Bletchleyite
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If true, it could prove the single biggest lifesaver since the introduction of socialised medicine.
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SELF-DRIVING CARS
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If true, it could prove the single biggest lifesaver since the introduction of socialised medicine.
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Giugiaro
Member
Most of the points have already been said on this thread.
- People won't buy self driving cars, they'll request them; (Car as a Service)
- AI will diligently follow the rules; (Hard defined behaviour)
- SDC's don't get drunk, sleepy, emotional or stupid;
- SDC's can have more sensors than needed to do their job safely. Humans only get a pair of front facing eyes that only see during the day, and not the best ears in the world;
- SDC's will operate according to peoples needs and only park for maintenance; (Always on the road)
- SDC's can have a shared Hive Mind that allows them to drive in blocks and plan routes and maneuvers efficiently;
- Since SDC's are a touchy subject they'll be more strictly inspected and certification will be harder to get; (Just look at the 747 Max)
- SDC's will be more convenient, with no parking, no insurance, no maintenance, no refuelling/charging, etc... (Like an elevator, call, get in, push button, move and leave)
- SDC's will be cheaper to use since they'll be engineered to be as efficient as possible, while making money for as much time as possible; (Low cost airliner philosophy)
- People won't buy self driving cars, they'll request them; (Car as a Service)
- AI will diligently follow the rules; (Hard defined behaviour)
- SDC's don't get drunk, sleepy, emotional or stupid;
- SDC's can have more sensors than needed to do their job safely. Humans only get a pair of front facing eyes that only see during the day, and not the best ears in the world;
- SDC's will operate according to peoples needs and only park for maintenance; (Always on the road)
- SDC's can have a shared Hive Mind that allows them to drive in blocks and plan routes and maneuvers efficiently;
- Since SDC's are a touchy subject they'll be more strictly inspected and certification will be harder to get; (Just look at the 747 Max)
- SDC's will be more convenient, with no parking, no insurance, no maintenance, no refuelling/charging, etc... (Like an elevator, call, get in, push button, move and leave)
- SDC's will be cheaper to use since they'll be engineered to be as efficient as possible, while making money for as much time as possible; (Low cost airliner philosophy)
Sounds perfect for your obviously metropolitan lifestyle.
Kingspanner
Member
If I may say so that seems a little harsh. Lucan, be my guest and buy a self driving car, new might be affordable, maybe there will be a second hand market for used examples from the service providers. What you won't be doing, sooner than you think, is driving yourself.
It will be a very very long time before we see a totally self driving car - if ever.
For the hipster wannabes with their "urban lifestyles" they may never need to take manual control but for the rest of us there are so many scenarios where a manual intervention is essential at least for the last few yards.
I don't want to carry my camping gear across a campsite, I want to park the car next to where I will pitch
I want to back up the car to the most convenient bay at the recycling centre not carry half a tree from one end to the other.
I want the car to park in my parking bay, not p*ss off the neighbours by parking in the first one that is free
etc etc etc
A true self driving car will be like a DLR train with a little cover to reveal some slow speed manual controls for all those little off road manouvres.
It’s been quite widely reported. The main idea in this legislation is mandatory speed limiters, but this is just one part of quite a large package. Also included is mandatory auto braking and lane keeping assist (which is literally the most irritating thing I’ve ever used).
It genuinely makes me feel quite depressed. Not least because I suspect it’ll actually cost an almighty amount of jobs if the performance car market collapses.
I just want to drive my car.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
You know what? I'd love it if self-driving cars caused an end to that. I hate people driving around campsites, they churn the site up and I feel incredibly vulnerable lying on the floor in my tent with 2 ton metal boxes driving around late at night on the way back from the pub probably chancing the limit.
Better campsites don't allow it anyway and provide trolleys to move your kit.
Back to self-driving cars, though, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a low-speed (walking pace) manual manoeuvring device of some kind.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
You might, I might, but younger generations increasingly don't care - they want to get around conveniently and cost-effectively, they don't care about owning a car. Hence the growth of Uber - and rail travel.
Ain't gonna happen for some time and only in very carefully controlled environments. The idea every car will talk to another will itself take many years as the first generation 5G isn't really the 'proper' low latency 5G that autonomous vehicles would need - and that's even before you decide on the protocols for interoperability.
10 years or more? And we also need to sort out issues like how a car will decide what to do when there's an unavoidable accident, how to actually develop true AI than can predict things a human can as accurately (rather than programmed in scenarios) and so on.
My world is technology but there's so much hype and so many issues to overcome.
Doesn’t look that way where I’m sat. My brother is ten years younger than me and has just turned 17.
Just like when my friends and I turned 17, his social group’s first thoughts have all been 1) learn to drive and 2) buy a car.
My Brother has been saving since he started his apprenticeship 12 months ago for said car.
So yes, whilst your super trendy hipsters who live in the city might be more likely to get an Uber, I suspect you’d find your average 17 year old lad just wants to learn to drive and buy a car.
Statistics do show a huge reduction in licence holding by the under 30s.
underbank
Established Member
I'd like to see those statistics broken down into regions and urban/rural areas. I can imagine fewer licence holders in London due to the fantastic public transport system, but in smaller towns and rural areas, there is really no substitute for driving.
My son passed his driving test yesterday. He says most of his sixth form friends are learning to drive. His best friend passed his test last week. All our neighbours' children have learned to drive as have my sister's children. I can't actually think of anyone we know whose children havn't.
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WelshBluebird
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For both of the above - isn't that more that young people want the freedom to be able to go where they want when they want though? And not much to do with the actual act of driving.
If a self driving car provides the same benefits of a normal car, with the added benefit of it does it for you rather than you having to do it, then that even more fulfills the role of a car in being a transportation aid surely?
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Precisely.
And talking of rural communities, if you take the cost of a driver out, and you have the ability to book easily via a mobile phone[1], surely providing rural public transport using a "shared car" type model will become much more viable?
I find it interesting that a poster from Liverpool said learning to drive is still a priority there given that its public transport is rather good by non-London UK terms - Merseyrail (even the diesel bits) provided me excellent mobility as a teenager and it was feasible to get pretty much anywhere by coupling a bike with it. MK has terrible public transport for a town, and yet from my observation it really seems not to be a priority here any more. Interestingly, they seem often to be using app based taxis (not Uber, which is here but is more expensive) which are very competitively priced here due to the short journey times with fast roads and lack of congestion - for two people a taxi is often cheaper than a bus and for three pretty much always.
[1] On the kind of horizons we are looking at I would expect 100% UK coverage or very near to it - certainly everywhere people live.
underbank
Established Member
Depends on timescales. If you have to wait 30 minutes for one to arrive and then you're stop/starting picking people up, then you could easily take an hour or more to get to where you want to go. If you have your own car, that could be just 10 minutes.
At the moment, after a night in town, people can be waiting 30-60 minutes at the taxi rank for a taxi home, hence why they tend to take a car and have a designated driver. Just how big will the fleet of driverless cars have to be to provide an acceptable service?
As for costs, just how cheap will these driverless journeys be? Owning/driving a car can be quite cheap if you don't want a brand new, high spec one, if you use it daily. I drive one that's 11 years old and costs me just £300-£400 p.a. in servicing/repairs, £150 in tax, £150 in insurance. Petrol is proportional to how much I use it. Driverless cars would have to be dirt cheap to rent per journey to be cheaper!
WelshBluebird
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Isn't all that an argument against car rental / car clubs etc, rather than self driving cars though?
Giugiaro
Member
The rule here states that a driver should slow down when approaching a dangerous situation, applying the brakes and maintaining the trajectory if something goes wrong.
Basically try everything to have a safe stop, and brace for impact and hope your car can take a hit if unavoidable. As far as I'm concerned, the same rule should apply for SDC's.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
What rule says that, precisely? A driver should take evasive action if that is feasible.
Giugiaro
Member
In Portugal we're taught to take preventive action above everything else.
The issue is that most drivers have some sort of disease that prevents them from slowing down under dangerous situations. No wonder the first rainy days are a an authentic crashfest.
The issue is that most drivers have some sort of disease that prevents them from slowing down under dangerous situations. No wonder the first rainy days are a an authentic crashfest.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Yes, you put the brakes on hard as soon as you know of a problem, but if there is also an option to take evasive action (i.e. to steer around the obstacle while braking) you should take that as well - certainly by UK wisdom. Essentially, within the law, you should do anything you can do to avoid a collision taking place, though not at the expense of e.g. killing a pedestrian instead.
I would suggest it is very unlikely you would be taught to maintain trajectory if doing so would cause a collision while there is an option to avoid it by taking another action i.e. steering. If you genuinely think that, either (a) Portuguese road safety is much poorer than the UK, or (b) you've misunderstood. I'd suspect the latter.
The "moral question" referred to is often known as the "points problem". You have a runaway train and a set of points, you can choose which way it goes. If you do nothing, it will kill 3 people who are on the track. If you switch the points, it will kill one (different) person who is on the other track. Which do you do? It's really one that for self-driving cars will have to be solved through legislation.
Kingspanner
Member
I think it might be a). Portugal is well known for road safety which is poor by European standards. Exactly why I couldn't say.
Giugiaro
Member
Exactly @Kingspanner Portuguese driving is absolute bonkers.
If you drive below the speed limit you're considered a public enemy!
If you drive below the speed limit you're considered a public enemy!
underbank
Established Member
It has to be a judgement call with your brain making a few million calculations during your reaction time.
I was once on a dual carriageway when a car ignored a give way sign and "filtered" in to my lane from a side road, literally inches in front of me and I had no warning of it at all. I had a split second decision of either braking and probably rear-ending it at high speed, or swerving into the right hand land to go alongside it. The road was quiet and I knew there was nothing behind/alongside me, so I took the decision to swerve and ended up fishtailing across all the lanes as there was oil on the road which I couldn't have known, and ended up in the ditch on the left hand side.
If I was put into that position again, I'd brake and rear end it.
Forget the rules. In certain situations, people will react too quickly to consider the rules or even what they've already trained for*. They'll instinctively swerve to avoid something, even if running a real risk of losing control or even hitting something head on and causing a worse outcome.
A computer has to make a similar decision. Let's not be naive and assume it will be so powerful as to work out every possible outcome. Sure it will want to stop in the first instance, but what other decision does it make. Carry on head on into the obstruction? Make some attempt to avoid? There are many implications around the decision made for possible claims afterwards, and who will be deemed liable.
We could change legislation to stop manufacturers being responsible for poor decisions (or even incorrect ones based on poor programming) but imagine the risk there. Large car makers no longer liable for making faulty products, with no fear of punishment.
I don't think we're losing a driver behind the wheel on a public road anytime soon. Sure, the car can drive itself in many scenarios but at some point it's going to say 'over to you'.
* You can think of this as a bit like doing first aid training. People invariably forget, which is why you have refresher courses. They forget because they probably don't apply the knowledge very often. They know the principle but forget the details. If they dealt with such situations regularly, it would become more habit based. Most motorists don't do such levels of practice to ever fully learn what to do in some situations that happen quickly.
Kingspanner
Member
Perhaps the agreement from the manufacturers will be "yes we can't deal perfectly with every situation, but we will do better than an average human driver. Oh and by the way, since 90% of situations are caused by human driver error (distraction, inattention, impairment, excess speed) there will be a lot fewer situations to deal with.
Excess speed will rarely feature for two reasons - programmed adherence to speed limits and reduced speed to save energy. In the future we may travel more slowly (or rather have lower peak speeds) the compensation for which will be more reliable journey times brought about by fewer breakdowns and collisions.
Excess speed will rarely feature for two reasons - programmed adherence to speed limits and reduced speed to save energy. In the future we may travel more slowly (or rather have lower peak speeds) the compensation for which will be more reliable journey times brought about by fewer breakdowns and collisions.
While human error is obviously a thing, think of all the situations where a human has correctly anticipated something (sometimes just from gut instinct, or knowing the local area etc) and AVOIDED an accident. Going by a shop where you know kids go after school and people park badly, so there's an extra need for vigilance. And so on.
How does a self driving car do this? A crowd sourced database of all possible issues? Resorting to map data to know to slow down at every shop? To scan for parked vehicles near crossings and slow?
Computers are fantastic things but let's not underestimate the power of humans. It's why we're still trying to make computers able to do things we do without breaking a sweat.
How does a self driving car do this? A crowd sourced database of all possible issues? Resorting to map data to know to slow down at every shop? To scan for parked vehicles near crossings and slow?
Computers are fantastic things but let's not underestimate the power of humans. It's why we're still trying to make computers able to do things we do without breaking a sweat.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
I'm sure it does, but as most car accidents are caused by human error, it's likely the accidents you get will change in nature recognising the flaws of a computer, but there will be markedly fewer of them.
Humans are quite good at reacting to unexpected situations and often do take split-second decisions that sometimes save lives (and sometimes have a worse outcome, as outlined above). But what they also do is prat with their phone (even if doing so technically legally e.g. talking to Siri), fiddle with the radio, chat to a passenger, look at scenery, doze off, read a map, calm down the kids, have a drink of coffee and spill it all over them, or whatever. And it's those things that a computer will never do - and they cause masses of accidents.
Kingspanner
Member
Why do we allow cars to travel at 30mph or more in places where conflict with pedestrians is likely and where such conflict will be disastrous? Because lower speed limits won't be adhered to and are unenforcable with current resources.
In the SDC universe cars will not slow down at every shop because they will already be moving slowly. And there won't be any parked vehicles at the crossing-there won't be any parked vehicles anywhere. There may not even be a crossing if we put resources into effective segregation of people and vehicles instead of the urban meat grinder we now enjoy.
On average 5 people are killed every day on our roads. If that happened on the railway we'd do something about it.
In the SDC universe cars will not slow down at every shop because they will already be moving slowly. And there won't be any parked vehicles at the crossing-there won't be any parked vehicles anywhere. There may not even be a crossing if we put resources into effective segregation of people and vehicles instead of the urban meat grinder we now enjoy.
On average 5 people are killed every day on our roads. If that happened on the railway we'd do something about it.
Speed limiters for cars are going to be mandatory for new cars from 2022. The limit will be set by GPS and sign recognition. Sign recognition is available in many cars today, so a lot of people are wilfully ignoring or overriding it.
Most people live outside London and local public transport outside London is in most cases worse than ever (although trains are being used a lot more these days). So people must be finding alternatives to both driving and local public transport.
Rural car dependence is hardly sustainable, luckily a lot of young people in rural areas are leaving.
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