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self-driving cars discussion

2K views 29 replies 8 participants last post by  David Beth 
#1 ·
Arizona doesn't require turn signals on motorcycles. You can legally run without them, although you are supposed to use hand signals if you don't have flashers. I think that some of the motorcycle jacket airbags I've seen might work technically, but getting people to actually buy and use them might be an uphill battle.

With all the talk about self-driving cars (an idea I hate, btw), I wonder if a self-driving motorcycle will be ever be invented.
 
#2 ·
With all the talk about self-driving cars (an idea I hate, btw), I wonder if a self-driving motorcycle will be ever be invented.
why would you want to send your motorcycle out driving around by its self?!

That would be like making a robot that goes to a restaurant and eats a nice meal, and then goes home with a beautiful woman...

from the comments I have seen about autonomous cars, they are targeting people that do not LIKE to drive.
 
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#5 ·
the people that are pushing cars to drive by themselves, with no one in the car, are talking out of their butts.

Esp companies like Uber, who are saying people will buy cars that are self driving, and then Uber-them out and make money when they are not using their cars. Uber does NOT pay their drivers for the cost of the use of their vehicles. It costs about 50¢ a mile to drive a car in the US, and all Uber pays is less than min wage for the drivers time. Uber drivers are being scammed. If you add in the cost a fully autonomous car then Uber would have to charge twice as much as a taxi cab to pay for the expensive car and the cost of wearing it out.

The technology sweet point will be for cars that are able to assist a driver to avoid accidents, keeping the driver engaged with his hands on the controls - more like a co-pilot than an auto pilot. Many cars are getting close to this now, advanced cruise control with collision avoidance and auto brakes. An excellent example is that Volvo truck in europe that was hijacked in Germany, and the terrorist tried to drive it through a christmas open market. As soon as the truck detected it was about to hit something, it put the brakes on and would not move. A handful of people were injured when hundreds could have been killed.

If someone does not want to drive their car, its cheaper to take a taxi or a bus.
 
#6 ·
I was reading a Gizmodo.com article about self driving cars and the point was made that the biggest use case for a truly autonomous fleet of cars, outside of long distance trucking, would be cities that bought fleets of them (or large manufacturers/companies) and rented them out for intra-city travel. Similar to the way that bicycles are available in some major cities for anyone that wants to rent them, a self driving car would come get you and then return to its base. Outside of that, I don't see the technology ever becoming truly widespread. Semi-autonomous cars would be practical in exactly the way you mentioned though.

I don't honestly see self-driving motorcycles ever becoming a real thing. I doubt that the people that ride motorcycles would ever embrace the technology (I wouldn't at least), and anyone that doesn't ride would never opt to just to get the self driving capability. Now assisted riding might be something that could take off. More intelligent sensory perception, heads up displays that showed useful information, that sort of thing could be useful.
 
#7 ·
As much as I hate to admit it, these things are closer than we all think. I heard a report today on them (yeah, I listen to a lot of public radio) and Dominos has a self driving delivery car in some city (can't remember which one). The technology is there, it's just a matter of getting the infrastructure in place. Here in Canada it's legal in Ontario for companies to test them, and I believe they said 17 US states are doing it. It's coming, like it or not and their mantra is that 10,000 car accidents every day can be prevented, if you trust all that technology.

It's coming, and as someone else stated, it's only a matter of time before it will be illegal to actually drive your own car anymore. Sad.
 
#8 ·
I was riding on the way to work this morning and there's about a ten mile stretch this time of the year where I'm riding directly into the sun, which is just above the horizon. It's very difficult to see anything in that kind of glare, much less a person's hand. I can't really even see cars' brake lights. Now, at night, it would be different of course.

I agree that autonomous cars are going to get here eventually, even if people don't want them. I also foresee the day when there will be at least some lanes of traffic dedicated to these vehicles, like we currently have HOV lanes. I can't see a time when "manual" cars will ever be truly outlawed, but they may be restricted to specific roads at some point.
 
#9 · (Edited)
I see autonomous cars ending up as nothing more than a novelty much like the Segway... remember when that technology was going to revolutionize personal transport? The problem with autonomous cars is that they rely on software. Software is never bug free or hacker proof. The first few incidences in which an autonomous car is the cause of a few fatalities and there's no one to blame and sue for damages will be their undoing. Hopefully then people who want to get somewhere but don't want to drive will accept that a solution has been in place in many European countries for a long time... public transportation.

 
#11 ·
The problem with autonomous cars is that they rely on software. Software is never bug free or hacker proof. The first few incidences in which an autonomous car is the cause of a few fatalities and there's no one to blame and sue for damages will be their undoing. Hopefully then people who want to get somewhere but don't want to drive will accept that a solution has been in place in many European countries for a long time... public transportation.
there have already been a couple incidents with the self-driving cars that resulted in accidents and 1 or 2 fatalities that have been nothing but blips on the overall industry. and that pales in comparison to the tens of thousands that die on the roads every day from user error. we have fully automated machinery in plants. auto-pilot in planes. and now self-driving cars. automation isn't going away.
 
#12 · (Edited)
There are two significant differences between the autopilot in a jet and automated driving in a car.

Aircraft flight control systems are quad redundant in all their sensors and processing circuitry. The SW is running on four microprocessors at the same time. If any one of the four does not agree with the other three, it is kicked off line and the remaining three continue with a warning issued to the pilot. The odds of all four independent control paths failing on any given flight is incredibly small. Car control systems are not designed this way.

The other thing is aircraft are kept miles apart from each other, and if the flight control has an issue you normally will not hit the ground for at least 5 minutes. Cars travel in opposite directions only FEET apart from each other, going well over 60mph. A failure in a car can cause an accident in a matter of seconds resulting in death.

The hundreds of thousands of accidents on US roads are primarily caused by our traffic system and road design, and the manner in which people are allowed to drive.

Just one example: every GPS system knows the speed limit on every section of paved road in the country (that is how it calculates travel time to destination). It would be trivial for cars to be designed that would not allow vehicle speed to exceed the speed limit. Im not saying human error and poor judgement is not a major factor. The problem is that our system of roads and highways depends too much on human perfection and good judgment, and that is not working out very well.

There is a scale of "autonomous driving" from nothing to a self driving car. The optimum point would be in the middle, where you are still driving the car yourself, but the car and the road system will not allow you to do anything dangerous or stupid.
 
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#13 ·
I have never used a gps that knew the speed limit for ever section of paved road. My older gps system used the general speed limits based on road type to calculate speed, and it would also remember how fast I drive on that road type, and adjust it's generic levels (this is rare in gps units).

I would imagine newer garmin units have this now, but I haven't had one for some time, as my cars all have it built in, but they aren't that great.

The newer units I have used know the limits of most highways, but default back to generic speeds for non interstate and some highway roads. This is with the gps units in my wifes nissan pathfinder and nv. In my juke, it doesn't bother with road speeds at all, and it's calculated travel time is only based on current speed, and not with road speed at all.
 
#14 ·
Patrick, are you sure about the Juke?! If you are driving and you speed up does the time to destination decrease as you go faster? When you stop for a red light does it go to infinity?

Many GPS units will only show the little Speed Limit sign, or show your speed in red (speeding) if you are on a road that is not in a city or town, and it is not 30 or 35mph.

Either way, the information is available in GPS map data bases, and it could be used to limit the speed of the car. I think this is going to have to happen for cars that are 'self driving' to any extent, otherwise if someone is stopped for speeding they will say "I wasnt driving the car... it was driving itself..." and the court cases will go through the roof.
 
#15 ·
My juke doesn't display and speed limit infomation to the driver. It doesn't go to infinity at a red light, but if I am in traffic, it will slowly increase to infinity, like stopped on the highway.
I have always ignored the time to destination in the juke, cause it is always highly incorrect. It's guidance is also horrible. I mainly only use it for general location information. It's constantly telling me to drive the wrong way on 1way roads in NYC, and to drive down non existing roads, or closed/barricaded roads. Roads that have not been open to public traffic for atleast a decade before I bought the car.
 
#16 ·
Drove longhaul for 10 years and I've never used one of those. Guess I'm old fashioned. If I need directions I read a map. That way I geographically know where I'm going instead of some autonomous voice telling me to "turn left" or whatever. Never trusted them in a rig not to send me down some road with a low bridge or other obstacle anyway.
 
#17 · (Edited)
... we have fully automated machinery in plants. auto-pilot in planes. and now self-driving cars. automation isn't going away.
I could argue that there's a difference between the commercial and private sectors because even though "robots" have been used to make cars, appliances, electronics and other consumer goods for decades I have yet to see one in my home making me friggin pancakes or cleaning the pee overspray around my toilet (the Popular Science mags I read as a kid in the 60s and 70s were so full of lies, dammit). Even if autonomous cars do catch on I honestly don't care because by the time they do I would have already retired to my compound off the grid where 'puters and fancy 'lectronic thingamajigs aren't even a concern even now.
 
#18 ·
I think one contrast against the imminent deployment of fleets a cars driving around by themselves like robo-taxis
is the discussion we have been having here about GPS units for cars.

They suck - they sometimes fatally suck - and they would be the primary basis of having a car that knows where it is, and how to get where it wants to go.

It will be decades before any normally priced car is able to drive on random roads by itself, without a person behind the wheel.
 
#19 ·
Let's first see how "awesome" Amazon parcel delivery drones end up being or how the fails and foibles of Alexa impact our mundane lives before we go gaga over the novelty high-tech autonomous cars. Just because there's media frenzy over new tech doesn't mean it's going to pan out. Also IMHO ITG combined with Big Data are of a bigger concern... though not necessarily relevant to this thread.
 
#20 ·
I've often wondered about how self-driving cars will handle speed limits. On most interstates that I've ever been on, doing the actual speed limit is a sure fire way to get honked at, gestured at, tailgated, and otherwise hated by everyone around you. Here in Phoenix, the speed limit is 65 yet you have to go nearly 80 to keep up with traffic. Will self-driving cars maintain the speed limit? Will the driver be able to tell the car to go faster? If the car just follows along with the flow of traffic, will there be some upper bound where the computer just won't go any faster? I could easily see the police having a major problem with people in autonomous vehicles just going however fast the car "felt" like. Who do you even give the ticket to?
 
#21 ·
I've often wondered about how self-driving cars will handle speed limits. ...
the main reason for promoting self driving cars is the elimination of the 35,000 deaths on US roads every year, going back for nearly 40 years! Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of serious injuries and totaled vehicles.

Following the speed limit would be a huge leap in the right direction. I cant see any rational for letting a self driving car exceed the speed limit, after all the driver is now free to do whatever he wants, so getting "there" as fast as possible is not an objective, right?

If people were dying in plane crashes as fast as they are dying in motor vehicles, it would be equal to a loaded 737 crashing with no survivors every other day, for the last 40 years. How long would that go on before people would be screaming bloody hell? But somehow we put up with it when people die one or two at a time in a car.

And like I said before, its not the drivers that hold most of the blame, its our road and highway system that demands a driver be totally attentive 100% of the time, because we are always seconds away from death on the highways. It does not have to be that way.
 
#22 ·
The main difference I see is that in a plane you are not in control. In a car you do. Atleast there is huge outcry about drunk drivers.
Why there is an outrage over plane crashes.

I also blame a lot of the cops too, they side accidents as nofault a lot of the time. The other driver didn't have a license or insurance, but you failed to avoid the accident, so you are at blame also.
 
#25 ·
The main difference I see is that in a plane you are not in control. ...
only about 20% of the 35,000 people that died in vehicle accidents in the US last year had any control over the situation. The other 80% were passengers, or were in other cars that were hit in a situation they could not avoid - t boned, hit head on by someone crossing the center line.

BTW this is one of the reasons I think fully self driving cars are never going to happen. When Im driving I can sense that the person in front of me is drifting around, or the car coming the other way is creeping up on the center line, or the car in the blind spot of an 18 wheeler is in danger of being forced off the road. Is a computer going to be able to pick up on all those subtle clues and indications, and start backing off or going full defensive mode? I dont think so.
 
#24 ·
That is one thing I totally don't believe in, is lane changes.
The more lane changes you make, the more likely an accident is going to happen.

Only change lanes when absolutely needed, know what lane you will need to be in coming up and change into it earily. Don't change lanes unless something insane is going on (someone driving 40mph in the left hand lane).

I will pick my lane (in maryland we don't have a law that says you must drive in the right most lane), and stay in it, till I must move out of it. You get to know the person in front of you, and that helps to reduce an accident from me rearending them.

I also hate people changing into the safety gap infront of me, cause they can fit. Expecially when I'm on the bike, and not only need that gap to stop but also enough so the person behind me will be able to stop also, since they are right up on me.
 
#27 ·
Yes, if the people involved make an issue, you would never notice, it takes 3rd party involvement to make a difference.

As a 3rd party, it's assumed something could have been done. I never see people outright blaming someone unless it's alcohol, drugs, or speed is a factor. No one gets upset at people running red lights, durning into the left hand lanes across 1-3 other lanes of traffic on a right turn, or turning into the right land lanes from a left turn (for those that drive on the right side of the road). You generally think, this won't happen to me, I drive safely.

Now looking at airplanes, everyone feels there is no way to have any control of the issue at all. A lot of people already have a hard time taking a plane trip, and only do it cause they have to, cause car travel would just take too long. So the outcry here is instantly a lot greater. The hassles this year united airlines have had is a great example of it.
 
#28 ·
Wholeheartedly agreed. There are a lot of drivers I see that really shouldn't be on the road, but I don't have the power to remove them. That's for law enforcement. I have called the police though to report someone who looked like they were driving erratically. No idea if they were eventually stopped or not, but I made the effort.
 
#29 ·
Many states now have gone to no fault accident reporting because unless we witness the accident, we can't testify in court as to whose fault it is. Only when there's life threatening injuries, death, or commercial vehicles involved is there an accident reconstruction. The insurance company adjusters now determine who is at fault, not us unless we've witnessed it.
In my humble opinion, distracted drivers, texting while driving and impaired drivers make up the majority of the accidents in my area. We live in an 'all about me' promoted society, if you don't think so, just look at social media, and what a large part of tv sitcoms promote. When cities cut their budgets for fire and police, the citizens suffer, and our hands are tied. Chicago and Detroit are prime examples of it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
#30 ·
Here in Phoenix, we have drivers from just about every state and numerous countries. That sort of mix of different driving styles just causes problems out here. People from states with no laws regarding "keep to the right except to pass" just sit in the left lane. People where they make "Michigan Lefts" frequently cross two or three lanes of traffic to turn. We see all sorts of accidents caused by this. I agree that most of the problems are distracted drivers or people who simply overestimate their own skill level. Riding a motorcycle out here is considered suicidal by a lot of people.
 
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