Driverless Cars May Be Coming, but Let’s Not Get Carried Away

The problems with the ideas of autonomous cars are fourfold: - their sensors don't work well in rainy/snowy/muddy weather because they get obstructed....there's a reason everyone is testing their cars in sunny Arizona. - given that hackers seem to perpetually one step ahead of rest of us, people are going to be loathe to hand complete control of their vehicle over to a computer, - if drivers have to monitor the computer, as is currently the case, they mind as well drive the car themselves....the only real benefit to drivers is if they can truly tune out and do something else. - the supposed traffic benefits will only accrue if everyone is driving an automated vehicle....if some people still choose to drive manually, then they will still need to maintain wider spacing between cars. And last but not least, let's not forget that many people enjoy driving.....it's only getting stuck in traffic that they hate.

Every time I'm stuck driving in heavy traffic I can't wait for autonomous vehicles to take over. If everyone; Picked A Lane Picked A Speed, and Stuck With It then, yes, maybe we could all get to where we needed to be in a reasonable amount of time. The selfish human urge to get in front of the guy in front of you is a cause for much of the unnecessary delay. If humans can't work machines for the benefit of everyone around them then maybe the machines ought to. (I count myself as the problem).

It must be easy to write an article for the NYT. Just dust off a few old Tesla stories, deliver them out of context, and move on with the story. As someone who actually owns a Tesla and uses the Autopilot feature, most commenters (and the article author) have no clue about it. I don't use it all the time but the more I use it the more I love it. You have to pay attention because you are required to make contact with the car at least every 20 or 30 seconds. It keeps you within the lane lines, going the proper speed with the correct distance between the car in front of you - something that seems to be difficult for most human drivers. It also has numerous warning systems to keep you out of an accident and is packaged in the safest car ever tested. The only thing that scares me is when I stop at a traffic light and see the people driving the cars around me.

What I'm wondering is, what does the driverless car do about small (or large) animals running across the road? Does it try to avoid hitting them? Last fall I was driving on a 2 lane road in Ulster County when from out of nowhere a deer started to run right in front of me. I was going about 50. Stopping the car was out of the question. Somehow I managed to avoid hitting it by swerving to my left and then recovering to my right. I only did that out of my human emotion. What does the machine behind the wheel do? To what degree does it value life that it is willing to execute a potentially dangerous maneuver?

It’s not a question of “if” but of “when” cars and trucks will be fully autonomous. The technology to do this already exists; it just needs refinement. For all the naysayers, keep in mind that computers don’t get drunk or tired or distracted or reckless or angry, and while no computer will ever be perfect, we know humans are not even close to perfect. So be excited about autonomous cars and trucks; they will save lots of lives. And when they are networked, they will reduce congestion and dramatically cut commute times.

Interstate driving is the easy part but throw in construction or accidents and we are not there yet. I will know the technology is ready when my fully autonomous "driver" can get me home on a snowy afternoon in December and know that it has to time the light and traffic to get up the Murray St hill without getting stuck, swing by the grocery on an impulse, pick up Johny walking home and deliver him home before arriving at my driveway with a 2ft bank of snow but know that it is soft snow and blast through with enough speed and park in the driveway out of the way of the snow plow.

As boomers age out of their driving privileges, the dream of autonomous cars is gradually easing the bitter disappointment over those jet packs. Hoping we're still born to be wild at 80!

As far as autonomous cars/trucks/public transportation - I do not see them being implemented on public street but on freeways first. Freeways would be the simple initial test to test those vehicles from the start. When you get off a off ramp or the freeway end..your AI will inform you that you will take over else it will just park itself in some area provided just for that purpose. AI driving is going to have to start simple and controlled initially. Could be your insurance rates could reflect that as well as a reduction.

Finally a self driving advocate fesses up to what anybody with a little education in computers and self driving technology knows, it will take DECADES if ever for any AI system to equal human abilities to drive a vehicle autonomously in a real world open environment.

Musk is a marketeer... and often boasts about delivering the undeliverable. So I simply cannot take anything he says seriously until he actually delivers. As for self driving cars.. (fully level 4 self driving which does not exist yet.. and is dependent on pre-mapped roads that also do not exist yet) WHO is liable when said vehicle is the cause of a fatal accident? Seriously.. this is a paradigm shift in liability which is ripe for a circular firing squad of finger pointers.. where the only winners are those generating the legal fees (lawyers). Currently... ALL car manufacturers (including Tesla) have hard coded policy declarations in the vehicles that clearly state the owner is liable... no matter what. Unless and until that is lifted.. I simply cannot take seriously or trust any car manufacturers claims that their car is fully autonomous.

Unless the car can be autonomous in all situations that might be encountered, the problem will be the human driver’s need to maintain situational awareness. This is also a problem with auto pilot systems in aircraft.

So, once again, Mr. Musk is, in effect, hyping Tesla stock. I thought the SEC was trying to prevent his doing so. Clearly, there are not going to be fleets of autonomous taxis operating anytime in the next few years, so is he a con man or simply delusional?

I miss the old New York Times articles which assured readers that driverless cars would never happen in our lifetimes.

I still believe sensor based autonomous driving cars will not happen. Too many variables. Too much road muck, dirt, grime to occlude sensors. The sensors need to follow the lane lines. On my commute more than 20% are missing, then what? 150,000 lbs. tandem tractor trailers driving at highway speeds autonomously? No thanks! Who's responsible in an accident? Owner, software programmer, sensor manufacturer? Can these be insured? If so, will the insurance skyrocket after a rash of accidents? Will the tech then be banned? If so, can you get your money back on the auto-drive tech.

If a driver wants to trust the computer, I have no problem with him taking the risk. It is the problem of the computer killing a pedestrian or another driver. We did not agree to assume the risk of you not taking driving seriously. You do not get to impose a risk on society so you can text or sell more cars. Tesla, are you listening? GM is the responsible parent.

This article was interesting to me because I enjoy cars a lot and driver less cars interested me. I also see Elon Musk as an idol starting multiple of his own companies like the boring company, Tesla and space X he is very innovative and smart adding to the fact why i think that driver less cars are interesting. Also i think that driver less vehicles would help first responders with navigation and the best route. What i think the next large breakthrough tech for cars would be flying cars.

How can a driverless car judge what human drivers might or might not do, likewise how are human drivers supposed to judge what a hyper-efficient driverless car might do ? I was driving yesterday and noticed a "little old lady" coming up to an intersection where the Stop Sign is obscured by bushes, she did not stop but made a right turn into traffic, had I not known she would probably not see the Stop Sign and thus drive through it, I would have not slowed down and we would have had an accident on our hands. What will happen to older driverless cars that are for sale - surely some of their computer components will have failed by then and if the new buyer is taken out for a spin by the used car...

It won't be the government coming for their keys; it will be the insurance companies. Given that 94% of accidents are human error, the insurers are going to jack up the premiums on people who want to drive instead of letting the car do it.

Two comments. First, I live in a rural area, and I recently was driving on the coast highway (U.S. 101 which has a 55 mph speed limit) when I came on a bicyclist pedaling uphill on a three foot wide shoulder, and wandering a bit as he did it. As traffic was approaching from the opposite direction, I slowed to about 30 mph as I passed the cyclist, since there was not a great deal of clearance between my car and him and I was concerned that he might suddenly wander into my lane. Would a computerized system have made this judgement call? Second, in regard to the joy of driving, there are still people around who enjoy the challenge of driving, e.g. in a sport car on a winding road where a degree of skill is required, not to mention two hands on the wheel (except when shifting gears). If my 911 someday comes with an autonomous system, I would want to be able to turn it off.

I've found Tesla's promotion of their cars as having "full self driving capability" to be deeply irresponsible. Not to undercut these technological achievements, but self-driving vehicle technology works perfectly... until it doesn't. The driver is expected to be able to take over driving at a moment's notice, and frankly, people just aren't designed that way. These systems currently work just well enough to encourage complacency. Add in a gigantic touch screen that requires drivers to look away from the road to access basic features of the car, and you create a real danger. Maybe instead of more autonomous features, car manufacturers should simply bring back the stick shift. A manual transmission forces to make drivers MORE engaged with the act of driving rather than less.

Driving towards the future Capitalism gets a bad rap, and in many cases rightfully so, but the self-driving car, as well as cell phone networks show that the problem really isn't capitalism, the problem is the greedy people who abuse the systems in place. Look how the self-driving car is being developed, by bold entrepreneurs, like Elon Musk, who are taking the risks, borrowing the money, and through trial and error, with competition that sharpens their focus, are somehow doing it, changing the future before our eyes. Another perfect example are the cell phone networks, private companies who invested in the technology, and constantly improved on design, making the cell phone network better and better, while keeping it affordable. In a communist nation where original ideas are forbidden and anyone with the brains of Elon Musk will soon find themselves in the Gulag, for daring to think differently, any cell phone that they developed would be the size of a toaster and cost about 10,000 dollars. Capitalism only chafes with democracy when the people involved are allowed to operate as monopolies. Competition is the natural check on capitalism, without competition we would be up to our neck in cell phones the size of toasters, but with worse reception. There are many unnecessary evils in the world, the self-driving car is definitely a very good thing. The future is looking brighter every day.

The question comes down to: who do you trust more behind the wheel, a robot or a human. I will take the robot, then I will not have to worry about a distracted driver looking at his cell phone, somebody driving high, drunk drivers, and road rage. It's almost perfect synchronization that self-driving cars are arriving at the same time as the hypnotic call of the cell phone screen, and pot being legalized in more and more states. We need self-driving cars more than ever, especially with the population getting older. Self-driving cars will never be perfect, too many crazy , unpredictable things can happen on the road, but they will be a lot more perfect that human beings. I don't know the figures of how many car accidents there are every year, I knew fatal accidents are about 50,000 a year, think of all the lives saved. The only people who could be against robots behind the wheel are body shops, and undertakers.

Here in Hove, a point occurs to me that I have not seen mentioned. Presumably driverless automobiles will be programmed to cope with driving on the other side of the road when going to continental Europe (indeed, human drivers' failure to adapt is a cause of accident there, as was a Hove pedestrian's recent death in Florida from not realising that the traffic came from the opposite direction outside his Miami hotel).

Perhaps under limited circumstances, the idea of self-driving vehicles may be doable but -- I drive Interstate 95 regularly and if anyone thinks those nutjobs passing me going 90 are going to be satisfied going the speed limit without zooming in and out of the various lanes scaring the you know what out of everybody...that's simply not tenable. Drivers will not give up control of those high powered foreign cars so they can go the same speed as everyone else in the same lane...won't happen...Sorry

Why should we trust our transport to driverless cars at all? Is any technology that we use very reliable? I see a future of dimwit humans who can't drive or think for themselves and tech nerds championing a technology that will make life dismal and dull. Fight the good fight people! Leave our cars alone!

The gist of Mr. Musk's argument on LIDAR is that the roadways are designed for human vision, not laser beam vision. LIDAR conveys some information about distance, but so does human vision. LIDAR cannot read traffic signs and is only updated once per month. This is why Musk says that LIDAR provides a local optima. 20% of accidents are attributed to sleep problems. It's not as if humans are making incredibly complex decisions to avoid accidents. If they could simply stay in their lanes and not fall asleep, perhaps 15,000 people would not die every year. It's interesting to hear the perspective from the folks at the rear in the race for autonomy. A geofenced LIDAR system is actually quite terrible compared to Tesla's system. And no one knows if the driver monitoring system would actually save lives because they don't have the data to prove it, which also says something about their relative position in the race.

This all sounds very dystopian to me. Do we really want a computer watching our every move in a moving vehicle while simultaneously we are trying to watch every move the computer is making? Doesn't this somewhat defeat the whole point? Is it a point worth pursuing? A lot of tech geeks seem to think so, but my sense is they enjoy the challenge more than the actual result. As Hannah Fry, among others, points out in her book "Hello World", the more automated cars and planes become, the less safe they will become, because people will forget how to operate them when an emergency does arise. What makes far more sense is to minimize the use of all motorized transport, due to their contributions to global warming and spoiling of the planet in general, but where it is needed, have it handled as much as possible by trained professionals and not by computers. I would take a train any time rather than drive myself somewhere, if only we had a more robust train network in this country, just as one example.

Another advantage of autonomous vehicles is that those drivers who are a danger on the road can be required to use them without experiencing the hardship associated with losing their license. This could make the roads much safer long before autonomous vehicles become predominant.

GM's system is geofenced. It sounds like it works great, but only works at all on certain highways. Tesla's approach is very different, and works amazingly well on all roads, including some that have no more than one white line on the right side (in the US). It negotiates curves, "sees" pedestrians, bicycles, etc. and allows the driver to relax and to do other things given a periodic indication that the driver is situationally aware (through one part or other of the steering wheel). Tesla's is a big machine-learning or AI system and it gets improvements through over-the-air updates to the car every few weeks or so. Tesla cars are a radical departure from the incremental annual improvements from the traditional car makers, so even aside from the self-driving capabilities, it's an extremely fun car to drive, extremely safe, cheap (it's electric) and reliable (many fewer points of failure than an internal-combustion-powered car) and with the self-driving capabilities it becomes much safer still.

The profit-based concept of cars driven by hackable and glitch-prone computers is very dangerous to society. All computers will fail at some point, and computers cannot be programmed to recognize the nuanced behavior of other drivers, pedestrians, or cyclists in the way human drivers do in order to avoid accidents. In the real world, computers will not be able to avoid the hazards that litter our roads, or safely pilot vehicles at high combined approach speeds only a few feet apart under ever-changing road and weather conditions. And people will not accept having tech companies decide who will die. Our money could be spent much more productively to enhance vehicle safety.

The Cadillac's system of monitoring the driver may seem redundant but makes a lot of sense. If such a system was in place on the Uber Volvo which ran over a jay-walker in AZ, the system would have warned the Hulu watching driver to stop it and may have saved the jay-walker's life and avoided a big black eye to the whole industry. Unfortunately the supervisor of the driver was also asleep at the "wheel" and Uber did not have any way to monitor the bad habits of an irresponsible driver. Kudos to Cadillac for coming up with such a system. Tesla, please buy that system from Cadillac!

I've driven tractors for many years (and taken pride in doing it well) the advent of auto steer tractors (drive straight to within 2 inches accuracy for hours) was wonderful! The pleasure of "driving" isn't nearly as great as being more relaxed and efficient -- and with the plethora of monitoring screens for modern farm implements in the tractor cab -- I'd never go back to steering. Turns out that the "joy of driving" is a lot less important than I thought.

I do agree with MR pratt that humans can make decision's better then the best robot, however if 94% from the accident's are to blame human error, then the benefit is less then the risk, if the % of accident's will decrease largely, then even if it would occur wrong decision making causing a significant accident that would possible be prevented by human driver, still the benefit of the autonomous is much greater, and this safety shouldn't be breached by the joy of driving a car even if it is incredibly innate and precious, and all this without taking in acoount less traffic etc. and unfortinally too much drivers are careless and make terrible decisions, so let's not be on the side of the big auto makers who are nervous to make huge changes like kodak in the photo industry.

It sounds as if Toyota is very worried about being left behind, which is currently happening at a rapid pace. If they do not pick up the pace with regard to their attitude toward autonomous driving, not to mention all-electrification of automobiles, they will see a seismic shift in their auto company, from being number one worldwide to being relegated to the likes of Subaru, Mazda, and Mitsubishi.