Driverless Cars

[3930dave]

I got quite a chuckle out of that one. The lead driver swapped lanes pretty quick and left the autopiloted car to smack right into the stopped auto dummy. Pretty darn funny to watch. It sure gave me a real feeling of confidence to sail right into the stopped auto. Yeah I want me one of those. I am all for new technology. I am a technology junkie, but we need a bit more "cooking" in the lab before we flip on the old autopilot and expect it to take us somewhere safely. That "autopilot" is a death trap. Made to lull you into a false sense of security and kill your sorry arse forthwith. Tesla should be sued off the map for releasing such a "system" to the public. And they say guns are dangerous. HA!.

While I like some of what Musk has pulled off, I do agree - marketing that as Autopilot is at best irresponsible.

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

Lot's of things can be dangerous. I wonder how well the typical, cell phone equipped, driver would have done in the same situation? With these assisted driver technologies, if the driver is not engaged, their going to get in trouble. Doesn't hurt to understand how these technologies work though.

Count me in the 80% or so of drivers that consider themselves "better than average" .

Whatever the tech is, I want to know the limitations, esp. if it can have lethal consequences.....

Humans screw up too, but at least there is an element of individual control/choice available to each person. I don't have the personal time/money/motivation to write my own code for a self-driving car though.....

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

Recently bought a new car equipped with the latest driver assist bells & whistles. First thing I did was to turn them all off! No way some friggin' computer is going to play with the brakes when a 70 MPH emergency lane change is needed in a life/death situation!

Like cell phones..... people buy them, and also promptly turn many features Off.

My biggest issue is reliability........ a sore point with me is when an additive non-core piece of tech (bell/whistle) faults, and takes down a primary function, or the whole piece of equipment.....

Rgds, D.

 

[airbiscuit]

Bah Humbug with technology. The horseless carriage will never replace the horse and buggy.

Who needs safety glass, redundant braking, anti lock brakes, power steering, automatic transmissions, seat belts, air bags, navigation, all wheel drive, ...

We will never be able to improve on the horse and buggy.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Bah Humbug with technology. The horseless carriage will never replace the horse and buggy.

Who needs safety glass, redundant braking, anti lock brakes, power steering, automatic transmissions, seat belts, air bags, navigation, all wheel drive, ...

We will never be able to improve on the horse and buggy.

Said the amish man...

 

[airbiscuit]

Said the Luddite.

 

[vvanders]

Nice! didn't even sound like a brake lockup happenned.

Having done a few panic stops in that same model over ~75k miles there's not really much sounds associated with planting the brake pedal to the floor. The ABS is pretty aggressive about not letting the tires slip and the front tires have a pretty wide contact patch.

As a few others have said, plenty of things can kill you if you don't respect them appropriately. I've a bit of experience with the system as we got one of the first dual motor cars and had ~15k on the odo before the OTA enabled it. Each time you engage it there's a very clear message that it's an assist and you should be ready to take over at any time.

You can configure the follow distance via a dial on a stick off the left side of the steering wheel. It lets you set a follow distance of 7(about 1sec per 10mph) down to 1 where you're basically up someone's tailpipe. I'd be curious what setting they had enabled in the test.

That said, I rarely use it for >40mph stuff these days(aside from the adaptive cruise control). The really useful feature of this is rush hour traffic. Speeds are low enough to easily respond to anyone cutting you off and takes off all the mental overhead of stop and go since the car will resume from a full stop.

I think the jury is still out if the public is ready for this type of an assist, even moreso considering how many faces I see planted in a cellphone every time I head into Seattle. That said I find it pretty easy to understand the limitations and I'd sure be pretty disappointed to move to another car that didn't have it.

 

[k0ua]

Bah Humbug with technology. The horseless carriage will never replace the horse and buggy.

Who needs safety glass, redundant braking, anti lock brakes, power steering, automatic transmissions, seat belts, air bags, navigation, all wheel drive, ...

We will never be able to improve on the horse and buggy.

There is nothing wrong with advancing technology, and even this technology will be mainstream, someday, and maybe someday soon. We are just saying that this tech is not fully cooked. More lab time is needed. The WILL make it work, too much is at stake to quit now.

 

[rd_macgregor]

Made to lull you into a false sense of security and kill your sorry arse forthwith.

I think this is the key observation. A system like this is almost guaranteed to breed complacency...pretty soon a user is bored with being the back-up driver and shifts attention to other things leaving the car's AI to do ALL the driving.

 

[k0ua]

I think this is the key observation. A system like this is almost guaranteed to breed complacency...pretty soon a user is bored with being the back-up driver and shifts attention to other things leaving the car's AI to do ALL the driving.

Agreed, The driverless car needs to be 100% responsible, or the system need to be turned off and the human driver 100% responsible. You can't have a system that will do lane keeping, scanning for obstacles forward, and either braking to stop or slow down and able to do this safely about 90 percent of the time, and expect the human to be "paying attention" that 100 % of the time but doing nothing. Who ever thought this out doesn't know squat about human behavior. Humans cannot operate this way. It is not in their nature. If humans don't have anything to do with the driving part, they WILL find something to do. That may include reading a book, texting on the phone, talking with other passengers, because that is all they are at this point, just a passenger.

When the driverless car can truly take you from point A to point B safely 100% of the time and not sail into the ***-end of other vehicles or run over children in the road, then we will have arrived. I believe it will happen. It is just a matter of time. But at this point, driverless vehicles are dangerous to the people inside of them and the others that share the road. Cars with drivers are also dangerous to the passengers, and to others that share the road, but until driverless cars can match or exceed this level of safety, then I don't think they should be on the road. I think lab testing should continue and take what we have learned and improve upon it. We will get there.