Anyone thinking this concept has anything to do with anything other than making money for the big players of the world needs to give their heads a wobble.
Safety, traffic management, getting Joe Bloggs home from the pub?? All bollox! It’s about automaton of driving jobs, delivery drivers and transport drivers etc take out human personnel and that’s a lot extra coffers into the company accounts and a lot less hassle. No working hours limitations, no unions to have to deal with.
Yeah I’m a taxi driver so I have a vested interest but saying that I’m certain it won’t be a factor in my working lifetime.
If we keep finding ways of making people unemployed I’d love someone to explain just how the economy etc is going to work in the future
It is a good point you make and our economy isn't set up for sharing the benefits of this more evenly. With AI we now have clerical jobs at threat too. We have also seen in supermarkets, DIY tills and the automation in banks and the closure of branches. These are all jobs. I don't think we can stop it so a new system needs to be developed to ensure people don't get spit out by it.
I tried to resist the latter two. I would insist on paying cheques in (for my business) with a person. When told I can do it with the machine, I would reply that I am trying to save your jobs. Once I got the reply, that's ok, I'm retiring next month. Same with supermarkets, I tried to avoid the self service tills but they stop giving you options. They are actually happy now for big queues in the manned check outs which forces you to use the automated ones.
I have remembered part of our holiday in 2022. We drove to Italy for a tour of the sights. High in the alps the sat nav wanted to take us down a path you would have difficulty walking down on foot. I could see that and ignored the instruction to turn left down it which would have killed us. Also when there are floods, even a safe stretch of road can be a danger. Would the driverless cars know? The answer is probably not which is why a qualified driver will have to be at the wheel for the initial implementation years to overide driving off mountains or into deep flood water etc... I'm pretty sure they won't be able to be over the limit, so the drive you home from the pub option won't be one fr quite a while I suspect.
On a similar subject, imagine two driverless cars meeting each other on a tight lane. Could you see them manoeuvring into a tight gap/one reversing back to a passing point for the other to pass? I think not...
Pointless, and will cause more problems than it solves.
Only way it works is if every car on a motorway is using it, and all manoeuvre around each other seamlessly according to how long they are on that road for and what junction they are turning off at, if they can do that and set the upper speed limit much higher then it will cut long journey times down significantly
As @Taxi_Lad lad says the “driverless” concept looks like it’s being driven by commercial interests for goods and people delivery. But still can’t see how it can exist alongside non-automated driven vehicles using the same road network. Imagine negotiating Marble Arch in the rush hour.
Continuing to develop the technology to reduce the risk of driver error is where the future should be. The driver must always remain in control to override the technology when it gets it wrong.
My Audi will sometimes initiate emergency braking when it thinks I am heading towards pedestrians because it thinks I am going straight on instead of following the curve of the road. Technology will never be able to react to an un-precedented situation until it has already learnt to react correctly, so should never be sold as anything other than a driver aid, not a replacement of the driver.
Having used it for a few years now I can’t imagine not driving without automatic cruise control. It reduces driving fatigue significantly in my view, particularly in poor visibility, so is making me safer, but should not be promoted as providing a driverless experience, only improved safety.
As @Taxi_Lad lad says the “driverless” concept looks like it’s being driven by commercial interests for goods and people delivery. But still can’t see how it can exist alongside non-automated driven vehicles using the same road network. Imagine negotiating Marble Arch in the rush hour.
Continuing to develop the technology to reduce the risk of driver error is where the future should be. The driver must always remain in control to override the technology when it gets it wrong.
My Audi will sometimes initiate emergency braking when it thinks I am heading towards pedestrians because it thinks I am going straight on instead of following the curve of the road. Technology will never be able to react to an un-precedented situation until it has already learnt to react correctly, so should never be sold as anything other than a driver aid, not a replacement of the driver.
Having used it for a few years now I can’t imagine not driving without automatic cruise control. It reduces driving fatigue significantly in my view, particularly in poor visibility, so is making me safer, but should not be promoted as providing a driverless experience, only improved safety.
You've made 4 interesting points and I think you are mostly wrong on all 4. A number of years ago I saw on TV a demo with 3 drones flying in a large room/small warehouse. The operators were trying to crash them into each other but failed because the drones were programed not to crash. I think this takes care of 'Marble Arch'. The tech doesn't 'think' about problems in the same way you do. It will be reacting very quickly as problems arise and circumnavigate them. The driverless tech IS being developed bit by bit and installed in cars as and when appropriate, so that when the time comes for full driverless, much of the underlying tech has been in operation for years/decades. As for your Audi going around bends, my new Volvo 'helps' me round bends. I've only done a couple of trips so I'll report back later on how useful/effective it is. I used cruise control constantly in my previous cars, especially to avoid speeding tickets. I am looking forward to using the automatic version. But it is just another feature that will eventually make up fully driverless.
Imagine being able to jump in a car, set your destination and have a sleep or read a book while you arrive. Amazing.
Yeah I do feel for people who will lose their jobs. AI has pretty much taken all of my work recently, so I've felt the effects very early. But there's no stopping this revolution. And the roads will be a hell of a lot safer.
The problems introducing driverless cars will not be technological. Given enough time, brain power and resource we can solve any of the issues. Marble Arch? That's nothing compared the the murmurations of a hundred thousand starlings and they've solved their traffic flow problems and a few simple rules and a brain weighing less than 2g. There is absolutely no technological reason why completely autonomous driving cannot be achieved.
The real issues will be political, social and economic. Is there a will to achieve it? How much do we invest in it? Who will invest in it? Who will profit from it? How do ordinary people afford it? How to we secure the technology? How do we manage people's data? How do we get them to consent to collecting data in the first place? How do we prevent people hacking their cars to over-ride the system? Will there still be a planet worth travelling around anyway? These are the big issues. Compared to these, any technological problems pale into insignificance.
Charlton Athletic come over as being a "driverless car", from boardroom to pitch. Wright, Curtis, Kinsey, Campbell et al. All put in what they had for the shirt, and plenty more 'fore and after............ until now? 1960s, real football. Feel sorry for any that have only witnessed "Football C21st". Plastic parasites.
The problems introducing driverless cars will not be technological. Given enough time, brain power and resource we can solve any of the issues. Marble Arch? That's nothing compared the the murmurations of a hundred thousand starlings and they've solved their traffic flow problems and a few simple rules and a brain weighing less than 2g. There is absolutely no technological reason why completely autonomous driving cannot be achieved.
The real issues will be political, social and economic. Is there a will to achieve it? How much do we invest in it? Who will invest in it? Who will profit from it? How do ordinary people afford it? How to we secure the technology? How do we manage people's data? How do we get them to consent to collecting data in the first place? How do we prevent people hacking their cars to over-ride the system? Will there still be a planet worth travelling around anyway? These are the big issues. Compared to these, any technological problems pale into insignificance.
There is a case that there is an advantage in being at the forefront of such a fundamental change in driving. We still have the engineers and resources but do we have Governments capable of taking the opportunities. Without trying to be political, certainly not this one.
You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Driving is in the main a laborious, tedious frustrating process that is tailor made to be taken over by technology when the time is right. It will be safer, faster and reduce accidents. Like any technological leap forward it will sideline some jobs and AI in general will have the potential to sideline even more. The future of how mankind adapts to more people not doing anything meaningful is as big a challenge as anything that’s gone before. Look at old film footage of central London around 1900. The streets were literally full of horses pulling everything from people to goods. Imagine the behind the scenes industries that serviced that. Blacksmiths, grooms, stables, harness and saddle makers, horse trough water fillers, knackers yards and probably more. What’s to come with AI will dwarf that. There won’t be jobs for everyone in fifty years from now.
Comments
Only way it works is if every car on a motorway is using it, and all manoeuvre around each other seamlessly according to how long they are on that road for and what junction they are turning off at, if they can do that and set the upper speed limit much higher then it will cut long journey times down significantly
Continuing to develop the technology to reduce the risk of driver error is where the future should be. The driver must always remain in control to override the technology when it gets it wrong.
My Audi will sometimes initiate emergency braking when it thinks I am heading towards pedestrians because it thinks I am going straight on instead of following the curve of the road. Technology will never be able to react to an un-precedented situation until it has already learnt to react correctly, so should never be sold as anything other than a driver aid, not a replacement of the driver.
Having used it for a few years now I can’t imagine not driving without automatic cruise control. It reduces driving fatigue significantly in my view, particularly in poor visibility, so is making me safer, but should not be promoted as providing a driverless experience, only improved safety.
A number of years ago I saw on TV a demo with 3 drones flying in a large room/small warehouse. The operators were trying to crash them into each other but failed because the drones were programed not to crash. I think this takes care of 'Marble Arch'. The tech doesn't 'think' about problems in the same way you do. It will be reacting very quickly as problems arise and circumnavigate them.
The driverless tech IS being developed bit by bit and installed in cars as and when appropriate, so that when the time comes for full driverless, much of the underlying tech has been in operation for years/decades.
As for your Audi going around bends, my new Volvo 'helps' me round bends. I've only done a couple of trips so I'll report back later on how useful/effective it is.
I used cruise control constantly in my previous cars, especially to avoid speeding tickets. I am looking forward to using the automatic version. But it is just another feature that will eventually make up fully driverless.
Yeah I do feel for people who will lose their jobs. AI has pretty much taken all of my work recently, so I've felt the effects very early. But there's no stopping this revolution. And the roads will be a hell of a lot safer.
The real issues will be political, social and economic. Is there a will to achieve it? How much do we invest in it? Who will invest in it? Who will profit from it? How do ordinary people afford it? How to we secure the technology? How do we manage people's data? How do we get them to consent to collecting data in the first place? How do we prevent people hacking their cars to over-ride the system? Will there still be a planet worth travelling around anyway? These are the big issues. Compared to these, any technological problems pale into insignificance.