Self-driving cars are here!

Man, I love jumping into already established discussions and making long posts of point/counterpoint!

I've read a number of articles about self-driving cars over the years and it's an area of significant interest to me. It should be noted that they've already been test driven in various situations for several years now, always with a human operator ready to take over should anything happen, and they've been very successful.

• Reliability: This isn't as much of a problem as you might think. Embedded systems have been controlling critical and non-critical devices for literally decades. They're used in power plants, manufacturing, military hardware (a guided missile is a robot!) — hell, coffee machines. The point is that these systems can be tested much more rigorously than an open platform like Windows. There's no reason to expect your car to BSOD. Does it now? I mean, most modern cars already have embedded systems running nearly everything except gross mechanical controls. That said, there are certain points of failure that would need to be accounted for.
  • Mechanical problems. The car would have to know what to do if it breaks down, including a breakdown of the automation systems themselves. Further, the systems would have to be reliable enough in mass production to not need servicing every few hundred miles, or go haywire if a stray rock smacks into a sensor.
  • Navigation. The car would need to know how to get from point A to point B, but more importantly, it would have to be able to deal with things like construction, temporary loss of GPS access (like being in a tunnel, with the caveat that they could install repeaters), detours due to accidents, and the driver suddenly changing his mind mid-route. A smart car should also be able to plan for refueling and alert the driver to make necessary stops.

• Safety: As noted, Google's automated car experiment successfully drove from San Francisco to Los Angeles (or was it the other way? w/e). We already have cars that can park themselves. The only reason we don't have full automation available this very instant is the public backlash against the concept, plus the inevitable liability issues. Humans are far more error-prone than machines — orders of magnitude more prone. A computer can react to the hypothetical deer instantly, or near enough to make human reaction time look glacially slow, and would never be drunk, tired, stoned, distracted by a child or cell phone, or angry from the fight with its wife.

• Automating the human experience: For every "rugged individualist" who can't stand the thought of not being in absolute physical control of his vehicle, there are a bunch of people who shouldn't be behind the controls of a Hot Wheels car, much less a motor vehicle. With all due respect to the auto enthusiasts of the world, I'll take the automated car over them 99% of the time. And if it leads to less people passing me on the right doing 90 in a 65 because they are just that much more important than everyone else on the road, I'll happily surrender my personal sense of entitlement.
  
  For one thing, it was already pointed out that most traffic jams/slowdowns are caused by natural human behavior patterns - guy in front slows down, so I slow down, and so on through the line. Automated transit could resolve this almost completely. Less crashes would lead to less major traffic jams anyway, and if I could get stuck behind a few less tractor-trailers doing 30 mph uphill in the left fucking lane... sorry, I digressed there a bit.

• Emergent behavior: This is a much more serious issue and one that would take study. Like a flock of birds or a school of fish, a bunch of cars all running similar automation software could be expected to behave similarly when confronted with unexpected situations. This could lend itself very naturally to unexpected results. For example, a crash involving an automated car travelling at high speed could easily cause a chain-reaction that would develop because of the software's programming. You'd also have the complementary problem of competing automation packages running around with conflicting priorities. This is probably the biggest issue that would have to be looked at before mass rollout of any products.

On the automated light rail issue, by the way, my experience from the Washington DC metro system is that nearly every serious crash involving an automated train has happened when a human operator was overriding the controls.

I'm willing to risk all the dumbasses rather than have my own personal freedom infringed upon. But I guess that's where we have our differences.

I'd love to have the option to use a system like this, and odds are, I'd use it pretty often if I did have the option. I just don't want automatic driving, even if it's only on the highway/freeway, to be the only option. I have a serious problem with that, if I'm approached with some problem because of my automated system, I want the ability to turn it off, take control, and drive around my situation. Plus if there's a traffic jam on a main avenue in my city, I'll know, and what if I want to take a shortcut? I hope it would allow for that.

tldr: People are lazy as shit as it is, I don't like the trend in making everything we do more and more automated so we do less and less work. I don't like what it represents or the trend it sets.

yeah, look at what this guy did in a Hotwheels car:

Can you imagine how dangerous he is on the road?? But really, some people are more dangerous to you than control systems would be, and that's not even bringing up the inevitable impaired drivers.

And sure, there are some places where mass transit doesn't work, but really, some of them, like LA are an example of how cities are designed for automobiles, and that does have a price.

I'm not sure where this idea of automatic control being absolutely mandatory comes from, but I doubt they'll do it for every single road everywhere, or keep you from taking alternate routes. Now there might not be an option on the ultra-high-speed roadways to drive under your own control, but hey, if you don't want to take them, I don't know that you'd have to do so.

edited 1st Jun '11 8:30:37 AM by blueharp

^^ I think it will be a long time if ever, before automated driving is made mandatory.

edited 1st Jun '11 8:27:18 AM by storyyeller

Eric, what does "FTFY" mean? By the way, the amendment to my post wasn't really needed; an automatic system need only be better than the average human performance as it really is, not some idealised level, to be an improvement. :)

"if I could get stuck behind a few less tractor-trailers doing 30 mph uphill in the left fucking lane... sorry, I digressed there a bit. "

For what it's worth, in the UK HG Vs, coaches and other vehicles limited to less than the national speed limit aren't allowed in the outside (i.e. the left) lane on any road with three or more lanes. Doesn't stop some decrpit old duffer in a flat cap from doing 55 in it, though. Most annoying, especially since we're not allowed to overtake on the left (i.e. overtake on the right, to you).

^^

I don't think it should happen period and don't want to take any steps even vaguely in that direction.

Besides, what about taxi and truck drivers? As a taxi driver would your job be to simply sit your happy ass in the taxi all day in case you suddenly needed to drive it in an emergency?

edited 1st Jun '11 8:31:02 AM by Barkey

I'm sure they'd be there to provide local color.

Truck drivers often help unload the cargo, at least for local deliveries.

Yeah, I know that truck drivers help with cargo, but their entire job would be to simply be there to do that? I think they would just do away with them and let the client do all the unloading so they aren't paying a human. That or truck drivers end up essentially just being security guards in vehicles.

Shit, they'll probably get some practically unlivable wage for that. There isn't much value in paying someone to just be a passenger on a vehicle.

edited 1st Jun '11 8:36:54 AM by Barkey

As an initial rollout stage, I'd support automation being made mandatory on national highways and optional on local roads, but what advantage do you really have being in manual control of a vehicle when everyone around you is running on autopilot, other than a (wholly false) sense of freedom?

I don't think we could get away with entirely unattended transport vehicles, at least not for a number of years. Plus, a great number of trucking "companies" are owner/operator affairs, and they could adopt the new automation systems in the same manner as anyone else. The long-haul business in the U.S. is already screwed up as it is; you constantly hear about drivers spending 14 hour stretches on the road, doing drugs to stay awake, then passing out and plowing through a bus or something.

If it came down to it, I'd support separate transportation networks for passengers and freight. I just can't get over the feeling that they are incompatible at a fundamental level.

edited 1st Jun '11 8:48:49 AM by Fighteer

Technology always eats jobs. That's inevitable, and there's no real way to fight against it. How many blacksmiths do you know these days?

Sorry, but, I'm with Fighteer on this one. Kind of tough for the 10% of people who are top-notch drivers and drive for the fun of it and actually deserve the full responsibility, versus the 90% of people who either can't drive worth crap or simply drive for the utility of it.

I've been in too many accidents where my best friend or mom was driving correctly but the other person was a moron, a few of which could have been very serious. And as a pedestrian I've been almost run over too many times due to moron drivers. I'm willing to take higher safety over indulging someone's ego.

And like has already been pointed out, the notion that it'll make people lazy is just BS. It won't make people any more lazy than taking the bus, taxi, or subway already makes people; it will just give more freedom to that concept. Not to mention that finding ways to automate what amounts to make/busywork isn't lazy, it's intelligent.

So if an accident actually happens on a freeway and I want to drive around it?

It's not about being a top notch driver, there's an element of control that people deserve as a right. And does this mean it's mandatory that I buy a new car with this system on it by X date? I can't afford that.

I'm sure there will be a protocol for dealing with such incidents, why wouldn't there be? I don't see why they would just stop all cars every single time. There will be SOME accidents that merit that, I suppose, but why wouldn't they expect to route cars around a problem?

edited 1st Jun '11 8:54:17 AM by blueharp

The car can handle getting around the accident by itself, Barkey. That or it'll alert you that there's something you need to deal with manually. One question is why you'd need to be concerned about it; full automation would lead to far, far less accidents in the first place.

Anyway, price and rollouts will indeed be a major factor, but if automated cars can drive now on today's idiot-populated roads, the situation can only improve with adoption.

edited 1st Jun '11 8:56:53 AM by Fighteer

@Andrew G Paul: Fixed That For You.

“Better than now” and “actually good enough” aren't the same thing. If you aim for the lowest common denominator repeatedly, expectations will keep going down. Things are already worse than they should (and practically could be,) holding up something that would lock us below that level as a solution to the insane lethality of driving is a very bad idea.

And I'm not willing to give up that privilege.

How about you get rid of that privilege when people get into accidents or drive recklessly? Temporarily/permanently, depending on the situation.

I don't approve of letting the idiots ruin shit for me, and I don't approve of it in this case especially.

edited 1st Jun '11 9:10:00 AM by Barkey

That last statement can go both ways.

I don't see why we can't have both kinds of cars personally. Though possibly with slightly stricter tests to identify the people who are responsibole enough to handle a human-controlled vehicle.

It's a giant diversion in any case. You're not going to see automation made mandatory within your lifetime, Barkey, if only because there are so many other people like you who consider driving a point of pride. That shouldn't hamstring the ability to partake of automation as an option for those who prefer it.

edited 1st Jun '11 9:19:21 AM by Karkadinn

@Barkey: But what if you can improve transit efficiency by a large factor, remove human error as a cause of accidents, and save a truckload on insurance? How about you give up your autonomy for the ability to have your car take you to work in half the time it normally does, thanks to improved traffic flow and higher maximum speeds?

As far as mandatory usage is concerned... honestly, in an automated transit system, having someone running around on manual would be one of the worst possible situations. Slower reaction time, prone to irrational responses... terrible. Maybe if there's a "slow lane" for the manual drivers and a "fast lane" for the automated ones, that would help persuade people.

That, too. Really, it's not so much a case of "a few bad apples" ruining it for everyone as it is "90% of drivers are idiots and/or jerks." Yes, even me sometimes. I've made mistakes that could have been serious when I was younger, and even still do make the occasional mistake. That autocar would not have made them.

edited 1st Jun '11 9:25:46 AM by Fighteer

@Barkey

Because the idea is to prevent accidents. Once an accident has happened, the damage is already done. Sure, you can then prevent more accidents, but it would have been better to also prevent the initial one.

As for reckless driving, I dunno about where you live, but here in MA docking people for reckless driving would effectively mean giving an automated car to almost everybody anyway. (I'm reminded of when a friend of mine drove up from NC to visit me, and he declared that the drivers up here "drive like they have a death wish".)

Higher maximum speeds? Oh yeah, let's hit the deer, patch of black ice, or slippery gravel road even harder, maybe that'll convince people automation is better.

edited 1st Jun '11 9:29:38 AM by Pykrete

I have a 15 minute commute through town that isn't slowed down by traffic. Not much of a boon to me.

I already said I'd use automation if it were available, but that I wanted the ability to switch. Let me get into manual if I want to so I have the peace of mind that I can if I have to, and I'll be fine with having it around. It's very important to me to have the option.

Also, I'm not short sighted enough to be ok with the whole "But you'll be dead by the time it's mandatory!" argument. It's irresponsible to leave problems of the present for future generations like that, it's caused plenty of other messes that are happening right now.

Besides, what about my bike?

edited 1st Jun '11 9:31:23 AM by Barkey

Remember, reaction times? Also, the car can detect local weather conditions and modify speed appropriately. If the road's cold enough for ice, for example, it slows down. Gravel roads would be similar - its road database would know the surface type and adjust appropriately, and really how many gravel roads do you drive down at 60 mph? When you aren't sixteen and have a death wish, that is?

Well, golly gee, good for you. Are you objecting to this purely as a kneejerk reaction to the idea of it being made mandatory? Which wouldn't happen for decades anyway, mind you, even if it were to come about as an end-goal.

Also, I never said manual controls would be removed. Certainly there would need to be a manual override in place. Again, however, as a far future goal, removing primary driver controls from cars would save quite a bit of money.

edited 1st Jun '11 9:34:48 AM by Fighteer

I don't really see it going any other way. If it got popular enough for people to have automated vehicles with a manual override being possible, I can't really see the government not eventually either doing away with manual, or simply making it so something critical had to happen to give you manual control and that it wasn't on-demand.

I don't want to encourage anything that progresses towards that sort of end-goal. I'm against most forms of automation.

edited 1st Jun '11 9:40:11 AM by Barkey