Autonomous Cars

[Just_a_fan]

Humans basically rely on one sensor - their vision.

Hmm. Really should be tapping abilities of the clairvoyants, [...]

I know, we use prediciton based on experience etc. but our starter for ten is what we can see.

[roon]

I drive as you suggest, unless I have a bit of open road and I'm in the car on my own. Then I might have a bit of fun and then the brakes do get used somewhat more firmly...

Request for non-autonomous mode denied. You are not permitted to endanger others upon public roads without sufficient credits in your account.

-Central control

[Just_a_fan]

Are you saying that you think AV software today can use a simple camera and be as good humans?
Im somewhat confused, as I was replying to a post that said cars have most of the sensors they need today, and I was pointing out that they didn't to get a reasonable level of safety.

I think the point is that we are where we are with human driver safety after 100+ years of humans driving cars on roads. To expect AVs to hit the ground running and be close to perfect from day one is rather unfair. Today AVs might be so-so but I bet a small pot of beans that in 5 years they'll be much better and 5 years after that they'll be eclipsing human drivers in most cases. That'll be zero to nearly hero in a decade. Not bad, it seems to me.

My cut off for AVs being used wholesale on the road is that they should be no worse than the average human driver. In that case, they present no increase in risk to all road users. In a short time period, AVs will progress to being better than average humans, then equivalent to the top 10 percent, then the top 1 percent. Human drivers, taken on masse, don't really improve very much after a year or two behind the wheel. They get lazy / distracted by life / whatever and that's it. AVs can be improved even during their own service life time with systems upgrades etc.

It's funny how people are happy to sit in a metal tube at 500mph and trust their lives to an AV system but they don't like the idea of AV cars.

[Just_a_fan]

I drive as you suggest, unless I have a bit of open road and I'm in the car on my own. Then I might have a bit of fun and then the brakes do get used somewhat more firmly...

Request for non-autonomous mode denied. You are not permitted to endanger others upon public roads without sufficient credits in your account.

-Central control

No doubt that day will come on the roads. And people will use track days to let off steam...

[theblackangus]

What I would like to pick up on here is variables. Not just between one sensor (person) and another, but the same on at different times and at different parts of the life curve. Yes you can have a very good very safe driver, but if the kids are playing hell in the back and the wife is standing on the roadside where he was not expecting her to be picked up, the 'loop' will not be the same as optimum.

The other huge advantage is human drivers never know what the other vehicles are about to do. We know what they are supposed to do and what we think the are gong to do. The autonomous car will know because they will be in constant exchange with the other vehicles. No guesswork.

There will still be accidents, there always will, but far less and probably far less severe than now.

That is a good conversation topic, but separate from the quote you used from me.
My point was that cars need a variety of sensors to work well and get to point where they are as safe as an undistracted human in 95% of the driving scenarios.

AV's will have advantages over humans for sure from the distraction stand point, but they have disadvantages as well at least in the nearish term. (Adaptability, threat recognition, etc)

I'm on the fence about talking with each other, this seems like a risk to me as much as a benefit.
We have a very hard time making secure networks and I don't want someone to brick my car remotely because they are feeling like an ***.

[roon]

I drive as you suggest, unless I have a bit of open road and I'm in the car on my own. Then I might have a bit of fun and then the brakes do get used somewhat more firmly...

Request for non-autonomous mode denied. You are not permitted to endanger others upon public roads without sufficient credits in your account.

-Central control

No doubt that day will come on the roads. And people will use track days to let off steam...

Rewarding aggressive tendencies has been deemed non-essential behavior by the Personal Development Commission. Remote administration of quelling agent commencing.

-Central control

[Big Tea]

Brakes are for slowing, gears are for going.

The days of brakes made from cheese are long gone. Use them, that's what they are there for.

I disagree. I see no reason to floor it until you are 6 inches behind the car in front then stand on the break.
You go just as quickly as the car in front, which is all you can ever do, and get a few fractions extra time if you need it to react. Try it you may deprecate it. A much more relaxed way to get places. But I don't mean hold up the traffic either. There are many who drive that way but you would not know if you were not in the car with them, unless you ask them how long tyres last.

Ah, yes, I see what you mean now. I thought you were rehashing the argument I've had in the past about "using the gears to slow down and only use the brakes as a last resort/to finish slowing". The sort of stuff my dad did when he were a lad, really, because the brakes were rubbish back in the day.

I drive as you suggest, unless I have a bit of open road and I'm in the car on my own. Then I might have a bit of fun and then the brakes do get used somewhat more firmly...

Truth is I'm just lazy

[theblackangus]

I think the point is that we are where we are with human driver safety after 100+ years of humans driving cars on roads. To expect AVs to hit the ground running and be close to perfect from day one is rather unfair. Today AVs might be so-so but I bet a small pot of beans that in 5 years they'll be much better and 5 years after that they'll be eclipsing human drivers in most cases. That'll be zero to nearly hero in a decade. Not bad, it seems to me.

I don't think anyone expects that, but most people expect that if I am getting an AV it will just work. (meaning as good as them or better) and as you say we are not close to that yet. Yes it will get much better as time passes, I don't think anyone disagrees with that. A decade... maybe or maybe not thats hard to tell. I would say no more than 2 decades at most.

My cut off for AVs being used wholesale on the road is that they should be no worse than the average human driver. In that case, they present no increase in risk to all road users. In a short time period, AVs will progress to being better than average humans, then equivalent to the top 10 percent, then the top 1 percent. Human drivers, taken on masse, don't really improve very much after a year or two behind the wheel. They get lazy / distracted by life / whatever and that's it. AVs can be improved even during their own service life time with systems upgrades etc.

Agree totally.

It's funny how people are happy to sit in a metal tube at 500mph and trust their lives to an AV system but they don't like the idea of AV cars.

Flying is a different can or worms all together vs automotive AV. Flying is much less complicated.
And as I stated even current consumer drones have a pretty complex hardware environment to deal with with that.
The hard part of AV isn't the driving, thats easy. Threat recognition and avoidance is the hard part, and so far the software is just not very good at that in a broad diverse environment.

[AJI]

Request for non-autonomous mode denied. You are not permitted to endanger others upon public roads without sufficient credits in your account.

-Central control

No doubt that day will come on the roads. And people will use track days to let off steam...

Rewarding aggressive tendencies has been deemed non-essential behavior by the Personal Development Commission. Remote administration of quelling agent commencing.

-Central control

Huxley, with a touch of Orwell, all mixed up in a big pot of love stew with some terrible Will Smith movie

[Just_a_fan]

Request for non-autonomous mode denied. You are not permitted to endanger others upon public roads without sufficient credits in your account.

-Central control

No doubt that day will come on the roads. And people will use track days to let off steam...

Rewarding aggressive tendencies has been deemed non-essential behavior by the Personal Development Commission. Remote administration of quelling agent commencing.

-Central control

You've been reading too much Huxley and Orwell...

[Big Tea]

What I would like to pick up on here is variables. Not just between one sensor (person) and another, but the same on at different times and at different parts of the life curve. Yes you can have a very good very safe driver, but if the kids are playing hell in the back and the wife is standing on the roadside where he was not expecting her to be picked up, the 'loop' will not be the same as optimum.

The other huge advantage is human drivers never know what the other vehicles are about to do. We know what they are supposed to do and what we think the are gong to do. The autonomous car will know because they will be in constant exchange with the other vehicles. No guesswork.

There will still be accidents, there always will, but far less and probably far less severe than now.

That is a good conversation topic, but separate from the quote you used from me.
My point was that cars need a variety of sensors to work well and get to point where they are as safe as an undistracted human in 95% of the driving scenarios.

AV's will have advantages over humans for sure from the distraction stand point, but they have disadvantages as well at least in the nearish term. (Adaptability, threat recognition, etc)

I'm on the fence about talking with each other, this seems like a risk to me as much as a benefit.
We have a very hard time making secure networks and I don't want someone to brick my car remotely because they are feeling like an ***.

It is the same as not having your radio on in the car. There are dozens of stations all zipping through your car and inbuilt radio, but you use some not others. It also goes back to something mentioned earlier being 'fail safe'.
If your car gets a 'brick' signal, it would examine it and decide this is not safe, ignore it or at very least fall back to a basic 'safe mode' without the bells and whistles while the car sorts its self out.

Again compare with human drivers having a heart attack or stroke while driving. The only 'fallback' here is someone in the passenger seat reaching over and getting off the road.

I am the first to admit we really have little real world idea of what will happen as something may be invented tomorrow that changes everything. It may even be something that completely replaces the car and makes this an irrelevance, a change of circumstance and everyone moving out of town and working from home so there is far less traffic, or something any kid can knock up in the shed and point at any computer controlled machine and make it go loopy. Thinking would change then.

[AJI]

Shall we put a timeline on this? Reading some of the comments you'd think AV's are going to be forcibly introduced tomorrow.

My thinking is:
If the top range currently has level 3, then they will have level 4 in ~7 years and level 5 ~7 years after that. So, top tier level 5 in the early 30's.

When you follow the upgrade path of lesser models (which usually lag 3-4 years behind the top range for mid range models and 3-4 years again for low range models) and it stands to reason that level 5 should implemented on all new vehicles by 2040.

Throw in a government buy-back for old vehicles (in the name of safety) and we're there.

Sound reasonable?

[theblackangus]

It is the same as not having your radio on in the car. There are dozens of stations all zipping through your car and inbuilt radio, but you use some not others. It also goes back to something mentioned earlier being 'fail safe'.
If your car gets a 'brick' signal, it would examine it and decide this is not safe, ignore it or at very least fall back to a basic 'safe mode' without the bells and whistles while the car sorts its self out.

Its not the same as having the radio on. The radio has no need to connect to the control devices of the vehicle, where V2V communication does. Therefore V2V communication has much greater inherent danger. There is no brick signal as such (there better not be!!!) the point is if you allow remote communication there is likely a way to cause some sort of harm via standard computer architecture flaw or software flaws.

Again compare with human drivers having a heart attack or stroke while driving. The only 'fallback' here is someone in the passenger seat reaching over and getting off the road.

Well honestly on the brick comment I wasn't even talking about "while driving" just period =)
My comment wasn't about failure but more vandalism.

I am the first to admit we really have little real world idea of what will happen as something may be invented tomorrow that changes everything. It may even be something that completely replaces the car and makes this an irrelevance, a change of circumstance and everyone moving out of town and working from home so there is far less traffic, or something any kid can knock up in the shed and point at any computer controlled machine and make it go loopy. Thinking would change then.

haah funny you mention this.... because that has already happened
Meet the herf gun:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuus8OtPY0w
I cant find the original video that showed a hand held one that some dude made, but you get the idea.

[theblackangus]

Shall we put a timeline on this? Reading some of the comments you'd think AV's are going to be forcibly introduced tomorrow.

My thinking is:
If the top range currently has level 3, then they will have level 4 in ~7 years and level 5 ~7 years after that. So, top tier level 5 in the early 30's.

When you follow the upgrade path of lesser models (which usually lag 3-4 years behind the top range for mid range models and 3-4 years again for low range models) and it stands to reason that level 5 should implemented on all new vehicles by 2040.

Throw in a government buy-back for old vehicles (in the name of safety) and we're there.

Sound reasonable?

I would buy 2040 as a good guess. (Maybe even 2035)
I don't believe any AV that you can current buy claims level 3. I believe they are all level 2 today.
Various people in the industry suspect that they will skip level 3 entirely and go from level 2 to level 4.
(Not saying this will happen just what I have read in various places)


For everyones reference:
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/au ... fferences/

Level 0: This one is pretty basic. The driver (human) controls it all: steering, brakes, throttle, power. It's what you've been doing all along.

Level 1: This driver-assistance level means that most functions are still controlled by the driver, but a specific function (like steering or accelerating) can be done automatically by the car.

Level 2: In level 2, at least one driver assistance system of "both steering and acceleration/ deceleration using information about the driving environment" is automated, like cruise control and lane-centering. It means that the "driver is disengaged from physically operating the vehicle by having his or her hands off the steering wheel AND foot off pedal at the same time," according to the SAE. The driver must still always be ready to take control of the vehicle, however.

Level 3: Drivers are still necessary in level 3 cars, but are able to completely shift "safety-critical functions" to the vehicle, under certain traffic or environmental conditions. It means that the driver is still present and will intervene if necessary, but is not required to monitor the situation in the same way it does for the previous levels. Jim McBride, autonomous vehicles expert at Ford, said this is "the biggest demarcation is between Levels 3 and 4." He's focused on getting Ford straight to Level 4, since Level 3, which involves transferring control from car to human, can often pose difficulties. "We're not going to ask the driver to instantaneously intervene—that's not a fair proposition," McBride said.

Level 4: This is what is meant by "fully autonomous." Level 4 vehicles are "designed to perform all safety-critical driving functions and monitor roadway conditions for an entire trip." However, it's important to note that this is limited to the "operational design domain (ODD)" of the vehicle—meaning it does not cover every driving scenario.

Level 5: This refers to a fully-autonomous system that expects the vehicle's performance to equal that of a human driver, in every driving scenario—including extreme environments like dirt roads that are unlikely to be navigated by driverless vehicles in the near future.

[strad]

After some of these comments I have to ask something.
Who amongst you has an EV?
Who has popped the bread for an AV?