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What if there were 10 9/11 scale terrorist attacks every year? People would be protesting in the streets for the government to stop the carnage. That's about what the highway death toll is annually in the US.
Because the deaths are spread out over the year and geographically, people don't perceive auto accidents to be a significant threat to their well being. Driving drunk, drugged, or distracted by texting or video screens is all too common and the consequences deadly.
The real problem with autonomous driving is the illusion of lack of control. We fear what we don't understand. How much control do you actually have on the streets today over a being a victim of impaired or distracted drivers?
It's funny to see so many people with their head in the sand regarding self driving cars.. I guess they are not current with the advances in artificial intelligence AI and how fast the field is developing
Self driving cars are coming faster than people think because with AI the algorithms train themselves to handle all sort of situations.. AI is now able to handle imperfect information to design a strategy to solve a problem.
Anyway you slice it these cars will be able to handle any situation far better than you. Can you precisely operate four independent brake pedals for each wheel at once?
FYI I've driven perhaps a million miles and absolutely love traction control. I live in an area that is very hilly and it works wonders in the snow.
I've never owned a vehicle with TC, my wife loves it on her ATS though. In the years I've been driving , I've gotten myself into situations when the whole "when in doubt , throttle it out" methodology saved my from an accident. It seems like with TC, it would eliminate that ability. Sure, it seems awesome when taking off from a light in snow/ice and you don't have to worry about feathering the throttle and countersteeing to keep the control of the vehicle but that is about it.
Sort of on the same topic. GM did a test a while back using their latest generation Corvette. They had Tanner Foust run thru a course they had set up on the streets of downtown Detroit. He did several laps with the TC on, then several without. And the TC was pretty impressive, and his lap time was very close but he was still able to run the course faster without TC. If I remember correctly, it had something to do with the changing transitions and bumps in the road. The TC would sense these (when losing a slight amount of traction) and reduce the power, with out it, Tanner was able to just stay into the throttle and power thru it.
Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
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I think self driving is overblown. Vehicles will have a lot of safety features that prevent human error from causing accidents, the notion of getting in the passenger seat and letting a car drive you won't become mainstream.
Computers were predicted to end need for paper when in fact they did the opposite. I doubt AI influenced driving will do the opposite of reducing human involvement in driving but definitely think the impact will be small for most of the world. AI can program how cars handle situations now but until they are programmed in a way that knows how other AI influenced cars they may encounter are going to behave, wont be a huge scale success.
We as human drivers predict how we expect another driver to react without thinking about it perhaps. But it is key in avoiding some accidents safely.
I don't know what you mean by "norm" but it won't even be the majority of vehicles on the road for more than 2-3 decades. There was an article about how often people get into new cars...
Will self-driving cars become ubiquitous? That becomes obvious once you’ve digested the most important lesson in Fight Club: On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero. Apply this to cars: There are 274,000,000 cars in the United States, give or take, with a turnover of around 17 million annually. If 100% of cars sold today were self-driving, it would take 16 years to get to 100% ubiquity.
Chris Gerdes, Chief Innovation Officer for the DOT, told The Drive that he thinks 35% of the cars on the road in the United States will be self-driving in ten years.
To get there, 100% of the cars sold would have to be self-driving by 2021.
Not a chance.
I'll bet the majority of cars on the road don't even have auto-headlights or rain-sensing wipers. Another good example is active cruise-control (where it accelerates and brakes for you depending on distance from the vehicle ahead) - this has been available for many years yet so few have even heard of it nor want to spend the $2k+ for the option. Because people feel "there's more to break". Now you want them to jump from even higher off the springboard.
Anyway, until they become ubiquitous (I'm on the fence about it), it will be a nightmare driving alongside these things that have to obey every single law and err on the side of caution making a left hand turn with oncoming traffic. There is something to be said about humans - learned behaviors, and experience over time. Computers can adapt to a lot of things but until EVERYTHING on the road is computer-driven, it will not be as safe and free-flowing as people would like to think. As I said - decades.
Anyone who wants to ban human driving is just as bad as terrorists. Given up freedoms in the name of safety is beyond disgusting and the path towards a 1984 dystopic society.
Driving is a freedom and a special privilege and self driving cars scream SKYNET!!!
anyone who thinks self driving cars won't be much safer than what we have now is insane.
what will be beyond frustrating is when people use a fatal accident from a self driving car as an example of why they're unsafe while ignoring the overall data.
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