California To License Self-Driving Cars 301
DevotedSkeptic writes "Californian senators have passed a bill that looks set to make the state the second in the US to approve self-driving cars on its roads. The bill was passed unanimously by state senators, and now hits the desk of governor Jerry Brown, who's expected to sign it into law. It calls on the California Department of Motor Vehicles to start developing standards and licensing procedures for autonomous vehicles. 'This bill would require the department to adopt safety standards and performance requirements to ensure the safe operation and testing of 'autonomous vehicles', as defined, on the public roads in this state,' it reads."
Should be done in upstate new york, too (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Should be done in upstate new york, too (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering half the drivers there don't seem to be paying attention to their driving, self-driving cars would probably be a huge improvement.
I got a ticket about 10 years ago and had to go to driving school. Maybe 50-60 people packed into a room. First two things the guy asked were questions on how close you could legally follow another car, and who had right of way in a simple merge situation and in a lane change. About 75% of the people, by show of hands on a multiple choice answer set got the wrong answer. Which means 3/4 of people on the road don't understand the simplest of rules regarding driving.
Couple that with being able to get a handful of questions wrong on the driving test, and rarely if ever re-testing, throw in some distraction since driving a two ton killing machine just isn't that interesting after you've done it a couple of months, and you have driving problems and accidents.
The car knows the rules of the road. It isn't distracted. It wont change lanes every 5 seconds when there's heavy traffic and all lane changing does is increase the likelihood of an accident. It wont tailgate. It won't drive drunk. Its not texting continuously. It wont speed 20mph over the speed limit so as to arrive home 1.5 minutes earlier. In short, it won't do any of the 95,000 things that human drivers do, usually at considerable risk and low to no gain.
Maybe if people actually read and retained the rules of the road, and didn't drive like they were playing a video game with no downsides and no risk, along with unlimited lives...we wouldn't need this.
But...we do.
Good on California legislators for reacting quickly to a potential source of licensing revenue. While they may go for years without addressing serious problems and safety issues, or doing complex things like resurfacing roads...they're pretty quick to respond to an increase in the revenue stream that allows them to continue spending billions on pork every year.
Now I just have to figure out how to trick them into thinking its fun to spend money on roads and schools.
Re: (Score:2)
Why can't they have autonomous vehicles resurface roads? That seems like an ideal situation for efficiency... controlled environment since the lanes are usually blocked off anyway, repetitive and standard task, etc. Its always been something done at a bad time of day for humans anyway and you might reduce union problems (once you get over the obvious initial ones to implem
Re: (Score:2)
don't you need to keep mixing and reloading the assault or concrete and you need people to look over the work as it's going as well.
Re: (Score:2)
don't you need to keep mixing and reloading the assault or concrete and you need people to look over the work as it's going as well.
I don't think anyone is assaulting the roads, I think they're just old.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Actually it means 3/4 of the people who were either stupid enough or unlucky enough to get caught by a cop don't know the basic rules of driving. If your sample is people in (remedial) "driving school" for having lots of tickets, you have a huge selection bias towards bad drivers.
I considered that until I realized that I had been stopped for being halfway through a light when it turned red. Which is perfectly legal, but I'm guessing the cop needed some work on his quota.
So its a little less a situation of being the one stupid enough, just the one trailing the pack by too far a margin. Any which way, the relative randomness of traffic violations seems to offset the plausibility of this being a group of people different from any other group of 50-60 you picked at random.
My wife perf
Re: (Score:2)
If they look at the revenue part of the equation, they'll never do this - they get a LOT of revenue from traffic tickets, and won't make that up if the cars never make mistakes....
Re: (Score:3)
How fast and how far do you drive? 20MPH over the speed limit in a lot of cases will save you more time than 90 seconds per trip.
I read a study a while back that said that chronic speeders trying to save time rarely save more than a few minutes on their trip, since most time is spent sitting at red lights or in traffic. I guess if you're driving 300-500 miles on the highway, you could knock some time off but most people don't drive that far on a routine basis. Even in that scenario, sitting by the side of the road getting a ticket for 15 minutes that costs you 10 hours of work to pay for is a pretty shitty substitute for ten minute
Re: (Score:2)
...self-driving cars would probably be a huge improvement.
For lives saved, of course, it will be quite dramatic, but not for those municipalities that depend on revenue generated by traffic fines it won't. Expect more layoffs of LEOs and bankruptcies, and higher taxes to take up the slack, unless they become more creative in extracting money from the public.
A side benefit will be the dissolution of MADD
Hackers around the world rejoice (Score:2, Interesting)
...and they'll work the security into it after the first major hacker-caused pile-up.
If the car is licensed... (Score:5, Funny)
And your driver's license lets you vote in CA, does that mean these cars get to vote? Can they vote themselves "car friendly" politicians? Will we be talking about "vehicle rights" in the next election?
In a panic, will we try and pull the plug?
what about stuff like code review and liability? (Score:3)
what about stuff like code review and liability?
Now there are 2 big liability parts criminal liability and civil liability.
and no who makes the car and or the software coders who make the code can't hide behind a mandatory arbitration or an eula.
Even more so if say the car hit's some thing out side of the car.
Re:what about stuff like code review and liability (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a lot of interesting legal implications for these self driving cars but all that a side I dream of the day when a drunk can stumble out of the bar and fall into the back of his car and wake up in the drive way of his home the next morning.
Anyone who seriously moves to prevent the self driving car from becoming reality regardless of how safe they are is simply against saving lives. I'm sure most people will wonder how anyone could be flat out against self driving cars but people like that do exist and at some point this will move from a legal issue to a political issue when it starts looking like mass adoption might happen and these people will come out.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
what about criminal liability the insurance industry can't cover that.
And who will go to jail if say a auto car some how things a small kid on the street is a bird or road kill and runs it over?
Re:what about stuff like code review and liability (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody. Same as now.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not as if cars don't already contain software today that affects how it drives, from anti-lock braking to engine control to powered steering to... It's simply the next (admittedly, big) step, not going from complete manual control to complete automatic control.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Who is doing the code review on your brain?
From what I've been able to determine, most people seem to be written in an early variant of Visual Basic.
Wake me up when they've been refactored.
Caution! (Score:5, Funny)
Don't put any ethanol in the tank! Or you'll see a lot more DUIs...
So who's going to insure these things? (Score:2)
Re:So who's going to insure these things? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Probably the same insurance companies which insure the equally (or even more) incalculable risk of human drivers.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nah, I'm sure they'll charge a boatload more than they would a human driver. Not because they're idiots, but because they know anyone who can afford a self-driving car will be able to afford it. They'll just say the newness of the technology and lack of risk history is the reason it's so much.
Beginning of the end for driving jobs. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
That's a |10-38| Outsider blabbing about auto-drive system
now we need to do to you what we did to jimmy hoffa
Re:Beginning of the end for driving jobs. (Score:4, Insightful)
unions aren't designed to protect peoples jobs from automation but to represent collective bargaining issues and represent workers in the face of often arbitrary and hostile (and incompetent) management.
the forces that prevent government change for something (or force it upon us) are the corporations that benefit most from them. I'm guessing a well known search engine had something to do with the ability to get a law passed that benefits.... them?
and when lawsuits arise around self-driving cars a well known search engine will hire a high powered PR firm to astro-turf a lobby of "citizens for self-driving robot car rights" and we'll here politicians railing about how small businesses will fail if they have to pay minimum wage to a human driver and the right to own and (autonomously) operate a self-driving car is the American Way.
Politicians have been destroying the power of unions for decades and never really wanted them in the first place. And that's almost certainly because politicians are the dogs and the corporations are the masters who pull their chains (running dogs of capitalism no less!).
Re: (Score:3)
I'd mod that insightful. I can't help but think someday when I get into a "Johnny Cab" in Las Vegas, or New York city. I'm going to have a much higher probability of getting to my destination alive, provided the cab isn't shot at by an out of work cab driver.
Get used the idea, I'm afraid (Score:5, Interesting)
It's clearly just a matter of time until automomous cars are head and shoulders safer than those driven by people. Once this happens, adoption will be driven by the insurance companies. It will become prohibitively expensive to drive your own car.
I actually look forward to this, and wonder how it will change the interior design of cars. Will we turn the front seat around and go for a more social living room style arrangement? Will we dispense with the view from the front windshield in favour of an immersive large-screen TV? Beds for those long drives? Will we have refrigerators and microwaves so we can get breakfast on the morning commute? The possibilities are awesome.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Get used the idea, I'm afraid (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
and in that movie there where still manual drive only areas / roads
Re: (Score:3)
I actually look forward to this, and wonder how it will change the interior design of cars. Will we turn the front seat around and go for a more social living room style arrangement? Will we dispense with the view from the front windshield in favour of an immersive large-screen TV? Beds for those long drives? Will we have refrigerators and microwaves so we can get breakfast on the morning commute? The possibilities are awesome.
An autopilot in your RV and you're already there. In more ways than one.
As a bonus, since they only go 45 mph in straight lines, the system should be pretty easy to set up. Lots of room for hardware and you can use the CPU as a stove top.
I'm gonna write Winnebago right now...
Re:Get used the idea, I'm afraid (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
If there is something that airplanes teaches us it is that passing control to a bored human in a dangerous situation is not the way to go. It is safer to keep either the computer or the human in control all the time.
Re: (Score:2)
You mean like in This 1955 Disney exhibition film [youtube.com]?
The relevant part starts from about 39:00 to the end of the video. Sadly none of it's happened, especially the atomic tunnelling machine.
In Soviet California (Score:3, Funny)
Car drives you!
You know you were all thinking it.
Self navigating cargo ships (Score:4, Interesting)
Somewhat off topic, I know. But if we're going to have auto-driving/piloting, then wouldn't self-navigating ships be more important, from a practical perspective? (Though I can see the fun and technological offshoots in designing self-driving cars.)
Self navigating cargo ships might need to be be piloted manually when leaving and entering docks (at least to start with), but in the open oceans they could auto-navigate and be centrally monitored.
Open water piracy would take a dent as there would be no crew to kidnap, and there would be no incentive for ship owners to follow pirates' demands to reroute ships. After all, if you're going to lose a ship and its cargo either way, then might as well do it by not appeasing pirates.
It would also mean that ships would not be piloted by crews who try to navigate tricky waters to cut corners.
Re: (Score:3)
It seems to me that either ships and airplanes would be easier to automate than cars. But the incentive to automate both is much smaller, since the cost of keeping a crew is relatively smaller, and neither has stopped time due to the human pilots.
Automated trucks are the way to go, but better test it on cars first.
Re: (Score:2)
Open water piracy would take a dent as there would be no crew to kidnap, and there would be no incentive for ship owners to follow pirates' demands to reroute ships. After all, if you're going to lose a ship and its cargo either way, then might as well do it by not appeasing pirates.
Dude, methinks ye have not been reading enough sci-fic.
Piracy will still exist, as long the ship or cargo is valuable to someone. Maybe the pirates will involve the services of a hacker or insider. I can imagine boarding a ship to subvert the computer or sending false "storm avoidance orders" and ordering the ship to hangout at a certain port. Many ways to skin a cat, there is.
When police start riding these, we're all in troub (Score:2)
When police start riding these, we're all in trouble. Imagine a police car which at any given moment knows the exact speeds of the cars around it, and can read license plates of those ahead. Heck, just drive on the highway in an unmarked car, and have it automatically issue speeding tickets to everyone. Neat.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm a little uneasy at what will happen when most people are driving these and how they will interact with the police. I suppose there wouldn't be any point in trying to ticket one, but I still would expect they'll eventually do something like on a signal from a police car, the autonomous car will pull over and stop itself. Things just get more ominous, if more unlikely from there. What if it was set up that, if the Government wants you, any autonomous car you get into will automatically drive you to the ne
Re:Not safe (Score:5, Insightful)
Just look at the wonders of automated flight. Most airline accidents that aren't due to terrorism or mechanical malfunction are due to pilots overriding the autopilots.
autopilots acting on bad data or coding issues??? (Score:2, Insightful)
autopilots acting on bad data or coding issues??? had lead to crashes.
What about that air show crash where you had stuff like
Thus he may not have heard these warnings (and thus any other warning or alarm as they sound in cockpit and not always in the headset).
that black boxes had been tampered with. (maybe to cover up the airbus issues with it's autopilot)
In the month prior to the accident, Airbus had posted two Operational Engineering Bulletins (OEBs) indicating possibilities of anomalous behavior in the A
Re:autopilots acting on bad data or coding issues? (Score:4, Funny)
I already have an autopilot in my car which is constantly giving audio prompts and attempting to take control, but enough about the wife. I for one welcome our new autonomous car overlords - as at least I can kick the wife out... heh
Re: (Score:2)
A320 crashes http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/view_details.cgi?date=03221998®=RP-C3222&airline=Philippine+Airlines [airdisaster.com]
The aircraft overran runway 4 while landing. A malfunction of the onboard flight computers prevented power from being reduced to idle, which inhibited thrust reverse and spoilers from being used. The offending engine was shut down, and brakes applied, but the aircraft was unable to stop before the end of the runway
I couldn't read the article you referenced ("server not responding"), but the accident report [uni-bielefeld.de] states this was caused by pilot error, not malfunctioning computers. From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]: "A selection by the pilot of the wrong mode on the onboard flight computers prevented power from being reduced to idle, which inhibited thrust reverse and spoilers from being used. The offending engine was shut down, and brakes applied, but the aircraft was unable to stop before the end of the runway".
There's a surprising number
Re:Not safe (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not safe for the simple reason that the automatic cars will drive the speed limit, and cause accidents because everybody else is going 20 over.
Re:Not safe (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Your theory isn't holding up in the face of the data. Googles Cars have logged hundreds of thousands of miles and have one accident caused by human error.
Slow vehicle driving significantly black the prevailing speed cause accidents for other vehicles, while seldom getting hit themselves. They cause chain reaction fender benders two or three cars back, which they are seldom even aware of, and drive away, never to show up in accident statistics.
At least that's the theory put forth by those who perpetually drive over the speed limit.
Re: (Score:2)
Your theory isn't holding up in the face of the data. Googles Cars have logged hundreds of thousands of miles and have one accident caused by human error.
Slow vehicle driving significantly black the prevailing speed cause accidents for other vehicles, while seldom getting hit themselves. They cause chain reaction fender benders two or three cars back, which they are seldom even aware of, and drive away, never to show up in accident statistics.
At least that's the theory put forth by those who perpetually drive over the speed limit.
Awww that's sucks! Then the drivers who are speeding are blamed! And the people driving the speed limit aren't even given a ticket. I'll remember this next time im driving, that speeding saves lives
Re: (Score:2)
Your theory isn't holding up in the face of the data. Googles Cars have logged hundreds of thousands of miles and have one accident caused by human error.
Hundreds of thousands of miles? That's nothing, Americans drive billions of miles each year, and I don't even need a source since that's pretty obvious, with 310+ million Americans each would only need to drive 3 miles a year to reach a billion.
Re: (Score:3)
> with 310+ million Americans each would only need to drive 3 miles a year to reach a billion.
With actual numbers:
"There were 190,625,023 licensed drivers in the United States in 2000." [1]
190625023 * 3 = 571875069
So not only are you wrong, but I don't see your point either. Americans drive a lot, but they also have a lot of car accidents. (Feel feel to provide more recent numbers, but you won't get a billion even if you count the whole population.)
To be fair, I think that computer controlled car should
Re: (Score:2)
If the accident was caused by a programming error, do you think Google would have admitted it and risked killing all th new legislation that's being passed, and thereby also the project?
Re:Not safe (Score:4, Insightful)
Self-driving cars will eventually be the majority.
Driving 20 over the speed limit may make you get there more quickly, but not having to focus on the road for the whole trip will make the trip more enjoyable and will make it feel like you get there more quickly.
Re: (Score:3)
Eventually sure. It's gonna be a trainwreck getting there, though.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't think so. I think self-driving cars will catch on very quickly.
Imagine when you get up for work in the morning if you could safely do things like comb your hair or eat breakfast while driving to work. You could save 15 minutes to maybe a half-hour. And a computerized system where the cars drive as close as possible to one another and optimize their placement, and where everyone is allowed to merge when they want to will make rush hour not completely suck.
Very quickly the number of accidents will go
Re: (Score:2)
I think you underestimate the CPU load of driving, or overestimate the computing resources that will be made available.
OTOH, perhaps a car could accurately estimate how fast it's CPU could let it drive, and higher priced cars could have fancier computers. That, of course, would increase the need for inter-car communication, which would put even more load on the low end models, so they'd need to slow down even more.
There's all sorts of possible futures out there. Some of them look quite familiar, from a di
Re:Not safe (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not safe (Score:4, Insightful)
If all cars are self-driving, then we can happily increase the speed limit -- and probably by a lot!! We might even get a scenario where one speed limit applies to humans, and another (higher) one applies to computer-controlled vehicles.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is, all cars are NOT self driving, and probably won't be in our lifetimes.
Re: (Score:3)
Our lifetimes? I'm a Singularitarian, you insensitive clod!
Re: (Score:2)
IIRC, turn signals became mandatory within about a decade after they were allowed. This isn't quite the same, so I give it 20-30 years to become mandatory on local roads, as well as on freeways. Whether that's within your lifetime or not I wouldn't choose to guess.
Re:Not safe (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't have to be safe, as nothing, not even laying in bed, is completely safe. They just have to be safer than what exists now. That is a pretty low bar to reach.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's not safe for the simple reason that the automatic cars will drive the speed limit, and cause accidents because everybody else is going 20 over.
That's pretty short sighted. As much as I enjoy driving my car myself, I imagine automatic cars getting their own lanes and higher speed limits within the next 10-20 years, it's one of the few things I like about their coming (that, and less idiots to contend with on the road.)
Re: (Score:2)
Well then, people should be driving the speed limit and not an arbitrary speed over because they feel entitled to break the law.
I fail to see the problem.
Re: (Score:2)
You fail to see reality. You talk about what should be, and willfully ignore what is.
Re: (Score:2)
Most airline accidents that aren't due to terrorism or mechanical malfunction are due to pilots overriding the autopilots.
[citation needed]
Hint - there is a difference between "pilot error" and "overriding the autopilots". There innumerable factors, input and output, that contribute to a safe flight, only a small fraction of those are handled by an autopilot. Arguably, the same holds true for automobile travel. Then again, I live in a city where the humans regularly demonstrate that machines are better drivers.
Re: (Score:2)
... since driving only requires a set of rules and environmental awareness.
If you replace the word driving with any verb your statement is true. I can't imagine the mayhem this will mean - in part because I don't think anyone knows how 'autonomous cars' will be implemented. In the simplest since we are talking about putting our safety into the hands of something engineered. Fair enough - we do that every day of our life - most of it unwittingly. However, engineering it seems to me, is best when solving a specific problem we're having with a conflict between our sets of rules and
Re: (Score:2)
I disagree - human driven cars have become more, and less, safe with engineering, and other, advances over the years.
Collapsible steering column, steel belted radial tires, seat belts, crumple zones: more safe
Crowded roads, mobile phones, multi-hundred horsepower engines: less safe
Anti-lock brakes, air bags, tougher DUI laws, better roads: more safe
Texting, e-mail, twitter and Facebook on mobile phones: less safe
Re: (Score:2)
Now, where are you getting those statistics from? Mechanical malfunction is constantly causing airline accidents, and is often one of the causes of the accidents attributed to human error.
In fact, everybody seems to be fast attributing airline accidents to human errors nowadays, even when there are little the crew could do to save the plane. The reality is a bit more complex, since there
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Not safe (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
They have well over 300k miles.
Source [techcrunch.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Hell, I have driven well over 300K miles without an accident....
Re: (Score:3)
Google cars have had over 480k miles accidents-due-to-system free. There was one accident when one was rear ended while stopped at a redlight, and another when a human tester decided to override the automatic driving and drive it himself.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
And what evidence is there that proves the safety of those cars, other than taking Google's word for it?
Re:Not safe (Score:5, Insightful)
With reports of Google's self-driving car crashing left [cnet.com] and right [jalopnik.com] how could anyone want to be in one of these vehicles? They just aren't safe. When something happens when you're driving then it's at least your fault and you could do something about it, but not in self-driving cars.
Was this meant to be sarcastic? Both of those posts referred to the same accident. These cars have logged hundreds of thousands of miles, with ONE accident(which may well have been human error). That's far, far safer than the average human driver. If you're in the drivers seat of the self driving car, you CAN take control of it should you feel the need, too.
However, realistically that's not going to be useful. The car will be better at accident avoidance than you are - it's not that big a programming challenge to achieve that. People don't like to admit it - it bruises their delicate little egos - but the car knows *exactly* how fast every car around them is moving, their acceleration, and can put itself exactly where it wants to be every time. No delayed reactions due to inattention, no slight overreaction due to panic.
Yes, self driving cars will be involved in accidents, and will be at fault, from time to time. This does not make them less safe - it's inevitable, particularly when human drivers are involved as well. Human drivers, on the other hand, are extremely unsafe. Everyone wants to think that they are special, and unlike everyone else they're awesome drivers, but the reality remains that human drivers are in accidents extremely regularly.
Don't get me wrong. I'd hate to be in a robotically driven car. Logically, I know I'd be much safer than with a human driver, but I'd be enormously squirrelly about the whole process. And, of course, I love driving - I'd never be comfortable giving that up to a machine. I consider myself a good driver, too (like everyone else), and I've never been in an accident for which I'm at fault, but I can acknowledge that there have definitely been times I've driven with far less than ideal circumstances. Distraction, emotional distress, tiredness, ill health, the list goes on an on. In all those cases, I'm less than 100%.
Re:Not safe (Score:5, Insightful)
Where are you getting that the average human driver has an at least one accident every few hundred thousand miles? I wouldn't call this "far, far safer" yet. It has the potential to be.
Also, most of the tests have been in still fairly controlled environments. Meaning, the car wasn't woken up in the middle of the night to get a pregnant woman to the hospital quickly over dirt roads, past nighttime street-racers, etc... Loads of "special cases" exist in the world of cars. It will be quite a long time before we have a really solid understanding of their viability. Right now, a "typical commute" is probably the safest use, or even for standard-route delivery vehicles without a high time sensitivity. Even better if certain roads / routes / lanes get set aside for autonomous vehicles only, which would make them even safer and more efficient.
Re:Not safe (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, 300,000 miles, one non-fatal accident (with, again, a human at the wheel - but we'll ignore that for now).
Now, I pulled these numbers of a set of google searches. There was a fairly wide range of stats, so I took a bit of an average:
Insurance industry assumes one accident CLAIM per 17.9 years (lots of minor accidents go unclaimed, but we'll ignore them too). Average of 15,000 miles per year per driver. Thus, an average of one accident per 268,500 miles per human driver.
Of course, while the human driver stats are numerous (and this is why insurance is expensive!) the self driving car stats are not. Only one accident with new, unrefined technology in 300,000 miles... and that with a human in control of the car.
That said, your example? That's where a self driving car is much, much better than a human. A human driver with a pregnant woman giving birth, woken up in the middle of the night is going to be tired, highly agitated and distracted and definitely not at his best. The self driving car isn't tired. It doesn't care what time it is. The self driving car will be aware of the speeding racers - and know their exact speed, trajectory, and likely path - sooner than the human driver will, as these are very simple computations to make. The self driving car is indifferent to the passenger; which is also important. It's not distracted, worried, or anxious.
Of course, there certainly are cases where that's just not good enough, extreme emergency cases. That's why all these self driving cars can be driven in manual mode. You've always got that option if need be.
Obviously, routes being set aside for autonomous vehicles will be safer, but routes mixed will be safer than pure-human routes, because autonomous cars are simply safer than human driven cars overall.
I've been rearended while stopped at traffic lights six times in the last twenty years; every time due to an inattentive driver. None of those would happen with an autonomous car.
Finally, yes, mechanical/electronic failure can result in crashes. Just like it can with human drivers - sticking accelerators, for example, failing steering linkages, brakes, etc. Software problems? No different than a human driver having a heart attack, stroke, seizure, getting stung by a bee, etc - those all happen all the time. There's no real difference there.
Re: (Score:2)
The majority of airline landings are still done manually, and even the best "auto-land" still requires substantial human input. This is another variant of the "airliners all land themselves these days" myth that seems to be so prevalent, and if it's used as a basis for policy ("Sure we're ready for self-driving cars, just look at airplanes!") a particularly dangerous one.
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, I lol'd at this... How could you possibly compare these two? Airspace has an incredibly consistent, standardized and mostly centralized air-traffic control system. you have ~7,000 aircraft simultaneously [about.com] in the entire US Airspace. We have over 242 Million [dot.gov] registered vehicles in the United States. I couldn't find data on how many are in operation simultaneous
Re: (Score:3)
Some redneck hacker will try to modify his own car to disastrous effect.
As if morons don't do that already and somehow this is the fault of the car.
Re:Not safe (Score:4, Informative)
the self diving cars better have the same level of code review that autoplot software get's.
and even if that you can still get errors like this
http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/view_details.cgi?date=01201992®=F-WWDP&airline=Air+Inter [airdisaster.com]
While on approach into Strasbourg the aircraft impacted the side of a mountain. The cause of the crash was found to be a faulty design in an autopilot mode selector switch which led the flight crew to inadvertently select a 3,300 foot per minute descent rate on the approach instead of the desired 3.3 flight path angle.
or this
http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/view_details.cgi?date=09141993®=D-AIPN&airline=Lufthansa [airdisaster.com]
The aircraft skidded off the end of the runway during landing. The aircraft touched down with sink rate low enough that the onboard flight computers did not consider it to be "landing," which inhibited thrust reverse and brake application for nine seconds.
http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/view_details.cgi?date=03101997®=A40-EM&airline=Gulf+Air [airdisaster.com]
A flight control failure at V1 caused the crew to abandon the takeoff, with deceleration beginning at V1+8 knots. The aircraft overran the runway, causing the nosegear to collapse. The flight control problem was traced to a faulty microchip in the aircraft's Fly-By-Wire system.
Re: (Score:2)
Left and Right you say? It's the same incident in both links (indeed the C|net article is based on and points to the Jalopnik post).
Also, from your own source:
Updated 3:51 p.m. PST: Google would only give me a further one-line statement. A spokesman said: "The car was in manual mode at the time. We have confirmed it in our logs."
That's 3:51 pm August 5th, so it was cleared up by the time you got the link.
I'm just as concerned about this, but your post is downright deceptful.
Re: (Score:2)
300k miles.
1 (non at-fault) accident.
A driving recod like that would probably rank in the top decile of all drivers in America. Stop spreading FUD (seriously, what did autonomous cars ever do to you?).
Re: (Score:2)
Ew, that Cnet article reads like a gossip magazine, or a script from Glenn Beck. Isn't there anything more... credible?
Re: (Score:2)
You might be writing history, joining a certain individual who proclaimed: 'The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty—a fad.'
The fact that an AI doesn't fatigue, doesn't text, doesn't lean over to grab a water bottle a
Re: (Score:2)
why have driverless taxis when they can build the monorail to the airport and have a downtown link.
Re: (Score:2)
OTOH, I don't have race conditions and can reboot myself if needed. My MTBF is about 50 years - better than pretty much any computer based device I've ever used.
Upgrades are a bitch though, I'll give you that.
Re: (Score:2)
and the Wright Flyer wasn't exactly up to FAA standards either.
i totally see your point. /dumbass
Re: (Score:2)
If a self-driving car crashes...
Make sure to get the breathalyzer sample from the tailpipe... that corn alcohol is powerful stuff.
Re: (Score:2)
and I will take the verbal morality statute all the way to the supreme court under my 1st amendment rights.