Uber self-driving vehicle kills pedestrian

Is that really a fair comparison though? Autonomous technology is something that exists now and is being tested on the roads today. So we aren’t talking about a fantastical concept creation with few known practical applications; we’re talking about the refinement of a current technology and the time line of wide spread adoption.

Nobody has convinced me that this is a technology that everyone wants. There are many, many people who enjoy driving and having their hands on the steering wheel. So I need to be convinced that those people are going to want to give that up.
 
Nobody has convinced me that this is a technology that everyone wants. There are many, many people who enjoy driving and having their hands on the steering wheel. So I need to be convinced that those people are going to want to give that up.

This 100%. They'll have to literally make it illegal to drive before I get into one of these driverless cars.
 
This 100%. They'll have to literally make it illegal to drive before I get into one of these driverless cars.

There are segments of the population where driverless cars could really be useful. Those with disabilities, the elderly who have vision impairment or simply no longer have the motor function skills to drive.
 
There are segments of the population where driverless cars could really be useful. Those with disabilities, the elderly who have vision impairment or simply no longer have the motor function skills to drive.

Ok. But I'm talking about myself. Frankly, the idea of a car with no one behind the wheel scares me to death. We all see things differently.
 


Ok. But I'm talking about myself. Frankly, the idea of a car with no one behind the wheel scares me to death. We all see things differently.

Yes I agree with you. I want my hands on the wheel. The bank and grocery store is about 5 minutes from where I live. I suspect that an autonomous car would take 2-3x as long as it would take me to get there and back.

I was just mentioning a couple groups that the tech could be really good for which are mainly people who aren't able to get behind a wheel right now.
 
No. That's half of the problem. Cars that have some capacity to pilot themselves today are misunderstood by people. They take it to mean they can sit back and play on their phones. Reality is, even with Tesla, the driver still needs to be at full attention and ready to take over at any time. Unless we get to the 100% isolated environment I mentioned above, this will not change.

But part of the reason that misunderstanding exists is because autonomous vehicle advocates present that vision without the disclaimers that it will never happen. I heard an interview on NPR with someone in autonomous development with I think Google who talked about the self-driving vehicle as a "mobile living room" where you can be reading, working, etc. on your commute. That isn't within the realm of possibility at this point because not only would it require every car on the roads to be self-driving and behaving predictably, it would also require removing pedestrians and other unpredictable hazards (a kid chasing a ball into the street, a deer running out into traffic) from the roads. Until that utopian ideal can be achieved, a self-driving car will still need a driver to monitor things, and attention spans being what they are, I think there's real cause for concern about the alertness of that human monitor.
 
Google has those driverless vehicles all over the Phoenix area. There's a person in the driver's seat, but he/she isn't actually driving the vehicle. They look like white passenger vans with this weird thing on the top of the vehicle.
 


Assuming you have ABS. My current car does but my last one didn't.

as for having to be darn near perfect... human drivers are no where near perfect... it may be viable simply to be better.

However I agree for most cases I would still like to be in charge of my car... although if I ever have to go to a city where being able to parallel park is useful a car that does that would be nice. (its so not an issue in my area I haven't done it since I took drivers ed... )

Yep. I agree. Good thing is that ABS has been mandatory for several years now, and common among most cars for over a decade. So the number of cars w/out it is dwindling fast.

Humans definitely aren't perfect...I see the results hundreds of times daily. I'm all for aids to help drivers, just not for taking full control.
 
Nobody has convinced me that this is a technology that everyone wants. There are many, many people who enjoy driving and having their hands on the steering wheel. So I need to be convinced that those people are going to want to give that up.

No one is going to force you to use a self driving car. The horse and buggy didn't go away when the horseless carriage was introduced. They were common for many years after cars were first sold. There are even horse and buggies today.
 
The bank and grocery store is about 5 minutes from where I live. I suspect that an autonomous car would take 2-3x as long as it would take me to get there and back.

With autonomous cars wouldn't brick and mortar bank branches and grocery stores disappear? There would be no need to drive to a bank or a grocery store to say hello to some robot who would hand you cash or scan your groceries. The bank or grocery store would come to your house.

Just like Netflix destroyed video stores so will autonomous cars eliminate most brick and mortar stores.
 
With autonomous cars wouldn't brick and mortar bank branches and grocery stores disappear? There would be no need to drive to a bank or a grocery store to say hello to some robot who would hand you cash or scan your groceries. The bank or grocery store would come to your house.

I admire your optimism.
 
Nobody has convinced me that this is a technology that everyone wants. There are many, many people who enjoy driving and having their hands on the steering wheel. So I need to be convinced that those people are going to want to give that up.

There are definetely going to be early, average, and late adopters. My grandmother never wanted to get on an airplane because if god had wanted her to fly he would have given her wings, and she enjoyed the journey in a car...as time passed though more and more people found plane travel advantageous and grandma was in the minority.

Going back to my first post my theory is that the cost to continue driving your own car is going to go up as you become riskier than the autonomous car (this would assume the data trends continue and autonomous cars continue to prove safer than drivers in a range of conditions). As the cost increases and autonomous vehicles become more common, i think driving will be reserved for those with money to spend on driving as a hobby. My prediction is within 10-20 years we will see a large shift.

Edited to add- I really love this discussion. You can tell I’m really interested and excited about the possibilities and don’t often get to geek out and discuss it this much!
 
There are definetely going to be early, average, and late adopters. My grandmother never wanted to get on an airplane because if god had wanted her to fly he would have given her wings, and she enjoyed the journey in a car...as time passed though more and more people found plane travel advantageous and grandma was in the minority.

Going back to my first post my theory is that the cost to continue driving your own car is going to go up as you become riskier than the autonomous car (this would assume the data trends continue and autonomous cars continue to prove safer than drivers in a range of conditions). As the cost increases and autonomous vehicles become more common, i think driving will be reserved for those with money to spend on driving as a hobby. My prediction is within 10-20 years we will see a large shift.

Edited to add- I really love this discussion. You can tell I’m really interested and excited about the possibilities and don’t often get to geek out and discuss it this much!

The airplane solved a problem. Long distance travel in very short amounts of time.

What problem are autonomous cars solving?
 
The airplane solved a problem. Long distance travel in very short amounts of time.

What problem are autonomous cars solving?

You don't think 40,000 people dead every year and millions of people injured every year by human drivers is a problem?
 
That is just the US alone.... Millions of people on this planet die every year in vehicle accidents. Completely unnecessary..
 
It solves the problem of idiots who should absolutely not be driving.

Autonomous cars only solve that problem if they are mandated by law. If not, the idiots are still going to be out there driving.

And I'm also very skeptical that autonomous cars are going to be affordable when they first enter the market. I bet they will be significantly more expensive. That will be a non-starter for most.
 
You don't think 40,000 people dead every year and millions of people injured every year by human drivers is a problem?

Yes, but you can't look at just sheer numbers. First, the number of injured is greatly exaggerated. Horribly so...and you can thank the plaintiff bar for that. Vehicle fatalities are in the 30-40k range and have been for a while. But there's more to that story. Look at the historical number of miles driven and vehicles on the road since the advent of the automobile. The fatality rate per miles driven has dropped exponentially. The fatality rate per person has also dropped significantly. Even the raw number of fatalities are down since cars really became the way of life after WWII (the advent of suburban sprawl). Humans are still at the wheel.

Without a doubt, 30-40K deaths is too many...far too many. But you have to look at the big picture.

None of us know for sure what the future holds. However, being as much of a car geek as I am and being in an industry very closely tied to it, I'm quite confident that if there were ever to be a 100% fully automated vehicle society, it's many, many decades away. I can foresee isolated autonomous environments coming sooner than that, where there are dedicated highways and roads for these cars. But not completely removing human piloted vehicles from all roads at all times. As I said before, the infrastructure changes alone that are needed to make us 100% human driver free would make it prohibitive in the relative short term...not to mention the human push back...I would fight tooth and nail to make sure it doesn't.
 

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