Amazing!!! Hope this doesn't put anyone out of work....

[ajaxlepinski]

Yes, I can understand that insurance company bean counters have already been contemplating the Death Ratio.
However, it's the unexpected situations where an automated car will fall short.

For example: An automated car is about to make a right turn, on to a street with an EMS vehicle or, Garbage Truck blocking traffic. A human driver will be able see the trouble ahead and decide to take the following right turn. An automated car will not know if it's a road block or, just cars waiting for a traffic light to turn green. In this case, the automated car will make the right turn and be forced to sit idle, until the road block clears.

Another example: A passenger, suddenly needs to pee. Will the automated vehicle be able to take instructions, from the passenger, to pull over near adequately sized shrubbery that will obscure the wizzery? What if the passenger left something back at their office - how will the passenger be able to ask the car to turn around and head back?

Example: A policeman is directing traffic at an intersection with a failed traffic light. Will the car be able to see the policeman waving the car on or, telling it to stop?

One more example: A drunk passenger gets into the car and passes out. What happens when they get to the destination?

I guess, in the event of an unconscious passenger, they can add an air horn to wake the passenger or, program it to go to a hospital if the passenger is unresponsive.

In a dynamic and changing environment, there are hundreds, of situations that only a human will be able to resolve.
They can add audio and video monitoring to allow a dispatcher (back at the car company office) to deal with unexpected events but, this kind of defeats the driverless aspect.
Automation is great for many things but, I'm still not convinced that it will work for cars.... trains yes but, not cars.
There are too many variables on the road.

Why should it matter to just insurance company bean counters?
Lets say we can get the 33,000 fatalities a year down to 5,000.
I think thats something EVERYONE can get behind in my opinion.
Simply due to bandwidth and rate of response its a matter of when not if computer piloted cars are safer than ape piloted cars. They might even already be there now for all we know.

Do you have experience with automation of any kind?
For what its worth I understand what you're saying but there is nothing you listed there that is unsolvable especially if machine learning is employed.

Didn't say it was JUST insurance company bean counters who would care about a lower death count.
I was responding to your statement: "We’ve already accepted high volumes of death from automobiles."
I ass-u-me-d that you were talking about bean counters.
I'm sure Mothers Against Drunk Drivers would also be happy.... and I would be too.

Unlike you, I have zero experience with automation of any kind but, I really dug your video of the wire bender... that was really cool!!!
I have a lot of faith in programmers... I just think we're a long way off from fully automating cars.
Eventually yes, automated cars will ultimately be safer then 'ape' drivers.

[K-Bizzle]

The funny, icky, weird thing about this stuff will be the trolley problems we'll have to, as a society, decide on and solve.
Example:

Car is traveling at 50 mph down the road. There is opposing traffic on the left lane traveling at the same rate. A child runs into the street and the car has say 3 options.
1) Swerve left into oncoming traffic. Kid lives, all passengers in both vehicles likely die.
2) Swerve right into pole. Kid lives, passengers in only the swerving vehicle possibly die.
3) Don't swerve. Kid dies, all car passengers live.

Gotchas:
There are kids in one or any of the cars.
There are additional pedestrians.

Questions you have to answer:
Do we always favor the lives of pedestrians?
Do we always favor for age? Or do we always favor for net lives?
Or do we say yes to both and do an estimated years of life left for each of the parties involved and take the net fewer total years? (ex kill 3 70 year olds instead of the 1 8 year old)

The weird ethics like that will be one of the biggest limiters, not the technology itself (even though machine vision still pretty much sucks more than anyone outside the industry knows).

[ajaxlepinski]

Programming cars, to determine the age of pedestrians and the occupants (in other nearby cars) would be REALLY amazing!

Companies like Uber, wouldn't care about ethics... as long as they could triple their profits by eliminating the driver.

[GuitarBilly]

Not to mention you can get drunk as fuck and still go home in your car

Your car will also be a thing of the past.
What is your car doing 98% of the time?

Sitting there. In your drive way, on the street, in a parking lot.
Ultimately we’ll need much fewer total cars. Coowning, subscription models, pay per ride, and more will all become more normal than owning your own car simply because it will become some much less expensive that having a car of your own will be stupid.

I don't doubt it might happen but that's harder one. What my car is REALLY doing 98% of the time is being available for me any time I want. Whether I have to work in the morning or run to the convenience store at 1am, the car is always there at my disposal. I don't know if I wanted to need to call a car every time I needed one, no matter how cheap that would be.

Also, while I can see this working in cities like NYC, Chicago, SFO etc people that live in rural or even suburban areas that are far from city centers would still need a vehicle on their property or deal with inevitable wait times.

And people also like owning stuff and are OK with paying for it... while it's true that most people need a car today, most people also buy the car they want to buy. Technically, there is no reason why a 1.0 hatchback wouldn't be enough for most non-commercial drivers but that's not what most people buy.

I can see the self-driving thing happening soon, but non-ownership is probably further away, if ever...

[Pepi]

At least 'it' won't be pissing in the corner of your crawl-space like I caught my builders doing

[clipless bumper]

The funny, icky, weird thing about this stuff will be the trolley problems we'll have to, as a society, decide on and solve.
Example:

Car is traveling at 50 mph down the road. There is opposing traffic on the left lane traveling at the same rate. A child runs into the street and the car has say 3 options.
1) Swerve left into oncoming traffic. Kid lives, all passengers in both vehicles likely die.
2) Swerve right into pole. Kid lives, passengers in only the swerving vehicle possibly die.
3) Don't swerve. Kid dies, all car passengers live.

Gotchas:
There are kids in one or any of the cars.
There are additional pedestrians.

Questions you have to answer:
Do we always favor the lives of pedestrians?
Do we always favor for age? Or do we always favor for net lives?
Or do we say yes to both and do an estimated years of life left for each of the parties involved and take the net fewer total years? (ex kill 3 70 year olds instead of the 1 8 year old)

The weird ethics like that will be one of the biggest limiters, not the technology itself (even though machine vision still pretty much sucks more than anyone outside the industry knows).

I would think the default would be to try to stop the car/avoid the collision - without involving other cars/people, while minimizing damage to the car/occupants.
in this case - the kid would lose.


which is why your parents told you not to run into the street.

[ajaxlepinski]

At least 'it' won't be pissing in the corner of your crawl-space like I caught my builders doing

Oh, jeeze!!! That would immediately cut the price of the job in half. There's no way to clean that up without demolishing walls and floor/ceiling.
You really do have to keep an eye on those scallywags.

[K-Bizzle]

Not to mention you can get drunk as fuck and still go home in your car

Your car will also be a thing of the past.
What is your car doing 98% of the time?

Sitting there. In your drive way, on the street, in a parking lot.
Ultimately we’ll need much fewer total cars. Coowning, subscription models, pay per ride, and more will all become more normal than owning your own car simply because it will become some much less expensive that having a car of your own will be stupid.

I don't doubt it might happen but that's harder one. What my car is REALLY doing 98% of the time is being available for me any time I want. Whether I have to work in the morning or run to the convenience store at 1am, the car is always there at my disposal. I don't know if I wanted to need to call a car every time I needed one, no matter how cheap that would be.

Also, while I can see this working in cities like NYC, Chicago, SFO etc people that live in rural or even suburban areas that are far from city centers would still need a vehicle on their property or deal with inevitable wait times.

And people also like owning stuff and are OK with paying for it... while it's true that most people need a car today, most people also buy the car they want to buy. Technically, there is no reason why a 1.0 hatchback wouldn't be enough for most non-commercial drivers but that's not what most people buy.

I can see the self-driving thing happening soon, but non-ownership is probably further away, if ever...

Soon is relative I suppose.
I'm not saying we'll hit full non-ownership but we'll definitely hit partial nonownership literally as soon as it happens.
Why do you think Uber continues to be propped up to lose money quarter after quarter?
They're banking on being the company that owns this.
They've already got this model with human drivers so with automated cars all they've got to do is flip the switch so to speak then offer subscriptions instead of the per ride basis they offer now.

We also see this already in action with things like Zip car.
And I don't see why this would be a problem in suburban areas so long as usage goes up, but agree very rural areas would pose a problem. Again exact same problems as with Uber. Sure I can get one in suburban Detroit but it takes longer and costs more. Same holds true with self driving, increased subscriptions over time would lower both cost and wait times.
Not saying nonownership will be a thing on the whole without exception but all the economic and efficiency game is stacked in favor of it. And none of this speaks to how younger generations care less and less about cars in the same way that boomers or gen xers do.

Think about it this way, why would anyone spend 10X the monthly cost on a car because they want it when the end experience will be barely different.
Want a Land Rover? Spend the extra cash and accept a slightly longer wait with your subscription.
Don't care? Get whatever is closest and pay less.

[jack56]

Nothing compares to the work of human construction workers.

[Ry Manchu]

Nothing compares to the work of human construction workers.

That's not true. I've seen roads, driveways and parking lots just as shoddy as the work of the average construction worker.

[Pepi]

At least 'it' won't be pissing in the corner of your crawl-space like I caught my builders doing

Oh, jeeze!!! That would immediately cut the price of the job in half. There's no way to clean that up without demolishing walls and floor/ceiling.
You really do have to keep an eye on those scallywags.

I made the company dig out that whole area on the south-east side and put in fresh pea-gravel. The home building company hated me with a passion Almost got into a fist fight with the supervisor over a fire door that had a big dent in it Thanks to my wife or I would have seen some jail time on this one

[Telephant]

Not to mention you can get drunk as fuck and still go home in your car

Your car will also be a thing of the past.
What is your car doing 98% of the time?

Sitting there. In your drive way, on the street, in a parking lot.
Ultimately we’ll need much fewer total cars. Coowning, subscription models, pay per ride, and more will all become more normal than owning your own car simply because it will become some much less expensive that having a car of your own will be stupid.

This reminds me of the 90's movie Singles. "But I love my car."

[ajaxlepinski]

At least 'it' won't be pissing in the corner of your crawl-space like I caught my builders doing

Oh, jeeze!!! That would immediately cut the price of the job in half. There's no way to clean that up without demolishing walls and floor/ceiling.
You really do have to keep an eye on those scallywags.

I made the company dig out that whole area on the south-east side and put in fresh pea-gravel. The home building company hated me with a passion Almost got into a fist fight with the supervisor over a fire door that had a big dent in it Thanks to my wife or I would have seen some jail time on this one

Some of those fucktards really don't give a shit about return business.
Threw some contractors off a job after two days because, their molding around two windows was fucked up - big gaps, crooked. We spoke to the workers who said, "That's the best we can do".
The job Manager tried to tell us it looked good. We called the company owner and told him we wanted our $4K initial deposit back or we would contact the Better Business Bureau.
He was more worried about us giving him a bad review on Yelp than with the BBB! Amazing!
We signed a document that said we wouldn't give him any bad reviews and we got all our money back.