Driverless Cars, Good Idea, Horrible Idea?

So basically they want to keep the skies as clutterless as possible for safety reasons? Regarding Amazon drones.

That's a big part of it, yes. And then you get stuff like drones falling into the White House lawn, or falling and injuring people. Or dropping loads from high altitudes.

That's not including the possibility of a government sanctioned "airway infrastructure", allowing aerial travel at certain altitudes. However, that will not be an easy change and will take a long time.

Other than you've been hung up on an analogy and unable to comprehend we have been talking about fully automated cars.. Sure.. you were never behind.

You could call me w/e you want, by all means.. break some rules.

None of these problems are insurmountable of course. I just think that we need to talk about them as a society and see what we are okay with seeing on the roads or in the skies. Engineering is more than just math and programming --- it's learning how to introduce change into society and how to allow easy transition between systems.

This already kinda exists. I have some friends who are pilots, it really doesn't take much too learn how to fly, buy a cheap plane and airfield hop around the country instead of driving.


Nothing is insurmountable if enough money is thrown at it. We can barely maintain the systems of transportation we have in place now though.

Kind of a big difference inventing an entire new way to travel and implementing it VS. trying to implement something controversial into something that already works.

Are we really pretending people have some magical ability that computers don't regarding icy roads/potential crash situations? If a human driving at their peak can compensate for icy roads, a computer with access to physics engines/instant slide recognition/etc.. is going to still be a much safer driver.

Yea, there are situations where they could crash. All of them would also result in a manual driver crashing. Fact is, while there are manual drivers on the road, crashes can and will happen. The only problem is choosing what to prioritize in the event of a likely crash. Luckily, countless research will go into deciding how to do such prioritization and a conclusion much more thought out than anything on this forum will be implemented.

1 in 8 car accidents right now is caused by mechanical failure, most of which are cars that are 10-20 years old and poorly maintained. You're telling me something designed by 2020 standards shouldn't be allowed on the road due to potential mechanical failures, but that *** driving a 1990 corolla with 350,000 miles on it and no brake pads is fine?

I'd say that is a fairly large problem that isn't going to be solved anytime soon.


I'd trust a 1990 corolla with a million miles on it and no break pads. For the simple fact that it has been on the road for 26yrs without fail!

Whats gonna happen when these 2020 models get 5 years old everything starts taking a crap, owners start "making" them run no matter what? Same thing, except this option seems A LOT more dangerous!



I'll take two.

Hate too tell yea, but you said appeal, not what they are used for.
The 69 camaro has also been replaced however, multiple times.

Driverless cars don't have to be 100% safe, they simply have to be safer than human drivers; which they're proving to be, more and more so each passing day.

Where is this assumption coming from that something on the same road as me and my family doesn't have to be 100% safe just because human being's can make mistakes?

When I see one of these cars do a random obstacle coarse with stuff jumping in front of it and other cars all around it at 60+ miles and hour and it makes it to he end unscathed I may change my tune. I think we can all agree this is a long way from happening?

Statistics.

OP

Aye, and 8/11 of those crashes were not caused by the driverless cars. It's one of those things that needs significantly more data to really show anything worthwhile. Not to mention having human drivers in the same traffic as driverless vehicles will amount to significantly more collisions than if you had an all or nothing scenario.

My bad, it appears that within Google's recorded 1.7m miles traveled, none of the driverless cars were the cause out of all recorded collisions, and those that did occur were very minor with minimal damage.

This is a great idea if the cars were on tracks or there was a road system specifically for these automated cars, if it was sort of like the ones they have in that super wealthy middle eastern city...
(I forget the name of the city but it's really cool how they set it up)

On the bright side of things, humans in general are becoming more safe at driving, as our vehicle related fatalities per million vehicle miles driven is diminishing at a steady rate. But if driverless cars can cut back on the ~30,000 deaths we get ever year that'd be pretty rad.

So you're saying those crashes would have still have happend if the driverless car was being driven by a real person?

You realize this is the only scenario that is possible right?


I suppose the tax payers get to pay for this right?

I'm just trying to be the voice of reason here.

I'm not a psychic of probable outcome, but I'm simply saying that out of our margin of recorded data of the 1.7m miles that were driven by driverless cars, humans accounted for all the collisions.
I can't confirm or deny that an accident would or would not happen depending on who or lackthereof was in the driver's seat.


I realize this. However, I think with more data, self-driving vehicles could be a boon to our transportation standards; possibly even benefiting underlying things like reducing costs in overall recorded vehicle damage, human injuries, lawsuits, deaths, etc.


I might be overly optimistic, but it is possible that on a reasonable enough timeline, the benefits (and costs) can significantly outweigh the damages that come from our status quo of all human drivers; regardless of who foots the bill. But alas, we need a lot more data.

The problem with trains is you have to get to and away from the station. The vast majority of people would rather just drive. Which makes trains non-profitable for moving people. Ask Amtrak.

Do you fly in any modern airplanes?

Probably.

The interesting part about the city in the documentary i watched was that the city was designed for foot traffic and the cars all ran underground and were automated and they were all public cars sort of like city transit and they ran on electricity.
This sort of thing probably is way a head of its time as far as the rest of the world is concerned because of the price tags on this sort of thing. But it is something to look forward to.

From your OP

There should be a rule that the OP needs to actually read the article they're posting.