Tuesday 3 October 2017

Autonomous Vehicles

There has been a lot of talk about autonomous vehicles, something which I would quite enjoy, and lots of outfits are working on developing one. 
 
One of their alleged 'virtues' is that they will be 'safer' than cars driven by humans.
 
Hmmm.
 
Have you noticed how much you use eye contact with other road uses when you are driving or walking around?  There's a junction I have to use on my way home from work and the only way you can ever join the traffic stream is if you engage with a motorist in it by eye contact and they then let you in.  Is that going to happen with robots?  This also applies to pedestrian crossings, or even just some hooray deciding to cross the road randomly.
 
Apropos of this, Dutch research ( and actions https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2017/sep/22/what-happens-if-you-turn-off-the-traffic-lights ) showed that making it more necessary for road users to engage like this, rather than relying on traffic lights and other traffic management techniques, reduced accidents and made people happier.
 
Perhaps we'll have to wait for proper autonomous vehicles until they can benefit from Sirius Cybernetic Corporation GPP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_in_The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Sirius_Cybernetics_Corporation ) .  If so I don't think I want a depressed one..
 
Ho hum.

8 comments:

L fairfax said...

I have heard people say that one problem with autonomous vehicles is how will they interact with each other and with people.
Saying that, it is probably solvable.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Where's the fun? What's the point? Take the bus/train or take the car. Self drivers combine the worst of both of those things.

Rich Tee said...

I think it's all a bit over-hyped. Same with robots. This was predicted in the 1950s and 1970s as well.

I don't think that it's possible to build a driverless vehicle that can cope with every situation it is likely to face. Unless roads can be rebuilt to have magnetic guides under the tarmac, or visual guides along the road edges, or on overhead gantries. But nobody is talking about that.

It seems to me to be a distraction exercise, to take people's mind off gloomy subjects like terrorism, immigration and housing etc.

L fairfax said...

@Rich Tee
"It seems to me to be a distraction exercise, to take people's mind off gloomy subjects like terrorism, immigration and housing etc."
Very kind of Google to spend money just to entertain us.
@"Mark Wadsworth
Where's the fun? What's the point?"
Some people don't like driving but want the freedom and can't afford a chauffeur.
Also if a self driving car were the same price as a normal one, young people could save the cost and time of driving lessons etc and spend the money on something else.
It would be brilliant for people who live in the countryside and can't easily get to the pub by other forms of transport.
(None of the above are true for me but I can imagine them being true for others).

Rich Tee said...

@L Fairfax

Yes, because Google self-driving car engineers are such sensible, grounded people.

"Silicon Valley engineer starts religion worshipping AI"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4927082/Silicon-Valley-engineer-founds-religion-worship-AI.html

Rich Tee said...

@L Fairfax

"young people could save the cost and time of driving lessons etc"

People will still have to learn to drive as they will still have to take over in an emergency, like pilots still have to learn how to fly a plane even though most journeys are done on auto-pilot.

Mark Wadsworth said...

@ LF, people can walk or take the bus, train, a taxi, hitch a lift. Those are the obvious alternative to driving a car. You can minimise your journey times by moving somewhere near town or on a bus route etc. No need to invent self-crashing cars.

paulc156 said...

What durprised me about self driving cars is that some are already on the road in the UK. 60K a piece Teslas but still I thought that would be in breach of some law. I think due to the number of traffic collisions caused by adrenaline junkies or just erratic driving or even momentary lapses of attention or tailgating etc etc etc...it should be quite simple for self driving cars to reduce the number of collisions in fairly dhort order.