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Cars that drive themselves...still trying to wrap my head around the "why" and "who cares" aspect of this. You have to sit there and do something anyway, and I kind of like driving for it's enjoyment aspects. Maybe if you could sit in the back and pretend you have a chauffeur?
Star Trek transporters...now there's a market. Dinner in Paris? Why yes.
"Why?" There have already been numerous reasons enumerated in this thread, from improved safety to improved fuel economy to increased highway capacity to greater independence and mobility for the handicapped to reduced driver fatigue over long-haul trips or lengthy commutes, et cetera.
"Who cares?" Anyone who cares about any of the above.
And just like that, hundreds of thousands of truck drivers, bus drivers, taxi drivers, and delivery drivers will find themselves without a job. And along with them will go the truck stops, restaurants, and hotels that cater to them.
"Why?" There have already been numerous reasons enumerated in this thread, from improved safety to improved fuel economy to increased highway capacity to greater independence and mobility for the handicapped to reduced driver fatigue over long-haul trips or lengthy commutes, et cetera.
"Who cares?" Anyone who cares about any of the above.
I guess I just can't see this technology being as practical as everybody would like it to be. Theoretically, sure, there are advantages, and I'd love to have a chauffeur that charges nothing to haul my a$$ around while I text and write emails or nap, but I doubt it will be that easy.
I agree if you mean the changes to those professions. Completely automating a workforce will take a generation (20-25 years after 2020).
Quote:
Originally Posted by UrbanAdventurer
I guess I just can't see this technology being as practical as everybody would like it to be. Theoretically, sure, there are advantages, and I'd love to have a chauffeur that charges nothing to haul my a$$ around while I text and write emails or nap, but I doubt it will be that easy.
It won't be that easy at first, but things like this take time to refine and establish in society.
I guess I just can't see this technology being as practical as everybody would like it to be. Theoretically, sure, there are advantages, and I'd love to have a chauffeur that charges nothing to haul my a$$ around while I text and write emails or nap, but I doubt it will be that easy.
Fully autonomous cars are a ways off; the systems in development now and being gradually filtered into new cars will still require driver supervision. But even those will begin to address many of the enumerated issues, particularly as they reach a critical mass.
The chances of driverless cars becoming plentiful anytime soon are essentially zero, and our out-of-control legal system is reason #1, primarily due to the staggering amounts of $$$ which companies such as Toyota are in the process of having to shell out to settle lawsuits for claims of unintended acceleration, as the WSJ reported in a scary column by Holman W. Jenkins on 12-17-13,
Toyota is being asked to prove the unprovable as Jenkins' column points out---that its software didn't go haywire in some untraceable manner which neither Toyota nor anybody else has been able to duplicate in a court of law or anywhere else.
In other words, stay away from them, and hold the confetti, since they're not in any danger of being produced anytime soon.
The chances of driverless cars becoming plentiful anytime soon are essentially zero, and our out-of-control legal system is reason #1, primarily due to the staggering amounts of $$$ which companies such as Toyota are in the process of having to shell out to settle lawsuits for claims of unintended acceleration, as the WSJ reported in a scary column by Holman W. Jenkins on 12-17-13,
Toyota is being asked to prove the unprovable as Jenkins' column points out---that its software didn't go haywire in some untraceable manner which neither Toyota nor anybody else has been able to duplicate in a court of law or anywhere else.
In other words, stay away from them, and hold the confetti, since they're not in any danger of being produced anytime soon.
Many years ago we ran into a weird failure of very low probability on a major copier product. Never did figure out where it came from. But we did, after a year and some millions learn to detect that it had occurred. So we added software to detect it and reset the offending software. And that worked 90% or more of the time. If that did not work the machine would go berserk but other systems would catch it and shut it down.
So yeah you can have software or, worse, software/hardware failures whose causal you cannot find. I know of no way to prove that Toyota or anyone else has a design free of such faults. You simply drive all the ones you can find out and pay for the left overs in court.
It should be reasonably straightforward at not outrageous costs for an auto manufacturer to log sufficient data to tell what went wrong if not what caused it. But they don't really want to do that.
I would think the automated truck will be the first implementation. And they simply put a couple of cameras in the right spots and have a reasonably air tight defense against most suits. If you look at the potential cost impact on that industry they will risk it every time.
“By the end of 2016, Nissan will make available the next two technologies under its Autonomous Drive strategy,” said Ghosn. “We are bringing to market a traffic-jam pilot, a technology enabling cars to drive autonomously – and safely – on congested highways. In the same time-frame, we will make fully-automated parking systems available across a wide range of vehicles.”
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