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Self-Driving Cars Don't Need to be Perfect

posted by martyb on Monday January 04 2016, @07:25AM   
from the how-long-could-they-last-in-Boston? dept.

fliptop writes:

Link

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

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Original Submission

• Re:Unreal expectations of self driving cars Re:Unreal expectations of self driving cars (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 04 2016, @01:07PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 04 2016, @01:07PM (#284474)

  > Imagine 10000 cars driving off of a collapsed bridge in to a canyon before the error is caught.

  Quick thought: If any of you knows anybody working on these, ask them what the car will do with the information "the car in front of me just vanished".

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• Re:Unreal expectations of self driving cars Re:Unreal expectations of self driving cars (Score: 2) by Nuke on Monday January 04 2016, @02:58PM

  by Nuke (3162) on Monday January 04 2016, @02:58PM (#284525)

  "Go faster" ?

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  • Re:Unreal expectations of self driving cars (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 04 2016, @03:58PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 04 2016, @03:58PM (#284554)

    ...That probably *is* the correct answer.

    They may complain if the lines on the road dis-appear as well though.

    Not sure what a self-driving car would do at a large sink-hole that leaves the lines in tact.

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• Re:Unreal expectations of self driving cars (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 04 2016, @05:08PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 04 2016, @05:08PM (#284589)

  Probably something along the line of "he is not being in the specifications. We are not being make code for that"

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