[MightyMouseTech]

Originally Posted by Efthreeoh

If Elon believes in Autopilot so much, why does he want to build his super tunnels?

Because you can't do ~1000 km/hr in a car.

[Efthreeoh]

Originally Posted by zenmaster

Nah.

Yeah, go read up on autonomous driving. One main benefit is supposed to be increasing traffic density while increasing overall speeds and reducing accidents and fatalities.

[hellrotm]

Originally Posted by jpdchicago

Wait until a few more people die (and kill others in the process) while on autopilot mode and their families start to lawyer up. We will see all of it grind to a halt until current laws are fully updated for the new technology.

Fully updated to what?

[Questofthetune]

Originally Posted by MightyMouseTech

Because you can't do ~1000 km/hr in a car.

Not with that attitude you cant!

[RM7]

Originally Posted by jpdchicago

Wait until a few more people die (and kill others in the process) while on autopilot mode and their families start to lawyer up. We will see all of it grind to a halt until current laws are fully updated for the new technology.

Right, because people that are texting and face-timing aren't already smashing into and killing people

[pz619]

Originally Posted by JamesNoBrakes

Right, because people that are texting and face-timing aren't already smashing into and killing people

Yes but we have laws for those. To my knowledge, automous driving is the Wild West right now from a legal perspective.

[xQx]

Originally Posted by zenmaster

Self driving doesn't alleviate road congestion.

Actually, it will.

The safe distance you can travel behind another car depends on two things:
1) your reaction time
2) how much more quickly they can stop than you.

In a perfect world, cars would trust each other and communicate braking capability, meaning if you and the car in front decide they have identical stopping capabilities (or the car in front has inferior stopping capabilities) the distance at which your autopilot car can safely 'tailgate' the car in front is determined by its reaction time. If it can measure the speed of the car in front and apply the brakes in 0.2 seconds, at 100kph that means it can travel 5.6 meters behind the car in front. Currently, people leave about a 2 second gap (some more, some less) - meaning there is 30 meters of empty space between cars travelling in convoy. This means on highways, you can easily fit twice as many cars on the same road.

In reality, you cant trust anything another car tells you, so tailgating margins are going to be a bit bigger, but you're easily halving the 26 meter gap that currently exists. However, this maths holds especially true for trucks. A volvo can completely trust the volvo in front, so essentially this gives us the ability for 20 or 50 carriage road-trains that dynamically assemble and disassemble.

Second - when a road is congested, and we all take off from a slowdown or a halt (or when we all take off at lights), each car waits for the car in front to take off, then they take off - so the time between the front car starting to move and the tenth car starting to move is considerable. When everybody's car has near-zero reaction times, a convoy of traffic taking off at a red light will look more like a single vehicle (eg. a train), than what we see today.

Lastly, if most cars can drive themselves somewhere out of the city after dropping you off, we don't need to waste nearly as much of that space between the two curbs on road-side parking. In many, many areas we'll be able to jam another lane (or two) of through traffic onto the existing suburban roads.

[hellrotm]

Originally Posted by pz619

Yes but we have laws for those. To my knowledge, automous driving is the Wild West right now from a legal perspective.

Are you suggesting they will outlaw autonomous driving or autopilot?

[xQx]

Originally Posted by pz619

Yes but we have laws for those. To my knowledge, automous driving is the Wild West right now from a legal perspective.

Well, it's quite simple really. Today, the person behind the wheel is at fault.

Same as what we've had with cruise control forever, and same with what happens when a pilot puts his 747 in fully autonomous flying mode. The buck stops with the driver.

When cars become unmanned, it's a different legal kettle of fish. But it's hardly insurmountable. We've got the legal framework in place to punish the right people if a company makes a product that kills people (james hardie aspestos etc.) - in reality, people very rarely go to prison, but the car manufacturer will just have fully comprehensive insurance that generously pays out any victims and their families.

... but the crux of the issue is that compared to the amount of people who are killed by human drivers today, autonomous cars will save countless lives - and countless more if you consider what our hospitals would be like without the burden of road trauma.

I mean, how many people do you know who've ever been injured by an autonomous elevator? Y'all trust those high-speed vertical-transition automatic death-traps without any thought. No thanks, I'll take the stairs.

[pz619]

Originally Posted by BlackJetE90

Are you suggesting they will outlaw autonomous driving or autopilot?

I'm not. Just pointing out that there is no real standard or legal guidelines for autopilot or similar technologies on the books today.

Autopilot is coming, I don't think that's going to stop. But one of previous posters bring up a good point, who is at fault if autopilot accidentally kills someone. Manufacturer due to potentially shoddy programming and subpar equipment? Or is it the driver for failing to intervene in time? It's a gray area. To me it's sort of like the airbag. It's not enough to just have some sort of inflator in the car, but it needs to be built to a minimum level to be sold in the US.

[David70]

Weird how upset people are about "taking my car away" when there isn't one car available that will drive autonomously. Maybe a little overreaction. Then no one is proposing taking their car away or considering the idea that the average car on the road is over 10 years old it would take many years for any of this to actually happen, once there is actually a car that can operate autonomously. By the time they are taking my standard car away I will probably need it to happen.

Tell some about a new technology and they ready for the world to end.

I would be happy to replace about 80% of my driving with a chauffeur which is how I see the autonomous car. Also, the chauffeur is hardly a new idea invented by the young generation, many people have wanted drivers from the beginning of the car, they just couldn't afford them.

[skyline408]

We have a car that does semi-autonomous driving up to 80 or so mph. It's pretty sweet to turn it on for long highway drives, and have your hands free for eating, checking phone whatever.. Every minute or so you need to 'tap' the wheel to tell the car you're still there. It's not w/o it's flaws though. It only works well, when the roads are clearly defined, and in some instances, it's just too strange to 'trust' the car to turn on that upcoming S curve.

Stop and go traffic is really cool though. You just turn it on and it will do all the work for you.

[tdott]

Originally Posted by Efthreeoh

Yeah, go read up on autonomous driving. One main benefit is supposed to be increasing traffic density while increasing overall speeds and reducing accidents and fatalities.

No it's to remove bottle necks and make traffic flow more efficient eliminating the dumbasses who can't merge, pay attention, change lanes, etc. A ton of reasons that lead to reduced congestion.

Statistically, it's still far safer than current drivers even if someone gets killed in one and that statistic will only improve as the systems get better. You are ignoring all benefits and focusing solely on the negatives. Change is inevitable, accept it, adapt to it, move on.....

It is the future, fight it all you want it will get there 100%, only time will tell how long and to what extent.

[Brandon818]

Whats scary is I saw someone sleeping on the highway, and another person reading a book with autopilot on.

[David70]

Originally Posted by tdott

No it's to remove bottle necks and make traffic flow more efficient eliminating the dumbasses who can't merge, pay attention, change lanes, etc. A ton of reasons that lead to reduced congestion.

Statistically, it's still far safer than current drivers even if someone gets killed in one and that statistic will only improve as the systems get better. You are ignoring all benefits and focusing solely on the negatives. Change is inevitable, accept it, adapt to it, move on.....

It is the future, fight it all you want it will get there 100%, only time will tell how long and to what extent.

The problem with this is the car needs to be a great driver not statistically safer than most. When the car company gets sued after a death and they ask the car company if a really good driver would have avoided the accident and the answer is "possibly" telling about the "average driver" or "most drivers" will have them paying.

[Fundguy1]

Originally Posted by Efthreeoh

Yeah, go read up on autonomous driving. One main benefit is supposed to be increasing traffic density while increasing overall speeds and reducing accidents and fatalities.

That's ONLY if ALL the vehicles are self driving. Which means the liberals have liberated us from being drivers to just passengers. Doesn't work in a mixed group.

[David70]

Originally Posted by Fundguy1

That's ONLY if ALL the vehicles are self driving. Which means the liberals have liberated us from being drivers to just passengers. Doesn't work in a mixed group.

The liberals control the technology? I thought you told me the conservatives had all the brains.

[tdott]

Originally Posted by David70

The problem with this is the car needs to be a great driver not statistically safer than most. When the car company gets sued after a death and they ask the car company if a really good driver would have avoided the accident and the answer is "possibly" telling about the "average driver" or "most drivers" will have them paying.

Since the driver is still liable under current laws and driver is required we wont have that problem unless laws are ammended for driverless cars.

No doubt someone will try to sue, that is why Tesla added checks to make the driver put their hands on the wheel. They will probably need to add more but that isnt a reason to think the technology will fail.

[David70]

Originally Posted by tdott

Since the driver is still liable under current laws and driver is required we wont have that problem unless laws are ammended for driverless cars.

No doubt someone will try to sue, that is why Tesla added checks to make the driver put their hands on the wheel. They will probably need to add more but that isnt a reason to think the technology will fail.

My point, no manufacturer is ready to tell the consumer they have an autonomous car and getting to 95% is worlds away from 99.9% or reality is the even higher percentage even if it is better than the average driver.

Someone tells you it works 99% of the time but the 1% of the time it might kill you and I am not ready to go to sleep or a court won't put the blame on the company that designed a system that works pretty well but not really well.

[xQx]

Originally Posted by Brandon818

Whats scary is I saw someone sleeping on the highway, and another person reading a book with autopilot on.

You don't need autopilot for that. Between 2000 and 2002 I used to drive from Bendigo to Melbourne every Friday night, then back every Sunday night on the highway (2 hour trip) with cruise control on. ... nothing strange about that.

Back then, there wasn't any law against using a mobile phone while driving... in fact, there wasn't even a law preventing you from using a laptop while driving.

So I did.

Every week I'd load 2 movies on my laptop, and when I started driving I'd put it on my lap - between me and the steering wheel, plug the 3.5mm audio into one of those cassette to ipod adapters so I could listen to it on the car stereo, load the video into a media player so all you had to do was press "space" to play, then drive out of town.

As soon as I got through town and onto the highway, I'd set cruise control on the speed limit, recline my seat and watch a movie.

Here's a test - next time you're on the highway, set cruise control and force yourself to stare at the speedo for as long as you can. You'll find you don't crash, because your peripheral vision is _very good_ at detecting movement, so you can monitor the road with your peripheral vision while focusing on something below. (be sure to look up if you see anything move in your peripheral vision) Sure, your reaction time is probably compromised, but it's just as compromised if you're half-asleep, angry, or have kids in the back. Your chance of an incident is also reduced since you're doing the same speed as everyone else, and not getting impatient, overtaking or tailgating. With practice, you become very in tune with the road using only your peripheral vision.

My old man used to read the paper on the way to work - doing about 80mph on a dirt country road. I could never get the hang of reading, I'd loose my place on the page every time I glanced up at the road.

Anyway, it's illegal now, so you can't do it. Apparently it's dangerous - but I'd contest that's because of lawmaker's assumptions rather than actual evidence. There's a big difference between passively motoring a device (eg. reading the speedo or watching a movie) and actively using a device (eg. changing the radio or texting). [Edit: note: I'm not saying it should be legal. People are idiots. I'm just saying it wasn't as unsafe as you'd think.]

But I did it for two hours, twice a week, for two years and didn't have _any_ near misses (or accidents).

Which is a lot more than I can say for my general driving experience at that time of my life - it was when I was paying attention (ie. driving as fast as possible without loosing my license) - that I was most likely to kill myself or someone else.

[RABAUKE]

Originally Posted by Fundguy1

So then the price of these goes well north of $50k and you get a really expensive but ugly and boring looking car compared to its competition that has the gimmick of self driving which most people are afraid of or like me really do not ever want unless I'm a 100 yr old quadriplegic. Hmmm. And it's not like you couldn't equip an ICE with self driving so the ev part doesn't ultimately have an exclusivity on that anyway.

I'm not sure if I'm more afraid of autonomous vehicles or the idiots out on the road now. I have zero interest or trust of self driving cars. I actually,.....and wait for it, like driving. I enjoy a short run out in the country or a cross country road trip.....and I love to be behind the wheel. Screw riding in a self driving car and screw having other people riding in one on the road anywhere near me.

[RABAUKE]

Originally Posted by xQx

You don't need autopilot for that. Between 2000 and 2002 I used to drive from Bendigo to Melbourne every Friday night, then back every Sunday night on the highway (2 hour trip) with cruise control on. ... nothing strange about that.

Back then, there wasn't any law against using a mobile phone while driving... in fact, there wasn't even a law preventing you from using a laptop while driving.

So I did.

Every week I'd load 2 movies on my laptop, and when I started driving I'd put it on my lap - between me and the steering wheel, plug the 3.5mm audio into one of those cassette to ipod adapters so I could listen to it on the car stereo, load the video into a media player so all you had to do was press "space" to play, then drive out of town.

As soon as I got through town and onto the highway, I'd set cruise control on the speed limit, recline my seat and watch a movie.

Here's a test - next time you're on the highway, set cruise control and force yourself to stare at the speedo for as long as you can. You'll find you don't crash, because your peripheral vision is _very good_ at detecting movement, so you can monitor the road with your peripheral vision while focusing on something below. (be sure to look up if you see anything move in your peripheral vision) Sure, your reaction time is probably compromised, but it's just as compromised if you're half-asleep, angry, or have kids in the back. Your chance of an incident is also reduced since you're doing the same speed as everyone else, and not getting impatient, overtaking or tailgating. With practice, you become very in tune with the road using only your peripheral vision.

My old man used to read the paper on the way to work - doing about 80mph on a dirt country road. I could never get the hang of reading, I'd loose my place on the page every time I glanced up at the road.

Anyway, it's illegal now, so you can't do it. Apparently it's dangerous - but I'd contest that's because of lawmaker's assumptions rather than actual evidence. There's a big difference between passively motoring a device (eg. reading the speedo or watching a movie) and actively using a device (eg. changing the radio or texting). [Edit: note: I'm not saying it should be legal. People are idiots. I'm just saying it wasn't as unsafe as you'd think.]

But I did it for two hours, twice a week, for two years and didn't have _any_ near misses (or accidents).

Which is a lot more than I can say for my general driving experience at that time of my life - it was when I was paying attention (ie. driving as fast as possible without loosing my license) - that I was most likely to kill myself or someone else.

You're lucky, most people can't drive worth a shit while they're paying attention.