Posted on 03/20/2018 6:32:48 AM PDT by a little elbow grease
Now that an Arizona woman was killed after being struck by a self-driving Uber vehicle many questions come to mind not that they shouldn’t.
We live in Pittsburgh, lots of hills, and lots of snow and ice.
There are times when we have difficulty controlling a car in those conditions (our weather forecast is for 6 inches of snow later today and tonight).
A couple months ago my wife, after driving to and from work in terrible road conditions, wondered how a self-driving car would handle it. What do you think of these self-driving cars navigating snow and ice?
Here’s what I want to know about self-driving cars:
Will they ever be so safe that they’re allowed to drive faster than regular cars?
I don’t mean that they’ll drive at 100 MPH instead of 65 MPH. I mean whether they’ll be able to ignore red lights, drive 65 MPH down a 40 MPH road, maintain 65 MPH at levels of congestion that force human drivers to drop to 15 MPH.
Think about it: The reason humans have to slow down to 15 MPH in traffic is because we don’t have the reaction time to break when our cars have to be packed so closely together, and it also takes a certain distance to break. But breaking distances drop very quickly as speed drops; the extreme slowdowns come when humans have to respond to people merging, cars ahead of them breaking without warning, etc. If one car knew to break the instant the car in front of it began to break, and how fast it was breaking, it could travel just a few feet behind its bumper. Even if it took 50 feet to stop, it could travel just 20 feet behind the car in front of it, as long as the car in front of it didn’t stop in LESS than 30 feet.
THAT sort of technology doesn’t require simply sensing the affects of what the car ahead is doing. It would require instantaneous, two-way communication between cars.
But the effects of traffic would be reduced far more than the mere reduction in stopping distance; cars react to traffic by SLOWING down, which means fewer cars are going past a certain point in a unit of time. Only because breaking distance decreases exponentially can you EVER slow down enough to allow more traffic past a point in a given timeframe by slowing down. Reducing stopping distance would make slowing down much more effective, so you’d need to slow down much less.
No one drives on ice
In other words government funding
Does the self-driving car have a horn that blows “allahu akbar” after it hits a pedestrian?
Self Driving cars rely on complex computer programming. Complex computer programs are imperfect and all have “bugs”. Self Driving cars rely on sensors which will have to be scrupulously maintained. Self Driving cars performance will degrade under less than ideal weather conditions.
Self Driving cars will create social problems. People who drive cars and trucks for a living will be put out of work. Initially Self Driving cars will be expensive and only the rich will be able to afford them. They will create traffic congestion because they will drive slower because they cannot effectively anticipate human behavior. For this same reason they will cause accidents and injuries and fatalities. There will be resisted by the public at large.
Why should I support something that someone else can control?
Apparently you are the only one who thinks that in a time of crisis the government will be nice and let our self driving cars go where we want
Any object weighing more than a ton and traveling at speeds about 30MPH is dangerous. The question is are they more or less dangerous than human drivers. And so far the miles per fatality say less.
Why don’t you just stay at home?
ROFL!
The only way that will happen is by government edict.
It's amazing how many so-called conservatives have no problem with that.
You looked at medallion costs lately? Training for truck drivers? What happens to your insurance when one of your delivery drivers gets a ticket? There’s a whole bunch of problems it can solve.
Tapping your breaks on black ice is not a good idea
IF the road is iced no one can stop until they run into something
Nobody decides. Trolley problems don’t happen in reality. They’re thought experiments.
Neither do regular cars
How do you face someone in court if you hit or are hit by one?
Most “self-driving cars” on the road today have humans sitting in them to make sure they’re working correctly, so your claim that self-driving cars are safer isn’t really valid.
You find out its black ice by tapping the breaks as a test.
Physics and experience shows that the vehicle will not travel forever on ice based on momentum alone, take your foot off the gas and it will slow to a stop.
That’s called testing. Also putting up with the law. They still have an accident rate per mile DRASTICALLY lower than people. Especially in America where our licenses come out of Cracker Jack boxes.
Only if you are the only one on the road
I’ve driven enough mountain roads to know that black ice is an unseen. Yes tapping is an indicator. But as I said only if you are solo on the road
Interesting. I just took a look. In NYC, at least, the cost of a medallion has crashed due to competition from Über and Lyft, which are merely taxicabs operating on newer technology. Looks like a good opportunity for the city money grabbers.
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