'Autonomous' Driving Could Turn The Old-Fashioned Kind Into A Hobby
from the driving-progress dept
My esteemed co-blogger Adam Thierer points out that General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner is touting a future of "autonomous driving." Adam is against the concept, worrying that future generations will be deprived of the excitement of controlling your own vehicle. Luckily, I don't think Adam needs to worry. Even after autonomous driving becomes sophisticated enough to be deployed on real roads, it will still take decades for people to transition to all-autonomous vehicles. Moreover, the market is likely to continue catering to old coots like Adam who want to continue driving their cars the old fashioned way, so there will be human drivers on the road for the foreseeable future. That, in turn, means that autonomously-driving cars will have to know how to share the road with human beings for the foreseeable future. It will be many decades before we could even start seriously discussing banning non-autonomous cars from the roads. More to the point, history suggests that when technology makes a day-to-day activity obsolete, it doesn't disappear. Rather, it become a hobby. A half-century after the introduction of the automatic transmission, there are still plenty of people who prefer to drive a stick. People haven't needed to hunt or fish for food for decades, yet hunting and fishing are now popular hobbies. The same is true of traditional housework activities like weaving, knitting, and quilting. It no longer makes economic sense to do these things in the home, but people do them anyway because they enjoy it. By the same token, if autonomous driving someday makes traditional driving obsolete, that won't make it go away. It will simply mean that it will become a recreational activity rather than an unavoidable part of daily life. When he's 60, Adam will still be able to zoom around in his sports car on the weekends, but on his morning commute he might have the option to ignore the Northern Virginia traffic jam and focus on writing his latest Luddite screed for the Technology Liberation Front.
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Filed Under: autonomous car, driving, hobby
Companies: gm
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Thrill of driving... Bah! Humbug!
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Re: Thrill of driving... Bah! Humbug!
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Re: Re: Thrill of driving... Bah! Humbug!
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Re: Re: Thrill of driving... Bah! Humbug!
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Re: Re: Thrill of driving... Bah! Humbug!
1. For some of my runs, I'd have to use THREE different bus lines. Waiting in between for a bus.
2. Have you *ever* tried to carry a bunch of packages on a bus?
3. Buses are **SLOW**, and make a lot of stops in between destinations, which makes them slower.
4. I can tell my car what to do. Have you ever tried to do the same to a bus driver? ... and lived?
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Re: Re: Thrill of driving... Bah! Humbug!
And that's not even the most important reason for avoiding the bus.
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Hmmm
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Bring it on
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Re: Bring it on
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Re: Re: Bring it on
I would think it would be settled in court cases. You can not win a lawsuit against a vehicle manufacturer because your radio is not working anymore or because the brakes fail. If it is still under warranty you could, so maybe this would be covered under a warranty but you would still need insurance for medical damages.
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Re:
You say that as if computers cannot be programmed to do the same thing automatically.
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Re: Advantages of stick shift
1) The vehicle costs less to start with because the transmission is an order of magnitude simpler.
2) The transmission lasts longer, because it's an order of magnitude simpler.
3) When it *does* break or wear out, it's cheaper to fix or replace, because it's an order of magnitude simpler.
4) It makes the vehicle less of a theft target, because many modern-day car thieves can't drive a stick, and most people prefer automatics, making them both harder to steal and harder to fence.
It used to be that a manual got a little better fuel mileage, but the automatics have gotten good enough so that is no longer the case.
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Why bother with cars at all?
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why not have the best of both worlds
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Zing!
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Even more interesting...
I also think the question of where liability lies (#6 above) will be a major hurdle. Will auto manufacturers be seen as liable for accidents? If I'm reading, can I be labeled a "driver"?
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Re: Even more interesting...
This would all be settled in the courts. I mean, we have all these laws for cars that did no exist hundreds of years ago. The laws will change as technology progresses, so I wouldn't worry about the liability issues.
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Gas Up ... Cars Smaller
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Bad Drivers are Plentiful
I still prefer public transportation and better urban design to facilitate walking (its a lot healthier).
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Better results
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No more car service
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Re: No more car service
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Autonomous commuting = removal of ownership
Likely, the propulsion on each vehicle will be fairly limited, and instead they will feature linking capabilities for freeways, with maybe a "bus" at the head of each link with maybe 20-30 commuter pods attached to each link.
Oh, and its not likely that the personal vehicle makers will lead this paradigm shift. It will most likely come from companies that create public transportation. And even more likely, it will be a foreign startup too.
American companies will NOT be leading a transportation revolution. They fear change, and that will be their doom.
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A paradum shift and I have no clutch
In listening to this discussion, here and on talk radio, it is clear that many people impress the constraints of driving today with what will happen as autonomous vehicles catch on and start to get their own space on the highway. Speed limits are no longer an issue. No, the vehicles won't "speed" but the speeds and following distances will be coordinated between the cars and the highway. Accidents under these conditions will reduced and drunk driving a thing of the past. The legal and insurance entities will have to keep up but, they always have in the past.
There are other benefits as well. I live a day's drive from Disneyland (not an endorsement, just an example) and with the vehicle of today would spend a day driving down and a day driving back. With an autonomous vehicle one could pile everyone in the car, set the destination and go. It would drive thru the night while we slept. It would be a very good alternative to doing it by air.
I can see the end of the road to the long distance trucker. Goods would still travel by road but autonomous vehicles don't get tired or hop up on pills.
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Not holding my breath
What happens when it's snowy out? Who decides whether it's too bad to drive, the car or the driver or the manufacturer?
What if they're wrong?
Maybe we'll see this in 50 years.
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Bring It!
If my car's going to refuse to let me drive, then it damn well better be able to do it itself.
Actually, I'd love to own a car that I could pile into with a bunch of friends after drinking all evening and have it take us wherever we want. Awesome.
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What about transporters?
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Ride Motorcycles!
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Watching too many movies
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Safer for Motorcycles
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Liability
I can see development of autonomous car lanes, in which "regular" cars cannot travel.
Autonomous cars should be able to avoid each other unless you have both cars experiencing sensor failure. Humans driving "regular" cars that collide or cause collisions will ultimately be at fault in 95% of regular vs autonomous incidents.
Just make sure you're not driving a car powered by Windows Vista, and you should be okay.
As far as automatic regulation of driving speeds, I can't agree more. The maximum speed limit is perhaps the most abused law on the books, and it's just there for everyone's safety.
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Re: Liability
> abused law on the books, and it's just there
> for everyone's safety.
No, it's most certainly not "just there for everyone's safety". If safety was the concern, speed limits wouldn't be routinely set artificially low.
No, the real reason for speed limits is the generation of revenue by the state. It's a hidden tax and one that forms of the lifeblood of many a municipality.
It's also a huge reason why this autonomous driving thing will face some fierce opposition. When a city like Washington, DC, which relies on tens of millions of dollars in traffic/parking fines per year to run its budget, is suddenly faced with that figure dropping to near-zero, you can bet the politicians will suddenly find all sorts of "problems" with the idea.
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Sticks
Now, wasn't it GM that predicted the demise of the traditional manual transmission? And now GM wants to take the act of driving out of the equation. I fear the day when the streets are overrun by Chevrolets on autopilot...
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What is this...
j/k
:-)
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Act of driving vs Transportation
A fully autonomous system would be much safer than the current system where humans are involved. Think about it. Each car knows exactly where it is located through GPS. Each car knows exactly where other cars around it are located via wireless networking. Obstacles can be identified and avoided via infrared and optical sensors. The entire transportation network could develop a hive mind and each vehicle would keep its situational awareness up to date by pluggin into the network and monitoring its scanners. Humans are obsolete.
If "they" can develop it, then I'm all for it. And for those jokers who say they won't buy one because they like to turn the wheel and push the petals, fine, stay at home.
It is unfortunate that in this country it will never happen because of the cowboy mentality that you have to drive to be free. Imagine the freedom of being chauffeured anywhere you want to go without being a slave to the wheel, stick, and petals. Forget driving, I'd rather take the Magic Carpet Ride.
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Re: Act of driving vs Transportation
> my 'transportation device' and have it get me
> to where I wanted to go, that would be great.
It would only be great if once I got into the vehicle, it "belonged" to me for the duration of my trip-- no stopping to pick up others and no way for anyone but me to stop or open it.
Otherwise, it just becomes a smaller version of the city bus, with all the delays and problems that come with it-- especially the safety issues.
Imagine riding along in your little robot car, when it suddenly detours off the freeway into a ghetto because some gang-banger called up and wanted to go downtown to the same block you chose. Next thing you know, a potential rapist or murderer is climbing into the cab with you because the computer didn't know any better and decided to stop and pick him up based on its "efficiency algorithms".
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Safety
> after the introduction of the automatic
> transmission, there are still plenty of people
> who prefer to drive a stick. The same is true
> of traditional housework activities like weaving,
> knitting, and quilting. It no longer makes economic
> sense to do these things in the home, but people
> do them anyway because they enjoy it.
The difference between the things you mentioned and this autonomous driving proposal is that with driving a stick shift and quilting, you don't have a whole chorus of "safety mavens" calling for the banning of quilters and standard-shift drivers to "protect the children". Their argument will be that a person who chooses to drive stick or quilt their own blankets isn't a danger to others but a person who chooses to control his/her own car isn't just indulging in a nostalgic hobby-- they're endangering those on the roads around them by introducing the risk of human error into the mix.
You can be sure that if there's a viable alternative to human-controlled cars, it will be swept into law on a chorus of people howling "think of the children!" and controlling your own vehicle will become a thing of the past.
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Autonomous cars - aren't these called trains?
I'm a bit stunned that so much technology is focused on taking away user intervention that none is being applied where it should: mass transit solutions.
No matter how much is taken away, no car will ever beat a "bullet train" when it comes to commuting. Traveling long distances should also be replaced by "autonomous trains". It would take less money to build "private compartment" train cars than try to "connect" all these individual cars together.
With so much emphasis on global warming, one would think it's more prudent to reduce the number of cars on the road, not increase them.
I can just see the headlines now: "A multiple autonomous pile up created a massive explosion as all the hydrogen fuel cells ruptured killing 122 people."
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Perhaps Microsoft will write it, so we need never worry. :D
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Autonomous Automated Automobiles -- A A A
Oh, the revenue ! ! !
Manual driving will NOT become a hobby, but rather a literal and costly nightmare ! !
.
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