Speaking about self-driving cars last September, Elon Musk preached caution. The man who wants to send us all to space and shuttle us between cities at outrageous speeds told the FT that "my opinion is it's a bridge too far to go to fully autonomous cars."
Somewhere deep inside the secret labs at Google X, Sergey Brin must have read that and smiled. And then climbed into his tiny car — the one with a strange smiley face for a front and a noticeably missing steering wheel — and with a single button press instructed his car to drive him wherever billionaires go to cackle at the short-sightedness of other billionaires.
On Tuesday night, onstage at the Code Conference in California, Brin revealed an entirely new take on a self-driving car, one decidedly more ambitious than anything we've seen before. Google's as-yet-unnamed car isn't a modified Lexus. It doesn't just park itself. It's an entirely autonomous vehicle, with no need for steering wheels or gas pedals or human intervention of any kind. You can't drive it even if you want to.
An absolute huge deal. Why? Because the cost of vehicle accidents is huge on the economy.
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A study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration finds 33,000 people lost their lives in crashes in 2010, 3.9 million were injured and 24 million vehicles were damaged. The economic toll from all of those accidents totaled $871 billion. The report says that represents nearly 2 percent of the nation's gross domestic product in 2010. The three leading causes of accidents were speeding, drunk driving and distracted driving.
There is a thread on it from a year or more ago. I was very active in it. Honda and GM I believe have already come out and said they'd be rolling out some form of "driver assist" cars. The financial impact would be huge
Self driving cars and computrized 'track' freeways are the future, and are a good idea. It will take a long long time though because there is something so romantic, so freedom encompassing, about a human and the open road.
Its really a battle of common sense over passion. More so than a lot of our other tech battles right now.
I know I wouldn't embrace that world, even admitting it would probably be better and smarter.
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Some thoughts on its impact (financial and otherwise) from the other thread:
-taxi cab viability vs. Co-Op. Lost taxi jobs
-parking no longer would need to be adjacent to location desired, plus one could compact it significantly
-less mortality and morbidity from MVA. Huge for healthcare impact. Lots of jobs lost though treating injuries, prosecuting, insurance companies, litigating, etc. Giant hit to jobs I would guess
-Senior independence
-Driving drunk?
-car design. Need for current interior design anymore? Entertainment?
-traffic laws. Speed? Does it increase significantly?
-network. It would help traffic and safety if your location and data were shared with the grid. Do we care?
There's lots more to think of. This is life changing
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-How does the self driven car react to accidents? They will still happen, unpredictable wildlife on roads, cyclists, pedestrians....
-How will self driven cars react to ice and snow on roads?
-How will insurance companies handle claims?
-How much faith can we place in cars driven by electronic operating systems that arent 100% foolproof, or am I the only one that has to reboot my computers and phones when they are glitching?
I am sure there are numerous other issues that would need to be ironed out as well.
I love the technological advancements but I think we are still a ways off from seeing this on the mass market.
Self driving cars cannot come soon enough. Cars are too big, too heavy, and thus too dangerous for the average person to drive in such a crowded area such as city streets.
I can't wait until the day when no one owns their own car. There is no need. For most people they only are actually using their car at most 2 hours of every day. The rest of the time it sits in your garage or a parking lot.
It will be like a taxi that picks you up almost instantly and drops you off at the door of where you need to go. Need to keep your things in it for a time period then let it know that and it won't go pick someone else up and wait nearby for you.
-How does the self driven car react to accidents? They will still happen, unpredictable wildlife on roads, cyclists, pedestrians....
Far, far better than humans.
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-How will self driven cars react to ice and snow on roads?
Once the algorithms are figured out, much better than humans
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-How will insurance companies handle claims?
This will be interesting. I think the manufacturer takes this one as the driver has no liability. The "insurance" could be built into the price or done sort of fee. It'd be far lower than current insurance rates though for sure.
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-How much faith can we place in cars driven by electronic operating systems that arent 100% foolproof, or am I the only one that has to reboot my computers and phones when they are glitching?
The ones already available are less error prone than humans. This isn't computer error vs perfect safety, it's computer error vs human error. Event at this infant state of the technology, human error>>>>>>computer error. That saves lives.
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I am sure there are numerous other issues that would need to be ironed out as well.
I love the technological advancements but I think we are still a ways off from seeing this on the mass market.
A lot closer than you think. I bet we see some form of "assisted driving" cars within 5 years and autonomous within 10. There's quite a few articles about what the major manufacturers are up to. I'll see if I can find some
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This is new since last time
Last edited by Street Pharmacist; 05-31-2014 at 12:48 AM.
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Really excited for this, hope it's a legit reality in my lifetime. Driving used to be enjoyable, now it's just something I have to do. Would love to have a computer car for day-to-day stuff and have a normal vehicle for the weekend trips.
Self driving cars cannot come soon enough. Cars are too big, too heavy, and thus too dangerous for the average person to drive in such a crowded area such as city streets.
I can't wait until the day when no one owns their own car. There is no need. For most people they only are actually using their car at most 2 hours of every day. The rest of the time it sits in your garage or a parking lot.
It will be like a taxi that picks you up almost instantly and drops you off at the door of where you need to go. Need to keep your things in it for a time period then let it know that and it won't go pick someone else up and wait nearby for you.
Exactly, like self driving Car2Go's, self driving taxis, and self driving public transit van pooling that can pick up a bunch of people that have a very similar origin and similar destination. Public transit without fixed routes!
Even self driving delivery vehicles. Order groceries on a website, robots pick it out of a warehouse, puts them in a self driving taxi, and the taxi brings them to your house on a route with a bunch of others. Tons of drivers running errands taken off the road.
Can't happen soon enough.
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
I feel like if something like this went mainstream, you'd see that cars start to transform into little entertainment boxes while people are driven around by the vehicle.
The requirement to keep eyes on the road would basically disappear and you'd be passing someone on Deerfoot while playing Xbox, watching a movie or reading. Also, all of a sudden sexual acts on the road would be less dangerous haha.
-How does the self driven car react to accidents? They will still happen, unpredictable wildlife on roads, cyclists, pedestrians....
-How will self driven cars react to ice and snow on roads?
-How will insurance companies handle claims?
-How much faith can we place in cars driven by electronic operating systems that arent 100% foolproof, or am I the only one that has to reboot my computers and phones when they are glitching?
I am sure there are numerous other issues that would need to be ironed out as well.
I love the technological advancements but I think we are still a ways off from seeing this on the mass market.
Google has had these Retro fitted S.U.V 's on the roads for a while . The Vehicle's have logged over 40,000 miles on the roadways and highways with out one incident or citation.
Google has had these Retro fitted S.U.V 's on the roads for a while . The Vehicle's have logged over 40,000 miles on the roadways and highways with out one incident or citation.
They've logged over 700,000 driving hours now. Their first few prototypes had over 300,000 miles with no accidents
The concept of Google's self-driving car brings back memories of tours in China where they make you go to a jade or pottery store before continuing on to the Great Wall.
Google's algorithms will force you to make a detour to the shopping centre where it found deals on the robotic underwater pool cleaners you searched for once a couple of years ago.
Last edited by Wormius; 05-31-2014 at 10:09 PM.
Reason: Greenified
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The concept of Google's self-driving car brings back memories of tours in China where they make you go to a jade or pottery store before continuing on to the Great Wall.
Google's algorithms will force you to make a detour to the shopping centre where it found deals on the robotic underwater pool cleaners you searched for once a couple of years ago.
Google has had these Retro fitted S.U.V 's on the roads for a while . The Vehicle's have logged over 40,000 miles on the roadways and highways with out one incident or citation.
Well, there was no mention of whether this was achieved with or without the human occupant taking controls.
I find it hard to believe that the vehicles never encountered a situation such as the ones mentioned before, that required the passenger to intervene to prevent an accident from a jaywalker or another car doing something stupid.
The car on autopilot and getting bailed out to prevent an accidents isn't the same as the car operating completely autonomously and not getting into an accident. And if the occupant has to be as alert as if they were driving the vehicle (much like, say a c-train conductor), what's the point? It's cool, but if I can't be doing the crossword puzzle while I am being driven to work, it seems a bit silly. The only benefit would be the system monitoring and preventing the driver from making an error in judgement when changing lanes or possibly blowing through a red light.
Yeah, an obvious exaggeration but if google tracks us on the web is it a stretch to think they'd also track our movements in their car, all for our own convenience of course?
Google Self Driving Car
