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Originally Posted by Tiger
My understanding of self driving cars is they currently give control back to the driver if there is a situation they can't handle. So if it hits ice it'll give control back to a driver. A drive that rarely drives and therefore has no experience is only control the car in the worst condition possible. That likely won't go well. It will prevent a lot of small accindents in trade off for a few big ones (like commercial auto pilot). It sounds great but I'm very skeptical of how this tech worksupport in snow and ice and with lanes covered etc. I'd be impressed. Note I haven't looked up any info on self driving cars on ice etc
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Here's a good story about how autonomous vehicles will work in the snow and how they'll combine different technologies to overcome the obstacles:
https://readwrite.com/2016/12/19/how...ndle-snow-tl4/
Here's a video from Ford talking about the testing they're doing in winter driving conditions...
As they say, everyone who knows how to drive in the snow had to learn by doing. They can program that knowledge into the autonomous vehicles so that a vehicle straight off the assembly line can drive just as well in snow as one that's gone through numerous winters. The same can't be said for human drivers with the same level of experience.
Worse than driving on snowy/icy roads will be getting the vehicles to safely drive through falling snow or rain. That's the real challenge. No one will embrace autonomous vehicles if they can't run in a light drizzle.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dissentowner
So my question is with these automated cars, what happens if a solar burst from the sun knocks out the satellite controlling all these cars? Do they just shut down or will it cause the most accidents ever seen at one time?
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There won't be a satellite controlling all the cars.
Each car will be autonomous, just as cars today are. Essentially, each vehicle will be an independent node that can connect with other vehicles to form mobile ad hoc mesh networks. The more nodes that are connected, the better information all members of the network will have access to. However, if a vehicle is completely unconnected, it will still function and take you to your destination. It just won't have as much information as it could if it were fully connected.
If you're talking about transportation companies and their vehicles losing contact with their home network, that's a potential point of failure that the service providers would need to be prepared for. If you were in the vehicle when the connection was lost, it should still continue to your destination. The vehicle just might be stranded once it gets there until it can reconnect.