EV's and Transportation as a Service to kill Alberta economy by 2030?

[DownhillGoat]

Originally Posted by GGG

The other question I have is are electric cars more dangerous than ICDs. We are used to using sound to detect traffic as we walk and cross streets. Do the relatively silent electric cars end up with higher pedestrian collision rates?

I was in Zermatt a number of years ago and they've been ICE-free for a number of years now.

The amount of close calls I had as a pedestrian was insane.

[puckedoff]

The sensor system on the Uber isn't supposed to even require light levels to function.
In my non legal opinion, it is pretty irresponsible for a company to release an autonomous vehicle where the human driver needs to be on standby alert as a backup. It is obviously an highly failable system, and an unreasonable ask on the driver.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by puckedoff

The sensor system on the Uber isn't supposed to even require light levels to function.
In my non legal opinion, it is pretty irresponsible for a company to release an autonomous vehicle where the human driver needs to be on standby alert as a backup. It is obviously an highly failable system, and an unreasonable ask on the driver.

That's why it is in testing, and the driver is getting paid to make sure this doesn't happen. Most other companies testing have 2 operators though. One to monitor the systems, the other to take control if needed. Uber has one person doing both.

[Flashpoint]

Originally Posted by getbak

On Sunday night, in Tempe, Arizona, an Uber self-driving test car was involved in a fatal collision with a pedestrian. The Tempe police have released dashcam footage from the crash (warning, it shows a fatal collision, but nothing graphic)...

http://calgaryherald.com/news/world/...8-a1157f9f9645

This is the first pedestrian fatality from a collision with a self-driving vehicle.


Based on the footage, she was invisible until seconds before the collision. She was walking her bike across the street and was not in a crosswalk. She also appears to be just outside the coverage area of the nearest streetlight.

After reviewing the video and the circumstances, Tempe police have said that it's unlikely Uber will be considered to be at fault in the collision.

After watching the footage, it's hard to imagine that any human driver would have been able to avoid the collision either. Although, sometimes, the human eye can see more than a camera, especially at night, so a human driver may have noticed her movements in the shadows and slowed down earlier.


Uber immediately put their self-driving vehicle tests on hold after the collision.

Bump - NTSB released report.

Car couldn't figure out what pedestrian and bicycle were. Driver was looking down. Pedestrian tested positive for weed and meth.

As NPR's Scott Neuman reported in March, dashcam footage released by Tempe police showed the safety driver's gaze apparently "divided between something inside the car and the road," with eyes diverted for several seconds before finally looking up again just moments before impact.

"In a postcrash interview with NTSB investigators, the vehicle operator stated that she had been monitoring the self-driving system interface," the report said. "The operator further stated that although her personal and business phones were in the vehicle, neither was in use until after the crash, when she called 911."

The pedestrian, for her part, had been dressed in dark clothing and crossing the road in a section not directly illuminated by streetlights, hundreds of feet from the nearest crosswalk, according to investigators. "Toxicology test results for the pedestrian were positive for methamphetamine and marijuana," they added.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-...ore-fatal-cras

[CliffFletcher]

Self-driving cars won't be adopted until they're almost accident-free. So being twice or three times as safe as human drivers will not be good enough. Setting the bar that high means we're still a long way from widespread adoption of self-driving vehicles, and in that span of time many more thousands of people will be killed by human error because we have a much higher tolerance for human error than we do for people being killed by machine error.

[Canehdianman]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Self-driving cars won't be adopted until they're almost accident-free. So being twice or three times as safe as human drivers will not be good enough. Setting the bar that high means we're still a long way from widespread adoption of self-driving vehicles, and in that span of time many more thousands of people will be killed by human error because we have a much higher tolerance for human error than we do for people being killed by machine error.

I disagree with your premise. Self driving cars are already on the road being tested.

[edslunch]

I was at a conference this week and one of the presenters made the point that full autonomous every day driving is the hardest problem to solve - it’s the end goal. A lot of benefits can be achieved without going that far. Mass adoption is likely to come sooner in the form of auto pilot for long distance highway driving, hub and spoke models for trucking where hub to hub is fully automated, etc.

Also saw a really interesting presentation on Uber Air where the leader of that business unit laid out their whole strategy for aerial transportation. Fascinating stuff.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Canehdianman

I disagree with your premise. Self driving cars are already on the road being tested.

Tested in small numbers. We're still a long way from mass-adoption, when we'll see millions on the road. And we won't get to that stage until they're far, far safer than human drivers. Which is a shame, really.

But the truth is AVs will always be held to a higher standard than human drivers.

Just how much higher? A study published last year by RAND Corporation, a think-tank, did the number-crunching. If found that deploying AVs even when they are only 10% safer than human drivers would save far more lives in the long run than (more than 500,000 over 30 years in America alone) than waiting until they are, say, 90% safer. But such stark utilitarianism sits poorly with how most people view the world, because AVs would still cause a lot of deaths.

https://www.economist.com/science-an...can-understand

At some point in the gradual ramp-up of AV deployment, we'll have three fatalities in a single week, and there will be a public outcry about their safety, calls for curtailing their use, for higher standards, etc. We're deeply irrational in how we assess risks, especially when it comes to anything new or strange.

[Fuzz]

I'm curious how the self driving tests have worked in winter. From what I have seen they rely on road markings quite a bit. What happens if they are buried under snow, or if the snow ends up looking like a white road line? Driving in the winter often involves a lot of improvisation, particularly on narrow rutted streets. Can they tell a pedestrian in a white jacket from a snow pile? Do they drive slower when it is -25 and stopping distance is greatly increased?

[Canehdianman]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Tested in small numbers. We're still a long way from mass-adoption, when we'll see millions on the road. And we won't get to that stage until they're far, far safer than human drivers. Which is a shame, really.



At some point in the gradual ramp-up of AV deployment, we'll have two or three fatalities in a single week, and there will be an intense public outcry about their safety, calls for curtailing their use, for higher standards, etc. We're deeply irrational in how we assess risks, especially when it comes to anything new or strange.

That article might be right. I think most people would buy an EV if it saved them $1000 a year in insurance. Heck, I'd buy one even if the accident rate was the same as the average, just for the time savings.

[Flashpoint]

Bump - driver was watching TV (Episode of “The Voice”) when crash occurred.

So a meth addled homeless person was wandering the highway at night with a bike, and was hit by a car where the driver was watching reality TV. And it’s the autonomous vehicle that’s the villain?

The crash of an Uber self-driving car that killed an Arizona woman in March was “entirely avoidable,” according to police reports released by the Tempe Police Department. Cellphone data obtained by police suggests that the Uber operator was also streaming an episode of reality show The Voice at the time of the fatal incident.

“She appears to be looking down at the area near her right knee at various points in the video,” the report reads. “During the 9 video clips, I found that the driver looked down 204 times with nearly all of them having the same eye placement at the lower center console near her right knee. One hundred sixty-six of these instances of looking down occurred while the vehicle was in motion.” Vasquez was appeared to laugh or smirk during moments when she was looking towards her knee, the report added

Wish the auto-driving had worked. Perfect example of how humans shouldn’t be in charge of anything.

[tripin_billie]

Originally Posted by Thor

You guys cannot underestimate the difference of living in Canada and the US with your cheap gas prices.

Electric cars are selling like crazy in Europe, and especially in the Nordic countries. We are paying in Iceland about $2.20 per liter right now.

Even without expensive gas (I'm in the States), lots of friends and acquaintances my age (mid 30s) basically don't want to buy another ICE car again. I bought a Volt in late 2016 and it's pretty much the perfect solution for this transition period. I maybe put gas into it quarterly, and it would be less if I didn't go on road trips. Everyday driving is almost always accomplished on the battery.

While there is a bit of a return to ICE vehicles in the current cheap gas era, those that aren't completely myopic know where things are going.

Also, the best way to sell electric cars is to get people into them at least once. Once they feel the on-demand torque, they never look back!

[Ryan Coke]

Originally Posted by Flashpoint

Bump - driver was watching TV (Episode of “The Voice”) when crash occurred.

So a meth addled homeless person was wandering the highway at night with a bike, and was hit by a car where the driver was watching reality TV. And it’s the autonomous vehicle that’s the villain?





Wish the auto-driving had worked. Perfect example of how humans shouldn’t be in charge of anything.

While she shouldn’t have been watching tv, it still is an indictment of the current state of auto drive tech though. We already know that humans are very poor at continuous monitoring of what is supposed to be an automated system. But it appears the auto drive system as currently being tested failed this time, and the regulatory framework which allowed testing of a system which is not yet ready needs to answer some questions as well.

[Hot_Flatus]

Originally Posted by calgaryblood

Not a chance. There is zero chance electrical vehicles will be main stream by 2030. More like 2060 if they're lucky.

Exactly and anyone preaching this is about to take off simply doesn't know what they're talking about. EV sales in North America are pitifully low (barely 1% market share). There are countless figures out there that support this as well if you do a google search. I do believe we will see electric vehicles primarily used in public transport and for other services in a highly urbanized setting. However, the majority of the average joe out there is not adopting this technology as a way of transport until it is much more proven has an vast network of infrastructure available that make typical travel habits more accessible to owners.

Hybrids will likely fill the gap but even they have issues of their own revolving around poor performance in our climate, reliability etc. How is a fully EV going to perform here from November-March....Its a long way off.