25 Percent of US Driving Could Be Done By Self-Driving Cars By 2030, Study Finds (techcrunch.com) 168
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Self-driving still seems to be a ways off from active public use on regular roads, but once it arrives, it could ramp very quickly, according to a new study by the Boston Consulting Group. The study found that by 2030, up to a quarter of driving miles in the U.S. could be handled by self-driving electric vehicles operating in shared service fleets in cities, due mostly to considerable cost savings for urban drivers. The big change BCG sees is a result of the rise in interest in autonomous technologies, paired with the increased electrification of vehicles. There's also more pressure on cities to come up with alternate transportation solutions that address increasing congestion. All of that added together could drive reduction in costs by up to 60 percent for drivers who opt into using shared self-driving services vs. owning and operating their own cars.
Its called mass transit (Score:5, Insightful)
And I'll get ahead of it here: mass transit needs to be properly funded in order to work properly. Mass transit does not appear to pay for itself on the surface, it pays for itself because of increase in population density that occurs as a result.
Re:Its called mass transit (Score:4, Insightful)
>, it pays for itself because of increase in population density that occurs as a result.
You say that like it's a good thing.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Population density is both good and bad (Score:3)
People living there receive more services, and businesses located there get more customers
That depends on the services you are seeking and what sort of customers you are looking for. Good luck finding a tractor repair store or any customers for one in downtown Manhattan.
And nobody's forced to use a mode of transportation they dislike - you're allowed to walk, you can take a bus or train, or you can drive.
You can only drive in a city like NYC if you are rather wealthy. Costs too much and is far too impractical for most people. You essentially are forced to take public transit and not everyone likes that.
It's a win-win for everyone.
It's a win-win for people who want/need to be in a dense city. It's a huge loss for thos
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Your reply seems to miss the point and/or doesn't make sense of the gp...
People living there receive more services, and businesses located there get more customers
That depends on the services you are seeking and what sort of customers you are looking for. Good luck finding a tractor repair store or any customers for one in downtown Manhattan.
Why would people who own a tractor be living in Manhattan or nearby for? What are other services usually located in a big city? Farming??? A repair shop for heavy equipment like this may not have good business in the city because of the cost of the land/lease and surrounding businesses...
And nobody's forced to use a mode of transportation they dislike - you're allowed to walk, you can take a bus or train, or you can drive.
You can only drive in a city like NYC if you are rather wealthy. Costs too much and is far too impractical for most people. You essentially are forced to take public transit and not everyone likes that.
The example does not need to apply to NYC only because NYC is quite a unique case. Other big cities aren't lands that surrounded by water...
It's a win-win for everyone.
It's a win-win for people who want/need to be in a dense city. It's a huge loss for those who dislike living in such a place. Dense populations have their good and bad features. It's not a clear "win-win".
You actual
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Why would people who own a tractor be living in Manhattan or nearby for?
Exactly my point. Not all services or companies benefit from high population density. That's why I used such an absurd example.
The example does not need to apply to NYC only because NYC is quite a unique case. Other big cities aren't lands that surrounded by water...
It's not unique to NYC at all though NYC may be a more extreme example than some. Driving into downtown Chicago for example can be hugely expensive and aggravating. Same with most large cities big enough to justify a robust public transit system.
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You can only drive in a city like NYC if you are rather wealthy. Costs too much and is far too impractical for most people. You essentially are forced to take public transit and not everyone likes that.
I am wealthy and I don't drive in Manhattan, where driving is a PITA irrespective of your wealth level. I do dislike the subways though and so I use a car service, most often Uber. Although I personally take regular Uber the use of Uberpool is pervasive in the city and is reasonably priced. Indeed, for shorter trips it can cost the same as the subway.
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It's a win-win for people who want/need to be in a dense city. It's a huge loss for those who dislike living in such a place. Dense populations have their good and bad features. It's not a clear "win-win".
Hey, look. Nobody is trying to go all Agenda 21 on you and force you to move to the big city and ride mass transit. For the city, it's what's needed for multiple reasons. And automation such as the article is talking about will probably help provide that. It will also have an effect in the rural areas. Tractors are already going towards GPS autodriving. Trucks will be next. For the last hundred years urbanization has been happening because of economic reasons and no reason to think it's going to stop as far
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I recently saw a lecture [youtube.com] that made a similar claim: our current transportation and energy systems will be obsolete by 2030. (There's a book by the same guy called "Clean Disruption".) He cites several examples of disruption, from automobiles to cell phones, and notes that they are not incremental (though they may seem so at first). Instead, they follow an "S-curve" of exponential increase. He believes we are right now at the inflection point where several disruptive technologies are about to "go vertical"
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NYC a lot of people drive cause large parts of the city have no subway or it's a 2-3 hour one way trip to get there from where you live cause some genius designed the system for almost every train to go through Manhattan
and the subway is actually controlled by NY State here. the city has very little control over it
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Pretty much everywhere not Manhattan in New York has shitty public transit. Brooklyn is ok, but Queens (the largest borough) it may as well not exist. But if you live in Manhattan its pretty good.
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With Uber and the like in the mix, some towns are skipping expensive and inefficient busses in a new way:
https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/04/05/0439229/canadian-town-picks-uber-for-public-transit
Also reme
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So I took a quick look at the bus system budget in austin, a green progressive city. 32 million trips @1.25/trip or about 40 mil from paying customers. Meanwhile the 1% sales tax EVERYONE pays generated 217 mil. 100 mil came from reserves, which I imagine are sales taxes people paid in previous years or maybe a bond issue. Did not look. So yeah, buses are expensive and inefficient. Customers are paying about 10% of the cost of service.
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So canada is going back to a "Its not quite slavery but close" transportation system? Nice..
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...And I'll get ahead of it here: mass transit needs to be properly funded in order to work properly. Mass transit does not appear to pay for itself on the surface, it pays for itself because of increase in population density that occurs as a result.
Waiting for "density" to justify resources turns cities into a complete clusterfuck. While density creates justification for resource improvement projects, waiting for fucking years for those projects to be completed only adds more fuel to the chaos.
Ironically, the tactic of being reactive with regards to planning and resources isn't getting "ahead" of jack shit.
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While density creates justification for resource improvement projects, waiting for fucking years for those projects to be completed only adds more fuel to the chaos.
When the freeway system got planned in 1950's, land was set aside for roadway that wouldn't be built for decades. The 85 extension from 280 to 101, and the 87 from the 85/87 interchange to 280 and 101, in Silicon Valley were the tomatoes fields of my youth. Those roadways didn't get built until 1990's.
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While density creates justification for resource improvement projects, waiting for fucking years for those projects to be completed only adds more fuel to the chaos.
When the freeway system got planned in 1950's, land was set aside for roadway that wouldn't be built for decades. The 85 extension from 280 to 101, and the 87 from the 85/87 interchange to 280 and 101, in Silicon Valley were the tomatoes fields of my youth. Those roadways didn't get built until 1990's.
Reserving land for expansion was good planning.
Sitting around waiting for mass chaos to justify doing something with it, is not good planning. Neither is shitty (or corrupt) project management that creates predictable delays.
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Neither is shitty (or corrupt) project management that creates predictable delays.
The Trump Administration is withholding federal funding to electrify Caltrain because the high-speed rail will use the tracks from San Jose to San Francisco. Never mind that electrification will help Caltrain run more trains than they can with diesel engines, reduce the standing room only conditions during commute hours (60K people per weekday), and reduce the noise impact on surrounding communities.
3D transporation networks (Score:3)
Mass transit does not appear to pay for itself on the surface, it pays for itself because of increase in population density that occurs as a result.
Sort of. Mass transit pays off biggest in cases where it allows you to use three dimensions instead of two. Subways allow you to use trains underground or overhead instead of on surface streets. Aircraft allow you to fly above the surface streets. When you get a dense city like NYC or Tokyo, you have people living in three dimensional buildings (high rises) but transiting in a two dimensional road network. This ensures congestion if you don't have a robust subway and tunnel network.
Busses obviously don
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There is still the last mile problem with mass transit. The small city busses really do not cut it for people who are above lower middle class. Residental areas in small cities that are near the bus line are normally that nice places to live, and the busses don't travel to where the good jobs are (the small professional company). The problem is much bigger then just public transport. The problem combines racism, class warfare, upward mobility, education, environment...
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That's fine for cities. For those of us who are small-town/rural, I expect to see a self-driving car before there's enough infrastructure that I can take advantage of public transport.
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Who said anything about unmapped or dirt? Most small town and rural driving is across paved, mapped roads. My route to work goes along 24 miles of one state highway, and one numbered country road. I'd expect dirt roads to need manual intervention for some time after the paved roads are automated.
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Look at it this way: shared cars (with robot drivers) are a way to get the flexibility needed to scale down to possibly accomplish what you just said.
It's a tiny bus with a flexible schedule. It's less efficient than a larger vehicle full of passengers, but more efficient than a larger vehicle with two passengers, or everyone having to drive their own car. It's another tool on your toolbelt, for addressing certain-si
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That is because it runs underground :-)
In reality, cars don't pay for the road, but rail users pay for the track. This is not a level playing field.
When I was a student (in the olden days), I conducted a (very unscientific) survey: I asked a large number of car drivers stuck in heavy traffic "Would you pay 50p to make the car in front of you disappear?" Approximately 90% said "Yes"., with a few saying, "I'd be happy to pay £1".
Yo
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Self driving cars and self driving buses will come hand in hand. Self driving buses will be cheaper for cities than bus drivers in the long term.
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Walking is definitely preferable to public transportation. The problem I have is that it's roughly a 9 hour walk to work for me. Yes, that's by choice - but the alternative is to house my family of four in a substandard apartment in the city with rent twice as high as my mortgage payment and crap schools for the kids.
If the city is actually built nicely (and some newer developments around the world are doing this), you can have a decent amount of room while living in the city, requiring fewer vehicles on
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Interesting that your examples are some of the largest cities in the entire world.
I've been using public transit (bus, light rail and trains) in Silicon Valley (~2M people) for the last 20+ years. The SV public transit is also integrated with the public transit for the entire San Francisco Bay Area (~6M people).
That's it? (Score:2)
I think that number is very, very low.
My prediction is that within 10 years, half of new cars will have some level of self-driving ability. High-end cars will be almost all autonomous capable.
I also predict that 1 or more of the classic "big 3" auto makers will go under or be purchased.
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Do adaptive cruise control and lane following count? Because that's basically 25% of driving and it's already here.
The remaining 75% is when you've tuned out and the car forgets how to drive, it requires help, and you're forced to take over.
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only 100% self driving vehicles will actually solve any traffic problems.
Not even 100% will do that, unless you have some sort of token system that determines if you're allowed to enter the freeway at all. Otherwise, as soon as the number of vehicles exceeds the road capacity, you get traffic problems.
And even when you're under, but close, to road capacity, it means that small mishaps can cause delays. For instance, if it starts raining, the increased braking distance would force more space between cars, and cause traffic to come to a stop.
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I think that number is very, very low.
My prediction is that within 10 years, half of new cars will have some level of self-driving ability. High-end cars will be almost all autonomous capable. I also predict that 1 or more of the classic "big 3" auto makers will go under or be purchased.
My prediction: you're wrong. In mid nineties we had SDCs. Two decades later the rate of success of SDCs has improved only a fraction of a percent while the computing power required to drive the car increased by a few thousand percent.
Given the tiny progress made by increasing computional power by thousands of percent, what makes you think that significant progress will be made?
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Level of investment due to a critical mass of well resourced companies? The big question whether that investment due to fad will sustain long enough to get to the end or if the fad dies down before they get to market.
A large part of progress is not whether it is technically possible to do so, but whether the right set of people get interested in making it a reality at the right time.
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The progress that has been made in the last 5 years is bigger than in the 15 years before that, despite general computing speed only increasing a little bit.
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There was nothing close to SDCs in the mid nineties.
Wow, can't you at least be bothered to read Wikipedia? [wikipedia.org] Relieve yourself of ignorance before posting, we have a vast network of information queriable in seconds and somehow we still get these kinds of falsehoods. We've had things "like" self driving cars since the 1950s, and in to quote Wikipedia, "In 1995, Carnegie Mellon University's Navlab project completed a 3,100 miles (5,000 km) cross-country journey, of which 98.2% was autonomously controlled, dubbed 'No Hands Across America."
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To quote Wikipedia again,
the project was a journey of 1,200 miles (1,900 km) over six days on the motorways of northern Italy dubbed Mille Miglia in Automatico ("One thousand automatic miles"), with an average speed of 56 miles per hour (90 km/h).[43] The car operated in fully automatic mode for 94% of its journey, with the longest automatic stretch being 34 miles (55 km). The vehicle had only two black-and-white low-cost video cameras on board and used stereoscopic vision algorithms to understand its environment.
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Boston Consulting Group is being conservative (Score:3)
The vast majority of Boston driving could be automated today.
Current AIs could easily handle merging in without checking whether a car is there or not, getting in minor low-speed accidents regularly, and constantly sounding the car horn.
Won't happen as fast as we imagine (Score:2)
My prediction is that within 10 years, half of new cars will have some level of self-driving ability. High-end cars will be almost all autonomous capable.
That's not exactly putting yourself out on a limb. That would be true if half of new cars got lane departure monitoring or adaptive cruise control. Like most new technology it's going to move both faster and slower than most people think. You'll see self-driving tech appearing in some vehicles but it's going to take quite a while to become ubiquitous. Some niches will probably move faster than others. Liability issues will hold things back. And development cycles are rather long in the auto industry a
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Despite this, only 20% of cars in Europe and Japan are sold with automatic transmissions.
Maybe we're just used to it. We don't have anything against automation around here. By the way, is the self-driving feature going to be more expensive than the driver? If not, such automated taxis might actually be cheaper to operate. The automatic transmission doesn't change the picture meaningfully, full autonomy does, though.
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Maybe in 10 years half of new cars will but in 10 years there will be a lot of "old" cars in the roads so, yes, 25% will do self-driving.
Until insurance rates make it cheaper to just get a car to drive for you.
Self-Driving? Yes. Shared? No. (Score:3)
I like having my stuff (umbrella, bag full of fitness clothes and shoes, kids toys, pens, sunscreen/lotion, med kit, sunglasses, etc.) right where I want it at all times. I also like being able to clean my car to my standards and know that someone else hasn't been doing who knows what in my seat ten minutes ago.
So when I'm in a city and I need a taxi, I'll rent your shared car...you just can't have mine.
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This is the thing that has had me scratching my head. People equate self-driving cars with 'always rent the car'. I don't understand why everyone things those two are necessarily tied together.
If anything, I would predict the opposite, between the lower maintenance of electric drivetrains and the experience of basically having a personal driver all the time, people would be more willing to own than rent.
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They aren't necessarily tied together. Of course some people will want one thing and not the other.
But they happen to go great together. For every person who needs their car to be personal space, there will be n people who don't need that. I think n is a big number, like 19 or something. Some people probably think tha
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It is a matter of degrees, but I find it hard to believe that a significant number of households currently owning three cars think they wouldn't need that third car if only they could rent a self-driving car. The reason being is they can rent such a car today, yet they still own a car, which they won't do unless they think it makes sense for them.
I don't say there is no market for rentals (obviously there is already), I just don't see self-driving long term tipping the scale in favor of renting more than i
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I already see 5% (Score:2)
For at least 5% of cars on the road they already seem to be driving themselves.
Those self driving car engineers need to step up their game because the weaving side to side and driving well below the speed limit in the passing lane on the freeway is a dead give away that their algorithms can be improved.
Pooled driving? Already exists. (Score:4, Insightful)
We already have pooled driving and shared cars. It's called a taxi.
The only thing a self-driving vehicle does is take out the cost of the human driver. That's it.
People also carpool. That's been around forever.
Self-driving vehicles will change a lot of things: delivery trucks will go cross-country without sleep breaks, off-site parking will be more practical, highway deaths will drop like crazy - but nothing about city traffic will fundamentally change.
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nothing about city traffic will fundamentally change.
well in the shorter term it will get orders of magnitude worse. In many areas, it would be cheaper to have your car circle the block indefinitely than to buy/rent a parking space. Certainly for the duration of a meal or trip to the store, "drive to nowhere, then drive back" will be the standard way to "park".
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The driver is half the cost of the taxi - so hardly unimportant. More so if they are electric vehicles and thus no effective fuel cost.
It also allows for greater utilisation of the taxi, etc.
My guess is manual driving (and thus parking) of vehicles will be banned in many CBDs by 2030 - too many advantages of doing so.
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70 dollars? Damn! I paid $138 last month and that's the cheapest in 2 years or more. I spend about the same on gas every month too. I'm watching electric cars closely. I think my next car might well be electric. I'm planning to set up solar panels on the garage so I can drive for free.
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nothing about city traffic will fundamentally change.
It'll change dramatically.
For one, it will largely eliminate parking. No need to park your car on the street in front of your home, have it park somewhere outside the city and have it drive in when you need it. When you go to the store or similar, no need to park your car at the store. It can circle the block, or drive a few miles away to where it can park. This will have the biggest effects not in dense urban areas but in moderately-dense suburban areas. Those huge mall parking lots will become unnecessa
no stop signs & stoplights = underpass / overp (Score:2)
no stop signs & stoplights = underpass / overpasses for pedestrians.
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no stop signs & stoplights = underpass / overpasses for pedestrians.
Or walk signals for pedestrians, which tell the vehicles to stop. But, yeah, when intersections have free-flowing traffic except for pedestrians there will be a lot of incentive to build pedestrian overpasses or underpasses.
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Carpooling is ok, but thinking about where I live, I'd totally go for owning a self-driving car. My wife works about 10 minutes from home, I work about 20-25, depending on traffic. She leaves a half hour before I do, gets home a half hour before I do. Car could drop her off at work, come home, get me, drop me off at work, go home, and park in the driveway. 10 minutes before she heads out of work she can summon it, and it will take her home. Then 20 minutes before I want it, I call it. Or I go grab a beer if
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You are wrong about taking out the cost of the driver being the only benefit.
You also get improved safety, reduced racism (ask any black man in how hard it is to get a taxi), improved availability, and improved area served - the humans tend to concentrate in the most profitable area, leaving certain areas undeserved.
Also, city traffic WILL change, it will be far more predictable. Fewer attempts to pass, fewer attempts to speed, etc. etc. That counts - a lot.
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A lot of trucks are already networked. Hijacking isn't as easy as it once was.
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Self-Driving Cars + Map Spoofing (Score:2)
This will end well...
Another point to consider - truck drivers (Score:3)
Let's say that trucking follows the same metric, 25% self driving inside of 15 years or so.
The trucking industry employs 3.5 million people. Source. [alltrucking.com]
That means that we are potentially looking at 875,000 freshly unemployed truckers over the next 15 years.
Is anyone planning for this?
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I don't think 'freshly unemployed truckers' is going to be that much of a problem. It's not 875,000 people all at once. It's more likely going to ramp up over those 15 years, but that's a lot of time.
How many drivers will retire in that time? For every one that retires, you just won't need to hire a new one. It's not a job lost, unless you somewhat disingenuously call "I would like a job in that profession but can't find one" a lost job.
How many people considering trucking are going to loo
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Most truckers don't load and unload their own trucks. And warehouses are becoming more and more automated as well. Robots are a bigger threat than Mexicans to jobs. :)
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I have an Uncle that put 4 kids through college driving a truck. He loved doing it driving on until he was 70. It's not a bad life.
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My father was a truck mechanic, which he did until retirement. We had a nice house growing up.
My concern is that this entire industry is set to evaporate, suddenly and most likely catastrophically. As a mental exercise try to imagine what it would be like for the economy if suddenly 3.5 million people became unemployed. I spend a lot of time worrying about this. It's going to be terrible. And worse yet, we aren't currently doing anything about it. This would be the perfect time to prepare for it bec
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Exactly! That's exactly the problem summed up. That's how this whole thing will be viewed initially. "You're unemployed? What a loser! Just go get a job." But there aren't going to be any to get. The economy simply won't be able to absorb 3.5 million unemployed people. For instance, what about Amiga3D's post upstream, his 70 year old uncle. What if the Automotive Singularity hit when he was 65? What the hell is he supposed to do, go to college?
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the tech. This will
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I certainly hope so... (Score:2)
I can believe this (Score:2)
You mean Taxi's (Score:3)
Taxi's are here now and under used. Electric vehicles are here now, but the range sucks and they're not practical for 1/2 the country. Try using a battery vehicle in Minneapolis in January - nope.
Once self driving cars are widely available and "safe", which could be (c) 2030, traffic will double. All these prognosticators ignore American / human nature. We like to drive alone. If you have a vehicle that drives you to work, why pay the high cost of city parking when you can send it home, have it go pick up the kids after school, have it get groceries (Walmart is already planning for this eventuality), release it into a revenue earning driving system (send it to work for you in Uber while you're at work), have it go run any number of errands for you- but it still has to come back to get you after work. Now instead of 2 runs (1 to work, 1 home) there are 4 runs + errands all of which will effectively double+ traffic in cities. Sounds like more of a problem than a solution.
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It's not as bad as you're suggesting, since those tasks the vehicles are carrying out are currently being done by some other means, that would no longer be necessary. Still, it's a good point and why we need to prohibit individual ownership of these vehicles.
Sad news (Score:2)
25% of pigs ... (Score:2)
Or, they might not.
However, now that buffaloes have wings, you might want to keep you head down!
Proud to be the 75% (Score:2)
Very Quickly? (Score:2)
In what universe is 13 *years* just to hit 25% "very quickly?" We need to put a plan in place that *prohibits* humans driving cars at all. 2030 seems like a good goal for that. Only then will self-driving cars realise their full potential, in terms of safety, efficiency, environmental savings. Individuals need to be prohibited from purchasing vehicles, unless they can justify the expense for a work-related reason or living out in the middle of nowhere.
Re:Not going to happen. (Score:4, Interesting)
I have various health issues.
I cannot legally drive.
A self driving vehicle would be enormously freeing.
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It would also improve the quality of life for a lot of elderly patients with various forms of mild dementia.
My elderly mom is fortunate that she still has her wits about her and can still handle driving physically - but I've seen her get flustered, and can see the eventual writing on the wall. I've seen other people wrestle with when to take the car keys away from their parents... it's not something I look forward to. Self-driving cars with some sort of limitations regarding where it's allowed to go - perha
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"I don't know anyone who has a self driving car or who has any intention of getting a self driving car. "
Of course. They are not on the market yet.
But now that the many beta models cruising with regular traffic are already better drivers than humans, it has become inevitable that they WILL come to market.
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are already better drivers than humans
Problem is this is based on data that is hardly that rigorous scientifically, from parties that have a vested interest in a specific result.
On the data from autonomous driving:
-Sometimes includes 'simulations'
-Necessarily done only on cars less than a couple years old
-Additionally, they have particularly rigorous maintenance
-Has the benefit of all modern safety systems apart from the autonomous driving system itself.
-Any time the autonomous system determines it might not be able to operate safely, it surren
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No, no it isn't. The sensory tech to make cars self-driving is already there. Google has millions of miles of successful testing under their belt. I myself have been riding in a Tesla going 120 km/h while the driver was doing nothing. Now Tesla's solution is not fully automatic and requires you to still pay attention to the road, but this if anything should point out to you that we're much, much closer to sel
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All existing data from ongoing self-driving car pilots,
All publicized existing data from pilots run by groups that would profit from a favorable result, and generally interpreted by those groups into a press release that is regurgitated by an ever less critical media. Skepticism is not such a bad thing to have when faced with neither research nor journalism with an objective, critical eye.
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You're entirely correct. However, in general the reasons for the cars being safer (reaction times, better situational awareness) are such that they can - and must - be objectively demonstrated before mass market release. That is, we're not going to take the companies' word for it, obviously the cars need to be tested by outside/3rd parties before being put on sale.
My general point is t
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There are things that inarguably are going to work better in software and sensors (the systems can know at the same time 360 degrees and within inches of each corner, if appropriate equipped) and can manipulate hardware faster when correct decisions are made.
On the flipside, we have whether the systems fail to recognize something real or 'hallucinate' something fake and react poorly. If some completely unexpected situation comes up not in the training (while driving training may be more exhaustive for the
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People die by the thousands on the road every year. Sure there are challenges but it's going to happen. I think in the next 5 to 10 years you'll see it begin. The testing has shown it's safer than letting people drive. Already there are automatic anti-collision features in cars.
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