Technology - thoughts on Autonomous vehicles

[FinalImpact]

Technology is changing fast, planes fly themselves. Cars are now driving themselves. Do we really need cars that park and drive themselves? So who is at fault when self driving cars remove Pokémon players from society? And what about that ball that rolls across the street with a kid behind it? Will these cars have the intuition to know that kids chase balls? To me it seems like unnecessary risk! Sh$t, if you can’t drive – uhm – MAYBE YOU SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED TO OPERATE A VEHICLE!!!

And what about those Big Rigs/18 wheelers? What happens when these go rogue or hackers take them over as they have other vehicles?

Does anyone else see that when these cars take out human lives; our insurance premiums will skyrocket as everyone is suing everyone!

Open discussion! Let’s hear the good and the bad! Oh and Keep it clean!

A recent quote on the subject; author unknown.

“The problem is that that there is no mechanism in the system to enable it to know what it doesn’t know“​

 

[KHarper4289]

It's an inevitable step forward in technology but I do think it will evolve into a longer-distance method of transportation or have niche roles. Automation could be useful when applied to travel, I just hope there aren't too many growing pains when it comes to implementation.

 

[Botch]

Once the bugs are worked out (and they will be), I'd feel a lot safer riding my FZ amongst autonomous cars than driven by people texting.
Regarding "who's responsible" when something goes wrong, the Deep Pockets Principle will take over as it does in so many other areas. Who's a lawyer going to go after for a monetary award, the single Mom who bought the car, or GM? May not be right, but it is what will happen (at least here in the greed-run States).

 

[KHarper4289]

Once the bugs are worked out (and they will be), I'd feel a lot safer riding my FZ amongst autonomous cars than driven by people texting.
Regarding "who's responsible" when something goes wrong, the Deep Pockets Principle will take over as it does in so many other areas. Who's a lawyer going to go after for a monetary award, the single Mom who bought the car, or GM? May not be right, but it is what will happen (at least here in the greed-run States).

Accidents will lower significantly. Insurance business is going to get destroyed. Going to be an interesting times as thousands of jobs disappear. (Long distance drivers as well)

 

[dbldutch02]

When there are still great swathes of the world without drinking water or sanitation, I really do think we're concentrating our efforts on the wrong things. Every car already has a magnificent computer on board, if only drivers would use it.

 

[FinalImpact]

The thought of the big rigs having a malfunction and the destruction that follows terrifies me...

I supppose it is no worse than our jetliners with pilots that have never flown spefic models of plans and all that, but releasing avionics and car computers smart enough to detect things it doesn't know it needs to look for seems to be stretch!
There will be a learning curve!

 

[Smersh]

In the long run - with accident rates decreasing, humans will be proven again and again to be more dangerous as drivers, so driving "in manual" will be considered a safety issue and will be banned following the logic "there is no point in driving when there is auto-pilot available" and externality of driving. And if not banned by law, it will become prohibitively expensive because of insurance (as insurance companies leave the market - car insurance that covers human driver will become a niche with much higher premiums). I just hope I don't live to see it.

Shorter term - insurance companies may actually lower the costs the more gadgetry you car has. People who are not particularly good at driving will move to autonomous vehicles sooner, which is great. As a motorcyclist and a road biker, this makes me happy. What is not making me happy is prospect of being part of "working out the bugs/kinks" - really really don't want to be involved in that process, not on motorcycle and not on bike.

I'd imagine long distance trucks will actually change to fully autonomous faster than cars (at least here in the states) - it's easier to make whatever changes necessary to infrastructure wholesale on fairly standard highway than on small twisty backroads - not sure how they will solve the last mile problem - maybe auto-truck pulls over disconnects and the last mile is done by human operated local truck?

On the bright side of things - the throughput of the highways will increase as number of human driven vehicle decreases, reducing traffic congestion - in a "pack" of auto-vehicles, separation can be kept much smaller. there will be fewer idiots on the road - both those shifting from lane to lane and those drifting into lanes while on the phone.

Interesting times ahead, for sure

 

[Motogiro]

I've watched traffic and sometimes there's only a small difference between the chimp exhibit at the zoo and traffic. Lol! I don't think there is any way auto piloting a car right now with today's technology would increase mortality or injury rates. In fact, look at road rage! The worst that might happen with chimp's driving and road rage might be a little poop throwing!

 

[greg]

I can't wait for the days of self driving cars. Then I can just kick back and read a book whilst my car does the hard work.

 

[major tom]

Enjoy your two wheeled fun machines while you still can! The transition period will be havoc. Manual operation will lose out. Fun,what's that and who needs it? Race tracks and track days will be the last refuge.Obviously I hope I never see it

 

[Electric_monk]

We're likely to lose driving and riding as a hobby, but hopefully not in my time.
Regarding insurance, who is going to be insured..? If you're not driving why would you need insurance?
Are the manufacturers of the vehicles going to be liable? Logic dictates that they should but logic has little influence when it comes to big business drawing every cent out of the public.
There are some interesting times ahead.

 

[shyamvenky]

I'm with the "enjoy while it lasts" bandwagon.
Manual transmissions in cars are almost gone. And pretty soon autonomous cars will become ubiquitous.
I agree with some of the previous posts that said that human drivers would no longer be required at some point.
But that's not happening today - so I'd rather have fun now, than worry about the future..

 

[beatle]

This is an interesting video. Not just focused on autonomous vehicles, but all automated skills:

YouTube

There are times when I'd rather not drive, but sometimes I do. I don't like the idea of not being able to drive for fun.