Random Image Thread XLIII: We were always renegades

[AidenCarby]

Mine of course, I'm paying good money here. Fuck a pedestrian, his bitch ass needs to be on the sidewalk

[Boyiee]

Well I'll be the pessimist on this one. To avoid hitting a pedestrian that jumped out in front of the car, does the car swerve and kill the passanger(s) instead? Which human life will the machine choose to save?

I'd imagine that it would choose vehicle occupants, and possible damage to the vehicle first and foremost over hitting an object that "gives" as opposed to one that doesn't (tree/pole/car/structure).

You shouldn't for the most part ever swerve left, I'm sure its hard coded that a yellow line or median is an invisible wall and would always go right if possible.

[Athas]

I just drove home tonight over an 80 mile stretch of road that was snow covered with no road markers of any kind. The last 10 miles was standing water and ruts with heavy rainfall. I wonder how autopilot would handle that. My guess is that it wouldn't. This is just one of hundreds of conditions that I encounter that I believe autopilot would not be able to handle. Automation may be coming to major cities with well developed road systems and lots of money in the economy, but it will be a very long time before it comes to smaller towns and rural areas if it comes at all. The technology will have a very hard time with the roads and conditions and the people will not be able to afford the vehicles.

Uh, they've already got it working on snow without road markers.

[Byrthnoth]

Keep in mind that they don't have to be perfect or even better than the best human driver, just better than the average.

I bet we have working automated driving within 3 years in high end vehicles, taking closer to 10 years to reach midrange cars. By the time I die, I suspect it won't be legal to drive outside of an emergency.

[Mythe_Seraph]

Keep in mind that they don't have to be perfect or even better than the best human driver, just better than the average.

I bet we have working automated driving within 3 years in high end vehicles, taking closer to 10 years to reach midrange cars. By the time I die, I suspect it won't be legal to drive outside of an emergency.

No way in hell. There's way too many driving enthusiasts for manual control to be illegal unless necessary. Could these individuals be fucked my insanely high insurance rates? Sure! But illegal? I can't see that ever happening in the US.

[Athas]

No way in hell. There's way too many driving enthusiasts for manual control to be illegal unless necessary. Could these individuals be fucked my insanely high insurance rates? Sure! But illegal? I can't see that ever happening in the US.

Forcing every car be automated confers too many benefits; no stop lights, road can handle much higher volumes without traffic etc.

[Boyiee]

I'm sure it'll just give us a warning like in irobot in the tunnel at 200mph.

[TheDirtyHobo]

Just make it legal in unincorporated areas, that way you can still take a leisurely drive manually if you want, but aren't clogging up cities with your shitty traffic-causing manual driving.

[Niiro]

In the future there's going to be this sort of conundrum when it comes to the safety and availability of self-driving cars.

They would function better and safer driving on streets only with other such vehicles, communicating and functioning cooperatively rather than independently.

But you obviously can't make roads "driverless only" without excluding people who can't afford them or simply don't trust them (for good reason or not).

[Byrthnoth]

First, even if we can't agree everyone should use a hypothetical automated better-than-the-average-driver, I think we can all agree that people over 70 should. Reaction times only decrease with age, and the average septuagenarian is just not capable of reacting in time to changing road conditions.

Depending how quickly automated driving becomes cost-effective, 50 years from now you could have an entire generation of drivers who have hardly ever driven a car unless their parents were driving enthusiasts. At that point, the only people who want to manually drive would be a narrow window of people with experience driving their own cars (lets say 50-70), many of whom will probably prefer to let the robot car drive, and the children of driving enthusiasts. The ability to drive manually for offroading and such is going to become a specialty skill, and I bet it's at least hidden behind another class of license.

I basically think that manual driving is going to age out, because it's a chore and people will opt out.

[Niiro]

Personally, I hate driving.

Unless you live in a car commercial it's just tedious, and it's the worst kind of tedious too.

Just demanding enough that you can't completely space out while doing it, but not demanding enough to be really engaging.

[Serra]

I think one of the biggest hurdles which will actually delay the process at least twenty to thirty years will be the trucker unions fighting tooth and nail to keep their jobs.

Unrelated..

Spoiler: show

[TheDirtyHobo]

Keep in mind that they don't have to be perfect or even better than the best human driver, just better than the average.

I bet we have working automated driving within 3 years in high end vehicles, taking closer to 10 years to reach midrange cars. By the time I die, I suspect it won't be legal to drive outside of an emergency.

The problem with the not-perfect idea is that humans are strangely more comfortable being able to blame a drunk driver that crashes into a mini van coming home from soccer practice and kills 5 kids than they are a robot that misses a signal and rear ends someone and gives them back problem. People want someone concrete to blame.

[Acevalefor]

Uh, they've already got it working on snow without road markers.

Neat but not quite what I was dealing with. That is still a paved road with easy delineation of road edges. It's a good bit of programming to be sure. I want to see it work when the road markers are all covered, there is blowing snow, and the road surface transitions from 6" of snowpack to heavy broken snowpack with standing water. If they can get to that point, then we will start talking about transitioning to autopilot being full-time. For now, I don't think it will go beyond what is already happening in Tesla cars while I am still young enough to drive. It will be a voluntary system that the driver can turn on and off at will and it will turn itself off in adverse conditions.

I will grant you that most drivers will not be driving in those conditions in the US, but we have several mountain states and an entire northern border that deals with conditions like I described every single winter. I drive in those conditions multiple times each winter and I would love to see a vehicle with autopilot capable of handling it. It would certainly minimize weather related accidents.

[Byrthnoth]

The problem with the not-perfect idea is that humans are strangely more comfortable being able to blame a drunk driver that crashes into a mini van coming home from soccer practice and kills 5 kids than they are a robot that misses a signal and rear ends someone and gives them back problem. People want someone concrete to blame.

This is a problem largely in the way we think about tools right now. If someone is using a tool and they hurt themselves or someone else, we respond in two possible ways:
Case 1) If the user uses it irresponsibly (as defined by the tool's instructions), then it is the user's fault.
Case 2) If the users is using it responsibly, then it is the manufacturer's fault.

That set of rules is fine if you're using a hammer, but case #2 broadens when your tool's "responsible use" is "it drives you everywhere." I'm sure Tesla just has a fund ready for settlements for the first few fatalities, but they'll probably pay much much more than a human driver would in the same situation because they're a big corporation. It could be legally dicey for a long time, and that might be a big impediment to progress.

[Myrrh_Quetz]

I'm all for self driving cars. People are too god damn stupid and irresponsible to be trusted with cars. I mean, I find it ridiculous that a person can take a single road test 70 years ago and still be allowed to drive without issues. We all see it everyday. People who don't use turn signals, people who play on their phone way too much while driving, ect. If Self driving cars take away even 10% of bad drivers. I'm all for it.

[Karbuncle]

I'd love a self driving car

[Roranora]

I want a car that runs through an EMP. I think I need a '91 Civic.

[dasva]

Forcing every car be automated confers too many benefits; no stop lights, road can handle much higher volumes without traffic etc.

You see benefits I see dey took our jerbs

[djzombie]

You see benefits I see dey took our jerbs

TERKIN DER JERBS!

Also, heres a good video on the cause of traffic and how self driving vehicles alleviate that.