Google Reveals Its Electric Self-Driving Car Prototype

[Dimitriov]

It looks like one of Robocop's buttocks.

Seriously though, even if the tech is sound, I wouldn't get in. It's like what they said on Top Gear. "Half of all plane crashes are pilot error. And planes can take off, fly and land themselves, so if you took away the pilot, logically, the number of crashes would half. But would you get in a plane with no pilot?" (at this point the general consensus was no).

I would totally get in a plane that did not have a pilot if it was safer. But that logic is really flawed as it fails to take into account plane crashes avoided by the pilot that would have resulted from hardware error. Instruments can fail and pilots are able to make up the difference with the ability to adapt. I would prefer an automated plane with an optional manual override with a trained pilot who could take over if needed.

However, cars are not planes, driving is not flying, and the average driver is not a pilot. The primary reason a pilot is needed is for complex adaptation to unexpected situations. The situations that arise in driving are much simpler to resolve and the average driver is significantly less skilled than the average pilot. Everyone can drive, and that is the big problem. Everyone sucks at driving and they cause all sorts of easily avoided accidents.

So the sooner these things replace normal cars the better.

Yeeeaaaah... actually flying is a lot easier in most ways. You ever look up and see all those obstacles in the sky? The dogs? The little kid on a bicycle coming out of a blind alley? No?

Right the sky is pretty much empty. That's why robots have been flying planes for many years already, and they're still trying to make the car adaptive enough for the real world.


And here's the damn question I have been asking since I first heard about this years ago, and which NO NEWS STORY HAS AS YET EVEN BOTHERED TO ADDRESS: if one of these cars does get in an accident who the fuck is legally at fault? The manufacturer? The idiot taking a nap inside?

 

[DrOswald]

It looks like one of Robocop's buttocks.

Seriously though, even if the tech is sound, I wouldn't get in. It's like what they said on Top Gear. "Half of all plane crashes are pilot error. And planes can take off, fly and land themselves, so if you took away the pilot, logically, the number of crashes would half. But would you get in a plane with no pilot?" (at this point the general consensus was no).

I would totally get in a plane that did not have a pilot if it was safer. But that logic is really flawed as it fails to take into account plane crashes avoided by the pilot that would have resulted from hardware error. Instruments can fail and pilots are able to make up the difference with the ability to adapt. I would prefer an automated plane with an optional manual override with a trained pilot who could take over if needed.

However, cars are not planes, driving is not flying, and the average driver is not a pilot. The primary reason a pilot is needed is for complex adaptation to unexpected situations. The situations that arise in driving are much simpler to resolve and the average driver is significantly less skilled than the average pilot. Everyone can drive, and that is the big problem. Everyone sucks at driving and they cause all sorts of easily avoided accidents.

So the sooner these things replace normal cars the better.

Yeeeaaaah... actually flying is a lot easier in most ways. You ever look up and see all those obstacles in the sky? The dogs? The little kid on a bicycle coming out of a blind alley? No?

Right the sky is pretty much empty. That's why robots have been flying planes for many years already, and they're still trying to make the car adaptive enough for the real world.

Driving is much easier in many practical ways. Specifically, if your engine blows up you don't fall do your doom. I am not talking about when everything goes right, programming a plane for that is super easy and difficult for a car. I am talking about when everything goes wrong in unexpected ways. The solution when driving is easy: Stop. Virtually 100% of the time you just stop the car and everything will be fine. But a robot can't just stop a plane. It has to land that plane without landing gear or in a river with half the instruments broken. Can it do that?

Robots can fly a plane fine under ideal conditions and in the sky ideal conditions prevail almost all the time. That does not make them suited to adapt to catastrophic failure with on the fly planning.

 

[Verlander]

Unless they plan on replacing every car at once, this won't work. The human element is flawed, but it works better than an automatic element against other humans. Auto cars are only going to be safe against other auto cars, and even then I'm dubious. Small scale testing is not the same as large scale reality.

Also, as the world is largely market driven (forgive the pun) it won't happen. People like cars, they like them enough to spend ridiculous amounts of money on them, all over the world. You won't get people to give them up

 

[Raziel]

And here's the damn question I have been asking since I first heard about this years ago, and which NO NEWS STORY HAS AS YET EVEN BOTHERED TO ADDRESS: if one of these cars does get in an accident who the fuck is legally at fault? The manufacturer? The idiot taking a nap inside?

It could only possibly be the manufacturer or the owner's fault. Like now when there is an accident, passengers are not the ones sued.




I'm more interested in what this would do to the economy. Cab drivers, truck drivers, bus drivers, etc... Just what we don't need is 10 million more unemployed people.

 

[theSteamSupported]

To all of those of you who are concerned over the stability of the driving automation, do you REALLY believe that the engineers at Google are so stupid they're not taking that into consideration?

 

[synobal]

I love it. Its cute and not frightening and totally approachable. I think this is a fantastic way to get people to try something they might otherwise be scared of. I mean look at it? you going to be too scared to ride in that?

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

Limited to 25mph huh? I guess we'll have to wait awhile before we get an epic race across Europe between the Google car and the guys from Top Gear

I wouldn't mind been driven around by one of these. I do like driving myself so I hope these don't end completely replacing manual cars in the future. But for getting around busy city centres and long monotonous motorway trips I'd happily let this thing do the driving while I watch a film or something; plus it would mean I could avoid stopping at God awful motorway services as well.

 

[DrOswald]

Limited to 25mph huh? I guess we'll have to wait awhile before we get an epic race across Europe between the Google car and the guys from Top Gear

I wouldn't mind been driven around by one of these. I do like driving myself so I hope these don't end completely replacing manual cars in the future. But for getting around busy city centres and long monotonous motorway trips I'd happily let this thing do the driving while I watch a film or something; plus it would mean I could avoid stopping at God awful motorway services as well.

I would bet real money the 25mph thing is a legal and cultural thing. They need to get people used to the idea so people accept it and all car crashes are not automatically blamed on the auto car.

 

[Heathcliff84]

I'm Really afraid of a "free to drive version" Forcing you to Watch ads before you may leave the car: Add Red Dragon reference here.
DO YOU SEE?
Be nickeled and dimed to go faster than 10 KM/h.
Drive past 10 drive-through fastfood places or pay to take the direct route.

 

[Scrythe]

Living in the Buffalo area for the past three years taught me a valuable lesson in just how awful drivers can be.

I'm all for this.

 

[TKretts3]

That thing looks ****ing ridiculous. It LITERALLY looks like a clown car.

Also, no steering wheel or pedals whatsoever? A self driving feature in a car is definitely a good idea, but one that cannot be driven manually at all is not. There are obvious problems, such as the self-driving system getting broken, or being in conditions wherein the self driving system cannot properly function, that make the inclusion of manual driving a necessity. In addition, there's just the plain fact that some people will still prefer to drive manually, just not in every single situation (Driving in traffic, while tired, intoxicated). All in all this seems like a great system to include in regular cars, but to have it be the only way of using a car seems like a very bad idea.

Also, that thing looks ****ing ridiculous. Did I mention that already? I'll do it again for good measure. Clown car.

 

[Pyrian]

People like cars, they like them enough to spend ridiculous amounts of money on them, all over the world. You won't get people to give them up

People love horses. They love them far more than they love cars. They spend much more ridiculous amounts of money all over the world. But by and large, they do not ride them to work.

Convenience wins markets. Handily.

 

[Grayjack]

I would not trust that thing. What if something happens and it gets out of control? I wouldn't get in unless it had a manual override.

 

[truckspond]

Since computers are capable of reacting much quicker to changing road conditions than a human ever could hope to this is a logical move. I am quite impressed that they have already reached the stage where they can remove the controls and let the computer handle it

 

[lacktheknack]

No freaking way I'm getting in that.

As someone who's done AI before, I wouldn't trust it to hand me my hat, let alone drive me anywhere.

 

[Ragnar47183]

There are a lot of issues this brings up.

1) For this to even be a viable option there is going to have to be Billions upon Billions of dollars spent in infrastructure for these things. They cant just use the roads we use for manual cars. Considering there are still parts of the U.S. that dont have internet, computer cars are a long freaking ways away.

2)For this to be useful as a normal travel vehicle it would have to cover EVERYWHERE. As it stands, at most it would be useful for drunk people to get home, basically just replacing taxis. And if thats it then whats the point? There is already trains and buses and taxies, why do we need this if thats all its going to be used for?

3) How would it handle things like tolls or tickets at parking decks?

4)In my case, My truck goes into places that arent normally accessed by cars. How could I do this with a computer car?

5)What happens to recreational vehicles like 4 wheelers or motorcycles?

6)If you have to call this thing every time you need to go somewhere, how long would it take to get to your house? Otherwise you would have to buy a personal one. How would that work? How expensive would that be?

7)What happens to all the manual cars?

This is highly impractical and I don't see robot cars happening Outside of taxi services in metro cities and I just dont see the point.

I vote we actually educate people on driving skills instead of the laughable system we have now.

 

[Maxtro]

Hopefully I'm dead before self-driving cars become the only choice.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Interesting... I wonder if they're operating on wireless to get data updates, and if so that means they're hackable. A part of me feels that there should always be a manual override on things like that just in case. Planes are a different matter as it is a self-containted system, and I'd hope they're running these cars the same way.