SEE ALSO HERE:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2013/08/27/nissan-leaf-self-driving-cars-2020/2708895/
Nissan vows self-driving cars by 2020
WATCH PROTOTYPE VIDEO HERE:
Video: Nissan demonstrates ozone-friendly self-driving cars
Maybe I should put a lawyer on retainer.
I like the self-driving Audi A7 seen briefly in this commercial.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPkByAkAdZs
Despite many people’s misgivings about this, I think an automated driver would handle a car a lot better than a lot of the nimrods on the road.
As I understand it, they drive themselves from the car manufacturing plant to the dealerships. If they survive, they are acceptable. If they crash and burn - unacceptable.
What does it matter if the cars are “self-driving” or not, when the radiators contaminate the transmission fluid and the vehicles come to a sudden STOP?
See NHTSA Action Number DP12004
Who pays casualty insurance? Am I on the hook if Googles car kills someone?
How will the auto drive determine of the police car behind you with flashing lights is looking to pull you over or looking to pull around you?
no thanks.
the lawsuits are going to be insane from these. Bad enough we have gas pedals being ‘stuck” under carpeting and its somehow the car’s fault. this is not going to end well.
Sure, how many times a week does your computer or cell phone mess up? Those have a lot less that can go wrong than a car.
If they want to put these things out on the road they had better be prepared to pay the politicians BIG TIME to get the immunity from lawsuits that they will need.
The lawyers who be after their neck the first time someone gets killed either in or out one of their vehicles.
I suggest some large donations to Jerry Brown just to get things started. It’s never too early to start buying your own politician.
I find this technology rather amazing and am all for it. I can see a ton of uses that will be beneficial to many people. However, I find it difficult to believe that states and localities will allow it. If there isn’t human control, then the revenues of those localities will suffer greatly.
I think it could make some sense if limited to interstate highway use outside of cities and in sunny weather.
Beyond that, frankly most municipalities do a pretty poor job with road maintenance, construction areas, and signage.
Be interesting to see how such a vehicle would deal with things like that.
Mostly interesting would be dealing with lose-lose choices.
Say your’re driving along a city street with parked cars on your right. Someone opens a door into your path - there’s no time to stop, and there is oncoming traffic in the opposite lane.
Do you take off the door or collide with the oncoming vehicle? Doing the former risks killing the occupant if they happen to step out. Doing the latter might result in less injury, but also violates the law by crossing the center line.
A human (assuming they were paying attention) might be able to ascertain if the oncoming driver was paying attention and take a gamble that they’ll also take evasive measures, or observe the occupant who opened the door and be able to tell if they’re going to hop out. Humans often make the wrong choice, but they often make a better choice than I suspect a machine would with less data.
As long as that future includes me still retaining my choice to drive my own self piloted vehicle, then I'm ok with it.
If the godless Commies want to take that freedom of mobility away from me, they can stick that car where the sun don't shine.
The technologists know nothing about cars.
Cars are 1/2 the business of what makes them work and 1/2 the driving experience.
If I want/wanted someone/something else to “drive” me somewhere, I’d take some form of “mass” transportion; that and THAT alone is the only worthwhile “driverless” vehicles for humans.
The rest is technological arrogance and lack of understanding of human nature, which prefers to be independent and in control, not “driven” by someone or something else.