Self Driving Cars - Who Wants One?

beers said:
Once someone discovers over-unity power generation and we have airborne cars then this would be a good idea. For road travel there are too many variables really. What would you use to reference the road? What happens when the road conditions change such as from asphalt with legible lines and similar to a windy dirt road that looks completely different, from a computer tracking perspective?

Also for poor weather driving and similar for ice or different variables in traction in the road surface I don't imagine it being that viable in the near future.
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Well I do see all of these things possible, with captors and other technology.
Reference the roads? GPS or future GPS like technology (Galileo should be working by then...)
 
beers said:
... For road travel there are too many variables really. What would you use to reference the road? What happens when the road conditions change such as from asphalt with legible lines and similar to a windy dirt road that looks completely different, from a computer tracking perspective?

Also for poor weather driving and similar for ice or different variables in traction in the road surface I don't imagine it being that viable in the near future.
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Would tend to strongly agree. Unless they are at the point of being able to discern as good as or better than a human being. Snow covered lanes. A heavy downpour. Someone spills paint or other object on the road, obscuring whatever. Not to mention driving in direct stark sunlight.

Now if such a technology could scan inside treelines, vegetation and other obstacles for oncoming animals ahead, I might tend to begin leaning in favor of this. As long as all other oncoming and following cars were coordinated to heed safely.

And when an errant person comes running at your car like someone did me the other day, how would it react?

What about decision making in the event of a threat - someone approaches with a weapon or in attempt of hijacking the car?
What if there is a medical emergency and you have to get to the hospital at 120 mph? It could indirectly kill someone.

Scenarios are exhaustive. There must be an 'override' which means fully equipped also for standard driving.
 
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I'm all for self-driven cars. Not only would they be safer than most drivers on the road, they would also improve traffic conditions by automatically reducing speed to avoid congestion or by automatically re-routing around traffic.

Bring them on!
 
storp said:
Would tend to strongly agree. Unless they are at the point of being able to discern as good as or better than a human being. Snow covered lanes. A heavy downpour. Someone spills paint or other object on the road, obscuring whatever. Not to mention driving in direct stark sunlight.

Now if such a technology could scan inside treelines, vegetation and other obstacles for oncoming animals ahead, I might tend to begin leaning in favor of this. As long as all other oncoming and following cars were coordinated to heed safely.
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All these with infrared, laser, radar technology. In fact, while you don't see while driving in direct stark sunlight, these technologies can without any problems.
And when an errant person comes running at your car like someone did me the other day, how would it react?
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Brake? There are actually two sides to this, you might actually create an accident by reacting as a human being would (heavy braking, changing lane etc).

What about decision making in the event of a threat - someone approaches with a weapon or in attempt of hijacking the car?
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Maybe have a lockdown button?

What if there is a medical emergency and you have to get to the hospital at 120 mph? It could indirectly kill someone.
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Well you are being dangerous to every other cars around you there...

Scenarios are exhaustive. There must be an 'override' which means fully equipped also for standard driving.
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Agreed, we've been discussing all these scenarios but we haven't discussed the fact that I really enjoy driving :)
 
There's too many people that care about cars and driving to just sit idly by while their passion is overtaken by automated machines. I love driving and don't ever want or expect to see the ability to do that disappear. It would be nice in certain instances like long road trips or when you're incapable of driving. Also there will always be a manual override for something like this. Too much of a safety risk without.
 
Punk said:
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Agreed, we've been discussing all these scenarios but we haven't discussed the fact that I really enjoy driving :)
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Me too. So if everyone stops driving, eliminating this sense of interaction, won't this further seal us off from the "passing outside environment"?
Creating more separateness?

Or will the new breed of privileged passengers be interacting among themselves more?
 
Darren said:
There's too many people that care about cars and driving to just sit idly by while their passion is overtaken by automated machines.
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Physically paying jobs have been taken over by automation. Nobody made a sound when that happened, did they?

Hmm. A very good friend of mine, a law professor at the University of Riverside in California, believed the very same thing for a long time. As a matter of fact we had a period of such disagreement that he abruptly stopped using me as a research and current events adviser. It took a little over a year for him to reverse his stance and finally come to the realization that The People no longer hold sway in a country that claims freedom and democracy for all.

In the simplest of terms, the United States of America is not democratic. It never was. It is an oligarchy. This simply means that a few, extremely rich and powerful people control the ins-and-outs of government policy and their special interests.

In the mind of a cynic the benefits to this FAR outweigh the negative.
 
How did you jump from self driving cars to a supposedly corrupt government so fast?

As for your comment about people's jobs that has nothing to do with the government or really even this. Jobs get replaced with automation because it's cheaper to produce. Money money money. Self driving cars would be default be more expensive to produce than normal cars. Also car enthusiasts would still be paying for normal cars, even if they were hypothetically more expensive than automated cars. If there's money to be had by somebody, then the market for normal cars will always exist.

And like I said, all of these would need an override feature so any car would still be capable of driving it like normal. It'll be more of an additional feature in the future instead of an outright replacement.
 
Punk said:
Everything that has electronics is hackable therefore, if the police wanted they could arrest about 80% of the cars today by shutting down electronics. They won't because people woouldn't agree with that.
Technology is moving towards automated cars trains and airplanes, that's a fact I can guarentee. Is it bad? Is it good? It has both bad and good sides but the safety is definitely improved.

Tesla Motors is definitley gaining credibility but that's just because people aren't polluting directly the air, they don't feel bad about it because they don't "see" it. What we need to improve right now is our production of "clean" energies or at least use cleaner fuels until we find a clean way to feed our motors. That's not going to happen until our govs rely on that fossil fuel money.
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Good point. Now i can see hackers doing it for fun to make your life miserable. Speed faster, stop the car or crash as far as that goes. It would happen and someone would figure it out.
 
Darren said:
How did you jump from self driving cars to a supposedly corrupt government so fast?
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If you don't believe that the automotive industry around the world is interconnected with governments then there is nothing else I can try to explain to you.
 
z3r0 said:
Physically paying jobs have been taken over by automation. Nobody made a sound when that happened, did they?

Hmm. A very good friend of mine, a law professor at the University of Riverside in California, believed the very same thing for a long time. As a matter of fact we had a period of such disagreement that he abruptly stopped using me as a research and current events adviser. It took a little over a year for him to reverse his stance and finally come to the realization that The People no longer hold sway in a country that claims freedom and democracy for all.

In the simplest of terms, the United States of America is not democratic. It never was. It is an oligarchy. This simply means that a few, extremely rich and powerful people control the ins-and-outs of government policy and their special interests.
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This entire post has nothing to do with cars. That was my point.

Of course government will have some sway over what goes on in the market. That's always been the case in the USA. It's not completely a laissez-faire market.

That's not to say that an entirely corrupt government is going to shove automatic cars down our throats and outlaw normal cars, which is what it sounds like you're trying to tell me.

Also, oligarchy? Really?
 
If there's one thing I hate about the Internet is that wherever you go somebody has to drag in the government to a discussion about anything.
 
Darren said:
If there's one thing I hate about the Internet is that wherever you go somebody has to drag in the government to a discussion about anything.
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Welcome to the internet where you can find whatever proof you want to hear for whatever conspiracy you believe in... (and I'm supposed to be the conspiracy theorist here... :P ).
 
We'll best case for the self driving car; they are launched and quickly evolve, causing very little hazard to life and limb.

In which case more drivers will be left wanting them :rolleyes:
 
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