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I don't think they will ever be on the road, just like the drones will not be delivering for UPS. There are just too many risks to having something with the ability to kill under the control of a computer and mechanical systems that can fail.Next time your computer freezes and you have to re-boot it, think about crossing the street with a self driving car coming toward you.
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Originally Posted by highlanderfil
Exactly. Planes have the ability to take off, fly and land by themselves, yet how many of us would take an unmanned flight to our next vacation destination?
Planes pretty much fly themselves these days. The pilots, outside of landing and taking off, don't "actually" fly the plane. It's all done through GPS nagivation technology.
If the technology were more advanced, it could allow for more efficient usage of roads, etc.
However, it would also incentivize more car usage, because the amount of driving wouldn't be limited to how much people were willing/able to drive. And that would lead to more CO_2 emissions.
The Acura MDX is practically a self-driving car. If you get the Advance & Entertainment packages, you get ACC. It's stop-and-go ACC and lane keeping assist.
Read the bold for the cliff notes, or don't, it's a free country and a free internet.
I have some first hand experience with this, although admittedly almost 10 years ago now.
Even if you somehow got past the reluctance of drivers to give up the ability to drive, the loss of driver related jobs, legal issues, insurance/liability woes, big brother invasion of privacy and the opportunity for sabotage, the technology still isn't there.
Automation is only as good as the input to the controller allows it to be.
When I was in college there was a group of mad engineering students that decided to mimic what BMW did with a GPS race car for their capstone project. They found a few things challenging.
1. GPS alone can't account for obstacle avoidance or fine driving skills. Remember, it may be "easy" to control cars on a road but what about the rigors of a parking lot, or signal loss in parking garage or in a tunnel?
They determined GPS resolution was not fine enough for the car to park itself. Even if they told the car to park in the same exact coordinates, it didn't repeat closely enough each time.
Therefore, a redundant radar system has to be installed in order to determine if an object is close. But even that wasn't perfect. They started with 6 proximity sensors but it still failed their pole test, so to finally achieve the results they wanted the car had to have 36 sensors all the way around. Cars with sensors in them are clever, but you can still see all the sensors, usually a 1/2" diameter circle placed in the trim. High end German auto makers have had them since the mid 90's but they haven't been able to hide them completely.
So they finally got it parking right, or so they thought. The next problem was it only worked if there was a vertical surface to gauge distance off of. The next problem is that parking spaces aren't uniform.
The biggest hurdle was what to do in a parking garage or tunnel. I think they figured it out by giving the computer a separate logic for parking garages and tunnels but it still wasn't perfect and by the end of the quarter they had a pretty dinged up old Jetta. They also lost the car in he I-10 tunnel in phoenix and had to tow it out. It seemed GPS was okay for 100 feet maybe even 300 feet, but anymore than that the signal was gone.
2. What if you needed to put your car in an undefined space? Say in a field, or a yard to wash it or it carped out or got a flat tire? Now, they had to have a separate controller for being able to move the car where you want it. okay simple enough.
3. What if your destination is programmed as home but as you pass a grocery store and decide you need groceries, how fast can you change the destination? If you put it in manual mode and other cars are in auto how do you know what the auto mode logic and your manual control won't screw each other up. Car x on auto thinks car y on manual will do "this" but instead it does "that."
4. How do the cars know when to stop? If they don't stop, in this perfect automated world how do we get them though an intersection safely if there are multiple lanes? Cars wont' drive side by side, that would be a safety issue (too close laterally) so in a multi-lane situation they would be need to be staggered and you'd have very tiny windows to fit perpendicular traffic through.
5. Wet road, snow, and ice logic. wet roads with potholes and standing water are continuously changing as are snow and ice covered roads. There would be nothing to prevent a car at a stop from sliding down a hill sideways in ice, the cars reaction could actually make . This goes back to liability. Even hill logic could be a problem (think San Fran). There would just have to be so many logic and modes the car would have to know how to switch back and forth between in a situation like that.
6. Different manufacturers cars have different performance envelops. One my not brake as hard as the other or one could accelerate faster or handle better.
5. A lack of maintenance or a malfunction could mess with the parameters programmed into the computer. Say you decided to skip your maintenance (I know, who would do such a thing, right?) The computer in the car says apply x amount of force. Well that force would be sufficient if you had properly serviced your car but since you didn't the car just applies max force and hopes it will be enough and it may or may not be.
Now, think of a tire blowout on the highway, what if there is no shoulder? What if its on a narrow bridge? what does the car do? Obviously it could figure out a tire blew with TPMS but the programming for something like that would be daunting, what if the computer messed up and flipped the car? What if it happened on ice?
What if something was in the road way, how would the car figure out how best to avoid it. Sensors? How does it know what it is. It could make an evasive maneuver for a plastic sack or plow right into a bunch of boards with nails or pipes. how does it know what it is in that split second? It could always err on the side of caution, but what if it did that constantly?
What if you lost battery power?
There are so many what ifs and the biggest ifs haven't even been discussed.
1. What about human driven cars and auto driven cars on the same road, which would inevitably happen.
2. Will manufacturers actually like this idea? The probably won't, Wrecks equal new car sales. What will the profit margins be on these self driving cars, what will R&D costs be, how will manuf. keep drivers from suing when self driving cars go awry. How much will these cars cost?
3. Would it be constitutional to tell someone they must buy a self driving compliant car? Even if it was how popular would that idea be. What about camping and off road enthusiasts they have no road and differing terrain and road conditions.
The only way I see this being used, is for freeway use only in congested urban environments. What interest would people living in a town with no traffic have in this feature? Of course the elderly may be able to drive till the day they die, and blind people would be able to get places without help... sort of....maybe.
I think this idea will go the way of the flying car and UPS delivery drones.
Airplanes are automated because of the huge workload on the pilots, there isn't a similar work load when driving an automobile. Automation was mostly welcomed. Anyone that has flown a small airplane can tell you it's pretty hard work keeping altitude and heading with a stick and rudder for more than an hour. Imagine the concentration it would take to fly 10 hours. In my car I can drive 6 hours non stop, no problem because it straightforward and simple.
Hope they will be adequately tested & factory will have good quality control. Maybe we could have cars with some features automatic & add the rest later. Look how long some driving features have been auto, like cruise control. People could maybe even drink alcohol while the car is driving itself, but police might figure a way to make that illegal. If they can't write tickets for drunken driving speeding, careless driving, etc, how will they spend their time? What if there are no accidents? Body repair shops will go out of business. If totaled cars are no more, less new cars will be sold.
I heard originally cars would be like metal detectors, so they'd have to install metal on the sides of roads. If that is still the method, how long would that take?
Today cars drive themselves. Tomorrow they will be stealing your children. so hide ya kids hide ya wife
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