Don
Pretty sure this is a thread on Autonomous Vehicles, not a discussion about parking spaces
Autonomous Vehicles
- Thread starter adam cool dude
- Start date
One of the problems at the moment is the autonomous vehicles get rear ended... a lot.
Apparently idiots can’t keep a safe distance from the car in front.
Jigger, as the world expert on autonomy I really recommend you hand write some letters* to those companies wasting hundreds of millions on a dead end. You best write letters to governments as well explaining what they’re doing is a waste and dangerous.
It would save everyone so much time!
*I would suggest type, but we all know computers just aren’t reliable enough to write a letter; and email, well... they have a tendency to get lost, fall of a cliff out of the blue and then land on a schoolkids desktop before blowing up, wiping out entire schools. The humble postie has never lost a letter or had an accident.
You’re still missing the point of all this.
Even if every so often (perhaps every half a million miles - how often are roads washed out, rockfalls happen or lead cows rooted to the spot for days in a western country?) someone has to take control of the vehicle the cost to the haulier is significantly lower.
Take Eddie Stobart. They have over 2000 vehicles on the road. That’s a lot of drivers and a lot of wages. In a world of automation that’s 2000 sets of wages not needed any more, 2000 less expenses claims for food/rooms/transport etc., 2000 less NI and pensions contributions. Instead all they would need is half a dozen or so dispatchers commuting to a central location from home, working 8 hours a day, to control all those vehicles (and occasionally take over if needed).
The cost savings for a company that size would be astronomical, especially if saved in tandom with a move to electric vehicles.
Now that’s obviously not going to happen in the next 10 years, but it’s most likely the future and why truck drivers are (rightly) worries about it, and why most operators are keenly interested.
That’s the reason so many companies are plowing huge sums into getting automation to a commercial product. If one can do it a few years before any other they are going to make a killing.
Tesla have shown an example of what could happen in this scenario. The car wouldn’t need to park on your street at all. It drops you off, then drives around the block and finds a parking space. Then when you want to make a trip in your car again you call it back and it picks you up at your door.
Soldato
227 is nothing of the sort.
I see deer quite a lot, my location mat give that away. They get startled by the lights, a quick toot, like as short as possible wakes them up and they leg it away from the lights.
All those AI (tip your cluelessly going on about AI, its not AI, its following simple logic statements, AI learns) are helping to improve poor drivers.
Breach of the peace lol, probably a mile from the nearest house.
Your clear and utter lack of technology is showing with spook a driverless car into doing something silly, honestly of all the simple statements I have heard for someone to think a beep on the horn would send some driverless car into some sort of meltdown made me lol more than anything for years. If thats what you think could happen now it all makes sense why you seem to keep finding so many problems with this tech.
I bet our dark warehouse would blow you mind. Yes its literally dark inside, the VNAs that operate in there do so in the dark, what magic is this that they can see in the dark lol
Edit to add that I don't mean drivers that are inherently poor, they my have had a bad day at work, maybe they had a fight with the Mrs, so for that period of time their mind is elsewhere not actively focusing on driving. Or they are just a bad driver who things going through red lights is acceptable, we don't know, just that they aren't that good at that point in time.
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Jigger, as the world expert on autonomy I really recommend you hand write some letters* to those companies wasting hundreds of millions on a dead end. You best write letters to governments as well explaining what they’re doing is a waste and dangerous.
It would save everyone so much time!
*I would suggest type, but we all know computers just aren’t reliable enough to write a letter; and email, well... they have a tendency to get lost, fall of a cliff out of the blue and then land on a schoolkids desktop before blowing up, wiping out entire schools. The humble postie has never lost a letter or had an accident.
I do think a lot of this development will have value. If nothing else the level of study will make governments look at the standards of roads and hopfully target accident prone drivers.
Once AI is safe enough and if applicable I would have no problem forcing dodgy drivers into AI cars. Maybe if they observed the car enough it would help them improve. Same with HGV. Having a layer of automation to take over in a case of an emergency would be a great benefit. Again you could use the AI to help an inexperianced driver and have that extra level of safety.
Soldato
You've not that through have you?
That the research alone has value?
Hold up AMP, we might have to start writing letters. Joe T could be onto something.
Soldato
It was the reference to 'dodgy' drivers being forced into 'AI' cars.
You don't think AI could help make the worse driver better or we shouldn't force dangerous drivers into automated cars?
Soldato
Which Level of Automation would this work with? 1? 2? 3? 4?
How would a mix of driver and driver-less cars work on the same piece of road?
What's your definition of a 'dodgy' driver? Is it innocent until proven guilty? Also, not all 'dodgy' drivers get caught speeding or get involved in accidents.
Do you consider yourself a driving god? I noted earlier you compared your own driving record (i.e. a sample of 1) with the total record for all hours that driverless cars have driven. I'm sure you know that that's not how statistics should be used and applied.
Soldato
But you judged me earlier and in nearly 30 years I have a count of both added together as zero.
Anyway I still think more drivers would jump at the chance to go into a far safer vehicle, numerous reasons
- It should be less stressful, ie just plug in destination and it gets you there
- Companies will probably go for it as it should lower insurance premiums as less chance of a rogue employee causing lots of crashes and screwing the claims performance
- Companies can get employees who spend hours sitting behind the wheel of a car doing something useful
- People will get to spend loads of time looking at beautiful bovines rampaging around, or standing still in the roads, beautiful rock falls etc
- Once critical traction is gained I suspect you wont get "manual cars" as such, they will go fully automated, having multiple versions adds cost
- I suspect once there is no need to have driver cars and once they are proven as safer people wanting to go old school will pay significantly more in insurance, just a gut feel
- You will be able to go to the pub in one and home afterwards, that for me would sell it to me
If automation is safe enough to be use for bad/non drivers then what’s the issue of using it with normal and good drivers?
And if it’s going to take over in an emergency, then it’s presumably better than the driver in the first place?
What you’re basically talking about is what is available in most cars now, things like lane assistance, ABS, parking assistance, blind spot monitoring, adaptive cruise control, ESP. That’s a combination of level one and level two automation.
The next step is to integrate that all into one system and allow it to be used most of the time, outside of a few more difficult circumstances. This is level 4, which is what car and HGV manufacturers are testing right now, with the aim of having it available to some extent in the next 3-4 years (legislation dependant). At this level people can sit in the drivers seat (or in the case of an HGV the sleeper) and do other things, as long as they’re available to take over with around 30 seconds warning.*
The eventual aim is level 5. This is where a vehicle can go anywhere without any assistance at all from anyone. This is a much longer aim, and is realistically probably 30 years away.
Level 4 is all that’s really needed for most taxi/bus services and certain transport routes. Automation in set areas that can be surveyed at a reasonable detail. That could be a specific town/city or certain national routes along main roads. Taxis are likely to come first, probably reasonably widespread** in the next 3-5 years (see the Pittsburg example mentioned previously). HGVs probably a bit longer. IMO in the region of 10 years before they start popping up.
Also, I recommend looking up illusionary superiority.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority
Presumably this won’t apply to you because you’re one of the 93% of people that believe they’re better than the average driver?
*the aim being they would only have to take over every few hours, at least in most areas. Most probably because of things like extremely poor roads.
** widespread in as much as there will be some automated taxis in multiple cities/countries, rather than most taxis being automated.
Perhaps you are right afterall.
Soldato
Out of interest. Is this something the general public really wants?
Soldato
I would say most haven't thought about it, but once they did they would go for it
Yes it would be nice to choose every so often, but on balance driving for most people most of the time is wasted time.
Driving can be fun, it can also be monotonous and tiring.
Fun driving is always available, karting, tracking, etc, monotonous driving is what most of us probably face more often than real fun driving. Its why people head off to known "fun" roads, and often end up in accidents
Soldato
I want people to abide by the laws which would make everything safer, I don't care if things are expensive, lots of things are.
I would say anyone who can afford to run a car properly and legally in the UK can afford karting or a track day. They would have to give something else up, thats how life works unless you have unlimited money available.
The roads are not for racing or really shouldn't be for pushing on either as most people do not do it safely but thats a completely different issue.
Will be interesting to see, I struggle to see a government banning "driver cars" but equally over a sustained period of time i see they dying out.
Plenty of reasons, but one will be critical mass. Think how petrol stations have declined, low margins etc, add into the mix the point where 50% of drivers are now EV, at that point I am sure lots of petrol stations will stop running them, or the price will go up very significantly, it has to to balance cost vs revenue. That will really start the vicious cycle.
I can envision a day there will be no real option to run a petrol station, and at that point you will have to switch to a specialist supplier, think like heating oil. So by that point only real real petrol heads would even consider wanting to drive a ICE car.
Also by then they will probably be slow and horrible places to be compared to a modern Ev at that point.
For these same reasons I don't think there will be a switch to motorbikes, they still require the fuel
Thats also assuming that later in the cycle govrnments do not massively load old fossil fuels, they cant right now, but when 90% are using Ev do you think they cant make the move, I would suggest they can at that point.
Sure you can buy petrol/diesel, but due to economics of supply and demand and tax its now £100 a litre, how would you like me to top up sir?
IMO we are lucky in a way, we will probably be able to see our driving days out having access to affordable ICE cars, and by the time driving starts to become an issue for me due to age, there may well be level 5 available.
I would say anyone who can afford to run a car properly and legally in the UK can afford karting or a track day. They would have to give something else up, thats how life works unless you have unlimited money available.
The roads are not for racing or really shouldn't be for pushing on either as most people do not do it safely but thats a completely different issue.
Will be interesting to see, I struggle to see a government banning "driver cars" but equally over a sustained period of time i see they dying out.
Plenty of reasons, but one will be critical mass. Think how petrol stations have declined, low margins etc, add into the mix the point where 50% of drivers are now EV, at that point I am sure lots of petrol stations will stop running them, or the price will go up very significantly, it has to to balance cost vs revenue. That will really start the vicious cycle.
I can envision a day there will be no real option to run a petrol station, and at that point you will have to switch to a specialist supplier, think like heating oil. So by that point only real real petrol heads would even consider wanting to drive a ICE car.
Also by then they will probably be slow and horrible places to be compared to a modern Ev at that point.
For these same reasons I don't think there will be a switch to motorbikes, they still require the fuel
Thats also assuming that later in the cycle govrnments do not massively load old fossil fuels, they cant right now, but when 90% are using Ev do you think they cant make the move, I would suggest they can at that point.
Sure you can buy petrol/diesel, but due to economics of supply and demand and tax its now £100 a litre, how would you like me to top up sir?
IMO we are lucky in a way, we will probably be able to see our driving days out having access to affordable ICE cars, and by the time driving starts to become an issue for me due to age, there may well be level 5 available.
Soldato
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I think the same as all of that