The death of taxicabs?

[Bestwifeever]

Sort of interesting that this happened recently: Self-driving bus involved in accident on its first day - Nov. 9, 2017 — the driverless shuttle in Vegas got bumped into by a truck this month on the first day of service following a two-week trial. The shuttle apparently cannot back up, which an alert human driver would have presumably tried to do to avoid the fender bender. The truck driver was found to be at fault, no one was hurt, but of course better to be able to avoid the accident completely.

 

[Midpack]

Oh, I think it'll be safer and more efficient once established, and I'm looking forward to that. I'm just pointing out why I think it's not going to be as easy for them to get established as some people are thinking.

Also, human nature will be to point out any deaths or accidents a driverless car gets in as "proof" it isn't safe, ignoring all those driver-caused accidents. I wonder how long it'll take for that to go away.

No less than a generation, many academics are guessing 30-50 years from now.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. Arthur Schopenhauer

 

[Midpack]

Sort of interesting that this happened recently: Self-driving bus involved in accident on its first day - Nov. 9, 2017 — the driverless shuttle in Vegas got bumped into by a truck this month on the first day of service following a two-week trial. The shuttle apparently cannot back up, which an alert human driver would have presumably tried to do to avoid the fender bender. The truck driver was found to be at fault, no one was hurt, but of course better to be able to avoid the accident completely.

Many papers I’ve read suggest along the timeline to autonomous cars, there may be a later stage before we reach autonomous cars only, where all cars will be required by law to have most if not all the accident avoidance sensors autonomous cars have - even cars sold that can still be manually driven by humans. One day you simply might not be able to buy a truly manual automobile. And "classic cars" like your 1961 Ferrari 250GT California with no accident avoidance sensors may be restricted or even prohibited on some roads or urban areas. The irony...as your linked article noted.

 

[CaptTom]

Sure, the hard part is assessing, in any particular case along any particular road, whether the deer or the ditch will cause less harm; but that's a very hard decision for a human, too, given the small amount of time you have to grasp the situation and react to it.

I'm not sure I agree. I've certainly had to make thousands of decisions like that in my driving life. I was once in a multi-car situations where EVERYONE did the right thing and nobody got hurt. It only takes the brain a spit second to figure out that a deer is softer than a tree, and a treeless ditch is softer than a deer.

I actually think most drivers are pretty good, and usually paying attention. "Most" and "usually" are obviously nowhere near good enough, which is why all-autonomous vehicles would be far better.

Here's another angle:

They just re-set the timing on the stop lights near me. Now the drivers on the side roads, or turning left, have to wait what seems like an eternity, even if no-one is coming along the main road. Obviously some Mensa candidate at the highway department decided this would be "better."

Think about a road with no drivers, and all the cars had access to information from the cars around them.

There would be no need for stop lights. No need for stop or yield signs. The cars could whiz through the intersection from all sides, moments apart, never touching. Long before any collision could occur, the cars would have worked out the CPA (closest point of approach) and agreed which one would speed up or slow down to increase that distance to acceptable parameters.

Come to think of it, the whole idea of having proscribed, one-size-fits-all, immutable traffic laws would be obsolete. Traffic lanes, speed limits, none would be necessary as algorithms calculated the most efficient way for each vehicle to get from it's own point "A" to point "B."

There would be no traffic jams. These would be predicted, and avoided, before they could happen.

The best part is us old farts wouldn't have to worry about being trapped in our homes when we got too old to drive

 

[Amethyst]

Car drops you off at the store...

"Where am I? Why am I here?"

I

The best part is us old farts wouldn't have to worry about being trapped in our homes when we got too old to drive

 

[aja8888]

Car drops you off at the store...

"Where am I? Why am I here?"

And what/who do I call to go home....Oh, where's my phone?

 

[Midpack]

Car drops you off at the store...

"Where am I? Why am I here?"

And what/who do I call to go home....Oh, where's my phone?

By then we'll all have chips implanted that tell the authorities where we belong, so we can be swiftly returned to where we belong - home. And our smartphone will have Alexa ask our fridge what we went to the store for. And our autonomous car will say "there, there - no worries" on the way home.

 

[NW-Bound]

Car drops you off at the store...

"Where am I? Why am I here?"

Instead of AZ patients wandering around not knowing how or what to do, or that they are supposed to get back to their robot cars, how about strapping them into robot wheelchairs that can take them down the supermarket aisles. Oh, but would they know what to buy? Tough, tough situation...

Ah, it's simpler just to lock them up, then have robots bring food to them in their confinement. Kind of like what we are doing now, but with human orderlies.

 

[CaptTom]

Car drops you off at the store...

"Where am I? Why am I here?"

LOL, I can SO see that happening!