Posted on 03/07/2015 3:05:54 AM PST by SMGFan
Although we’re likely a decade or two away from every person on the block owning a driverless car, when the time comes we could be saving billions of dollars and spending far less time dealing with auto accidents.
The Wall Street Journal reports that a new study found that widespread use of self-driving cars could eliminate 90% of all auto accidents in the U.S. and decrease the costs related to accident damage and health issues by around $190 billion each year.
(Excerpt) Read more at consumerist.com ...
Although I am of the opinion that the self driving car is mental masturbation, I admit it would be cool to text the local Food Lion my order send my car to the supmarket parking lot have it loaded with my groceries and drive itself home. And beep when it arrives.
Once we have reliable auto-drive cars, the whole game changes.
Actually, there is a lesson in this sort of thing to be learned from a movie I own: Surrogates. Especially when the main character decides to abandon his surrogate and just walk on a city sidewalk. (hint: it’s dangerous).
Out of reach of many people pricewise but that’s OK, they simply don’t want self drivers on their roads.
;-)
Hackers. GPS jammers. Electronic car jacking. A whole new class of terrorism. Rogue countries with the capability to disable or destroy GPS satellites.
Iran wouldn't need nukes to wreak havoc on the US once we have converted over to driverless transportation, especially once the government has mandated driverless transportation which, at some point, it surely will.
The more ways that transportation systems depend on electronic communication with external systems such as satellites, cell towers, government agencies, the more ways they will have to fail and the more ways they can be MADE to fail.
Make no mistake...the government will mandate that any driverless car sold or made available to the public will have the capacity for full government control, and the ability to lock out any manual control option, if that option is even still allowed once the system is fully implemented.
And also eliminate you going anywhere you want to ... if your destination is not on the “approved” list because it is politically undesirable or too fragile ecologically etc.
While the article doesn’t come right out and say it, its pretty clear that the ultimate desire is that all cars be driverless and personal rights be damned.
also know as the Willie Green Expressway
“Hackers. GPS jammers. Electronic car jacking. A whole new class of terrorism. Rogue countries with the capability to disable or destroy GPS satellites.”
These cars wouldn’t be reliant on GPS any more than the Mark 1 human driver. Granted, they would use GPS navigation much as most human drivers do now, but if GPS were unavailable, they would fall back to locally stored maps. They would not necessarily be connected, and thus wouldn’t be “hackable” by default.
“Iran wouldn’t need nukes to wreak havoc on the US once we have converted over to driverless transportation, especially once the government has mandated driverless transportation which, at some point, it surely will.”
Please expand on your thesis.
“The more ways that transportation systems depend on electronic communication with external systems such as satellites, cell towers, government agencies, the more ways they will have to fail and the more ways they can be MADE to fail.”
These cars wouldn’t need to “depend on electronic communication”, nor should they. That is an area where the car companies need to be influenced/educated, perhaps.
“Make no mistake...the government will mandate that any driverless car sold or made available to the public will have the capacity for full government control, “
That is rampant paranoia. None of the current plans include any such thing. It might happen in China, but not in the US. It won’t be allowed.
“and the ability to lock out any manual control option, if that option is even still allowed once the system is fully implemented.”
There will always be a need for manual control, for many reasons. There is a legitimate concern that folks won’t be very proficient at driving, once the driverless cars have been in operation for awhile...
That Mercedes is a very interesting design. I hope it comes out more or less in that form. :-)
Because they have unions. But notice what causes the vast majority of train accidents, that human driver. He will be replaced as soon as they depower the union.
Not all all. Because between day 1 of driverless cars and the first accident humans will have run over dozens of kids in the same city. Computers won’t drive drunk, stoned, tired, angry, distracted, or just plain stupid. They WILL be better drivers than us.
This has nothing to do with trains, other than another vehicle that will be computer run. It’s inevitable and it’s soon. We already have cars that park themselves, brake themselves, and navigate themselves.
I hate this idea. No way am I ever going to voluntarily buy one of these vehicles.
it would be a vast improvement over this..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fS38WKSnqRE
“As you can see from the supporters, it doesn’t matter what you want. It only matters what they want. Its like the return of Willie Green.”
Nonsense. As I said in another post, for the foreseeable future regular driving will be an option.
Personally i hope flying cars (which will require better energy sources than we have now) will make their debut around the time that human controlled driving will end.
Whine to someone who respects your kind.
I dont think you understand how GPS works.
You’re pretty naive to think the government (at whatever level) wouldn’t want to have a way to control cars.
There are certainly benign reasons to do so, such as remotely disabling a stolen car or to clear roads to make way for an emergency vehicle.
Do you honestly think they would stop there?
What makes you think that sort of control system wouldn’t be hackable?
You could ask Michael Hastings if he was still alive.
I’m not talking about the government the founders envisioned, nor am I talking about the government we grew up with. I’m talking about the government people like Obama are working hard to implement.
I’m sorry, but I am rapidly losing faith in the motives of my government.
You say it won’t be allowed. That’s BS, in my opinion. Who won’t allow it? Congress? The courts? LOL!
It will be regulated into law, rather than legislated, under the guise of “protecting the children” and “saving the planet”.
But it won’t happen overnight. Little baby steps of tyranny are accepted more readily by the sheeple than goose-stepping troopers.
They’ve already mandated “black box” data recorders in cars. What’s the next step? Obviously, that would be wireless access. Within a few years, every new car will be Internet connected.
Will there be NSA back doors into the car’s control systems? Oh, that’s just paranoia, you say. It can’t happen here, you say.
What makes you so sure of that?
“Whine to someone who respects your kind.”
I didn’t have the time to respond ‘til now, but go crawl under your rock and wait for the inevitable. “My kind” has the advantage of intelligence and knowledge, which you apparently lack. FYI, my politics are (according to some at least) rather to the right of Atilla the Hun.
Perhaps we’ll meet one day. :-)
“I dont think you understand how GPS works.”
(Sorry it took a bit to respond, I’ve been busy.)
I understand GPS quite well. Autonomous cars will have the compute capacity to correlate imagery and other cues to their internal maps. It’ll be much like the TERCOM navigation Tomahawk cruise missiles have used since the 70’s. GPS will be used if available, if not each car will have complete digital maps for at least the US, if not the world.
Those will be cross-referenced with ground truth as presented by the various sensors.
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