Driverless Cars

[8corners]

Just saw this article -- it's the only way I picture truly driverless cars hitting out streets anytime in the next 20 years....

 

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Driver-Dressed-Like-a-Seat-Spotted-Inside-Driverless-Van-439041863.html

 

-8corners

 

[BLASTERZ]

Blame the immigrants, they came in and took our engineering jobs, then invented self driving cars, which also take their jobs, but also our jobs.

[Delibirb]

The only way self driving cars works is if literally every car is driverless. Wed have to replace/upgrade every car at once which is not realistically feasible.

[Kaiji]

The only way self driving cars works is if literally every car is driverless. Wed have to replace/upgrade every car at once which is not realistically feasible.

This isnt the case. Peep Tesla

 

You actually have to convince people about ethics and guarantee 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% safety

[Astolfo]

Except driverless cars are more efficient and risk-free than human drivers themselves are and so far the only recorded single incident is from a human driver crashing into the driverless car itself because the former backed up (or something of that sort) when it shouldn't have, sending it colliding with the latter.

 

Technology advances at an exponential rate of development and they will only continue to get even faster at getting better and better, far exceeding any human capability. By not switching, you are quite literally increasing the road risk, as time goes on. Sure, advances could be made to account for human drivers to the best of capability, but when you are within an armsbreadth distance, such as in the aforementioned example, there's only so much space for the driverless car to move without hitting others as well. On top of that, it's not like there will always be enough space for every single car in the lane to back up simultaneously so they don't crash into each other while making space for the driver-containing car. All of this is based on assuming every single car behind the drivercar is also driverless. Also the fact that you literally cannot move fast enough to avoid collisions or reactions in small distances or from sudden reckless/stupid decisions humans make at times.

 

Again, by not switching in the near and quickly coming future, you are quite literally increasing the road risk. And you can't simply just refuse and flat-out deny technological advancements altogether without being either A, a dictator/single-party ruler style of government, or B, halting economical development and/or slowing it down because of the impacts said advancement would have had in other fields as well. Sure, the cars by themselves aren't too special. But by using the same thing in for instance, emergency medical trucks which might also then have fully automated machines to both diagnose and remediate any problems and/or surgery on the spot would be able to get there faster as well. By not requiring human shifts which are labor intensive currently which make it impossible to get to everyone as they call for help, more people could be saved as well.

 

But by refusing the advancement of driverless car systems, you are also denying the speed in something like that. Sure, the automated life survival/treatment system is great, except you have no way to get it anywhere except at the hospital itself which by that point some people are already dead or too far gone to save. So on and so forth.

 

You literally will not be able to deny it whatsoever. It will come, whether you like it or not.

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

so far the only recorded single incident is from a human driver crashing into the driverless car itself because the former backed up (or something of that sort) when it shouldn't have, sending it colliding with the latter.

I do totally support driverless cars, but this is untrue. Off the top of my head, I can think of an example with the Waymo car swerving when confronted by an unexpected sandbag barrier, hitting a bus in the process.

 

Google has reported 14 accidents with its driverless cars, the previously mentioned accident being the only one Google admits to being the fault of the driverless car.

 

There are also an unknown number of accident reports google throws out, on the basis of their simulations showing that the car would have been fine on its own.

 

Despite the vast majority of accidents being at the fault of other drivers, these incidents are still very relevant, as they indicate that the programs used have not yet reached the point of being completely viable. A computer may be a better driver, but at this time it simply cannot react to potential crashes to the degree a human can.

[Astolfo]

Alright, my bad on that then.

 

Hence, what I said about as technology further develops, it will become necessary and then further more and more necessary to swap after that point of safety is achieved. Not switching it is literally just emotional stubbornness and recklessness at that point.

 

Synchronize and connect with traffic cameras to check for other moving/incoming objects. Better development in cameras to better recognize shapes and properties of movement and speed and such of said objects. Match code with traffic light and some sort of transmittable sign for the machines to understand the equivalent of road signs. Match paths and figure out optimal routes with other driverless cars. So on and so forth.

 

That might sound like it'd be in the far future, but it's not likely to be more than 50 years, or 100 years at a stretch, at maximum. After that sort of point occurs, people not switching it would literally be more dangerous to the rest of the human population because of their own emotional stubbornness and recklessness.

[cr47t]

A close friend of mine once discussed driverless cars, and I remember one of the things he brought up; imagine what would happen in terms of parking. People would, with driverless cars, not have to park them in parking lots, but they could just program them to drive around the block (assuming the car has a program that does that) until the driver needed the car again. And if everyone did this soon streets would get pretty crowded with the driverless cars. I just thought I'd bring that idea up in case any of you had thoughts on it.

 

I myself am concerned on the subject of driverless cars. For the sake of my argument, let's assume for the time being that the driverless car uses a online GPS system. Suppose it took a wrong turn or the GPS (assuming it uses one) went offline, and that is not to mention hackers. Of course, I would prefer a drivable car, but if driverless cars are going to be the norm, in my opinion, they should all have some "manual override" option in case the driving system fails, so the driver can still navigate.