mikef Posted July 30, 2014 Share Posted July 30, 2014 Food for thought.........I must confess to finding it a bit scary however safe they say it is. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-28551069 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John K Posted July 30, 2014 Share Posted July 30, 2014 Hmmm... Me no like. I'm a bit of a geek / engineer type so I've been watching these for years. I also work for a software company and I know how flakey early software can be in really obscure circumstance. The thing that worries me the most is the mix of autonomous and 'driven' cars on the road. If overnight everything was changed to driverless and they all had agreed communication standards so for example at a junction if all four driverless cars were waiting, they could sort it out between themselves. But on the plus side, these things will be skewed so much towards safety and risk avoidance that it will be quite easy to manipulate their behaviour on the road when you are driving near them. Want to pull out onto a busy road, see a driverless car coming, inch out a bit, it will see you and assume there is a collision coming and it'll slow down. Out you can pop even if it is against the traffic. And my final comment, I wonder if anybody developing these things has read 'I Robot' and I mean the old paper thing called a book, not the film... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalli Posted July 30, 2014 Share Posted July 30, 2014 You know what i'm not liking the thought of? Onboard cameras. Thrown into it, if they are 'all' driving at 40 in a 40, and you overtake at lets say 45....or more....no more spirited drives. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XTR2Turbo Posted July 30, 2014 Share Posted July 30, 2014 I can see the value to create road trains on motorways etc where crashes would be reduced and flow rates improved but not so sure about the value around towns etc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SootySport Posted July 30, 2014 Share Posted July 30, 2014 Well, it just wouldn't work, if all cars were driverless, as soon as there was a traffic jam, none of them would move as they would all be following the rules of the road. The only way traffic will start moving again is if a human intervened and went against logic by breaking a rule or two or by going against priorities at a road junction and allowing someone out. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John K Posted July 30, 2014 Share Posted July 30, 2014 Well, it just wouldn't work, if all cars were driverless, as soon as there was a traffic jam, none of them would move as they would all be following the rules of the road. The only way traffic will start moving again is if a human intervened and went against logic by breaking a rule or two or by going against priorities at a road junction and allowing someone out. Exactly what I meant when I said read 'I Robot' LOL... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Onliest Smeg David Posted July 30, 2014 Share Posted July 30, 2014 Currently reading a series called 'Post Human' about A.I. taking over..... scary stuff! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SootySport Posted July 30, 2014 Share Posted July 30, 2014 Exactly what I meant when I said read 'I Robot' LOL... It's been a long time since I read it, collection of short stories if I remember right, I Robot being just a few pages long. Asimov was the only SF writer I liked. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Colonial Posted July 30, 2014 Share Posted July 30, 2014 Fine by me...if we start by giving them only to people who need a car but whose driving standards are so bad that it would make the roads safer for the rest of us if the car drove for them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John K Posted July 30, 2014 Share Posted July 30, 2014 Also been ages since I properly read it, it was a short story in a collection other robot stuff. I was thinking of the story called "Runaround" about mining robots on Mercury. BTW I had to google all of that, too many years and beers have gone by for my memory to be that good from my teens... Basically a group of mining robots ended up going nuts because the three laws of robotics all conflicted with each other. And a human had to put himself in danger for the cycle to be broken. That's what your example about the traffic jam could result in if all the cars followed the same rules. How many lady posters do we have? I want to know how badly I will get flamed if I suggest the solution is to add a "Lady Driver" subroutine where the computer does something completely random and unpredictable at a completely random point in time... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John K Posted July 30, 2014 Share Posted July 30, 2014 Actually I am really only talking about my beloved Linda... And her driving is so random all the time that it is no longer random, it is consistently random, which means it can't be random any more... I think this is an existential oxymoron. My head hurts... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dombanks Posted July 30, 2014 Share Posted July 30, 2014 I can see the value to create road trains on motorways etc where crashes would be reduced and flow rates improved but not so sure about the value around towns etc it would be amazing that. we could have a situation where you rock up to a pre determined point and join the "train" of cars. then at other pre determined points the "train" could stop and you exit. as they are all auto then they could bunch up really close and use a sort of tow effect. maybe the one at the front could be a special car with say a really big engine that acts as a guide and then the ones behind could have little engines or a way to couple onto it so they dont need the engine on. sounds a bit familiar but i cant quite place it.... google have been running cars like this for ages havnt they? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeff oakley Posted July 30, 2014 Share Posted July 30, 2014 You have to look at this from a different angle. We are car lovers and enjoy driving but these are not aimed at us, they are aimed at the people who want to not use public transport but don't really want to drive. On any morning you will see people who are eating, shaving texting how good for them if they could get in and just do nothing at all and get there. They would love it as it would give them more time to do "important things". Companies will love them, fill up van with deliveries send out a person to unload, they can control speed, schedules etc. For me it is a nightmare driven by the need to control us all. Once these become mainstream which will not take too long, how long before driven cars become outlawed? We need to be very careful what we accept as down the line we may wish we had not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tisme Posted July 30, 2014 Share Posted July 30, 2014 There are two things that worry me: 1) It's just more "dumbing down" - removing a skill that requires thought, effort, control and restraint - a bit like now when we have so many young people relying on satnavs that they don't have any concept of "place" and just do as they're told (being a luddite, I still prefer a good old fashioned map - not just so I can work out my own way from A to B, but because it also shows you towns, villages and the country in general that add so much to the last remaining joy of driving) 2) Will driver-less cars not become the target of abusive driving and "accident" scams - who pays up on the insurance and wouldn't there be an automatic "we're right you're wrong" because computer driven cars MUST be perfect "so obviously it's your fault for hitting me" (and they have all the technology CCTV etc to PROVE it was your fault even if you know full well it wasn't or the true circumstances of the accident). One day we'll just be lumps of lard obeying everything we're told..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Posted July 30, 2014 Share Posted July 30, 2014 Fine by me...if we start by giving them only to people who need a car but whose driving standards are so bad that it would make the roads safer for the rest of us if the car drove for them. That would be about 70% of the population then, Scott? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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