Waymo press photo
In the COAL article of my 2017 Ford Fusion Titanium, I heaped praise upon the various driving assist technologies in this car, including all-speed adaptive cruise control, lane departure assist, and collision warning/auto braking. Many commenters were skeptical of such technologies, whether it was for reasons of cost and complexity, or for diminishing the driver experience. I originally started drafting this as a followup comment, but it got so long that I decided to make an entire post about it.
Regardless of how you feel about the advancement of Autonomous cars, there is no denying their inevitable rise. I for one view this as a good thing, and hopefully by the end of this piece you will too.
First of all, when we talk about transportation vs. driving, we are really talking about two different things. The vast majority of drivers on the road aren’t doing so for the sheer pleasure of driving: They drive because it is the most expedient form of transportation. Substitute driving with an equally convenient form of transport, and many drivers would happily become passengers, as illustrated by the rise of Uber and Lyft.
As a result, many of these reluctant drivers out on the road today are not very good at driving. They don’t have the innate desire to excel at their craft that we afficiandos have. They do their driving impaired by alcohol, distracted by their phone, and deprived of sleep. These are the people who would be far better served by self-driving cars.
And this gets to the very heart of my argument. Will our driving experience be diminished once we remove all these unwilling drivers from the road? Hardly. Once the disinterested and disaffected mobility seekers are safely ensconced in their self driving cocoons, things will improve immeasurably for those of us who choose to pilot our own vehicles. It is kind of like the difference between high school and college: The former everyone has to go to, the latter is voluntary. Once you get rid of the people who don’t want to be there, the end result is a better experience for those who do.
I will be the first to admit that there are times I want to drive, and times I want to be driven. When I was working for JC Whitney, I regularly took the train to my office just outside the Loop in downtown Chicago. As a lifetime car commuter, this experience was eye opening. I could actually take this otherwise non productive time, and use it to read, catch up on my emails, watch a video, or even catch a few winks.
Does not wanting for fight rush hour traffic make me any less of a driving enthusiast? I for one don’t think so. Comparing rush hour traffic to driving is like comparing standing in line to a jog in the park: They both involve using your feet, but that is about it. Indeed, I don’t consider commuting by car to even be proper “driving.”
Which brings me to my other point: Self driving technology won’t make my SLK or Mark III obsolete, any more than it will render any of your current cars obsolete. What it will do is let you truly enjoy the time you want to spend behind the wheel. I drive about 20,000 miles per year, about 15,000 of which is pure commuting. Handing that 15,000 miles off to Waymo does not in any way diminish the road trips in the Mark III, nor does it make ambling around the back roads of Amish country in the SLK any less enjoyable.
If I may employ one final crude analogy: I know lots of people who enjoy weekend camping trips, but I can’t think of any who would give up their bed and central air forever. I think that automobile driving will become like camping, something that was once done out of necessity, but now done for pleasure.
My main point is that self-driving cars and automotive enthusiasm do not have to be either-or propositions. To me, they can live side-by-side an ultimately enhance each other.
“there’s many a slip ‘tween the bowl and the lip”
There will be many unforeseen challenges in the implementation of AVs. One of the less attractive ones is that traffic is predicted to get worse as a result of AVs, at least until they largely take over in a given geographic area.
The question is how long it will take for fully autonomous vehicles (Level 5) to hit the streets. Estimates range very widely, from a couple of years to 30 or more.
You make a good case, but then you are a lot more accepting of new technology than I am. I guess I am accepting of new technology too, but I expect lots and lots (and lots) of bugs in it.
The road-sharing between self-driving cars and driven cars will be an interesting mix. There will still be jerks on the road (hopefully many fewer of them) who will seethe at all of the traffic going right at the speed limit. And there will be flaws in the programming and technology. We will probably end up there, but it is going to be a lot more messy than the boosters think.
The biggest problem will be this: we humans have a tendency to be forgiving of human weakness. “Accidents will happen” is a saying I have heard from childhood. There is no legal liability for damage or injury caused from unforseen circumstances that don’t give someone time to react. Will we be as forgiving of imperfect programming or the technical limitations of a self-driving system? If not, the liability issues may be a problem.
“the liability issues may be a problem”
This is an interesting point. I’ve read stories of tech companies “working with” state governments to write laws governing autonomous vehicles. Whenever I hear that sort of thing, I fear that the companies will write laws that are very favorable to their own interests, and essentially absolve themselves from much liability.
Given the influence that many of these companies have over state legislatures, and the arcane nature of these regulations, I bet a lot of loopholes will be written into this completely new area of the law. But given this technology’s fast pace of advancement, I have a feeling that the liability issue will be tested sooner rather than later.
I am one of the dwindling number of lawyers who still see our old English-based common law (broad principles applied by judges to specific fact situations) as preferable to the Roman-Napoleonic code-based law (Rules and statutes passed by legislatures or written by administrative agencies) that has been creeping through our legal system like kudzu for the last 80 years or more. As bad as the computer code-writing process is that R L Plaut describes above, legal code-writing is pure abomination. Nobody knows how it will work or affect anyone or anything and every interest group with a buck to make or lose will be in there trying to get things written to benefit it. The only reliable result is the old economics law of unintended consequences. Pull up a chair folks, because this is going to be a real show. 🙂
You make a lot of solid points in this article. I as well would welcome technology that helps keep the drivers who don’t really want to be driving off the road. Another reason autonomous cars could be extremely helpful is for the elderly — statistics repeatedly show that past a certain age, driving skills start to decline across the board. Giving these people access to autonomous cars will ensure that they can still travel wherever they want without posing problems to others on the road. Also, those who are handicapped and cannot drive could benefit greatly from this autonomous technology.
I think people are hesitant to accept autonomous cars for a couple of reasons: first, for some people, having humans cede control of potentially lethal objects to machines is unnerving. Despite statistics showing that self-driving cars are safer ‘drivers’ than are humans, people are uneasy about handing over the controls to a non-human entity, and worry that the autonomous mechanisms will screw up in some way that they wouldn’t. I think people are also worried that these self-driving cars will be less competent than human drivers in strange situations and/or bad weather, which are realistic qualms. Finally, there’s the worry that self-driving cars will make it so that conventional driving will become illegal, which isn’t really going to happen, at least in the near future.
But I can’t deny that it would be a surreal experience to be transported around in a vehicle without a human pilot. For the first few times (and probably beyond that), I would likely be constantly anxious and worried that something would go wrong. As a driver, you’re so used to paying attention to the road that even if you don’t have to anymore, you still will, and then every time a car stops suddenly or pulls out in front of you, you’ll subconsciously second-guess the proficiency of the self-driving car and want to react in some substantive way (i.e. slam on the brakes). It will just feel weird when the car does all that for you.
For some, that’s a level of control that they’re not ready to relinquish, and that’s fine. But the solution for that is not to cease developing this new technology, it’s to first utilize it where it’s most needed, and when people want it to be used (i.e. let the people who want self-driving cars have them). Nobody’s forcing self-driving cars down anybody’s throats. Driving yourself will still be an option for the foreseeable future. Plus we can get a lot of bad drivers off the road. That all sounds good to me.
I used to tell programmers on my development teams that there were two types of bugs in our code.
1. Those that we find.
2. And those that we do not find (at least not when we’re trying to find them).
As AVs need code to run all their autonomous systems, I wonder who will have the temerity to declare their AV code contributions “debugged”.
Although that famous Tesla Model S crash in Florida did report the system asking the driver to take back the wheel, the fact that it could see clear road ahead under the truck would, in my limited knowledge of how the Tesla works, be a bug the developers did not find when they were looking.
Well they found it now, probably already fixed it, and are looking for more.
There are always more.
Brings back this memory for me: In the mid-80’s I spent some time at the Marshall Space Flight Center. The last summer a contractor had installed a super computer system complete with mass storage (a Cray and the mass store was headed by a big IBM mainframe). Anyway part of my job was to try and fill the mass store, a silly idea at best. I ran my model and generated files that I sent to the mass store. Unfortunately they were too big, but the contractor said they would fix it. They worked at it for a while, but finally gave up. I was there for about a month or so, and ended up with 10% of the mass stores capacity, which was supposed to be open ended, but the NASA employee who hired me thought that they did not have a clue how to do it.
Here’s my problem, I am fully for the utopian vision of letting careless drivers just get shuttled around in their transportation pod, I 100% GET that part. The trouble is that people are getting sold this line like they’ll be able to kick back and nap and watch Netflix. How long until employers, aware of this newfound free time on your way to the office, begin to expect or demand that employees to use their AV as their mobile office, and their means of transport to and from work becomes a bullet point on the resume?
Furthermore, if the majority end up in the seat of these things, road planning will inevitably change, and probably in a way that will make “pleasure driving” for the few of us less pleasuring, as some of those great driving roads off the beaten path suffer from deferred maintenance or disappear just as old highways did when the interstate system was constructed.
And my biggest reservation is how will insurance, registration and fees apply? How long before everyone gets incentivized to buy an AV under the guise of public safety? How long before pleasure driving then becomes an activity reserved only for the well off who can afford it?
I keep getting pitched the same lines by proponents – that no one likes traffic and it’ll take bad drivers off the road – but this is a myopic presentation of it, and it underestimates the very real concerns of enthusiasts.
People already are doing work while in their car. Not all texting drivers are conversing with their spouse, some are actually (foolishly, albeit) trying to do work. Others check their email at red lights or in stop and go traffic (or worse). Plenty of cars let you dictate a text response verbally already as well as also reading the text or email or voicemail out loud.
Many (Most?) people that travel for work via airplane are almost constantly working while in the airport or on the plane. And that doesn’t just pertain to 9-5 flights. Many people are also working at home at random hours of the day or night, again, not just those that actually “work from home”.
The only jobs that really let you switch off and leave the “office” at work are those where one works in retail, food service, or perhaps some forms of government service and even in those ONLY for the more base levels. As soon as one supervises others, there is plenty of “off-hours” contact.
Sure, one can switch off and refuse to answer, but perhaps invariably it is to one’s own detriment, whether one works for themselves or for someone else.
Absolutely true.
Basically what is/has been happening is the responsible drivers are being punished by the reckless majority, and when AVs come in to fix their self inflicted bad driving habits, the responsible and attentive drivers still driving non AVs, will now be labeled irresponsible and reckless, and punished with obscene fees and insurance premiums. The irony swirling in my head is that some of these super important wheeling and dealing business people are most definitely practicing the modern art of distracted driving to get their business ahead on their push to automation. Way to go.
I think you’re letting your imagination running a wee bit unrestrained. 🙂
Back when Dick Tracy (The comic cop) was using his two way wrist TV, who was to say we wouldn’t be eventually Face Timing our friends. So, never say never.
On a road trip the other day seeking better fireworks for my 14 year old son, we made a pilgrimage to Missouri. There was a lot of truck traffic on 1-29, and it made me think of the speculation on autonomous trucks.
There are tremendous hurdles, and some issues I’ve never seen brought up – like purposeful vandalism and piracy of unmanned vehicles. We had a local case where a kid dropped a rock off an overpass and killed a motorist some years ago. Killing someone stops a lot of miscreants from acting, but was about dropping a dummy in front of an unmanned semi just for fun? The potential for piracy seems tremendous as well.
And, of course, there will be epic failures of technology at some point, leading to some pretty spectacular road carnage. The rogue semi that plows through a group of people? The legal issues seem mind boggling.
I didn’t chime in on tech the other day. I’m mixed on it. Just like the VCRs of old, I’m starting to find functions in my vehicles I’ve never used, and some that are just plain annoying. Adaptive cruise control? Might be interesting if I can shut it off if I don’t like it. Lane change warning and it variants – annoying in my experience, and how many people do we want experimenting with it by letting their cars drift?
Fully autonomous cars? Quite possibly. Inevitable? Quite possibly not, especially within the next 50 years or so. But, I do appreciate the dreamers and inventors and engineers. Without curiosity, we’d have nothing like we have today. But, technology is frequently a rabbit hole, just ask the editors of Popular Mechanics in the 1950s.
The idea is a good one, but it must come with implementation growing pains and infrastructure changes, some of which would cost $$$ even if they are temporary. Steve Lehto, the entertaining lemon law lawyer from Michigan, has some opinions on the legal aspects that might have to be dealt with:
Leave it to a lawyer to rain on the parade. Litigation makes it so hard for innovations to come to market.
Think about this: Imagine if the motorcycle didn’t exist, and someone just now invented it. Do you think it would have a prayer of getting made, sold, and approved for use on public roads?
Even the automobile would never be built today, knowing that it would be powered by 20 gallons of highly volatile gasoline. That would be thought of in the same category as a nuclear automobile if the idea wasn’t already in production for over 100 years. The elephant in the room of the autonomous cars debate is the long haul trucking industry. If a truck can be put on the road on the west coast and sent to the east coast without a driver there is a huge profit potential for the trucking company. This could be a devastating blow to truck drivers everywhere.
According to the website Trucker’s News, several manufacturers have autonomous truck prototypes “up and rolling”. I read recently where 1 such truck had already made a 50 mile+ or – trip in a state west of the Mississippi (wish I could remember which state it was). An unintended sort of “stopgap” is that federal regulations are being considered that will limit the top speed of trucks to something like 63 MPH.
One of my biggest worries with autonomous vehicles is that it takes “us” closer to the one size fits all/TOTALLY vanilla, generic mobile pod.
The other worry is that I recently read cars built recently have a “shelf life” determined by their electronics. There are cars built in the 70s and 80s with several on-board computers that are failing or have failed. There are no direct replacement computers in some instances so a car “dies” for lack of a black box.
But now that I’ve written that, I realize my 1st worry cancels out the 2nd worry.
You don’t have to go back to the ’70s for electronic obsolescence. This article from TTAC is quite interesting…..
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2016/09/ford-gives-search-part-mans-seven-year-old-f-150/
“Think about this: Imagine if the motorcycle didn’t exist, and someone just now invented it. Do you think it would have a prayer of getting made, sold, and approved for use on public roads?”
Absolutely. The risk falls heavily on the owner / operator. We spend a lot of time on lakes, and the foolishness out there is epic. But, the fact that a jet ski, developed commercially in the 1970s, can be purchased and insured by me at reasonable cost, and my 14 year old can legally drive it, is a testament to where risk falls primarily to the operator, and the extended risk lies within a like minded group of individuals (the boating community).
You make some good points. Ive long held the idea that vehicles should be categorized 2 ways: transportation appliances and specialty vehicles. Transportation appliances largely appeal to non enthusiasts and people who would rather text or play around with infotainment anyway, OR theyre the daily beaters of enthusiasts who keep the good stuff locked away for nice days, Fridays, or pleasure driving. Obviously, specialty vehicles are the sports and muscle cars, offroad 4x4s and pickup trucks etc that are anything more than a mobile maytag.
The implication is that regulations and mandates could and maybe should be continued to apply to the beigemobiles aimed at the masses, yet frozen and/or rolled back on specialty vehicles. I mean really…does any Camry owner really care if some new emissions regulations mean its harder to modify that car, or that the already nonexistent driver experience is numbed further? On the other hand, can even one Challenger owner tell you how many safety stars that car has, or care if it accommodates a child seat? Nows the time to make this distinction, so that autonomous cars can benefit the right people yet NOT be shoved down the throats of those of us who have zero interest in them or outright reject it.
I’m pretty certain Corollas would cease to exist in an AV world.
That’s actually a really interesting potential side-effect of implementing self-driving cars. Companies that cater to those that view cars more as basic transportation (like Honda, Toyota, etc) could suffer massive financial losses if they don’t adapt by putting out their own self-driving cars. If human-driven cars become something of a niche market for enthusiasts, nobody will want to buy a human-driven Corolla or anything similar. It’s going to be interesting to see how car companies choose to approach this uncertain future.
The Corolla is the ideal car to go autonomous. The ‘driving experience’ is about as engaging as operating a washing machine. But that’s what Toyota’s core customer wants.
What I see happening with autonomous cars is much less car OWNERSHIP. They’ll be leased out to rideshare companies and that’s how they’ll be used. Of the segment of the population that’s open to self driving cars, how many of them want car ownership? It will be us enthusiasts who buy and drive our own.
I welcome it. In fact, I can’t wait. Traffic and other drivers make 97% of my driving miles nothing more than a chore. Furthermore cars no longer excite me – they’re all similar and do most things equally. Even if I had an “exciting” car, I’d still be spending 97% of my driving time using it as an appliance.
As for the remaining 3% of my driving, the parts that are interesting and/or fun, they still require drudge work driving to get away from the traffic of the city, so they become an effort to achieve, and one that (generally) requires planning.
I look forward to the day I can bring up an app on my phone and summon a pod within 10 minutes. No gas, no maintenance, no ever-rising insurance. Uber is most of the way there for me, but it still feels creepy getting into a stranger’s car and having to trust his/her driving abilities. I’d sooner trust an autonomous pod.
Let’s see what happens when Tesla puts 50,000 Model 3 cars on the road with their enhanced autopilot drive mode enabled. (I assume they’ll get at least that many on the road from the 350,000+ pre-orders they have.) What’s going to stop this technology after that? Mass carnage, maybe. Little else. Hard to think that NHTSA will place an outright ban on such systems today.
The comments already posted above seem to completely ignore the large number of cars already on the road with the technology to do achieve some level of ‘automatic drive’ (to update a Studebaker term).
When these systems become fully capable of emulating the vehicles used in Woody Allen’s ‘Sleeper’ movie is already beside the point. If you can push a button on a key fob now to automatically summon your Tesla to come you from wherever it is in the parking lot, are people not going to let it drive them the rest of the way home? If Tesla can do it, why not Ford? — they & every other auto maker simply won’t be able to ignore this, nor will the majority of drivers.
(Pardon, I just need to check that text I just got….don’t mind me while I take my hands off the wheel and eyes from the road….)
I think you’ll find few people that wouldn’t prefer to be comfortably shuttled about autonomously rather than sitting in traffic. It’s the other implications that concern me.
I like the disconnect that driving provides, even when sitting in traffic. When else can you just listen to the radio and not have to focus on being productive. That’s already begun to change with cell phones and bluetooth. Remember how much more enjoyable flying was before you were expected to work during your flight?
Will everyone be able to have their own autonomous vehicles? I suspect not. At least for some of us, we’ll have to sacrifice the freedom and individuality of our own vehicles for a shared uber-type system, or a bus system. At the rates things are going now, these will be operated by a few large private companies (e.g. google), who will enjoy even greater control of our lives. I would not look forward to hailing an autonomous car with surge pricing that forces me to watch ads throughout my voyage. I suspect that once established, most autonomous car trips will be more like that than enjoying a comfortable cruise in your own Camry/Accord/whatever. I recognize that I’m basically describing the existing situation for anyone who doesn’t commute via their own vehicle… however, this will only become more common when autonomous vehicle technology takes off. People in cities are already abandoning cars thanks to Uber. Personally, I would never want to make that sacrifice.
In relation to driving for pleasure; right now, driving your own personal vehicle is affordable for almost everyone. If autonomous cars become the norm, will that remain true? I think not. Insurance, gas, road maintenance, licencing, all things which are affordable today will become significantly more expensive.
All of this this concerns me 1) because I enjoy driving, and 2) probably more importantly, driving gives regular folks an amazing amount of freedom. I’m not sure either of those will be possible in a landscape dominated by autonomous cars.
Maybe it’s an irrational fear, but I’d hate to see that go. This is kind of a disjointed series of thoughts, but essentially I don’t think that the autonomous vehicle landscape will be as similar to what we currently enjoy. Whether that’s worth the tradeoff of sitting through less traffic, I’m not sure.
All very valid points, but you ENJOY driving. You are an engaged driver. You are not who the autonomous vehicles are being created for, you are the antithesis of who they are for. But you are a part of a very small minority. The younger the (adult) person, the less likely they are to own and drive a car. When we get those folks who should not or care not to drive, then the roads are that much safer for those who want to drive, and are competent drivers. Most yearn not for the freedom to drive their own car, but the freedom to be taken where they want to go.
It’s not just enjoying driving, it’s enjoying driving at an affordable cost, and maybe more importantly enjoying the freedom currently offered by driving.
I’m not sure that having a personal vehicle to drive you anywhere you want, anytime you want, at a price that’s totally affordable for nearly anyone will be a reality in an autonomous car future.
The discussions about autonomous cars that are going on here, and elsewhere, assume that we will enjoy the same personal vehicle model when autonomous cars become the norm. I just don’t see that being the case.
Personal vehicle ownership and autonomy are not going to go together. If you use an AV, it will probably be owned by a corporation and you simply hire it on an as needed basis. The AV you ride in will be a part of a fleet operated as a transit company, not a private vehicle you own and have drive you around, unless you have lots of money. Similar to having a personal chauffeur drive you around in a personal car, only the rich have them here in the USA. But like the horse analogy, while it won’t be cheap to own, insure, fuel, and maintain, if you really enjoy cars, they will be around for the hobbyist.
I, for one, look forward to the autonomous automobile – in the restricted, initial implementation that I see within my lifetime (5-20 years): Completely limited to multi-lane, limited access interstate and expressways. I’d absolutely love the idea of driving the mile and a half from my house to exit 86 (VA) on I-95, get on the southbound ramp, flip the switch, and only switch back to self-driving for refueling stops and when I hit the proper exit for St. Augustine, FL. As much as I enjoy the Florida trips, I hate the boring drive.
But there’s so many details to work out, dealing with things like human stupidity, human maliciousness (autonomous cars are infamous for being the least aggressive vehicle on the highway, I can see lots of problems from practical jokers, aggressive jerks, and worse), and the inevitable creep of legislation.
No, I don’t see the government making your regular car illegal any time soon. I DO see the possibility of, once Level 5 capabilities are reached, insurance companies suddenly starting to massively raise the rates of any non-autonomous vehicle, due to inherent risk – of course. Your rates will go back down to normal, if you just buy a self driving car and keep your hands off the wheel. It’s all for your own protection.
Your canary in the coal mine in this instance? Motorcyclists. You’ve got a vehicle that’s going to be more difficult to automate, with an ownership that’s going to be way harder to convince they should do so than the average automobile driver. As well as the one vehicle that’s going to have a ball on roads filled with nice orderly convoys of cars all doing the exact same speed in nice, neat little formations.
Your regular car might remain legal, but insurance might price you out of your regular car and essentially force you into an autonomous car.
I can’t see motorcycles being automated, what if the rider doesn’t lean with the bike? But there’s lots of things happening now I couldn’t see, so we’ll see.
“there is no denying their inevitable rise”
I remain a skeptic. Just as Concorde did not usher in a new era of supersonic mass-transportation, driver assist technologies will not usher in an autonomous vehicle revolution.
This morning, at a T junction, I made eye contact with the driver at the opposite point. Whether it was a nod or telepathy, we communicated who should proceed next. This level of human interaction comes effortlessly, but will remain impossible for any machine to predict, implement, or decipher. A mixed environment–autonomous and human piloted cars together, won’t work, despite the best efforts of brainiacs in Mountain View, CA. I do think a closed environment however, has great potential.
I see autonomous technology being used in limited closed-loop applications. Take Interstate 10 for example, a primary truck route for shipments moving East-West on the southern tier of the US. It would make lots of sense to dedicate a lane in each direction for use by autonomous trucks. Exits for this truck lane would be for truck use only and would lead to a yard where a human driver would be ready to drive the truck to complete the “last mile” delivery in the human driver zone.
Like horses, cars will go from a form of transportation to a hobby for those who appreciate them. We don’t really know what a fully autonomous vehicle will end up looking like, and we on this site tend to think that they will still be cars. I think something more like a small bus will be more likely, to hold more riders as they will be more for commuting than for joyrides. I don’t see single occupant autonomous vehicles being cost effective, even though that is how we use cars for commuting, regardless of how wasteful that really is. Ride sharing may well become actual sharing, with multiple occupants going to nearby destinations. It is more likely to end up where we never imagined, but it will happen. I happen to be of the “adapt or die” camp, and I am not ready for my dirt nap.
I can see it now… 4 autonomous vehicles come to a 4 way stop at the same time and just sit there, waiting for one to go… and sit there, and sit there, until their little electronic brains explode from indecision…
That’s easy enough to program around, for instance if faced with that situation one could easily create a standard that the one facing most northerly has priority, then the other three go in sequence.
Actually, they would be able to sense which arrived first, as the sensors are more perceptible to the split second than a human, and they would know which one came to the 4 way stop first. There would practically never be 4 cars arriving simultaneously, at least on the sub-second level. Also, the electronic “brains” would not explode from indecision, as that is a completely human problem. A chip is yes/no, not maybe. Don’t anthropomorphize computers, for all their faults, they are more “logic-based” than humans.
I am a pessimist on this subject. No doubt, the first wave of automation will result in unnecessary deaths as the bugs are worked out. Those deaths will likely be fewer than if the vehicles in question were “traditionally” human operated, but it doesn’t seem the same–there is a feeling, however false, that many of those who die in vehicle accidents bear at least a portion of the blame. If everyone is a passenger, who else to blame but the machine?
Longer term, I subscribe to the view that driving a non-automated vehicle on interstates and in city centers will become illegal, and that owning one will become prohibitively expensive except for the wealthy. The horse analogy is very apt. The question is whether the transportation pods are controlled by corporations or by the government, and how much like a miniature bus or subway they may become. After all, if “sitting is the new smoking” as I keep hearing, then we’ll probably all be standing for the entire trip for our health. If the pod’s motions are damped well enough and small ledges are provided for our computers, then it does become a very natural continuation of the office.
Excuse me, my tinfoil hat needs adjusting.
It appears inevitable to me. Being an inner-suburban dweller the great majority of my transport needs are covered by feet and public transport. I use my CC for the occasional rushed appointment during the week, but mostly for after-hours socialising and weekend cruising. So I’m the demographic that’s already (theoretically) halfway to acceptance. Except for the fact that I personally won’t allow myself to be driven in a single driverless vehicle. Nor a driverless mass-transit vehicle either to be honest (if I had the choice), but Melbourne is not there yet.
Implementation seems to be the biggest barrier – whether it be legislative or ‘bitumen and metal’ rollout. But with the relatively easy ability for digital systems to be hacked, when entire hospitals and other public ecosystems can be held to ransom, I’m just as worried about deliberate sabotage.
All of the gadgetry will eventually break. Or wear out. And be either pricey or impossible to fix.
Ugh. I can’t get behind this idea. My logical brain says we should just ride the bus since the infrastructure already exists. On the other hand, I commuted by rail and bus in Atlanta when I lived there and I understand the advantages and disadvantages of this kind of commuting. My logical brain says that none of this makes sense unless we have roads dedicated solely to AVs. I’m hazarding a guess that mixing AVs and human piloted vehicles is analogous to mixing oil and water. My logical brain (as feeble and overworked as it is) can’t seem to get past the legal ramifications of all this; who’s responsible when software kills a human?
I’m hoping that none of this will have widespread acceptance until I’m judged senile and no longer capable of driving. With my family’s history, this should take about another 10-15 years…
I’m definitely not an early adapter, but I realize that change is inevitable. In my early work years typewriters were the norm in the office and I performed calculations with a mechanical adding machine. Both are fossils today. Technology advancements are inevitable and humans will eventually adapt. Once we do, we laugh about how primitive the old days were.
In 20 years autonomous cars will be the norm, powered by powerful electric motors good for 500 miles between charges. The internal combustion engine will be a fond, but obsolete, memory.
I’ll concede the AV has a valid role, and I’m not phobic at the thought of sharing the road – they’ll have to be more like amusement park rides to even approach the standard of some road users in these parts!
What does concern me, however, is the prospect of old tech being legislated into oblivion directly, or as XR7Matt stated, through overwhelming “incentives.”
Last Thursday’s drive from Melbourne to Flinders for work, with twin carbs and 4 speeds, was very pleasant and unlike work. I had a fine old time, but late that day in the same region, a car crossed a median into the path of an oncoming B double gas tanker with predictable results. Suddenly I wasn’t feeling quite so chipper about my earlier expedition…
Reading all of the different perspectives on this subject is very interesting. I would say that for the first time in our lifetimes we can understand some of the anxiety that our grandparents felt when the automobile first came on the scene and replaced horses and oxen.
The eventual problem with AVs might be that when the inevitable catastrophic failure occurs with multiple fatalities and injuries, will it be enough to return to nothing but human controlled vehicles?
I doubt it. Consider manned flight. There have been disasters from the beginning that continue to this day, but not enough that humans have foregone flying. Indeed, it’s more commonplace (and automated) than ever.
My guess would be it will be the same with AV; there will be issues, and some will lead to accidents, maybe horrific, but the march to completely autonomous vehicles will not cease because of them. The Tesla accident was bad but did it stop AV development? Hardly.
Of course, there’s always the demise of supersonic transport which the Concorde disaster hastened. If AVs end up with too many negatives like SST (noise, pollution, cost), they could end up a footnote, as well.
Lucky me. When I started driving in the 1960’s, driving was really a pleasure. Transmissions that the driver shifted, steering that you steered. Cheap. On many occasions, I got a legal and safe car on the road for a couple hundred bucks or so. Generally fixed ’em myself or my kid brother helped. Even the insurance wasn’t bad. All through my teens and 20’s, my cars all got registered in my mother’s name – she owned some really interesting old jalopies!
I haven’t read all the comments, so I may be reiterating a point, but you assume it would be legal to drive cars yourself even when flawless technology is available. Are we so sure that would be the case?
If we have validated operating systems for autonomous cars and accepted their lower-than-with-a-human-driver accident rate, why would you let humans drive at all? This makes perfect sense objectively. For me as an enthusiast, it is a dystopian scenario.
An we have to assume autonomous cars would be safer than non-autonomous cars, otherwise it would not make sense to move along with this technology.
Good point, but during any transition, there will be both AV and human driven cars at the same time on the same roads. There will probably be designated lanes for AVs that will transition to Non-AV only as the transition goes more towards AV majority. Think of bike lanes. We share the road with bikes when there are no bike lanes, and while there are accidents, they are few. There may be fewer and fewer human driven cars as times go by, but it will not be made illegal any more than riding a bike on public roads.
Fortunately (or not), there is no such thing as “flawless”.
That’s city hall in downtown Chandler, I live about a mile from there. Our city and the city of Tempe allows the autonomous cars for testing. I must see 10 a day at least.
I just want to thank adaptive cruise and lane compliance technologies for forcing me to upgrade my radar detector to one that analyses the signal to see if it is a ToyHonRu in a lane near me or a unanticipated tax collections administrator lurking behind that overpass.
Seriously, a recent drive from Portland to Eugene with the old detector meant never more than 5 minutes without a false alert and nothing in sight but a CamCord, and that little box had been a trusted and reliable device for years.
I guess it’s time to sell my buggy whip stock.