Self-driving car discussion catch-all

Self-driving cars also makes the current incarnations of rental cars and taxis obsolete. Once self-driving cars are the norm, it will be a no-brainer to offer on-demand car services where the car drives itself to your location. With no human drivers necessary, the cost should be low.

Classy Paleocon. I'll remember how bad I am at maintenance and driving when figuring out how to pay off the Mastercard bill from repairs to my last car that even the dealer agreed it shouldn't have needed for a long time yet.

Needless to say, I'm very curious how this experiment works out. I hope the industry doesn't bungle it and it turns out awesome.

Demyx wrote:

Self-driving cars also makes the current incarnations of rental cars and taxis obsolete. Once self-driving cars are the norm, it will be a no-brainer to offer on-demand car services where the car drives itself to your location. With no human drivers necessary, the cost should be low.

I hadn't even thought of that; awesome!

Granath wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

I don't think we need to necessarily remove the human element. Self driving cars actually do a lot better at collision avoidance of bad human drivers than human drivers do at avoiding other human drivers.

I do, however, suspect that once folks separate the insurance pool of self driving cars from manually driven cars, driving your own car will become much more expensive to do. I don't consider that a bad thing either. Folks who really really really think they are better at driving should necessarily need to put their money where their mouths are.

I believe you're spot-on here. Once proven to work well, insurance premiums on fully automatic cars will plummet as compared to a manually controlled one. It will be simple economics that helps drive this forward.

I really really really think I am better at driving than most people. I've raced on the minor circuits. I've been trained professionally. I haven't had an accident that was my fault since 1991 (that one cost me $100 to give you an idea how minor it was) and I've driven about half a million miles or more during that time. I actually like driving! But even I know I have made mistakes behind the wheel. I've missed stop signs driving in unfamiliar areas. I've missed a car or two in my blind spot while changing lanes. And as I get older I know things aren't going to get better. Frankly I'd love to have the option of letting a computer drive for me as I slide past middle age. There are so many benefits - better traffic patterns and faster transportation, fewer accidents, fewer injuries, fewer deaths, more freedom for older people who shouldn't drive, more leisure time, more family time (Skype my wife/kids from the car as I'm coming home)... it's absolutely a no-brainer. Will I miss driving? Perhaps from time to time, but the benefits outweigh any negatives for virtually everyone.

I suspect that, in 30 years time, we will look back at manually driven cars and see them much the way we look at the Amish today.

I'm not convinced the insurance rates will go down. Once you have a golden goose, you don't give it up willingly. Insurance companies are not in business of providing fair rates for risks and costs involved. They are in business of taking your money and paying out as little of it as possible, and that which they have to pay out is just a cost of doing business. They will push for self driving cars if it means they have to pay out less (while still taking the same amount in), and will burry self driving cars with all their might if it means that the rates must go down.

MoonDragon wrote:

I'm not convinced the insurance rates will go down. Once you have a golden goose, you don't give it up willingly. Insurance companies are not in business of providing fair rates for risks and costs involved. They are in business of taking your money and paying out as little of it as possible, and that which they have to pay out is just a cost of doing business. They will push for self driving cars if it means they have to pay out less (while still taking the same amount in), and will burry self driving cars with all their might if it means that the rates must go down.

Insurance companies are not controlled by a monolithic central agency, they're controlled by a market. If most companies refuse to lower rates even though their costs go down, they're not ensuring themselves profits. They're ensuring they're going to go out of business when other insurance companies drop their rates in order to get more business. Any company insane enough to try to keep their rates the same while other companies are doing the smart thing and actually lowering the costs to the end user to reflect the lowered cost to themselves is finished.

cheeba wrote:
sometimesdee wrote:

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

Save the political bullsh*t for the proper forum.

I suppose a discussion on whether the government can properly regulate the self-driving car industry is apolitical.

*Sigh* this is what I get for reinstalling Chrome without reinstalling all of my extensions.

I don't see the rental car industry dying. When I fly someplace I still need to drive something away from the airport.

But the biggest problem that sprang to my mind is how an automated car handles speed. I drive a little slightly faster than the median driver on the highway (I usually set cruise control at 80mph). While in the early transition phase of automated cars (before we can outlaw human control on highways) will an automated car go the speed I tell it to or will it go the speed limit? On one hand, I have no desire to lengthen my commute, regardless of the things I can do in the car. On the other hand, I don't want people setting their self-driving car for 95mph and hoping for the best.

I would imagine a properly automated car will always go the speed which maximizes safety and fuel efficiency given the present environmental factors (with the benefit of being able to access this information far in advance of what a human driver would and process it far faster).

An exception to this would perhaps be a medical emergency but given the availability to take the least busy route and communicate with every car likely to be on route to emergency facilities the need to go extremely fast is largely overruled by efficiency - with a penalty imposed on those who use this feature when they do not in fact have a medical emergency.

If these cars are visibly distinguishable from human driver cars then I suspect some human drivers will intentionally try to run the things off the road.

I would imagine that, for a while, there will be a manual override. If you want to exceed the speed limit, you'd most likely have to drive yourself.

As a software developer, it would take a lot to convince me that self-driving cars are ready for prime time.

Add me to the wait list to get a self-driving car ASAP along with drone deliveries and a fully automated tranist system.

cheeba wrote:
sometimesdee wrote:

*Sigh* this is what I get for reinstalling Chrome without reinstalling all of my extensions.

Or perhaps it's what you get for disparaging political ways of thought in a thread not meant for that? I agree that ignoring me would be a much easier solution than taking responsibility.

She didn't do that. You seem rather confused.

sometimesdee wrote:

*Sigh* this is what I get for reinstalling Chrome without reinstalling all of my extensions.

Or perhaps it's what you get for disparaging political ways of thought in a thread not meant for that? I agree that ignoring me would be a much easier solution than taking responsibility.

krev82 wrote:

I would imagine a properly automated car will always go the speed which maximizes safety and fuel efficiency given the present environmental factors (with the benefit of being able to access this information far in advance of what a human driver would and process it far faster).

Which would really suck. Maximizing safety and/or fuel efficiency should be my choice, not my car's.

Edit - Also, as I look out the window and see snow and rain and poor road conditions, I have a hard time believing a computer can automatically control a car in such conditions better than I can. Would the software know that sometimes you have to hit the gas to get out of a slide?

cheeba wrote:

Which would really suck. Maximizing safety and/or fuel efficiency should be my choice, not my car's.

Maximising your safety should be your choice. Maximizing my safety shouldn't.

cheeba wrote:

Edit - Also, as I look out the window and see snow and rain and poor road conditions, I have a hard time believing a computer can automatically control a car in such conditions better than I can. Would the software know that sometimes you have to hit the gas to get out of a slide?

You are very, very misguided on this.

A computer can react to road conditions (such as sliding on ice) many orders of magnitude faster and more precisely than a human operator. Computers routinely fly airplanes and helicopters through complicated manouvers with far greater precision than a human pilot, and those are computationally far more difficult and complex tasks than driving a car.

While it's potentially arguable that a world-class driver could maybe outperform a computer driver (and I'm willing to argue that even that is unlikely), it's not even a question than a computer driver would hugely outperform your average, distractable daily driver.

Hell, simply look at ABS versus pumping the pedal. It's essentially the same thing, only in one the computer is doing it, in the other a human. Guess which is better?

Jonman wrote:

A computer can react to road conditions (such as sliding on ice) many orders of magnitude faster and more precisely than a human operator. Computers routinely fly airplanes and helicopters through complicated manouvers with far greater precision than a human pilot, and those are computationally far more difficult and complex tasks than driving a car.

See that sounds to me like you don't often drive in snowy conditions. I get that differentials can react faster than I can. I get that anti-lock brakes are better than normal brakes. All that technology doesn't mean a thing if your tires aren't in good condition, either through normal wear or if they're packed with slush. Sometimes, regardless of who is controlling the car, you are going to slip. In such an instance, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes you have to hit the gas or sometimes you have to let it slide or sometimes you have to tap the brake and then hit the gas. I don't see technology catching up with humans in that regard for a long, long time.

cheeba wrote:
sometimesdee wrote:

*Sigh* this is what I get for reinstalling Chrome without reinstalling all of my extensions.

Or perhaps it's what you get for disparaging political ways of thought in a thread not meant for that? I agree that ignoring me would be a much easier solution than taking responsibility.

Sure, it has to be her "not taking responsibility" (whatever that means) and certainly not you being a derisive douche whenever you interact with people. It couldn't be that at all.

cheeba wrote:

Sometimes, regardless of who is controlling the car, you are going to slip. In such an instance, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes you have to hit the gas or sometimes you have to let it slide or sometimes you have to tap the brake and then hit the gas. I don't see technology catching up with humans in that regard for a long, long time.

Anything you can think of doing, the designers already implemented in the vehicle. And that vehicle takes about 0.1 seconds to figure out it needs to perform a defensive manouver, while you'll take anywhere from 0.5 to 3 seconds. This also means that the vehicle control system will need to do less defensive driving because it will be in less uncontrolled trouble than you, having responded to developing conditions sooner.

Another thing to consider is that the automated vehicle will drive a lot less aggressively than you (look up recent news reports on google driverless cars), while achieving the same long term performance as you. This means that the automated vehicle will find itself in a lot less troublesome conditions than you, the human driver.

The conclusion: the automated vehicle will be in less trouble, less often, and will recover from that trouble much more efficiently than you.

cheeba wrote:

All that technology doesn't mean a thing if your tires aren't in good condition, either through normal wear or if they're packed with slush. Sometimes, regardless of who is controlling the car, you are going to slip. In such an instance, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes you have to hit the gas or sometimes you have to let it slide or sometimes you have to tap the brake and then hit the gas. I don't see technology catching up with humans in that regard for a long, long time.

Except the car is going to know that its owner is an idiot and hasn't properly maintained its tires and it's going to know that the road is slippery. That's because the car is going to come packed to the gills with sensors. It will literally be able to tell that the left rear tire is rotating faster/slower than it should be and that the car isn't moving quite moving along the proper path it should be. And it will be able to detect this--and likely correct for it--all before a human driver even senses there's problem.

I mean the average human takes between 1.5 and 2.5 seconds just to realize they need to apply the brakes and physically do so. Our wetware simply cannot compete with the speed of silicon.

cheeba wrote:

See that sounds to me like you don't often drive in snowy conditions. I get that differentials can react faster than I can. I get that anti-lock brakes are better than normal brakes. All that technology doesn't mean a thing if your tires aren't in good condition, either through normal wear or if they're packed with slush. Sometimes, regardless of who is controlling the car, you are going to slip. In such an instance, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes you have to hit the gas or sometimes you have to let it slide or sometimes you have to tap the brake and then hit the gas. I don't see technology catching up with humans in that regard for a long, long time.

See, that sounds to me like you don't often have any contact or experience with control systems. On the other hand, I am a control systems engineer. I design and test jet engine control systems - this is my bread-and-butter, pal.

I've got 15 years experience doing this - hopefully, you'll see I can speak to this from a place of knowledge.

With that said, your example only holds water if we assume that the engineers designing this hypothetical control system that's incapable of dealing with ambient temperatures below freezing were f*cking morons.

The technology has not only caught up to humans a long, long time ago, it's far, far surpassed them. Trust me on this.

Wow. Saying that you don't seem to drive often in snowy conditions is not an insult. My argument is that it's going to take a long time for an automated car to be able to handle snowy conditions as well as a human. There's nothing personal about it, so just calm down and relax.

If you take a look at the American Top Gear (sucks, I know) show where they tested the automated systems (differentials) of the new Corvette, you'll see that Tanner Foust, a professional driver, was able to go faster with manual control over automated control. That's in perfectly dry road conditions which don't require many variables. In snowy conditions the variables skyrocket. It shouldn't be that controversial to say it's going to be a long time before automated systems can handle it better than humans. By the time they do I'll be old enough to where I don't want to drive and will welcome automated systems anyways :).

A professional driver probably can perform better than the automated systems. The vast, vast majority of people who drive have nowhere near that level of skill.

Tanner Foust is probably great at driving under snowy conditions. I'm not Tanner Foust, and I panic and instinctively slam the brakes when I see ice. And living in New England, I can tell you that that seems to be the norm among our crappy, crappy drivers. I fully believe a computer does it better.

Also, as Jonman pointed out, planes mostly fly themselves and they deal with all sorts of complicated weather conditions. Why is a car any different?

cheeba wrote:
sometimesdee wrote:

*Sigh* this is what I get for reinstalling Chrome without reinstalling all of my extensions.

Or perhaps it's what you get for disparaging political ways of thought in a thread not meant for that? I agree that ignoring me would be a much easier solution than taking responsibility.

Taking responsibility for what, giving you the benefit of the doubt? I was about to take responsibility for that by ceasing to engage with you on a thread which is, as you said, "not meant for that." However, I'll take the bait. I was not attempting to disparage political ways of thought; I was disparaging people who follow one way of thought yet try to masquerade as followers of another. That's the real bullsh*t.

Anyway, congratulations on getting me to return to this crap via "ad feminam" attack.

cheeba wrote:

Wow. Saying that you don't seem to drive often in snowy conditions is not an insult. My argument is that it's going to take a long time for an automated car to be able to handle snowy conditions as well as a human. There's nothing personal about it, so just calm down and relax.

NOPE.

NOPE NOPE NOPE.

cheeba wrote:

It shouldn't be that controversial to say it's going to be a long time before automated systems can handle it better than humans. By the time they do I'll be old enough to where I don't want to drive and will welcome automated systems anyways :).

You're right. It's not controversial. It's wrong. Claiming the earth is flat isn't controversial, either.

Plain old wrong.

Wrongedy wrongedy wrong.

cheeba wrote:

If you take a look at the American Top Gear (sucks, I know) show where they tested the automated systems (differentials) of the new Corvette, you'll see that Tanner Foust, a professional driver, was able to go faster with manual control over automated control.

One datapoint does not a scientific theory prove. Let's also not forget that those systems are built to work with an average or less than average user of that vehicle. It is meant to elevate the skill of the poor driver, rather than enhance the skill of a good driver. In addition, it is an automated system designed for a very narrow specific purpose. Of course you can defeat that purpose and prove the system doesn't apply in all cases. Also the system didn't fail. It just didn't drive as well as a professional race car driver on a closed race course. Not really applicable to discussion of highway commuter cars.

If you want to discuss race car driver capabilities on a racecourse, than you can find tidbits of information like this:

Although fully automatic transmission systems, including systems with sophisticated launch control, are possible on Formula One cars, they are now illegal.

One of the reasons provided for illegality of automated transmissions and launch control computers is that semi-automatic allows for some degree of competition due to human skill. Otherwise humans cannot compete and it becomes a battle of who can fork over more money for better technology. Coincidentally, traction control is also banned from Formula 1 racing since 2008.

In other words, Formula 1 racing bans fully automated systems because they outperform humans and remove human element from the competition.

cheeba wrote:

If you take a look at the American Top Gear (sucks, I know) show where they tested the automated systems (differentials) of the new Corvette, you'll see that Tanner Foust, a professional driver, was able to go faster with manual control over automated control. That's in perfectly dry road conditions which don't require many variables. In snowy conditions the variables skyrocket. It shouldn't be that controversial to say it's going to be a long time before automated systems can handle it better than humans. By the time they do I'll be old enough to where I don't want to drive and will welcome automated systems anyways :).

And all the Corvette forums said the reason that happened was that the Corvette's Performance Traction Management system rightly dialed down the power because it detected the bumpy and pot holely Detroit road conditions.

So what you have isn't an example of how humans are better than computers at adjusting to road conditions. What you have is an example of a how a human drove more unsafely than they should have given the road condition because they either couldn't properly judge how crappy the road conditions were or, worse, just wanted to drive fast regardless of the less than perfect road conditions. Either way, humans are more dangerous than computers.

Jonman wrote:

Wrongedy wrongedy wrong.

And how can I argue against such an eloquent, perfectly reasoned rebuttal?

OG_slinger wrote:

And all the Corvette forums said the reason that happened was that the Corvette's Performance Traction Management system rightly dialed down the power because it detected the bumpy and pot holely Detroit road conditions.

So what you have isn't an example of how humans are better than computers at adjusting to road conditions. What you have is an example of a how a human drove more unsafely than they should have given the road condition because they either couldn't properly judge how crappy the road conditions were or, worse, just wanted to drive fast regardless of the less than perfect road conditions. Either way, humans are more dangerous than computers.

Uh, he finished the course safely both times. He wasn't less safe in one instance. The Corvette's system did dial down the power. It did that because that's the right thing to do for most people. For Foust it wasn't the right thing to do. Personally I don't want a car that makes decisions for me based on the lowest common denominator.

But I've been driving since I was 12 and I still make race car sounds while rounding corners at high speed, so I'm open to the possibility that I'm an outlier :).

cheeba wrote:

Personally I don't want a car that makes decisions for me based on the lowest common denominator.

Safe isn't the lowest common denominator. It's safe. That you might personally find it less fun is irrelevant.

cheeba wrote:
Jonman wrote:

Wrongedy wrongedy wrong.

And how can I argue against such an eloquent, perfectly reasoned rebuttal? :)

He explained why you were wrong earlier, and you basically responded with "Nuh-uh!" (and told him to calm down and relax, which is just some top notch condescension on your part). At this point, I think Jonman is entitled to a Coxian style wrong chant.