"This is a great development, considering the recklessness of many young drivers and their relatively high accident rates."
Wow, restricting people's freedom, a great development? Seriously ? Why not restrict access to computers considering the recklessness of "hackers" ? And so on.
You are going to build a bleak future if people do not drive as much.
Imagine that Google's self-driving car efforts come to fruition. That self-driving cars are common, legal, and trusted.
Who needs to drive in that future?
More: Imagine a successor to Zipcar with a fleet of self-driving cars. Who needs to even own a car? You just log in and summon a car from a nearby lot. It's there in a few minutes, and it takes you where you need to go; when you need to go back home, you summon another one.
In the future, owning a car and knowing how to drive it yourself may well be considered eccentric.
Even if that becomes the norm (and I doubt this would happen very fast even in the most optimistic scenarii), I seriously doubt self-driving would disappear. The practice would still continue because for some people and for some occasions, driving is a leisure as well. And I am not just talking about speed, but simply being on the road and going somewhere without precise goal. Just like one can go for a walk and wander around.
GPS-driven cars are not going to be any good for that kind of usage.
It's only a matter of time until human drivers will be banned because they cause too many accidents and impede traffic. Robot cars don't need traffic lights for example, because they can just coordinate their speeds such as to not collide. They can drive much closer to each other at high speeds.
> It's only a matter of time until human drivers will be banned
Last I checked robots still can't vote. And if it came down to voting between Google cars and human cars. Well, fuck Google. Roads are built by taxes, which are paid by people. As long as everyone pays those taxes everyone is entitled to use them.
The self-driving car has been solved for over decades. They behave well on closed tracks and that has never been in dispute. The real development is making them work in an environment with cars, people, bikes, pets, etc.
> Roads are built by taxes, which are paid by people. As long as everyone pays those taxes everyone is entitled to use them.
What if computer-controlled cars were 10X more efficient than human controlled cars? That means 10 times more traffic for the same amount of roads (or the same traffic on 1/10th of the roads). The economic case then becomes tremendous.
I pay taxes. I would like my taxes to be used more efficiently. I don't care for any idiot who wants the freedom to drive their own cars.
> The self-driving car has been solved for over decades.
This is not true at all. Its only recently where autonomous self driving cars in real environments have become viable.
> The real development is making them work in an environment with cars, people, bikes, pets, etc.
I'm sure they would be able to do that, but then we aren't getting the 10x improvement in traffic capacity if a few humans are still allowed to drive (i.e. the safety margins will have to remain human). The allure of self driving cars is not really "we don't have to drive anymore" but "we can utilize our infrastructure and resources way more efficiently."
> I would like my taxes to be used more efficiently.
Democracy isn't about efficiency. It is about effective representation. That means the guy with the 50 year old manual antique has the same say as the guy with the computer-driven Jaguar.
> I don't care for any idiot who wants the freedom to drive their own cars.
Well nothing I say now will really matter. Guys, one guy has the only correct opinion on this matter so skip the debate and proceed straight to tyranny.
> Its only recently where autonomous self driving cars in real environments have become viable.
When I was a kid the local newspaper converted to automated forklifts that loaded and unloaded paper rolls to the presses. And they managed to do this with humans (pressmen, school kids) walking amongst them. Even with 2-ton spools they could stop on a dime. But the warehouse was built for them, embedded sensors, special handling tools, etc. The automation part has been done, it's solved.
And logistically, how do you ensure everyone has one of your cars? Do you give them away for free? You can't force everyone to buy one. And you certainly can't build a road exclusively for it, the public
I'll assume you live in a first world country with plenty of expensive infrastructure that you guys were happy to pay for. Now imagine you live in a city like Beijing where traffic is bad...not just bad...but hellish. There is not much space to build roads even if they have money, there are 30,000 taxis and a few hundred thousand private cars AND NOT MUCH PARKING. The problem is extreme, the solution will be extreme; it helps that the government is autocratic.
Now say Beijing implements the change: within the 5th ring road, autonomous cars only. Most people don't own one of these cars, but its fine...the city and various private companies have a fleet of 100k or so that they treat basically as taxies. Because no humans are involved in the system, they can achieve 10x densities, basically solving traffic, parking, and pollution problems overnight.
Could your average human being handle tailgating and slack-free synchronous movement of a bunch of cars? Of course not! That's why they aren't driving anymore. Could we disable the system outside of cities without traffic? Ya, but in China, the traffic and infrastructure problems are everywhere, it will catch on.
Now your western cities, they don't have traffic problems mostly, not on this scale. But these cities will then have to compete economically with other cities with the system. Its a world market, if it the new system is 10x better, the other cities will have to follow to remain competitive; perhaps some Disney like places will exist where people can drive cars, but that is how the future works!
Yes, sorry this was a figure of speech. I could have used Luddite as a more reasonable/representative term, my point is not to disparage their point of view (which they have good reasons to have), but to call it out as anachronistic in a rapidly advancing world.
Imagine how out of place/disruptive a horse buggy/donkey cart would be on a motorcar street (I don't have to imagine, unfortunately). Now, they pay taxes too, don't they have a right to be there no matter how disruptive that is?
Well yes, but this argument is made over and over again about cyclists - that they are a disruption and should not be allowed on the streets, especially in the cities which are hard to drive through as they are. Yet I fully support the argument that they are paying taxes and have the same right to use the road as everyone else. And yes, that includes horse-drawn carriages and donkey carts.
However, all European motorways ban vehicles that cannot go faster than 30mph(50kmh) from them, because they are supposed to be used for fast travel only, so there is a certain amount of people banned from using them,purely because they don't have a car and can't use motorways on a moped or a bicycle - even thought they pay taxes so their "rights" are somehow violated for the good of others. So I imagine that major motorways and maybe town centers could be made automatic-only. But, in the countryside, if somebody wants to drive in manual,why not? There is little joy in driving in the city,with all the tragic jams and such,but driving on the empty, countryside roads is a different matter entirely.
The comparison with cyclists isn't completely apt, though. I can't really think of an empirical benefit for human-driven cars over computer-driven (assuming there's a manual mode that can be activated outside the cities and off freeways), but governments have incentives to encourage cycling (smaller parking footprint (municipal government spends less on parking spaces), less wear on the road (lowers maintenance costs), health benefits for the riders (lower public health costs), less fuel usage (improves energy independence), etc.). I'll not make an argument about whether those factors outweigh the inconvenience of motorists dodging cyclists on the road, but I don't think there are any analogous reasons it might be a good idea to allow human-driven cars on the road with autonomous cars.
Seat belts can't vote either but insurance companies can, and much more effectively than you or I. And since they are the one who ends up paying the bill I can see them forcing people into self driving cars as soon as the numbers make sense.
My car runs software from 1997 without any issue. A well-built and properly isolated core shouldn't be a problem. No reputable manufacturer would give a user-installable piece of code a connection to the systems that control movement.
That is the whole point of this fuss, though. Way too many systems, from nuclear plants to manufacturers to traffic controllers are exposed to the internet (often through backdoors in LANs) and are vulnerable to network exploits.
It is the faults of the designers they make them visible like that, but they do it, and it is an issue.
Has this been the case with network-connected cars? You'd think some app developer somewhere would love the notoriety of blowing the whistle on poor isolation.
Wow, restricting people's freedom, a great development? Seriously ? Why not restrict access to computers considering the recklessness of "hackers" ? And so on.
You are going to build a bleak future if people do not drive as much.