Auto-Driving: What Are the Consequences?

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Auto-Driving: What Are the Consequences?

...A partner and I have an all-original 1961 MGA roadster in storage, with knockoff wire wheels and the twin-cam engine, that is just begging for a frame-up restoration...something I plan to do in my "copious free time" some day. A beautiful "sunny Sunday tourer" for less than the price of a used Volkswagen. And that little 1600cc engine with the twin side-draft SU carbs won't use much fuel in this coming PCO era.

That's a beautiful MGA. It's identical twin is, for me, the one that got away. When I was in college the old curmudgeon across the street had one in his garage -he was the original owner and hadn't driven it since about 1968. I tried to buy it several times but he would not part with it, especially to a kid like me. I intended to buy it from his widow when he died, but was too poor at age 25 when that day came.

Have you seen one of the rare MGA hardtop coupes? If a pair of jaguar XKE 2+2 coupes had puppies those pups might look like this

[Slimprofits]

Re: Auto-Driving: What Are the Consequences?

My authority is none other than Alberto Broggi, a senior member of the respected IEEE (electric and electronics engineers) international trade group. IEEE predicted in 2012 that 75 percent of the vehicles on the road by 2040 will be autonomous. You won’t even need a driver’s license at that point.

http://www.cartalk.com/blogs/jim-motavalli/2035-most-cars-will-drive-themselves-and-2040-forget-about-drivers-license


Not if the state governments (all of them at this point?) that heavily depend on "revenue" from the DMV / RMV have anything to say about it...

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Auto-Driving: What Are the Consequences?

...Not if the state governments (all of them at this point?) that heavily depend on "revenue" from the DMV / RMV have anything to say about it...

Not to fear. DMV /RMV revenues will go up, not down.
Today those fees go to examine the human driver and certify they can be trusted to be safe on the road.
In 2040 the same agencies will inspect the machine and certify that it can be trusted to be safe on the road.

[Slimprofits]

Re: Auto-Driving: What Are the Consequences?

Examining the human driver? Ha! Last week I paid the RMV $25 for the pleasure of switching from one vehicle insurance company for another.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Auto-Driving: What Are the Consequences?

Examining the human driver? Ha! Last week I paid the RMV $25 for the pleasure of switching from one vehicle insurance company for another.

LOL! Well whatever it is they do, they will still be doing it when cars drive themselves.

[vt]

Re: Auto-Driving: What Are the Consequences?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...tart-EYES.html

[shiny!]

Re: Auto-Driving: What Are the Consequences?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...tart-EYES.html

Yeah, but can it fly?

[santafe2]

Re: Auto-Driving: What Are the Consequences?

Auto driving may still be just a few years away. Watch the video in the link below as a test driver tries to get the auto-park feature of the new BMW i3 working....and this is in a vehicle going 2 miles per hour, not 60 or 70mph. Jump to about 17:30 in the video.

http://insideevs.com/bmw-i3-self-par...e-wrong-video/

[cbr]

Re: Auto-Driving: What Are the Consequences?

I don't know where to start. I guess I am like a proud fighter pilot now being asked to live in a world of automated drones. Disgusted.

The reality is complex. I get that there is no drivers training in the us. (Drivers ed is not drivers training at all). I get that Americans put no thought into their driving skills. I get that many people don't like driving.

For or me though it's a hobby and sport. It's total freedom and personal responsibility. It's what being a free, educated, responsible person is all about.

I want to vomit when I see car companies advertising bullshit like cars that slam on the brakes by themselves.

Frankly I want to vomit when I interact with my newer cars at all. I am selling them and going to older ones. Why?

Because Software engineers fail to anticipate what I need, want, and will encounter. They flat suck.

And the current generations of them actually interacted with real humans who knew how to drive and how cars work. The next generation won't have those real people to guide them.

A vehicle should have have no computer modules other than for complex injection and ignition timing. I will concede that abs is a generally good technology as well. But the fact is that the abs in an 86 corvette or porsche is FAR Better than the abs in a modern one. Why? Because software engineers fail to anticipate what I need,want, and will encounter. The 86 system senses individual wheel lockup and prevents it from continuing. The modern system tries to do all kinds of things related to vehicle dynamics and fails miserably.

Auto driving cars will miserably fail to anticipate what people want, need, and will encounter. They will suck in many ways.

Eventually they will take over and be safer than the present untrained driver population.

But at the price if really being the another nail in the coffin of everything I love and respect about life. Freedom, privacy, some semblance of self reliance and responsibility, independence from government, individual rights and responsibilities, talent, pride, etc.

for most of history, I could build or fix almost anything that existed myself. I can't fix an iPhone. I have no pride in owning or using one. I am totally dependent on apple, the government, and satellites for everything that happens with one.

An an old, old friend once told me that the secret to a happy life was to embrace change. He was born before the wright brothers flew. He watched a man land on the moon. But that kind of change was expanding freedom and pride. Humanity has never faced anything like this. If the average person can't or is not needed to build or fix anything, and only specialized teams can compile the expertise to design or improve things, and everyone lives in cities and can't feed or transport themselves, what the hell is that place going to look like ?

[flintlock]

Re: Auto-Driving: What Are the Consequences?

I still don't see any full time auto-driving in the near future. For highway use, yes, but day to day around town, nah. Not sure we could ever get around the product liability problem alone in this country. Much less the technical problems.

[flintlock]

Re: Auto-Driving: What Are the Consequences?

This is analogous to what has been happening for decades in the aviation industry, especially the commercial and business aircraft sectors. "Fly-by-wire" side-stick controllers, synthetic vision, zero-visibility landing systems and so many other phenomenal safety and performance advances have turned pilots into "systems managers".

Unfortunately when these systems fail in unexpected ways there's a need to revert immediately to "stick-and-rudder" abilities...and occasionally the intensively trained systems managers produce results that are...um...not exactly as desired.

.

I watch a lot of these air crash shows like "Air Disasters". I am not a pilot but have flown a lot of PC flight simulators so I understand most of the basics. I am amazed at how poorly some pilots react to situations when the autopilot systems fail and they are left with manual control. A friend who was a long time military, commercial pilot, and flight instructor has said the same thing. He came up flying everything from Phantoms to F-15s. He said some of the commercial pilots today are missing those stick and rudder abilities you mention. I recall one episode where the pilots only reaction to losing altitude was to simply continue to pull up on the controls, at 30,000 feet! I believe the show said that pilots were not even trained to fly manually on this aircraft( airbus?)

Edit: Clicked on your link and realized you referred to the same incident I was talking about.

At what point do car drivers lose their driving instincts after auto-driving becomes mainstream?

[Woodsman]

Re: Auto-Driving: What Are the Consequences?

...But at the price if really being the another nail in the coffin of everything I love and respect about life. Freedom, privacy, some semblance of self reliance and responsibility, independence from government, individual rights and responsibilities, talent, pride, etc.

for most of history, I could build or fix almost anything that existed myself. I can't fix an iPhone. I have no pride in owning or using one. I am totally dependent on apple, the government, and satellites for everything that happens with one.

Speaking of which, I just tabbed over from a piece by David Graeber that speaks to this frustration.

It does often seem that, whenever there is a choice between one option that makes capitalism seem the only possible economic system, and another that would actually make capitalism a more viable economic system, neoliberalism means always choosing the former. The combined result is a relentless campaign against the human imagination. Or, to be more precise: imagination, desire, individual creativity, all those things that were to be liberated in the last great world revolution, were to be contained strictly in the domain of consumerism, or perhaps in the virtual realities of the Internet. In all other realms they were to be strictly banished. We are talking about the murdering of dreams, the imposition of an apparatus of hopelessness, designed to squelch any sense of an alternative future. Yet as a result of putting virtually all their efforts in one political basket, we are left in the bizarre situation of watching the capitalist system crumbling before our very eyes, at just the moment everyone had finally concluded no other system would be possible.

A Practical Utopian’s Guide to the Coming Collapse

[cbr]

Re: Auto-Driving: What Are the Consequences?

I still don't see any full time auto-driving in the near future. For highway use, yes, but day to day around town, nah. Not sure we could ever get around the product liability problem alone in this country. Much less the technical problems.

what product liability? Special interest groups eliminated access to courts long ago through 'tort reform.' In most states you can completely forget about risk of lawsuits in big business decisions. Lawsuits are as obsolete as a bone axe.

[don]

Re: Auto-Driving: What Are the Consequences?

what product liability? Special interest groups eliminated access to courts long ago through 'tort reform.' In most states you can completely forget about risk of lawsuits in big business decisions. Lawsuits are as obsolete as a bone axe.

+1

cbr: we are all free now from the tyranny of the septuagenarian's litigious wrath on scalding corporate coffee . . . .

[don]

Re: Auto-Driving: What Are the Consequences?

(Woody) Speaking of which, I just tabbed over from a piece by David Graeber that speaks to this frustration.


It does often seem that, whenever there is a choice between one option that makes capitalism seem the only possible economic system, and another that would actually make capitalism a more viable economic system, neoliberalism means always choosing the former. The combined result is a relentless campaign against the human imagination. Or, to be more precise: imagination, desire, individual creativity, all those things that were to be liberated in the last great world revolution, were to be contained strictly in the domain of consumerism, or perhaps in the virtual realities of the Internet. In all other realms they were to be strictly banished. We are talking about the murdering of dreams, the imposition of an apparatus of hopelessness, designed to squelch any sense of an alternative future. Yet as a result of putting virtually all their efforts in one political basket, we are left in the bizarre situation of watching the capitalist system crumbling before our very eyes, at just the moment everyone had finally concluded no other system would be possible.

A Practical Utopian’s Guide to the Coming Collapse

We've been re-watching the splendidly written Mad Men, whose series-long story is between wresting power from the 'creatives' over to the quantifying-codifying corporate control freaks. One of our original brain drains.