first, sorry for starting a thread then disappearing :(
Question. Would you feel safer sharing the road with my 95 year old grandma or a car controlled by Google's self driving software? Same question, but replace my grandma with someone that just left the bar and is blowing a .2?
depends on the scenario. is your 95 yr old physically and mentally capable of driving a car? note, that is not the same as having a valid drivers license. just because our laws for licensing individuals to drive needs work doesn't make self driving cars suddenly a good idea. but yes, assuming your grandfather/mother is mentally and physically capable of being a responsible driver... i would absolutely trust them more than a computer. while i would expect the computer to be more "efficient" behind the wheel. ie properly obey the driving laws to the letter and making efficient use of said laws and using them to create an effective driving plan. i DO NOT trust a pc or any code i have yet come across to intelligently handle a scenario for which it is not currently programmed.
the reality is that i don't need you or anyone else to signal for a full mile before changing lanes on the highway. what i do need from the drivers around me is the ability to react and adapt to scenarios that can not be forseen in a reasonable manner.
self driving cars are a fix for a problem that already has a much simpler, more efficient and less expensive fix. its called a "driver safety course". make people take one to get AND renew their license. then, have the bmv work with individuals primary care physicians to flag individuals who may need more review before being allowed to get behind the wheel of a car. the drunk bit is even easier. the u of wisky (i think it is) recently announced the invent of a blood test system that literally just has to come into contact with the skin on your finger. no poking required. put something similar to that in the steering wheel and insto super chango! :)
Eventually it will be required that all new cars have to have the self driving systems and then at some point after that they'll all be networked together so they can better anticipate what each other are doing.
how do you plan to make that work specifically? you do know there are places here in ohio where your gps nor cell phone will work right? the people who live there... do they have to start walking or move or....?
I don't think it's fair to compare self driving cars with flying cars since a fender bender between 2 cars on the ground is a pain in the ass, but likely not fatal. A fender bender at 1000 ft is likely fatal for anyone in the air or on the ground below it.
does it become more fair when you factor in the number of people hurt or killed by takata air bags? or chevy's inability to make a car ignition system that doesn't literally kill everyone in the car? these are the SAME types of people who will be writing the software for your self driving car.... just sayin..
Do flying cars exist? Sure. Do we really have the technology to make the Back to the Future 2 flying cars work? Nowhere close.
outside of the whole "time travel thing..." yes, we actually do have a pretty respectable approximation to that technology.
Same as we don't have the technology that makes Ironman fly. Who knows if it's even possible.
if your just talking about the flying part... we got that too, and likely far closer to the whole iron man bit than either of us realize. flying soldiers have been on the "to do list" for most military contractors since the beginning of the cold war.
but i will happily check back in 10 years. flying cars, imo, are an epic waste of time and money that could be much better used elsewhere. its just not going to happen. sorry :(.
Thing is, old people are horrible drivers. Kids are horrible drivers. Drunk people are even worse as are distracted drivers, which is a huge chunk of the population. Then there is the road rage insanity, the fast lane hoggers, the Indy car superstars, and the entitled jerks who feel that two miles of bumper to bumper traffic should halt and make way for a constant stream of jerks who can't bother to merge before the actual on ramp for the exit.
there are laws against just about any bad thing the above demographics could ever do wrong. problem is we don't enforce those laws. so we are desperately looking for a technological solution to solve the issue of us being too damn lazy to enforce our own laws.
There would have to be some way to grandfather in the 57 Corvette that my dad wants, but I'm guessing 10 years after they pass the legislation would be a fair amount of time to force everyone into a self driving car.
why is it "fair" to make an individual purchase something they don't want or need? im starting to think this brainchild is coming from the makers of obamacare. further, one of the more amusing stories out of the self driving car club is the one where a self driving car sat at a 4 way stop for over 10 minutes. the reason? the people at the other 3 sides of the 4 way stop didn't stop long enough for the self driving car to think it was safe to move.
a lot of people call that a win for the self driving car and a knock on the humans. to me that is absolutely incorrect. a self driving car is only capable of what it is programmed to do. the human mind is able to anticipate and adapt to scenarios it has never experienced before. i have no idea how anyone could expect a developer to sit down and code every possible scenario a car "might" face in the real world. keep in mind ANY scenario you leave out likely ends in an application error of some type. which ya know.... tend to STOP applications. so when your self driving car all the sudden hits an unrecoverable error condition it..... pulls over? slows down? stops immediately? speeds up? explodes? just a heads up... none of the above is a one size fits all solution to every potential issue and any of the above in the wrong scenario could very likely result in human deaths.
I'm sure it would also require that cars get yearly computer checks to make sure the computer is fit similar to echeck, but as El Presidente said the cars would have to be getting constant updates either by mobile connection or wifi to keep the OS and maps up to date so I'm sure the computer will report in if there is a problem and force you to get service.
i think there is a lot more functionality in that sentence than you realize. i work for a company that does some reasonably high tech high capacity software development and support. the services we provide are rather life and death. so i think i can speak to this subject a little bit. i don't want to bore you with every issue with what you just said from a technical point of view nor do i think you personally need all the answers. someone does, but you nor i do. however, i could write a 50 page single space report and not come close to covering every single technical challenge related to the above.
rendering a hundred years of cars as obsolete and largely without value is going to be a disastrous stance to take as a politician. there will need to be daily updates in a country that rarely keeps antiviruses or operating systems up to date. Huge chunks of America still use xp. That is a gigantic and difficult problem to solve.
xp???? rofl!!! id be happy if people would just stop using win 95 and NT!!!!
if i remember correctly that isn't even a self driving car issue but rather a "radio software" problem.
