Thread: Autonomous Vehicles

Originally Posted by rammypluge

And when there is a medical emergency, or a computer glitch.........

I can just imagine a whole highway of vehicles grinding to a halt, due to a faulty update. People frustrated, late to work.

When you look into how much work it is to make autonomous work, its less work to just keep a hand on a wheel.

How often do you see something of interest, somewhere to grab a bite or just check something out or whatever. It takes a fraction of a second to change the course of your journey when you have a steering wheel.

Sounds like a normal day on the road to me, cos someone's just looked at their phone and crashed into a slow car in front, blocking the whole highway for hours. Or the sewage tanker pilot that overcooked his brakes at Glen Osmond and took out a whole intersection's worth of stationary cars.

As I have said before, AV's just need to be better than the average dimwit today and they'll save lives. Communicating your wishes to the vehicle will be as simple as you need it to be. Loads easier than convincing an elderly uncle to do anything other than drive straight ahead at 50km/h. And I'd like to see you reef on the steering wheel while doing 110 down a main road, no, that takes a bit of looking around and safe driving skills. Nothing that isn't able to be programmed.

Originally Posted by bee utey

AV's just need to be better than the average dimwit today and they'll save lives.

and we're 20 years away from that.
AV's work in isolation, but are a long way from integrating into society.

What could be considered very crude versions of “cars talking together” in a kind of communication mesh is already finding its way into vehicles, even low tech old vehicles.

What I am talking about is navigation apps in phones, like Waze, and how they currently crowd-source information on traffic and positions of accidents, potholes, mobile speed traps etc.

Some of that info gathering requires user input, tapping a screen when some obstacle is seen.

Some of it requires no user input, like slow traffic areas are calculated by averaging the speed of users’ vehicles on the same road and flagging if that speed is much slower than the known speed limit of that section of road. Just need the app running, this stuff happens automatically.

The info that is crowdsourced is then shared with all the app users to make for a better informed commute. Sometimes the app itself (or logic in the cloud servers) choosing to re-route you when it suggests a faster route. And don’t we love it.

Considering how inefficient interfaces are becoming, such as the tesla where you have to wade through multitudes of screens to change settings etc, if/when autonomous do arrive, rather than people being in full instant and simple control of their vehicle, and significantly free to talk and do other things, people will instead be spending their time fiddling around with the screens and navigation.

"Sorry darling, cant talk or do anything right now, i need to work out how to deviate into that service station and sidle the car up against that particular pump/charger. Things are looking busy there and its the quick and the dead in that lineup. Oh christ, damn machine, just hook to the left a bit through that gap, i know it will fit, damn you thing!".

(I saw a review of a tesla where the guy took a few minutes or so just to work out how to start it ready for driving).

Originally Posted by bee utey

None of this is really that difficult to solve. Seeing that many big city cars already carry transponders (for toll roads) it's no big stretch of the imagination to think that soon all vehicles will have to carry them as part of their registration. That way every AV will know when a vehicle piloted by a squishie is invading their space and they'll act accordingly. Non tagged (ie unregistered) vehicles can be herded into the gutter by drone cop cars and subsequently towed away.

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Easy as,should have all that worked out and sorted in the next few months......

Originally Posted by bee utey

But unless you're a true bush hermit you're going to visit a town or highway with signal at some time or another.

You are, most likely, but there are many vehicles that are required to be registered that never will. A significant proportion of these will be "cars'.

Originally Posted by bee utey

As I have said before, AV's just need to be better than the average dimwit today and they'll save lives.

Save lives by dragging all the average and better than average drivers down? I dont think so.

AV will need to be better than a good driver, otherwise it is dragging down too many people, that are playing an important leadership and incident avoidance role on the roads.

Originally Posted by rammypluge

By dragging all the average and better than average drivers down? I dont think so.

AV will need to be better than a good driver, otherwise it is dragging down too many people, that are playing an important leadership and incident avoidance role on the roads.

Easy as. The dimwit defence of "waaah, ah need mah licence for work" will no longer be warranted when adequate AV's are around. Lose your licence for bad driving and you're still able to get about. The average driving skill on the roads has then gone up. Good drivers can remain on the road until they're no longer good. AV's will get better, and much faster than eevo thinks too, but longer than scarry jokingly suggests.