Driverless Cars

[Oaktree]

Typing this, I'm thinking of a sci-fi short story I read many years ago..... it was about the Last Driver...... he took the last IC engined vehicle out of a hidden garage, and went for a run...... got tracked down by satellite before he got far......

Does anyone remember a tv show a couple years ago, I think it might have been called "Hunted" or something similar. It was a one shot summer replacement show on CBS.
The premise was that a number of couples was given a one hour head start, and told to "disappear". If you could elude an army of agencies looking for you for 30 days you won a million dollars or something like that. The government played very dirty...in addition to utilizing street cams & facial recognition software, license plate readers, etc. they'd keep tabs on any known friends and relatives in the event you tried to make contact, watched your email, tracked cellphones, even posted "be on the lookout" messages on social media. Truly scary how big brother-ish this country already is.

Surprisingly, there were a handful of contestants who were smart, planned ahead and were able to collect the prize.

 

[3930dave]

My wife just read the book: No One at the Wheel-- driverless cars and the road of the future. By:Samuel Schwartz 2018

The book describes many things that could go wrong going driverless like hacking the cars or what controls them and people using DC's to deliver explosives. These vehicles would also need black boxes to record what happened during a horrible accident. Who do you blame for a accident when there is no driver? Do you think you will win against a big corporation? The rest of us will have to have dash cams to prove our side too. The book describes the HUGE costs of things to come...

No One at the Wheel: Driverless Cars and the Road of the Future by Samuel I. Schwartz

Thanks for posting that ruff. It will be a candidate for my Winter reading list.

Rgds, D.

 

[prof fate]

Short version, second guy that i've seen bring up the SAME subjects...
Tony Seba talks 2: 95% km will be EV and autonomous. Really? Try to dig deeper! | rEVolution 218 - YouTube

Longer version - Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation - CWA - Boulder, April 9, 218 - YouTube

Elec car revolution will be here in a decade or less. Like it or not. LIke cell phones...11 years ago if I decribed a smart phone you'd say HA! If I told you Apple would be the number one phone seller you'd say HA. Not now of course.
Apple has spent BILLIONS on car tech...uber (not around a decade ago), google (webs search car? yep) - and more to come no doubt.

I remember when elec power tools were new...junk, weak. Today? WOW. No point to buy wired tools for most things.

Cost of battery and range of battery are converging...cost to power and maintain is hands down in the favor of elec cars.

Self driving..100% of the time? It may be a while. Some of the time? yep, that exists now. Cost of the sensors for autonomous is $1700 per car...cheap. Will be on all cars...even if not full autonomy, we had NOTHING 10 years ago and now you can buy it retail today (tesla).

Horse to car took less than 15 years...this will be much easier.

Will there be growing pains? Sure, we've seen some already. I live in Pittsburgh - an Uber test city, big google presence. After the accident in arizona they pulled autonomous cars, went back on the raod here yesterday. Too much momentum behind it for it to be stopped.

 

[3930dave]

Does anyone remember a tv show a couple years ago, I think it might have been called "Hunted" or something similar. It was a one shot summer replacement show on CBS.
The premise was that a number of couples was given a one hour head start, and told to "disappear". If you could elude an army of agencies looking for you for 30 days you won a million dollars or something like that. The government played very dirty...in addition to utilizing street cams & facial recognition software, license plate readers, etc. they'd keep tabs on any known friends and relatives in the event you tried to make contact, watched your email, tracked cellphones, even posted "be on the lookout" messages on social media. Truly scary how big brother-ish this country already is.

Surprisingly, there were a handful of contestants who were smart, planned ahead and were able to collect the prize.

Interesting premise. Then again, there are businesses around that provide digital isolation for xyz time frame, for a fee of course..... (meaning for people that just want/need a break).

This one was in the news again recently.....

In a land of workaholics, burned-out South Koreans go to '''prison''' to relax | CBC News

It's easy to forget how Borg-like many of us have become..... (as he sits, typing to the TBN collective..... )

30 days...... yeah, I could do that.... esp. for 1MM USD cash. Heck, 30k Canadian would be enough to interest me...

Facial recognition has become scary fast..... they were doing testing on massed crowds in China not long ago..... response/isolation time was quick.

UK may still have the record, for most cameras vs. population.

We haven't really "owned" the data in our cars for some time....... old-tech automotive black boxes are routinely confiscated and submitted into evidence for trials.

Anybody remember the late 80's show Max Headroom ? I liked the character back when, but Blank Reg is starting to look better and better with time....

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

Even w/o driverless cars, the tracking/privacy issues are significant......

ACLU, Electronic Frontier Foundation Win Court Ruling That Police Can't Keep License Plate Data Secret | ACLU of Southern California

Yep, 1984 was 34 years ago.....

May You Live in Interesting Times.....

Rgds, D.

 

[LD48750]

What happens when I get into a driverless car & don't know where I want to go?

 

[airbiscuit]

"We don't know where we're going, but we're making good time!"

 

[Soundguy]

my smart phone figured out where i worked..based on time spent there maybe? Not sure. Creepy.
Looked up a funeral notice online, thought i knew where it was..got close but not right, got out my phone..the directions were there to the place....no clue how it knew that.

Many other less creepy things of course, but those two stand out in my mind.

Every time I eat at cracker barrel, within a few minutes of leaving I get an email advertisement from cracker barrel store... I'm sure its using position I to know where I am, then sends me 'relevant' adds.

 

[Jstpssng]

I got an email from a local convenience store recently. I have no idea how they got my account address, and was not very happy about it.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

Every time I eat at cracker barrel, within a few minutes of leaving I get an email advertisement from cracker barrel store... I'm sure its using position I to know where I am, then sends me 'relevant' ads.

There is probably an app on your phone that is ratting you out. One where when you installed it, you got a message like "XYZ needs access to the following services: track your location" and you hit OK. The problem with apps is they tell you what information you want, but not what they're going to use it for. So you download some free utility, and behind your back it's spying on you and then selling what it learns to advertisers. Just about any free app is going to rely on advertising to pay for it, but they're moving away from pop-up ads in the middle of the app -- those are ineffective, not targeted, and make you not want to use it. The real money is gathering information about you and your habits that they can sell to advertisers.