Sadly not the retired people of today. This is a little pessimistic, but fully self-driving cars where they basically guarantee that you won't have to touch the wheel, or are level 5 autonomous, will likely take another 30+ years to mature. Hopefully we'll see this in the lifetime of boomers, and we'll get to hear tales about how everyone used to text and drive, while now everyone just texts while the car drives itself.
There are intermediate steps. Lots of retired people live in specific communities which could control the layout of their streets and make them very compatible with self driving cars. Just community <-> medical center would be huge. Nearest grocer, bus terminal and that would cover a lot.
Maybe. I don't believe all retired people would require a full level 5. They don't have the daily commute.
They're in a fairly unique position that, if it's raining or snowing, whatever they needed the car for, they'd probably wait anyway. They're also able to schedule transport form say, 10 AM to 4 PM and only in optimal conditions.
I can envision a system where you hop in the car and hit the button, and the car checks weather and traffic and then responds, sorry, no can't do that now. That really wouldn't meet my needs, but it would meet my grandma's needs.
Heck there are parts of Arizona where the laws could be changed, controlling speed and access that would make level 3 good enough. Mostly the rule is just _go slow_. Everybody is different, though i can imagine people given the choice of a level three or no car, would probably take the level three. The car won't drive you across the country, but it'll get you to the grocery store if the weather is good.
30 years ago the most powerful intel cpu was a 386.
I’d be very careful to make predictions with absolute certainty like you given that we have already a level 4 commercial self driving service in Phoenix and it will expand in other cities during the course of the year.
It’s also worth noting that until 5 years ago the absolute earliest and optimistic prediction was to have self driving cars in 2020, and this prediction has already been beaten.
Which is "good enough". People who have the choice between "no car" and "self driving car that sometimes refuses to start because of the weather" will still prefer the latter, as long as it's not too frequent in their climate.
Not being able to drive on certain roads because of road quality and other restrictions also become much more acceptable if you alternative is not having a car at all.
> People who have the choice between "no car" and "self driving car that sometimes refuses to start because of the weather" will still prefer the latter, as long as it's not too frequent in their climate.
This. As an anecdote, my grandmother still drives, but does not drive at night, or in bad weather.
No, no. It's not about refusing to start or anything like that.
In places that have winter it's not some roads. It's all roads. The surfaces will be completely covered for months. There will not be reliably or static visual indicators. People will park haphazardly and arbitrarily. People will act like people and form new arbitrary lanes to drive in. Parking lots will be free for alls. This is not something that only occurs during snow events. It's a multi-month permanent thing.
Interpreting this all and driving safely requires an general understanding of the environment and human behavior that machines just won't have for a very long time. It's hard enough for humans.
I live in a place that has a month of snow or so each year. But we also have snow plows and road salt, so the time roads are actually covered in snow are limited unless you are in the middle of nowhere.
Of course there are places where it's worse, and the US tends to have more extreme winters because of their unique geography (no mountain ranges that block wind from the North, combined with a huge land mass in the North). But that's the exception, most inhabited places have very managable winters.
Ok. I am talking specifically about Minnesota, Wisconsin, (upper) Michigan, (northern) Iowa, North and South Dakota. These are not desolate places in the middle of nowhere. They are very inhabited. I specifically live in a state university city. These places have well established snow infrastructure. And what I said before is still true.
The winter I describe does exist. It exists for many tens of millions of people in the USA in many states.
"Move fast and break things - having lawyers clean up a mess is still a good value proposition, crimes for progress are soon forgiven" is not quite the autonomy I was hoping for.
I agree that true AV is way off but it seems like there’s a huge amount of good with partial systems (e.g. continuing to improve auto-braking to deal with inattention) and it’s not inconceivable that you’d see some popular retirement destinations (e.g. much of South Florida) do something like designated lanes for AVs (passenger or delivery) where you could simplify the problem and have things like weather/hour restrictions.
Retirees tend to avoid rush hour and bad weather, and they’re less time constrained, so there’s some room for experiments and there will be a growing incentive as more Boomers become unsafe to drive but are unwilling to give up a key part of their self-identity & lifestyle.
for places with shitshow traffic, very erratic drivers, tons of roadwork and pot holes, such as new york, yeah maybe 30 years, probably never. but the rest 95% of the country can be handled by self driving tech in 3-5 years.
"The rest of the country" also includes places with extreme weather (mostly snow and ice) and unpaved rural and forest service roads. In 3-5 years I see self driving cars being able to handle maybe 10-20 percent of the roads most of the time, and probably having huge blackout sections of the country for months of the year.
I live down a dirt forest service road that’s off a 2-lane 45mph paved road that gains 3000 vertical feet in 16 miles.
Yesterday it was snowing and there were 4 accidents during the evening commute. 2 were rollovers- SUVs taking a turn too fast for the conditions. 1 hit an elk- driver not paying adequate attention to the side of the road. 1 spun out and hit the ditch.
I think most of these accidents were easily avoidable with currently available technology. Simply driving slower and more cautiously would’ve prevented 3 of the 4 accidents yesterday.
fully would be ideal, but even partial would help. Last week a young woman lost use of her legs after some 80yo driver lost control. A bit of danger aware control system may be able to turn this into a lower level accident. Now maybe that would be too hard to ensure and insure..
I wish we would re-test drivers every few years after retirement. I see 70-80 year old drivers on the road every day driving in an unsafe manner. I dread the time when I have to take my parent’s licenses away.
That is interesting. At the same time I wonder about the data source. I’d imagine these are pulled from insurance/police data.
Anecdotally, I’ve been hit by senior citizens 3 times. All were very minor fender benders in parking lots or at traffic lights. In each case, I didn’t have the nerve to put them through insurance. We settled it personally and never reported to anyone.
Is it possible there are a lot of people like me that take pity on these older drivers and don’t report accidents?
Another common theme I see around me is when you’re in a corridor where most drivers are speeding by 5-10mph and there’s the one person in the left lane going 10mph under the limit. They’re usually a senior citizen. That creates bottlenecks and potentially dangerous situations behind the slow driver. They could be a contributing factor to accidents and wouldn’t be included in these statistics.
I suppose you could argue that those speeding are causing the accident because they’ve broken the law. It’s a fair argument.
I was wondering if (instead of level 5 self driving) there could be a simple inter car protocol to communicate presence/distance/range so that car could warn or even slow down (smoothly) when signal is caught.
That sounds workable, and could be implemented in parallel - with two caveats: what of unconnected vehicles (not using this transponder), and what of malicious data (e.g. faking road jams for fun and profit)
I think that France has been discussing or even passing a law going away from lifetime driving license to periodic checks. It's indeed a good idea. I know it's an effort on the people but we all know it's a lot better this way. Who knows, some people might even learn about their limits and find ways to relearn/improve instead of being blind.
