Self-driving car discussion catch-all

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Link to post on Slashdot.

"Volvo is starting a pilot project that aims to have 100 self-driving cars on Swedish public roads around the city of Gothenburg by 2017. The project is called 'Drive Me' and is a joint initiative between the Volvo Car Group, the Swedish Transport Administration, the Swedish Transport Agency, Lindholmen Science Park and the City of Gothenburg, Volvo said Monday. Together they will make an effort to eliminate deadly car crashes in Sweden, said Erik Coelingh, technical specialist at Volvo Car Group. In the next few years, Volvo will develop its Scalable Product Architecture (SPA) in its XC90 model. The goal is to have the first self-driving cars available to 100 consumers by 2017, Coelingh said. They will be able let their cars navigate about 50 typical commuter arteries that include motorway conditions and frequent traffic jams in and around Gothenburg, the country's second largest city."

Between this and the Google self driving cars in the US I have high hopes that in my lifetime I will have a self-driving car. More time for gaming!

FYI: Gothenburg is not the Capital of Sweden.

I'll be at least a little surprised if Volvo is still alive in 2017.

jbavon wrote:

FYI: Gothenburg is not the Capital of Sweden.

Is it the capital of a Swedish province? It's not a tiny city at least.

cheeba wrote:

I'll be at least a little surprised if Volvo is still alive in 2017.

It will be fine. It's owned by Geely Automobile out of China and is basically their R&D department.

Regarding self driving cars. It's my understanding that they could basically be on the road now except for legislative reasons.

MrDeVil909 wrote:
cheeba wrote:

I'll be at least a little surprised if Volvo is still alive in 2017.

It will be fine. It's owned by Geely Automobile out of China and is basically their R&D department.

Regarding self driving cars. It's my understanding that they could basically be on the road now except for legislative reasons.

One of my very libertarian leaning coworkers swears that the moment we allow self driving cars on the road will be the last day he is allowed to drive his own car.

I replied "deal accepted".

I still wonder how the auto manufacturers plan to shield themselves from liability on this. Personally, I won't trust me safety to an self-driving car full of computerised components built by the lowest bidder that could be both buggy and exploitable and which is also reliant on every other self-driving car by every other manufacturer also not being buggy and exploitable but I also accept that most people seem to be fine with it. But what happens when one of these things bugs out and kills someone in a collision? Car manufacturers have already been sued due to accidents resulting from failed equipment, what happens when their equipment is also responsible for driving the car?

Paleocon wrote:

One of my very libertarian leaning coworkers swears that the moment we allow self driving cars on the road will be the last day he is allowed to drive his own car.

I replied "deal accepted".

I wonder if we got the same complaints when they introduced the cotton gin? Seriously I don't see how using technology to do routine tasks is bad.

Car examples only:

Should we still require a crank to turn over the motor?
Should we outlaw cruise control?
Shall we take out blinkers and require people to stick their arm out the window?
or biggest I bet
Should we remove the automatic transmission altogether? After all the car is deciding when to shift gears! Do people whine about that loss of human intervention?

1) I would trust a computer to drive better than 99% of the folks on the road today.
2) I am sure that the lawyers would salivate at the first case a computer driven car results in even a minor injury.
3) The possibilities of networked computer piloted cars are so attractive that they far outweigh any romantic attachment I might have to driving my own vehicle.
a) cars that automatically avoid one another
b) herds of cars that dynamically adjust speed to reduce trip time
c) smart herds of cars that maximize traffic flow and all but eliminate "stop and go"
4) No more need for "designated drivers" would drastically increase my alcohol consumption

All of that sounds great until they break and/or are hacked and both will happen very quickly. If the car industry doesn't have an air-tight liability shield in place to prevent them from being bankrupted by ambulance chasers, we'll never see this on a wide scale. I'm not against the core concept of self-driving cars per ce, I just don't trust an industry full of large, public companies to do it properly. Just look at the average build quality of most new cars if you want examples.

Cars don't break now?

Maq wrote:

Cars don't break now?

Exactly.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

All of that sounds great until they break and/or are hacked and both will happen very quickly. If the car industry doesn't have an air-tight liability shield in place to prevent them from being bankrupted by ambulance chasers, we'll never see this on a wide scale. I'm not against the core concept of self-driving cars per ce, I just don't trust an industry full of large, public companies to do it properly. Just look at the average build quality of most new cars if you want examples.

Honestly, the build quality of most new cars has been steadily improving in dramatic fashion. That and feature creep has already gotten to the point that a good deal of the driving has already been abrogated to the machine anyway (e.g.: collision avoidance, self parking, etc.). I, honestly, don't think it is a terribly big step to networked machines.

Paleocon wrote:

One of my very libertarian leaning coworkers swears that the moment we allow self driving cars on the road will be the last day he is allowed to drive his own car.

The irony here is palpable, I think (granted, my understanding of libertarian philosophy is pretty limited). Shouldn't a libertarian be against any kind of government legislation keeping self-driving cars off the roads?

Feegle wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

One of my very libertarian leaning coworkers swears that the moment we allow self driving cars on the road will be the last day he is allowed to drive his own car.

The irony here is palpable, I think (granted, my understanding of libertarian philosophy is pretty limited). Shouldn't a libertarian be against any kind of government legislation keeping self-driving cars off the roads?

You would think. That said, the word "libertarian" is mostly just code for crazy Southerner with a gun fetish and a fear of a "new world order". So anything requiring the coordination of more than five people or so is immediately the subject of tin foil hat scrutiny.

I for one welcome our new self-driving overlords

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

All of that sounds great until they break and/or are hacked and both will happen very quickly. If the car industry doesn't have an air-tight liability shield in place to prevent them from being bankrupted by ambulance chasers, we'll never see this on a wide scale. I'm not against the core concept of self-driving cars per ce, I just don't trust an industry full of large, public companies to do it properly. Just look at the average build quality of most new cars if you want examples.

You mean like cruise control? Or ABS systems? Or automatic transmissions?

I kind of get your concerns but there are thousands of ways that cars do things automatically for us now.

farley3k wrote:
Parallax Abstraction wrote:

All of that sounds great until they break and/or are hacked and both will happen very quickly. If the car industry doesn't have an air-tight liability shield in place to prevent them from being bankrupted by ambulance chasers, we'll never see this on a wide scale. I'm not against the core concept of self-driving cars per ce, I just don't trust an industry full of large, public companies to do it properly. Just look at the average build quality of most new cars if you want examples.

You mean like cruise control? Or ABS systems? Or automatic transmissions?

I kind of get your concerns but there are thousands of ways that cars do things automatically for us now.

To say nothing of the fact that most commercial aircraft are not only fly-by-wire but largely fly themselves. So we clearly have a legal framework in place for at least one type of transportation that is already largely automated. So these are clearly the kinds of legal issues which can be shored up.

DanB wrote:
farley3k wrote:
Parallax Abstraction wrote:

All of that sounds great until they break and/or are hacked and both will happen very quickly. If the car industry doesn't have an air-tight liability shield in place to prevent them from being bankrupted by ambulance chasers, we'll never see this on a wide scale. I'm not against the core concept of self-driving cars per ce, I just don't trust an industry full of large, public companies to do it properly. Just look at the average build quality of most new cars if you want examples.

You mean like cruise control? Or ABS systems? Or automatic transmissions?

I kind of get your concerns but there are thousands of ways that cars do things automatically for us now.

To say nothing of the fact that most commercial aircraft are not only fly-by-wire but largely fly themselves. So we clearly have a legal framework in place for at least one type of transportation that is already largely automated. So these are clearly the kinds of legal issues which can be shored up.

And considering the deadly crash of that commuter train in NY over the weekend, I really don't understand why trains are not fully automated.

Maq wrote:

Cars don't break now?

Umm, yes? That's kind of my point. More and more cars are built to be disposable and not to last over the long-term because like everything else, car companies want you replacing them frequently. That's the mentality you want designing the system that you want doing all the driving for you?

farley3k wrote:
Parallax Abstraction wrote:

All of that sounds great until they break and/or are hacked and both will happen very quickly. If the car industry doesn't have an air-tight liability shield in place to prevent them from being bankrupted by ambulance chasers, we'll never see this on a wide scale. I'm not against the core concept of self-driving cars per ce, I just don't trust an industry full of large, public companies to do it properly. Just look at the average build quality of most new cars if you want examples.

You mean like cruise control? Or ABS systems? Or automatic transmissions?

I kind of get your concerns but there are thousands of ways that cars do things automatically for us now.

And all of those things are supplementary to and dependent on the person who is actually driving the car. None of those things make fundamental decisions for you. Cruise control doesn't determine your route or what a safe speed is, ABS doesn't determine when to stop the car, the automatic transmission shifts gears at certain RPMs but is otherwise dumb as a post. None of those are responsible for determining when you make a turn or at what speed you should be driving at and all these systems just talk within your own car, not with every other car around you. It's hard enough just getting the same app to reliably share data across multiple smartphone platforms. You really think a for-profit industry driven by investor greed first is going to come together and have every manufacturer from every country agree to put the same systems and protocols in place across every model of car? I live and breathe technology, both for a living and as a passion. Maybe that and my experience with modern build and design quality with those things is why this concerns me more than most people.

As I said, the core idea of self-driving cars is fantastic and has the potential to solve a lot of problems. I love driving and would be sad to give it up but would be happy to for all the cost savings in both fuel and infrastructure. But the current corporate climate in the world is conducive to these systems being built with cost and not safety in mind. You will have to have every car manufacturer and road governing body in the world sharing the same protocols and behaviour traits among all their vehicles for the system to have a chance of working properly and the second one fails or is exploited (both of which will happen) and causes a major accident, you will suddenly have a public consciousness that no longer trusts "the machines" to keep us safe. There's a lot of bad drivers out there (I worked on the road for a decade, I know) but people don't like losing control unless they can be sure they're giving it up to something that will always work. Something designed by the current automotive industry will not always work.

There are many examples of self-driving machines already mentioned above: airplanes, trains, etc. There is no reason why you could not extend the technology. In addition, the most likely path of this technology will be an adaptation phase, where you'll be able to turn it on and off at will. Think cruise control that actually takes over from you on the highway. But when you want to get off and drive down your side street, you push a button to turn it off. This will also be the most likely legal solution as well for now. You the driver are still in charge of the vehicle because you have the override controls. Just like running into someone because you were on cruise control today does not absolve your responsibility, so it will be for the foreseeable future. When people get used it the idea, and the systems get their kinks worked out, it will become a norm.

I'm also the first to jump on the mega corporation hating bandwagon. But in this case, consider what's at stake for them. A half a million car recall after a costly lawsuit is not something they want. That hurts their bottom line. A lot! So yes, they will go cheap, but this is also an industry that has one of the most stringent standards and processes in place. They are used to the government telling them how safe they need to be. It's part of doing business. They also don't want to find things wrong with cars that were sold and on the road. That's VERY expensive for them.

Paleocon wrote:

You would think. That said, the word "libertarian" is mostly just code for crazy Southerner with a gun fetish and a fear of a "new world order".

Insulting, and of course wrong. Libertarian is mostly code for someone who upholds personal liberty above all else. Libertarians would see self-driving vehicles as problematic because they give control from the person to the (government regulated) computer and it's also likely there will be a bunch of new regulations - eg, you have to buy a self-driving car.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

More and more cars are built to be disposable and not to last over the long-term because like everything else, car companies want you replacing them frequently.

No. Cars today are more durable and reliable than cars of previous generations.

As for self-driving cars, it's a sad sign of the times. Fewer and fewer people enjoy driving. It's going to happen but I wouldn't think we'll see it reach popularity for another 25-35 years at least.

cheeba wrote:

As for self-driving cars, it's a sad sign of the times. Fewer and fewer people enjoy driving. It's going to happen but I wouldn't think we'll see it reach popularity for another 25-35 years at least.

Fewer people also enjoy churning butter, fashioning chunks of flint into simple tools, and dying of dysentery. Times change. Few people enjoy driving because driving is not an intrinsically enjoyable activity most of the time. I drove to Target yesterday. It wasn't fun, it was a way to get to Target. Next week I start driving into work. It won't be fun. Now, given the opportunity to drive on a race track, that would be fun, but "driving" for most people means getting from point A to point B, and, if someone comes up with a reliable way for it to happen in an automated fashion, yes, I think it will become immensely popular very quickly, as it will eliminate a mundane activity and allow people to do more productive things. Given an opportunity to have a car drive itself to work while you can pull out a laptop and actually begin working, about 95% people are going to jump on that opportunity.

cheeba wrote:
Parallax Abstraction wrote:

More and more cars are built to be disposable and not to last over the long-term because like everything else, car companies want you replacing them frequently.

No. Cars today are more durable and reliable than cars of previous generations.

As someone who has had 3 cars from 3 different brands lemon out since 2008 (all of which were maintained at a bare minimum to the manufacturer's recommendations) and whose latest Certified Pre-Owned car has been in the shop for a month as of today, I strongly disagree with you. A friend of mine has also been a mechanic since he was a teenager and he refers to most modern cars as "plastic junk that's designed to break in 5 years because people want cars that are cheap but also have a killer stereo, power everything and heated seats." This guy's seen cars from the 80s to now, he knows what he's talking about.

MoonDragon wrote:

I'm also the first to jump on the mega corporation hating bandwagon. But in this case, consider what's at stake for them. A half a million car recall after a costly lawsuit is not something they want. That hurts their bottom line. A lot! So yes, they will go cheap, but this is also an industry that has one of the most stringent standards and processes in place. They are used to the government telling them how safe they need to be. It's part of doing business. They also don't want to find things wrong with cars that were sold and on the road. That's VERY expensive for them.

Look up how many recalls there have been in the last few years and how many of them are for safety related issues. It's staggering and given that all the car maker's profits are increasing, I'd say the incentive isn't there for them to do better. And once again, we're not talking about something like defective windshield wipers, brake fluid pumps or even engine fires, we're talking about a technology that can directly affect the safety of not only the driver but all the drivers around them. Do you really want companies run the way GM and Chrysler were being run in charge of that level of safety? I don't but I appear to be in the minority and I accept that this is happening with or without me. I still don't like it though.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:
cheeba wrote:

As for self-driving cars, it's a sad sign of the times. Fewer and fewer people enjoy driving. It's going to happen but I wouldn't think we'll see it reach popularity for another 25-35 years at least.

Fewer people also enjoy churning butter, fashioning chunks of flint into simple tools, and dying of dysentery. Times change. Few people enjoy driving because driving is not an intrinsically enjoyable activity most of the time. I drove to Target yesterday. It wasn't fun, it was a way to get to Target. Next week I start driving into work. It won't be fun. Now, given the opportunity to drive on a race track, that would be fun, but "driving" for most people means getting from point A to point B, and, if someone comes up with a reliable way for it to happen in an automated fashion, yes, I think it will become immensely popular very quickly, as it will eliminate a mundane activity and allow people to do more productive things. Given an opportunity to have a car drive itself from work while you can pull out a beer and actually begin drinking, about 95% people are going to jump on that opportunity.

ftfy

MilkmanDanimal wrote:
cheeba wrote:

As for self-driving cars, it's a sad sign of the times. Fewer and fewer people enjoy driving. It's going to happen but I wouldn't think we'll see it reach popularity for another 25-35 years at least.

Fewer people also enjoy churning butter, fashioning chunks of flint into simple tools, and dying of dysentery.

Right, those are totally equal comparisons.

The next time your computer or your smartphone crashes on you randomly for no apparent reason when you were just doing normal, routine things, picture that same thing happening to your self-driving car when it's travelling at high speed in a heavy grid of other drivers and you don't notice because since it's a self-driving car, you were starting at your phone instead. That's the scenario that has to be avoided almost entirely. How is that accomplished within the current corporate automotive industry?

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

As someone who has had 3 cars from 3 different brands lemon out since 2008 (all of which were maintained at a bare minimum to the manufacturer's recommendations) and whose latest Certified Pre-Owned car has been in the shop for a month as of today, I strongly disagree with you.

My mom's car is 12 years old and has 278,000 miles on it. My anecdote cancels out your anecdote :P.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

Few people enjoy driving because driving is not an intrinsically enjoyable activity most of the time.

That's because you're driving wrong.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

How is that accomplished within the current corporate automotive industry?

You see how safe aeroplanes are per passenger mile...

DanB wrote:
Parallax Abstraction wrote:

How is that accomplished within the current corporate automotive industry?

You see how safe aeroplanes are per passenger mile...

And it is arguable that it would be even safer should we be able to automate more tasks rather than fewer of them. The number one cause of fatal air incidents is human error.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:
MilkmanDanimal wrote:
cheeba wrote:

As for self-driving cars, it's a sad sign of the times. Fewer and fewer people enjoy driving. It's going to happen but I wouldn't think we'll see it reach popularity for another 25-35 years at least.

Fewer people also enjoy churning butter, fashioning chunks of flint into simple tools, and dying of dysentery.

Right, those are totally equal comparisons.

The next time your computer or your smartphone crashes on you randomly for no apparent reason when you were just doing normal, routine things, picture that same thing happening to your self-driving car when it's travelling at high speed in a heavy grid of other drivers and you don't notice because since it's a self-driving car, you were starting at your phone instead. That's the scenario that has to be avoided almost entirely. How is that accomplished within the current corporate automotive industry?

I will grant you the possibility of a computer issue causing a crash certainly exists, but, if you're telling me the possibility of that is higher than the risk we all face on a regular basis on the road, I'd question that. Nobody is going to argue that computer-controlled driving is going to be risk-free, but it's pretty clear that the driving we do these days is far from risk-free. Yes, I think it is absolutely clear we can build automated driving systems that are far more reliable than relying on people paying attention and not driving like idiots.

cheeba wrote:
MilkmanDanimal wrote:

Few people enjoy driving because driving is not an intrinsically enjoyable activity most of the time.

That's because you're driving wrong.

No, I'm not. I'm driving to get places. "Fun" driving would be fast driving, and, on the roads I drive, fast driving is irresponsible and stupid, and would place myself and, more importantly, others at risk. Sure, some people think driving is fun. Sure worked for Paul Walker.

DanB wrote:
Parallax Abstraction wrote:

How is that accomplished within the current corporate automotive industry?

You see how safe aeroplanes are per passenger mile...

Airplanes still have people dedicated to flying them or when the computer is doing it, paying attention to the computer, ready to take over at a moment's notice when it fails. Airplanes are within feet of other airplanes all around them and if a computer in an airplane fails, the time to fatal crash isn't potentially as little as a second or two.

People seem to be interpreting what I'm saying as "nothing wholly computer controlled can ever be safe." That's never what I've said. But comparing planes or trains and the circumstances under which they are operated to a car on a highway is comparing apples and cabbages. It's not impossible to make self-driving cars that are all but 100% safe. I'm saying it won't be possible in a way that everyone (various world, federal, state and city governments plus all the auto manufacturers) will agree on and which will ultimately be in the realm of affordability for consumers, at least when the industry in charge of it is laser focused on only the next quarter's results.

cheeba wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

You would think. That said, the word "libertarian" is mostly just code for crazy Southerner with a gun fetish and a fear of a "new world order".

Insulting, and of course wrong. Libertarian is mostly code for someone who upholds personal liberty above all else. Libertarians would see self-driving vehicles as problematic because they give control from the person to the (government regulated) computer and it's also likely there will be a bunch of new regulations - eg, you have to buy a self-driving car.

There are Libertarians, and there are "libertarians." The "libertarians" are giving Libertarians a bad name.

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