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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: 3, Insightful) by MostCynical on Monday January 04 2016, @08:47AM
this issue, then is threshold: what level of competence is required to have a car that drives itself better than even an average driver?
No, scratch that - bar set way too low - "average" drivers are crap, that is why so many people die on the roads.
A self-driving car should be able to get from A to B without breaking the law or hittting anything - basically, the same as passing most driving tests.
Society must then accept that driving requires the driver to not break the law, either.
Yes, "we all do 70 in a 55 zone". We are all breaking the law. So, either we all need to stop breaking the law, or get the speed limit changed.
Personal responsibility.
Law.
Break one, break them all.
Pick and choose - Just like people apply the bible!
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday January 04 2016, @08:55PM
Society must then accept that driving requires the driver to not break the law, either.
Yes, "we all do 70 in a 55 zone". We are all breaking the law. So, either we all need to stop breaking the law, or get the speed limit changed.
Can't be done.
You can't change the speed limit to match people's actual driving speed, because the local municipality makes too much money on fines.
And you can't have auto-cars driving either, because they're going to get socked with tickets: if they speed, they'll get speeding tickets and the manufacturers will be sued out the wazoo and stop selling auto-cars. If they don't speed, then they'll get "impeding the flow of traffic" tickets because everyone else is speeding.
There is no solution for this problem which doesn't involve the complete destruction of current society.
My prediction is that auto-cars will become a big hit in some small, socialized countries with good governance. In the US, we won't have them because of the above.