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Originally Posted by polak
All of these points are great, if every car is self driving. I would 100% get into a car that drives itself if every car drove itself and they talked to one another. It's combining humans with self driving cars on the same roads that I don't think will work. Hesitation, behavioral cues, common courtesy, all of these things are things I'm doubtful that a self driven car can understand at the level of a human being.
Hell, what happens when you get to a 4 way stop and the self driving car gets there at the same time as a human and the human believes they were there first? Self driving cars will always wait? That won't get annoying. What happens when the weather is crap and the self driven car, which will most likely be programmed to drive more cautiously, is going 30 when confident human drivers are going 60? Cause now we have a bunch of cars that don't speak the same language or behave the same way going significantly different speeds? What happens when someone decides to wave someone in or does something that the self driving car doesn't understand? Is it just going to sit there confused, until the person gives up and goes? What happens in construction areas, places with unpainted lanes, places that place the self driving car in extremely unique situations that it'll never see on a normal basis, where human intervention will be needed? Construction worker is holding some sort of sign or does some sort of gesture that the car doesn't understand? Maybe there is an accident and the police is telling cars to drive around on the grass?
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These are all programming issues, which I imagine would be handled rather easily. I agree that early variations of the computer-driven car might have limitations (gravel roads perhaps?), but most of the examples you give above are fairly ridiculous. Do computers you use right now lock up and stop working because you do something out of turn? Hit f5 on your computer and then hit f5 before it finishing refreshing... Does your computer give up and 'sit there confused'?
Quote:
Originally Posted by polak
I don't know, maybe I'm out to lunch and computers can now calculate all these actions of human beings in the speeds required for human driven cars and self driving cars to share the road, but I have a hard time believing it.
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I'm not even sure how to respond if you don't think that a computer can calculate things faster than you can.
Quick, what's 385435439x12354854? For reference, it took my ancient work computer 0.28 seconds.
Quote:
Originally Posted by polak
What I think you will see, maybe within 20 years, are self driving car lanes where only self driving cars are allowed and they talk to one another, but once you drive off of that lane, the human driver has to take over control. Which is kind of pointless outside of the highway, and we can't even afford to light up our highways so....
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I agree that this wouldn't really be a feasible solution. They will have to share the road from the beginnning. The first generation of self-driving cars (I'm sick of typing that. Let it be known as SDC from now on) will have to be very adaptive in the event that a human driver does something stupid. I imagine they will require the 'driver' to pay attention to potentially take over if necessary. I would bet that all cars (SDC or not) will have computers in them that network to share information (speed, destination, upcoming turns, traffic ahead, detours, etc...)