Thread: Autonomous Vehicles

Originally Posted by V8Ian

Duly noted for future advantage.

Wotz sed on da forum, stayz on da forum!

Was interested to see Elon Musk in a recent TED talk say he believes they are close to making the autonomous driving system so good that it will have a lower accident rate than human drivers.
The human is still supposed to monitor the situation even if the autonomous system is operating, so I guess that's how Tesla avoids liability in a crash - by putting the ultimate responsibility on the driver.
In another field, I was looking at an expensive drone recently (too expensive for me to buy) and was impressed with how many autonomous features it has for avoiding collisions and so on.
The machines are getting smarter.

Yes, but worth noting that autonomous flight, whether drones or full sized aircraft, are a lot easier problem.

The other thing that needs to be recognised is that it is not necessary for the autonomous system to be better than the average driver - it needs to be a lot better than that. One of the reasons for this is that it has long been known that a large majority of accidents involve a small proportion of drivers, so that 'average' is not what we should aim for.

And worth remembering that to meet this target, will mean that every bit of software involved will have to have an error rate lower than has been achieved in any commercial software - and have some means of proving and maintaining this.

And further to musk's comment - note that the US accident rate is substantially higher than Australia's!

The main problem with Autonomous Vehicles is that there is no point in swearing at them, giving them the finger or even the hand of the steering wheel & what was that look.
Jonesfam
PS There is no point in do the above to a lot of drivers either.

If they make Uber Drivers redundant, that will do me The bar isn't too high for that job. It will probably make my third digit redundant too, except for Porsche drivers.

Great video just out by Fortnine- of of my favourite YouTubers overall as it’s about Motorcycles, and he’s intelligent and funny with his subject matter. This one is about his thoughts on 2 riders killed by Teslas on ‘autopilot’.

Tesla Autopilot Crashes into Motorcycle Riders - Why? - YouTube

Originally Posted by p38arover

There is this para relating to autonomous vehicles from your linked page:



I had read of this some weeks back.

I know that's not many crashes when compared with the USA's overall figures.

However, there's also this report: Report: Nearly 400 crashes by ‘self-driving’ cars in the US | Automotive Industry News | Al Jazeera

I sincerely hop (given his propensity) that Ron never buys an Autonomous Vehicle.

The real question is, does the autonomous vehicle make more or less wrong decisions than human drivers?
I saw Elon Musk say he expected autonomous Teslas to become more accurate than humans within a few years. If that happens, we might have to ditch our scepticism.