SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the how-long-could-they-last-in-Boston? dept.
A little while back, I saw the following tweet:
I can print mostly. My wifi works often. The Xbox usually recognises me. Siri sometimes works. But my self driving car will be *perfect*.
The tweet has since been deleted, so I won't name the author, but it's a thought-provoking idea. At first, I agreed with it. I'm a programmer and know full well just how shoddy is 99.9% of the code we all write. The idea that I would put my life in the hands of a coder like myself is a bit worrying.
[...] The reality is that self-driving cars don't need to be perfect. They just need to be better than the alternative: human-driven cars. And that is a much lower bar, as human beings are remarkably bad at driving.
[...] Self-driving cars don't get tired. They don't get drunk. They don't get distracted by friends or a crying baby. They don't look away from the road to send a text message. They don't speed, tailgate, brake too late, forget to show a blinker, drive too fast in bad weather, run red lights, race other cars at red lights, or miss exits. Self-driving cars aren't going to be perfect, but they will be a hell of a lot better than you and me.
Related: The High-Stakes Race to Rid the World of Human Drivers
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 04 2016, @08:46AM
One thing automated cars have trouble with is looking ahead.
The other week, I got confused by extraneous lines on the road. Instead on veering for the exit (as the Telsa has actually been seen to do). I held my line because I knew that the road continued ahead. (The week prior to that I almost got into trouble for not following a random line: the road under construction did veer to the side.)
That is one reason you are advised to take the same route every day too: you learn what the route looks like. I am too paranoid for that, but it means I often have to drive slower.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 04 2016, @12:56PM
That's a double-edged sword. There have been several accidents where the driver later explained "but the train doesn't usually pass at that time".
Especially things like road signs being changed don't get noticed by people driving the same route every day.