Posted on 10/13/2019 7:14:49 AM PDT by rickmichaels
I actually believe it does take a village to raise a child. But it sure as hell doesn’t take my village for you to test your self-driving car.
No, I’m still not over Uber testing its self-driving technology in Tempe, Arizona in March of 2018. With the so-called safety driver behind the wheel as the car ferried itself around the city, a woman crossing the street with, not on, her bicycle was killed.
The vehicle never even slowed. “Uber had disabled Volvo’s automatic emergency braking system in order to ‘reduce potential for erratic vehicle behavior,’” according to The Verge. The safety driver was watching The Voice on her phone, and Uber had previously cut the number of safety drivers in their experiments from two to one.
Hey, Uber? How do I hate thee, let me count the ways.
I was recently with Honda at their testing facility in Ohio, and part of their Honda Sensing safety systems is a pedestrian detection and collision mitigating braking system that stood that car on its hood to avoid hitting a pop-up fake pedestrian. My notebook flew off the seat.
Most manufacturers have a version of this now, and there is no excuse for a company like Uber to disable something like that, especially when they’re testing the accuracy of their mapping skills and hiring people who would rather be home on their couches voting for their favourite singer in some contest.
I’ve long been ired by Tesla installing something called Autopilot in its vehicles. The fine print always says “driver must remain able to take control of the car at all times blah blah blah” but you tell me what something called “Autopilot” means to average people.
You may think we love running video after video of morons literally asleep at the wheel. We don’t. People die. One driver, the fourth killed in similar circumstances, had Autopilot engaged and died when a large truck crossed his Tesla’s path. “Good enough” is not enough.
It is deeply irresponsible to not take into account how your new product will be received and used by the general public. I remember (and I’m dating myself) when we had to pull lawn darts from the shelves of the Consumers Distributing I worked at because a handful of people had managed to impale themselves with the metal shafts. In hindsight, they really were a little violent, to be honest, but at least everybody in the yard knew they were flinging them around.
Dumping self-driving cars on the public roadways to test your tech and your theories? That’s just a lawn dart that comes out of nowhere.
Watch this week’s videos of people remotely telling their Teslas to meet them across a parking lot, only to have the cars filmed looking like they’re in a bumper car midway game. And that’s not the Autopilot feature, just one using an application called Smart Summon. If I’m in a parking lot and a Tesla, sans driver, is headed toward me and shows no signs of stopping, prepare for a showdown, both physical and legal.
Maybe it’s the media’s fault for the screaming headlines about autonomous cars, and the wave of the future being here right now. It’s not. Autonomous features, now that’s a discussion worth having. Lane departure correction, front collision avoidance, parking assist, trailer back-up: these types of systems are about safety.
Will they one day form the basis for autonomous cars? Sure they will. But having the technology does not mean having the right to inflict it on the unwilling and the unknowing; other drivers on our roads are not your guinea pigs to perfect your technological skill set.
In some parts of the world, new drivers have a prominent sign or symbol on their car to warn those around them that a newbie is behind the wheel, and to keep some distance and cut them some slack. If you want to toss a vehicle onto the roads in my city to test your autonomous technology, it better be lit up like a Christmas tree so I can decide if I want to take my chances stepping off a curb near it, or entering a lane of traffic.
You don’t have to take my Luddite word for it. Read this Washington Post article about Silicon Valley residents with expertise in this very area not wanting these cars in their community. The proliferation of Waymo self-driving cars has them nervous — even as they understand the only way to advance the technology is to try it in the real world. They just don’t necessarily want it in their world. Neither do I.
Years and years ago, a rep from Mercedes-Benz told me at a facility in Germany it used for testing just such safety features, the cars were performing very well. Until at an intersection, one of the vehicles stopped, allowing a pedestrian to cross as per traffic rules. The pedestrian waved the car onward.
The car was confused and didn’t know what to do.
You can factor in all the code you like, but let me know when you’ve cracked the human one.
Yes, there are self-driving prototypes without any driving wheel and driver breaks.
You have absolutely no control if the computer system fails.
They're a long way off from being deployed but that's the ultimate goal. Full computer control and no controls for drivers.
That's a scary situation for me. Imagine being helpless as your car heads into a crowd or off an embankment and you have no steering wheel or breaks.
I am of the opinion that the whole push for driver-less cars is to take away the ability of citizens to mover around without the government’s awareness.
Re: flying cars... Look at all the necessary restrictions that they had to put on quadcopters (semi-autonomous flying drones) and you’ll realize one of the major reasons that we don’t have flying cars.
“automated cars are perfect to deliver car bombs.”
As we always say in the Tech world: every problem has a solution but every solution has a problem.
“Imagine being helpless as your car heads into a crowd or off an embankment and you have no steering wheel or breaks.”
Well, that’s the brakes, I guess.
I see what you did their :-)
In my line of work I am heavily involved in advising clients on transportation developments like automated vehicles. If I talk to 10 random people in my industry and ask them about the feasibility of automated vehicle technology, almost without exception I will find the following patterns:
1. 5 of the 10 will tell me that automated vehicles are "right around the corner."
2. The other 5 will tell me that "we are decades away."
3. The 5 who are optimistic about automated vehicles are the dumbest of the group, and completely fixated on stupid gadgets and the capabilities of modern technology.
4. The 5 who are pessimistic about automated vehicles are the smartest of the group, and recognize the limitations of technology in a real-world environment where people and natural elements don't operate like computers.
5. The ones who are "optimists" use mass transit frequently, drive the least, and tend to be the worst drivers ... while those who drive the most will fall in the "pessimist" category.
Take that for what it's worth, folks. I'd say we are DECADES away from anything remotely resembling fully automated vehicles operating on public roads.
Think about that in the context of these discussions about automated vehicles.
got me.
They’ve already ruined cruise control on newer cars. Just bought the wife a new Honda Passport. When on cruise control it adjusts its speed to vehicles ahead. If someone passes and pulls in front of the car, it slows down even if the passing cars is going faster than the subject. This leaves people behind you are wondering why you suddenly slowed for no reason whatsoever. Same thing happens when cars cut in front of you to hit an exit. Unless there is almost no traffic around I don’t use cruise control now, it’s too annoying.
Heck yeah. Sign me up for one of those RVs.
Poppycock. Self driving cars will save lives.
In the same way autopilot has been saving lives on the new Boings.
This is because people do stupid things while driving cars. All the time.
No doubt there will still be accidents with self-driving cars but they figure to be much less than what we are seeing today.
The age of self-driving vehicles is coming and a lot faster than most of us think.
There are now a number of companies spending billions of dollars a year on R&D for self-driving vehicles. These companies are not run by dummies that are willing to flush billions of shareholder dollars down the drain on a lark. They see the coming revolution and they want to ensure that their companies are not missing the opportunities to play a major role in it.
Get back to me when self driving cars can effectively operate during a snow storm.
Right because we never see human drivers get confused or just plain stupid.
Even if the test driver was perfectly alert, what is the reaction time of realizing the autopilot has gone wrong and then assessing what went wrong and how to correct it, and then taking control.
It certainly has to be longer than if the driver was in control to begin with.
You wandered into the truth. Air deaths per passenger mile are way, way down.
I’m cool with them so far. We have some driving around my town central area as part of a demonstration, and they’ve being going without a single accident even though 5pm traffic and road construction.
I like the idea that one day they will get good enough that people can actually rely on them for modest trips, especially the elderly.
That's a good example of how fast things can change.
Another example is with cellphones. Not too long ago, only self-absorbed Yuppies had cell phones and they were these obnoxious looking monstrosities. Now even senior citizens have them.
This point was driven home to me when I went to a music concert recently. I went to a lot of concerts in my youth where some of us might flick a cigarette lighter during a power ballad. This time around, it was a little creepy to see virtually everybody in the arena holding up a cellphone. It was like something out of a dystopian science fiction novel.
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