Google Reveals Its Electric Self-Driving Car Prototype

[Verlander]

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.

Not even close! What metric did you use to come up with the statement that people love hoses more than cars? Sorry, but that's the silliest comparison. There are horse lovers dotted around, as well as a large portion of preteen girls, but even they don't prefer them as a reliable mode of transport. It's like saying people prefer BMX's (which, incidentally, there are probably more BMX lovers in the world than horse lovers). Also you're suggesting that the love of horses and cars is mutually exclusive - every family in the west that owns a horse owns a car, bar perhaps the very rare exception. Horses are recreational, cars are useful.

Convenience is important for sure. Self driving cars aren't any more convenient than normal cars - you still need to store them and keep them fuelled. The only convenience is "not driving it" which would leave more than a few people nervous. They haven't even managed to create a satellite navigation system that can keep up with roadworks or new roads. The infrastructure upheaval that would be needed to make this viable would be prohibitively expensive, and for nothing. The current system isn't broken, and the bits where it's failing can be resolved more cost effectively. Convenience doesn't win markets, profit does.

 

[Kaymish]

this is great we HAVE to get people out from behind the wheel AS SOON AS POSSIBLE people cant drive i do heaps of traveling for my job and the amount of stupid stuff people do is beyond me
though nothing is with out its flaws and i can see this going the most screwed up route everywhere there better be an option to tellit how to get some where because i have had GPS units take the most weird and roundabout routes probally because they dont have human intuition
but that is a small price to pay to get the idiots out of the driving seat and a safer road network for everyone

next thing is to get rid of cyclists or write some legislation so they have to obey the road rules too

 

[Raziel]

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.

lets bash these assembly lines because they are better and more people would have work if we did everything by hand
-workers at the turn of industrial revolution

Except that logic is flawed as it does not allow progress. no, we dont need 10 million people being cab drivers. very much rather we had them working something more useful. Oh and yeah we can easily lower working hours per month AND keep same pay per month. they 1% would get less rich, yes, but thats not a problem at all.

And just what more useful work do you think there is? Last time I checked there was no brand new industry looking to hire millions of people.

Sure we could absolutely share the business profits more equally so everyone worked less for more money. But in what world do you think thats going to actually happen? Whats going to happen is bottom wages are going to drop even lower because there will be so much more competition for any job that business can do whatever the hell they want. You see this clearly right now. Most any min wage job pays only 15-20 hrs and week, and forces you to work off the clock. And that trend is spreading to what used to be good jobs. I have relatives that are nurses in hospitals, all the nurses there (thousands of them) are now on 3 12 hr shifts MAX. There are no full time nurses aside from management. And if there are not enough patients that day nurses are told not to come in. A 3rd of their weekly pay, just gone at any random time. And this is still one of the best jobs available were I live.

For my entire life productivity has been sky rocketing. More stuff is made more cheaply now by fewer people than in any time in human history. And whats happened? Average household income for middle and lower class families has steadily decreased adjusted for inflation.

And its even worse than that. When my father graduated high school a high school diploma was enough to get a job that not only paid well enough to have a family it also came with benefits. Now you have to have a college degree for that. So you start out with tens of thousands of dollars in loan debt to pay off and only 27% of people with degrees actually get jobs in their field. So a huge portion of people who take on that debt don't even get jobs that let them pay it off. 53% of college grads are unemployed or underemployed. So getting a degree is no guarantee of success. Its actually a huge gamble of time and money that could leave you way worse off than just getting that retail job without a degree.

 

[briankoontz]

So what happens when someone hacks the programming?

 

[Ragnar47183]

There are a lot of issues this brings up.

lets try to resolve them then.

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.

this is prototype proof of concept. duh, of course its a long way off. as far as billions upon billions, we already spend that in current road infrastructure, and US spends FAR FAR more on military than that. its not like you lack money, what you lack is will.
And these cars can use existing roads if they are using sattelite signals to see where they are. and there is always sattelite signals on the roads. your phone has a reciever strong enough to contact them, car is certainly going to.

Nononono. We dont have the money for it. Who do you think will pay for it? You think the government would? What politician would say, "I want to replace the roads and put millions of people out of a job so we can have these cars!" I dont even know why you think we have the money for that when we dont even have the money to keep the roads we have fixed.

They CAN NOT use existing roads unless manual drivers would no longer be using them. Also you apparently have never been outside of a major city. You can't get a sattelite signal anywhere, you cant even get SATELLITE signals everywhere. Not even close.

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?

coverage is going to be a problem, but just like GPS, navigation is almost everywhere now. true coverage in rural areas can be a problem however this is going to be more than buses and taxis. its also going to be much cheaper than overpriced taxis we got now.

Yes its going to be a huge problem outside of metro cities. The price difference remains to be seen and is just speculation at this point. Im not sure it would be cheaper.

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

Wifi?

What does that even mean??

[qoute]4)In my case, My truck goes into places that arent normally accessed by cars. How could I do this with a computer car?[/qoute]
That is a fair concern and would need a solution such as setting manual route.

The ability to manually drive a car would defeat the purpose things like this are trying to achieve. (I.e. to take human error mostly out of the equation) But it brings up issues like this and things like emergency vehicles; how would they be able to get where they need to be when often they are required to drive off road, or navigate damaged sites. Which brings up another issue, lets say a river floods and covers the bridge. Would the car be able to detect this water and stop and find a new way or would it just keep going because it wouldn't have a sensor for water?

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

Nothing, i guess. there is going to continue being stupid people who are going to risk their lives driving these.

Right. Everyone who rides recreational vehicles are stupid. Guess im stupid then. But either way, you cant have man controlled vehicles mixed it. It makes to many variables and I doubt a computer controlled car would be programmed to have contingencies for every single situation.

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?

you have to call a taxi if you wnat to go home now as well. or buy a personal car. that is expensive. its really not much of a difference.

You can pick up a cheap personal car for a few grand. Youre telling me this thing would be anywhere in the ballfield of a few grand? I have a personal vehicle because I dont live in a metro city. Public transit is near impossible here. There are many people out there that have the same issue and cant afford expensive new cars. What are they going to do? Call one of these things and pay outrageous amounts of money every time you need milk or have to go to work or anything at all? Again, this is only viable for people living in places like Atlanta or New York.

Nevermind the fact that I actually meet clients using my truck. How would something like this change my ability to give an estimated time? How much time would I spend waiting around for a car to show up?

7)What happens to all the manual cars?

they would become obsolete for daily use and only enthusiasts continue using them?

Refer to above comments.

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

100 years of driving history has proven to us that its impossible to both educate people on driving skills and allowing acess to cars to more than a chosen few. as long as we got a "anyone can get a license" system this is not possible. because "Anyone" cant drive.

Where do you live that everyone can get a license? Here you have to be 18, have to be able to see, have to past a written and driving test, cant have any medical conditions that would effect your ability to drive a car, and have to have a learners license for 6months before you can drive alone.

I suggest making the written and driven tests a lot more in depth and comprehensive.

 

[Ragnar47183]

Excellent, start replacing all the cars with these and outlaw the old pieces of junk, make this thing mandatory for everyone. You can also get rid of busses now, yay! And taxi driver is now a obsolete job, double yay!

It can't happen soon enough.

Oh YAY! People losing jobs! Possible starvation and increased crime rates! YAY! I can't wait! -.-

Please think about other people for a second. Heres a list of people that would be out of work.

Taxi Drivers
Bus Drivers (School bus drivers too)
Companies like Grey Hound
Emergency service drivers
Every car insurance company and the people they employee
By and large most car manufactures would close.
People that run any kind of driving courses
Semi drivers
Most mechanics and repair shops
Most dealerships
Things like Biker clubs/bars
Traffic guards
Whoever produces road signs, traffic lights, and other road related materials like traffic cones

Thats just a small list. Im sure you can think of more

 

[Ragnar47183]

this is great we HAVE to get people out from behind the wheel AS SOON AS POSSIBLE people cant drive i do heaps of traveling for my job and the amount of stupid stuff people do is beyond me
though nothing is with out its flaws and i can see this going the most screwed up route everywhere there better be an option to tellit how to get some where because i have had GPS units take the most weird and roundabout routes probally because they dont have human intuition
but that is a small price to pay to get the idiots out of the driving seat and a safer road network for everyone

next thing is to get rid of cyclists or write some legislation so they have to obey the road rules too

Yeah everyone is a stupid driver besides you huh? Funny how that works.

How about we improve our education system and process for getting license instead of going to this extreme?

 

[briankoontz]

Thats just a small list. Im sure you can think of more

That doesn't matter, as long as they are able to have equal income through some other dignified means. Since Google impacts everyone everyone should already be receiving compensation from the company (through tax redistribution), which should logically increase if Google's profits increase as a result of this.

The reason people are worried in the first place about technology displacing jobs is that governments are owned by high capital (corporations and banks), with the corresponding lack of taxation of corporate entities and distribution to humans. The solution then is not to refuse to allow technology to displace jobs but for humans to enforce proper taxation on the wealth of capital entities, so that people will be safe, secure, and have food on their plates regardless of their employment status.

There isn't a problem with Google becoming a galactic overlord as long as humanity as a whole controls Google. If control of Google is instead in the hands of a few fabulously wealthy individuals with lesser control in the hands of big investors and zero control in the hands of regular people, humanity won't survive the overlordship. While the few fabulously wealthy individuals see this as a solution, the members of the Escapist should view it as a problem.

 

[Ragnar47183]

bla bla

That's the price of progress baby! Pay it or get left in the dust of everyone who does.

Do you have any idea of how much money and lives you'd save?

Im all for progress but it has to be actual progress.

How you think this would save money at all is astounding. This would cost an outrageous amount of money.

As far as saving lives go, you may have less car accidents but putting thousands of not millions out of work would cost more.

 

[Ragnar47183]

Thats just a small list. Im sure you can think of more

That doesn't matter, as long as they are able to have equal income through some other dignified means. Since Google impacts everyone everyone should already be receiving compensation from the company (through tax redistribution), which should logically increase if Google's profits increase as a result of this.

The reason people are worried in the first place about technology displacing jobs is that governments are owned by high capital (corporations and banks), with the corresponding lack of taxation of corporate entities and distribution to humans. The solution then is not to refuse to allow technology to displace jobs but for humans to enforce proper taxation on the wealth of capital entities, so that people will be safe, secure, and have food on their plates regardless of their employment status.

There isn't a problem with Google becoming a galactic overlord as long as humanity as a whole controls Google. If control of Google is instead in the hands of a few fabulously wealthy individuals with lesser control in the hands of big investors and zero control in the hands of regular people, humanity won't survive the overlordship. While the few fabulously wealthy individuals see this as a solution, the members of the Escapist should view it as a problem.

Because everyone knows that a company getting larger profits means bigger paychecks for its employees right? -.-.... Seriously this wont happen. Also how do you propose these people find alternative employment? How many jobs would this create compared to how many jobs are lost by its implementation?

So you propose the top 1% pay for everyone to live? Also what do you mean by 'lack of taxation of corporate entities?" last I checked my business is taxed damn near into the ground.

"Humanity controls Google" What the hell does that even mean. Do you understand how business works? Do you understand how life works in this day and age? I dont think you do....

 

[Qizx]

Excellent, start replacing all the cars with these and outlaw the old pieces of junk, make this thing mandatory for everyone. You can also get rid of busses now, yay! And taxi driver is now a obsolete job, double yay!

It can't happen soon enough.

Oh YAY! People losing jobs! Possible starvation and increased crime rates! YAY! I can't wait! -.-

Please think about other people for a second. Heres a list of people that would be out of work.

Taxi Drivers
Bus Drivers (School bus drivers too)
Companies like Grey Hound
Emergency service drivers
Every car insurance company and the people they employee
By and large most car manufactures would close.
People that run any kind of driving courses
Semi drivers
Most mechanics and repair shops
Most dealerships
Things like Biker clubs/bars
Traffic guards
Whoever produces road signs, traffic lights, and other road related materials like traffic cones

Thats just a small list. Im sure you can think of more

Taxi Drivers Yes
Bus Drivers (School bus drivers too)Maybe
Companies like Grey Hound Maybe
Emergency service drivers No. There will still be emergency vehicle drivers to get from A to B ASAP. Those will be manned.
Every car insurance company and the people their employees. No, these things will certainly have/need insurance as well.
By and large most car manufactures would close. Except the ones making these cars?
People that run any kind of driving courses. Yes.
Semi drivers Maybe, hard to tell if they'd automate those as well.
Most mechanics and repair shops Wut? Like seriously, wut? Are you saying these things won't ever need mechanical support? I didn't know the Jesus Car was coming out.
Most dealerships Cept the ones that sell automatic cars.
Things like Biker clubs/bars Cause people will stop going to them... They like the atmosphere they'll go for it.
Traffic guards Maybe?
Whoever produces road signs, traffic lights, and other road related materials like traffic cones. Possibly, I could see those still being around though.

All in all not THAT many jobs would be lost and of those jobs that would be lost they could go into another field. These are literally the same arguments that came from the argument against automation of factory lines.

 

[Ragnar47183]

Excellent, start replacing all the cars with these and outlaw the old pieces of junk, make this thing mandatory for everyone. You can also get rid of busses now, yay! And taxi driver is now a obsolete job, double yay!

It can't happen soon enough.

Oh YAY! People losing jobs! Possible starvation and increased crime rates! YAY! I can't wait! -.-

Please think about other people for a second. Heres a list of people that would be out of work.

Taxi Drivers
Bus Drivers (School bus drivers too)
Companies like Grey Hound
Emergency service drivers
Every car insurance company and the people they employee
By and large most car manufactures would close.
People that run any kind of driving courses
Semi drivers
Most mechanics and repair shops
Most dealerships
Things like Biker clubs/bars
Traffic guards
Whoever produces road signs, traffic lights, and other road related materials like traffic cones

Thats just a small list. Im sure you can think of more

Taxi Drivers Yes
Bus Drivers (School bus drivers too)Maybe
Companies like Grey Hound Maybe
Emergency service drivers No. There will still be emergency vehicle drivers to get from A to B ASAP. Those will be manned.
Every car insurance company and the people their employees. No, these things will certainly have/need insurance as well.
By and large most car manufactures would close. Except the ones making these cars?
People that run any kind of driving courses. Yes.
Semi drivers Maybe, hard to tell if they'd automate those as well.
Most mechanics and repair shops Wut? Like seriously, wut? Are you saying these things won't ever need mechanical support? I didn't know the Jesus Car was coming out.
Most dealerships Cept the ones that sell automatic cars.
Things like Biker clubs/bars Cause people will stop going to them... They like the atmosphere they'll go for it.
Traffic guards Maybe?
Whoever produces road signs, traffic lights, and other road related materials like traffic cones. Possibly, I could see those still being around though.

All in all not THAT many jobs would be lost and of those jobs that would be lost they could go into another field. These are literally the same arguments that came from the argument against automation of factory lines.

Why would companies pay for bus drivers or even have buses at all if these cars were around?

Wouldn't it be faster and safer to have an emergency vehicle operate with a computer to get to point b from a? Why would a person still be needed for this?

Why would these need insurance? Warranty from the manufacture yes but not insurance. They wouldn't have accidents like manned cars.

Thats why I said by and large. You think we would have as many car manufactures with these cars? Why? I dont see the reason or the ability for this to happen.

Why would they not automate semis? You think semis would be the only cars left manned for some reason?

Again "Most" is the key word here. Maybe read what is written before making a reply? You dont pay for taxi repairs. If you have one of these as a personal vehicle I am positive it would be sent back to the manufacturer or a technician would be sent out to repair it. Also its spelled 'what.'

Again keyword is "most"

Right. I want to hop in my computer car to go to a biker bar to remind me that I can't ride my bike anymore.

Why would we need traffic guards if cars arent human controlled?

What purpose would traffic lights and such be to a computer?

This is not the same as the assembly line. Not even close. The assembly line didn't require millions of dollars in infrastructure, The complete shut down of companies, or job loss on this scale.

 

[FPLOON]

So what happens when someone hacks the programming?

Blame Aiden Pearce?

OT: The more I think about this, the more I remember the first book of The Remnants[footnote]Wow... It's been a while since I've read THAT series...[/footnote], where you can drive manually if needed to...

Regardless, if this becomes really common to the point that anyone can own one, they're bound to be people complaining that they still have to get a driver's license just to own one of these kinds of vehicles... or that they can't be in one [alone] if their license was suspended or something like that...

 

[Ragnar47183]

bla bla

That's the price of progress baby! Pay it or get left in the dust of everyone who does.

Do you have any idea of how much money and lives you'd save?

Im all for progress but it has to be actual progress.

How you think this would save money at all is astounding. This would cost an outrageous amount of money.

As far as saving lives go, you may have less car accidents but putting thousands of not millions out of work would cost more.

And its just impossible to find new jobs right? Not like something like this is going to be implemented over-night. As if all this new tech is just gonna build itself.

Our unemployment rate is already high. This wouldn't create more jobs that it kills. Not by a long shot. Its not even like there is a large benefit for anyone other than, "Hey look beep boop cars!" What does this ultimately accomplish? In an age where people are still scared of even moving their game library to digital, what makes you think people will trust these cars? This stuff has to many problems to be implemented now. I don't see this taking hold. Maybe 2050 we could see this but not anywhere close to now.

 

[Kaymish]

this is great we HAVE to get people out from behind the wheel AS SOON AS POSSIBLE people cant drive i do heaps of traveling for my job and the amount of stupid stuff people do is beyond me
though nothing is with out its flaws and i can see this going the most screwed up route everywhere there better be an option to tellit how to get some where because i have had GPS units take the most weird and roundabout routes probally because they dont have human intuition
but that is a small price to pay to get the idiots out of the driving seat and a safer road network for everyone

next thing is to get rid of cyclists or write some legislation so they have to obey the road rules too

Yeah everyone is a stupid driver besides you huh? Funny how that works.

How about we improve our education system and process for getting license instead of going to this extreme?

oh no you misunderstand i never said i was exempt from my own argument, i am including myself in this, i do stupid things all the time too and i cannot possibly see how a self driving car can be worse than having people driving their own cars. i suspect that self driving cars will not boost up the inside lane and try and cut into a gap thats only just big enough, and then indicate they are going to go it after they have done it.
a self driving car probably wont start getting off at the wrong offramp and then drive down the grass bank and into the fast moving traffic rather than drive to the onramp that is no more than 100 meters away from the end of the off ramp
and the myriad of other things i see drivers do every day
and as to improving education it could, probably would work or at the very least mitigate the problem but that would need the politicians to gather enough backbone to do it every time the government has even said it might remotely possibly be a good idea to think about making the drivers license tests tougher or go on to a different testing regime or improve driver education lobbies start firing up to roast them i mean you can hear blast furnaces and marinade pots boiling from 20 KM away
but in the end i think a gentle phase in of self driving cars will get under the wire from cool factor alone

 

[Strazdas]

The current system isn't broken

Yes it is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year]

And just what more useful work do you think there is? Last time I checked there was no brand new industry looking to hire millions of people.

Sure we could absolutely share the business profits more equally so everyone worked less for more money. But in what world do you think thats going to actually happen? Whats going to happen is bottom wages are going to drop even lower because there will be so much more competition for any job that business can do whatever the hell they want. You see this clearly right now. Most any min wage job pays only 15-20 hrs and week, and forces you to work off the clock. And that trend is spreading to what used to be good jobs. I have relatives that are nurses in hospitals, all the nurses there (thousands of them) are now on 3 12 hr shifts MAX. There are no full time nurses aside from management. And if there are not enough patients that day nurses are told not to come in. A 3rd of their weekly pay, just gone at any random time. And this is still one of the best jobs available were I live.

For my entire life productivity has been sky rocketing. More stuff is made more cheaply now by fewer people than in any time in human history. And whats happened? Average household income for middle and lower class families has steadily decreased adjusted for inflation.

And its even worse than that. When my father graduated high school a high school diploma was enough to get a job that not only paid well enough to have a family it also came with benefits. Now you have to have a college degree for that. So you start out with tens of thousands of dollars in loan debt to pay off and only 27% of people with degrees actually get jobs in their field. So a huge portion of people who take on that debt don't even get jobs that let them pay it off. 53% of college grads are unemployed or underemployed. So getting a degree is no guarantee of success. Its actually a huge gamble of time and money that could leave you way worse off than just getting that retail job without a degree.

pretty much anything really. how about creativity?
ANd yes there is industry hiring millions of people. that industry is called IT.
ANd there does not have to be. we are far more rich than we think. the problem is that all those riches are all stolen by "The 1%". the inequality gap is jarring. lowering that would allow us to easily support millions of unemployed. or, like i said, just make the week work hours less so the same business has to hire more people while forcing them not to lower wages. you know, the way we always did with massive technological advancements.

now what you decribe with nurses and the like is actually criminal behaviuor outside of US, so yeah, jut because one country is fucked in its ways does not mean whole world has to suffer. We have the technology AND resources to make sure noone is starving. its a matter of wanting it to, but of course its more itneresting to see what drugged TV star gets ptohobombed tonight or what some politician said to his wife than solving the real issues.

You make a false equivalence of productivity skyrocketing and lower income. the corelation isnt even there, let alone causation. what perfectly corelates and has grounds for causation is the inequality gap and the lower class state you describe. The inequality gap in US is worse than many 3rd world countries. your country is fucked and its amazing it hasnt collapsed on itself yet. which means you still have time to fix it, not that you must stagnate and go back to middle ages because hurr durr everyone had work back then. yes, it was called slavery sorry, vassalage.

The fact that you cant afford college working on minimum wage is a problem of itself too, i agree.

So what happens when someone hacks the programming?

you get to drive your car manually in a very inefficient way?

 

[Strazdas]

Nononono. We dont have the money for it. Who do you think will pay for it? You think the government would? What politician would say, "I want to replace the roads and put millions of people out of a job so we can have these cars!" I dont even know why you think we have the money for that when we dont even have the money to keep the roads we have fixed.

oh, we have plenty of money. Its just that we prefer to do something inefficient instead of actually implementing useful features. and yes, the money for our current roads are what could do it.

They CAN NOT use existing roads unless manual drivers would no longer be using them. Also you apparently have never been outside of a major city. You can't get a sattelite signal anywhere, you cant even get SATELLITE signals everywhere. Not even close.

I have dropped satellite signal once in my life of GPS navigation and it was inside a canyon, the signal returned when i came out of it. you CAN get sattelite signal anywhere with a phone, let alone the stronger reciever that the car can carry (which no longer needs to fit inside your pocket so it can have an antenna, hurray).

and they can use existing roads, we already have devices to control speed based on other drivers.

What does that even mean??

that it would be able to pay toll tickets by communicating with the booth via wifi?

The ability to manually drive a car would defeat the purpose things like this are trying to achieve. (I.e. to take human error mostly out of the equation) But it brings up issues like this and things like emergency vehicles; how would they be able to get where they need to be when often they are required to drive off road, or navigate damaged sites. Which brings up another issue, lets say a river floods and covers the bridge. Would the car be able to detect this water and stop and find a new way or would it just keep going because it wouldn't have a sensor for water?

I didnt say drive manually, i said manual route. as in, you would have a map and point it where it should go and what way to do it. not to drive it yourself.

current cars are able to detect rain and (falsely) think they cannot park there because they would hit a wall. certainly water detection is already there. you just need to work out the kinks of ignoring rain, which would be needed in autmated car, not really needed in parking sensor.

Right. Everyone who rides recreational vehicles are stupid. Guess im stupid then. But either way, you cant have man controlled vehicles mixed it. It makes to many variables and I doubt a computer controlled car would be programmed to have contingencies for every single situation.

Not necessarely stupid, but people riding motorbikes are certainly suicidal. its one of the least safe modes of transports possible. and noone relaly drives 4wheelers on roads to work anyway.

COntingency is simple. stop, if waiting does not help, drive around it. you know, no road rage or anything like that from a computer.

You can pick up a cheap personal car for a few grand. Youre telling me this thing would be anywhere in the ballfield of a few grand? I have a personal vehicle because I dont live in a metro city. Public transit is near impossible here. There are many people out there that have the same issue and cant afford expensive new cars. What are they going to do? Call one of these things and pay outrageous amounts of money every time you need milk or have to go to work or anything at all? Again, this is only viable for people living in places like Atlanta or New York.

Nevermind the fact that I actually meet clients using my truck. How would something like this change my ability to give an estimated time? How much time would I spend waiting around for a car to show up?

You can pick up a new car for a few grand? heck, i should move to where you live then.
No, more likely your talking about used cards. and used automated cars are going to be the same.

I do understand that your public transport situation is miserable and you have a need for cars like that. its not going to be a miraculous overnight change. more like somewhere down the line in 10 years we will have far more automated cars than regular ones. you know, kinda like how its going to be with electric cars.

Also automated cars may actually allow much cheaper public transport, you know, no driver wages and the like (and bus drivers get paid a lot, at least here. because otherwise they would just run off to transporting companies and work as drivers there because those companies pay outrageous wages).

Where do you live that everyone can get a license? Here you have to be 18, have to be able to see, have to past a written and driving test, cant have any medical conditions that would effect your ability to drive a car, and have to have a learners license for 6months before you can drive alone.

I suggest making the written and driven tests a lot more in depth and comprehensive.

oh we have that too, but people who are phyiiscally excempt that are above 18 are very few and anyone can pass a test of they want to. does not make them good drivers though. comprehensive and in depth tests have been tried to no result. if anything, we have too complex testing now testing things a person regullary driving a car wont ever need (such as gear shift mechanics, no, i wont be fixing my gearbox myself ill let people who do that for a living do it). it hasnt stopped idiot drivers at all though. its been tried and doesnt work. people are just not good drivers.

Oh YAY! People losing jobs! Possible starvation and increased crime rates! YAY! I can't wait! -.-

Please think about other people for a second. Heres a list of people that would be out of work.

Taxi Drivers
Bus Drivers (School bus drivers too)
Companies like Grey Hound
Emergency service drivers
Every car insurance company and the people they employee
By and large most car manufactures would close.
People that run any kind of driving courses
Semi drivers
Most mechanics and repair shops
Most dealerships
Things like Biker clubs/bars
Traffic guards
Whoever produces road signs, traffic lights, and other road related materials like traffic cones

Thats just a small list. Im sure you can think of more

Yay, possible shift in paradigm of how we deal with income gap due to large influx of new workers. Yes, some will suffer, it always happens during paradigm sihfts. wont stop progress for that though. if we did we would still be in middle ages.

as far as your list...

Taxi Drivers - yes they would. no more stealing from costumers, road raging taxists and jumping across pavement when taxi driver decides to go around the traffic jam via pavement. im all for them loosing jobs.
Bus Drivers (School bus drivers too) - good thing here too. automated public transport that works around the clock, without needing to pay wages too!
Companies like Grey Hound - not familiar with such company
Emergency service drivers - likely not, these will likely have manual overrides for reasons you mentioned.
Every car insurance company and the people they employee - oh no the insurance hounds are going to loose money. how terrible.
By and large most car manufactures would close. - this is a very good thing. car manufacturers have been stiffling innocation in the field for decades. to the point of buying out competition just to close it.
People that run any kind of driving courses - yes, thats a loss, but its a small one in comparison to gains.
Semi drivers - our items delivered on time by robots. isnt it nice?
Most mechanics and repair shops - because automated cars never break right? these will still have work. the refurbishers from accidents less maybe. but then we dont want to increase accidents just to make these people more work now do we.
Most dealerships - erm what? so we are going to buy these cars from god or something?
Things like Biker clubs/bars - the problem here is?
Traffic guards - these policemen already have plenty of work and are underfunded, it would be nice if they could use the resources to fight crime instead of standing on crossroads because theres always idiot drivers around.
Whoever produces road signs, traffic lights, and other road related materials like traffic cones - why would these loose jobs? are new cars going to fly around?

Because everyone knows that a company getting larger profits means bigger paychecks for its employees right? -.-.... Seriously this wont happen. Also how do you propose these people find alternative employment? How many jobs would this create compared to how many jobs are lost by its implementation?

So you propose the top 1% pay for everyone to live? Also what do you mean by 'lack of taxation of corporate entities?" last I checked my business is taxed damn near into the ground.

"Humanity controls Google" What the hell does that even mean. Do you understand how business works? Do you understand how life works in this day and age? I dont think you do....

it should. and if it isnt so we need to enact laws to change that. we, as a human race.
as far as alternative job creation. assembly line didnt create as many jobs as it took over. it wanst a bad thing to start using though. becuase the net gain was spectacular. we create new industries all the time, and we already ahve more resources than we would need to make sure everyone has a minimum living resources. the problem is that these resources are in hands of corporate entities and not people. as far as taxation goes, you do know that your business is very likely being taxed far more than the big boys right? and if its not and your still failing then maybe your just a bad businessman?

Why would companies pay for bus drivers or even have buses at all if these cars were around?

really? looks like you know fuck all about public transport. its more efficient than private cars. and if you have a good network, its far better option of going to work.

Our unemployment rate is already high.

No its not. US was always overworked nation and its about time you get on the level with the rest. your current unemplyment rate as of Alril 20104 is 6.3% [http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate]. this is a perfectly acceptable unemployment rate for the natural unemployment (which is around 5%) plus the moving unemployment (such as people changing jobs, ect) which is usually 2-5%. in fact, your BELLOW the expected unemployment rate of a healthy economy.

 

[Verlander]

The current system isn't broken

Yes it is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year]

Did you read that link? Road deaths have been almost exclusively dropping relative to population since the 80's (longer than some of the people working on that driverless car have been alive), and have actually dropped in real numbers consistently over the last decade. There's nothing to suggest that trend won't continue.

In real numbers, 0.01% of the population were in a fatality involving a motor vehicle accident of any kind, and roughly 90% of these were in-car fatalities, something a "self drive" car doesn't resolve - unless you remove all other road traffic, and make the necessary changes to infrastructure that would let the automated vehicles aware of things like roadworks. That won't happen, particularly removing all other traffic. How would you propose to remove all other traffic? Buy cars from people? Legally demand that they don't drive? Interestingly, one thing that those stats don't (and can't) show, is how many fatalities are avoided by human reaction.

Go further into the stats and you'll find that motor vehicle deaths are only considered a major cause of death for senior citizens - for those who are younger, there are far more risks than road deaths. Given that this is where there is a "need" for driverless cars (if we assume that the system is sufficiently "broken" to need a change), I'd suggest that the cars won't sell well - senior citizens aren't known for being active purchasers of modern, up-to-date vehicles, which no doubt affects the likelihood for road fatalities.

 

[Ragnar47183]

Our unemployment rate is already high. This wouldn't create more jobs that it kills. Not by a long shot. Its not even like there is a large benefit for anyone other than, "Hey look beep boop cars!" What does this ultimately accomplish? In an age where people are still scared of even moving their game library to digital, what makes you think people will trust these cars? This stuff has to many problems to be implemented now. I don't see this taking hold. Maybe 2050 we could see this but not anywhere close to now.

For the common person to accept it, it only has to do one of two things, be more convenient or be cheaper.

At first these new cars will coexist with the old, but the accident rate difference will become clear soon enough and governments will be forced to put restrictions on the old cars and eventually phase them out completely.

They will not be more convenient for a lot of people and they for sure wont be cheaper. How would it be more convenient for me to call a car and wait for it to go where I need to instead of getting in my car and going myself?

Like I said before, These cars can not co-exist with manual cars unless they have their own set of roads.

Also, the government should not be forced to put restrictions on anything and they really shouldn't be telling people what they can and can't drive. Thats not going to work.

this is great we HAVE to get people out from behind the wheel AS SOON AS POSSIBLE people cant drive i do heaps of traveling for my job and the amount of stupid stuff people do is beyond me
though nothing is with out its flaws and i can see this going the most screwed up route everywhere there better be an option to tellit how to get some where because i have had GPS units take the most weird and roundabout routes probally because they dont have human intuition
but that is a small price to pay to get the idiots out of the driving seat and a safer road network for everyone

next thing is to get rid of cyclists or write some legislation so they have to obey the road rules too

Yeah everyone is a stupid driver besides you huh? Funny how that works.

How about we improve our education system and process for getting license instead of going to this extreme?

oh no you misunderstand i never said i was exempt from my own argument, i am including myself in this, i do stupid things all the time too and i cannot possibly see how a self driving car can be worse than having people driving their own cars. i suspect that self driving cars will not boost up the inside lane and try and cut into a gap thats only just big enough, and then indicate they are going to go it after they have done it.
a self driving car probably wont start getting off at the wrong offramp and then drive down the grass bank and into the fast moving traffic rather than drive to the onramp that is no more than 100 meters away from the end of the off ramp
and the myriad of other things i see drivers do every day
and as to improving education it could, probably would work or at the very least mitigate the problem but that would need the politicians to gather enough backbone to do it every time the government has even said it might remotely possibly be a good idea to think about making the drivers license tests tougher or go on to a different testing regime or improve driver education lobbies start firing up to roast them i mean you can hear blast furnaces and marinade pots boiling from 20 KM away
but in the end i think a gentle phase in of self driving cars will get under the wire from cool factor alone

Fair enough. It sounded like you were saying every one else was dumb. Sorry.

Politicians would need much more backbone to tell people they can't drive their cars anymore and have to use these cars than they would need to revamp the education system. Something that should be done anyway.

-------------

Nononono. We dont have the money for it. Who do you think will pay for it? You think the government would? What politician would say, "I want to replace the roads and put millions of people out of a job so we can have these cars!" I dont even know why you think we have the money for that when we dont even have the money to keep the roads we have fixed.

oh, we have plenty of money. Its just that we prefer to do something inefficient instead of actually implementing useful features. and yes, the money for our current roads are what could do it.

Plenty of money? Where? We are so far in debt its not even funny. The amount we spend on road work now wouldn't even put a dent in the cost for new infrastructure for these cars.

They CAN NOT use existing roads unless manual drivers would no longer be using them. Also you apparently have never been outside of a major city. You can't get a sattelite signal anywhere, you cant even get SATELLITE signals everywhere. Not even close.

I have dropped satellite signal once in my life of GPS navigation and it was inside a canyon, the signal returned when i came out of it. you CAN get sattelite signal anywhere with a phone, let alone the stronger reciever that the car can carry (which no longer needs to fit inside your pocket so it can have an antenna, hurray).

Where have you traveled? Where do you live? This isn't my opinion. You can not get a signal from everywhere. What happens on a cloudy day?

and they can use existing roads, we already have devices to control speed based on other drivers.

No they cant. Like I have said multiple times. It would be virtually impossible to program all the contingencies needed to account for manual driver mistakes, or road damage. All it would take is one single wreck involving one of these cars for people to cry and get them shut down.

The speed of the computer car is not the issue.

What does that even mean??

that it would be able to pay toll tickets by communicating with the booth via wifi?

How do you think this would work? You want all toll booths to be equipped with wifi now? When there are still a large amount of the U.S. that cant get wifi? What kind of world do you think we live in?

The ability to manually drive a car would defeat the purpose things like this are trying to achieve. (I.e. to take human error mostly out of the equation) But it brings up issues like this and things like emergency vehicles; how would they be able to get where they need to be when often they are required to drive off road, or navigate damaged sites. Which brings up another issue, lets say a river floods and covers the bridge. Would the car be able to detect this water and stop and find a new way or would it just keep going because it wouldn't have a sensor for water?

I didnt say drive manually, i said manual route. as in, you would have a map and point it where it should go and what way to do it. not to drive it yourself.

So these tiny electric cars can do off road? I dont think so. And what about something in the way you can see on maps. This is highly impractical.

current cars are able to detect rain and (falsely) think they cannot park there because they would hit a wall. certainly water detection is already there. you just need to work out the kinks of ignoring rain, which would be needed in autmated car, not really needed in parking sensor.

There is a difference between detecting rainfall and detecting the water in front of you is to deep to cross.

Right. Everyone who rides recreational vehicles are stupid. Guess im stupid then. But either way, you cant have man controlled vehicles mixed it. It makes to many variables and I doubt a computer controlled car would be programmed to have contingencies for every single situation.

Not necessarely stupid, but people riding motorbikes are certainly suicidal. its one of the least safe modes of transports possible. and noone relaly drives 4wheelers on roads to work anyway.

Oh I am suicidal now? Guess I need to go to therapy.

COntingency is simple. stop, if waiting does not help, drive around it. you know, no road rage or anything like that from a computer.

Because that will work for every problem. -.-. You must be a horrible driver.

You can pick up a cheap personal car for a few grand. Youre telling me this thing would be anywhere in the ballfield of a few grand? I have a personal vehicle because I dont live in a metro city. Public transit is near impossible here. There are many people out there that have the same issue and cant afford expensive new cars. What are they going to do? Call one of these things and pay outrageous amounts of money every time you need milk or have to go to work or anything at all? Again, this is only viable for people living in places like Atlanta or New York.

Nevermind the fact that I actually meet clients using my truck. How would something like this change my ability to give an estimated time? How much time would I spend waiting around for a car to show up?

You can pick up a new car for a few grand? heck, i should move to where you live then.
No, more likely your talking about used cards. and used automated cars are going to be the same.

Good thing I didn't say new anywhere. Please dont move anywhere near me thanks.
I like how you expect used computer cars to be the same cost. I doubt that very much. The cost to build these im sure is quite a lot more than a regular car.

I do understand that your public transport situation is miserable and you have a need for cars like that. its not going to be a miraculous overnight change. more like somewhere down the line in 10 years we will have far more automated cars than regular ones. you know, kinda like how its going to be with electric cars.

Ha, do you like in California or something? Electric cars being the majority? Thats not going to happen in the next 10 years. Not even close.

Again, look at how much shit Xbox got for trying to go full digital. You think a world that has that many problems with digital games will just be cool with computer cars? This is something that wouldn't happen outside of some place like California for a very very very long time.

Also automated cars may actually allow much cheaper public transport, you know, no driver wages and the like (and bus drivers get paid a lot, at least here. because otherwise they would just run off to transporting companies and work as drivers there because those companies pay outrageous wages).

Cheaper public transportation in what way? In the fact that per ride you are paying less? Maybe. But that doesnt take into account how much more we would pay in taxes, or if we actually wanted a personal car. This is benificial to one type of person only. People in metro cities would love something like this and it would probably be a good fit for that. Everyone else however, would not like this at all.

Where do you live that everyone can get a license? Here you have to be 18, have to be able to see, have to past a written and driving test, cant have any medical conditions that would effect your ability to drive a car, and have to have a learners license for 6months before you can drive alone.

I suggest making the written and driven tests a lot more in depth and comprehensive.

oh we have that too, but people who are phyiiscally excempt that are above 18 are very few and anyone can pass a test of they want to. does not make them good drivers though. comprehensive and in depth tests have been tried to no result. if anything, we have too complex testing now testing things a person regullary driving a car wont ever need (such as gear shift mechanics, no, i wont be fixing my gearbox myself ill let people who do that for a living do it). it hasnt stopped idiot drivers at all though. its been tried and doesnt work. people are just not good drivers.

Care to link me where these comprehensive tests have been used and failed?

Oh YAY! People losing jobs! Possible starvation and increased crime rates! YAY! I can't wait! -.-

Please think about other people for a second. Heres a list of people that would be out of work.

Taxi Drivers
Bus Drivers (School bus drivers too)
Companies like Grey Hound
Emergency service drivers
Every car insurance company and the people they employee
By and large most car manufactures would close.
People that run any kind of driving courses
Semi drivers
Most mechanics and repair shops
Most dealerships
Things like Biker clubs/bars
Traffic guards
Whoever produces road signs, traffic lights, and other road related materials like traffic cones

Thats just a small list. Im sure you can think of more

Yay, possible shift in paradigm of how we deal with income gap due to large influx of new workers. Yes, some will suffer, it always happens during paradigm sihfts. wont stop progress for that though. if we did we would still be in middle ages.

What?!? How the hell do you think we would deal with millions of unemployed people? Also, you are ok with this happening for the 'possibility' for this to happen? Thats got to be one of the most selfish things I have heard in a long time.

as far as your list...

Taxi Drivers - yes they would. no more stealing from costumers, road raging taxists and jumping across pavement when taxi driver decides to go around the traffic jam via pavement. im all for them loosing jobs.
Bus Drivers (School bus drivers too) - good thing here too. automated public transport that works around the clock, without needing to pay wages too!

Stealing from customers? Sounds like you have some problems there. It actually sounds like you have some issues with drivers in general. Do you drive? Where do you live that there are so many road raging people? I drive a lot for my work and I dont see very many stupid drivers or angry drivers.

Companies like Grey Hound - not familiar with such company

Its usually used to take people on vacation when they dont want to fly or drive themselves.

Emergency service drivers - likely not, these will likely have manual overrides for reasons you mentioned.

They could. But in the future how would people be trained for emergency vehicle driving?

Every car insurance company and the people they employee - oh no the insurance hounds are going to loose money. how terrible.

Yes it is terrible. All of the people these companies have working for them would be out of a job.

By and large most car manufactures would close. - this is a very good thing. car manufacturers have been stiffling innocation in the field for decades. to the point of buying out competition just to close it.

I hate it when people have been "Stiffling innocation" especially if its anything like stifling innovation.
Seriously though, care to explain your stance on this?

People that run any kind of driving courses - yes, thats a loss, but its a small one in comparison to gains.

Why is this one a loss but all the other ones not?

Semi drivers - our items delivered on time by robots. isnt it nice?

On time? what do you mean? I order things online all the time and unless they are from China they are delivered on time. Most of the delays in shipping things happen at the shipping centers, not at the transportation of the goods.

Most mechanics and repair shops - because automated cars never break right? these will still have work. the refurbishers from accidents less maybe. but then we dont want to increase accidents just to make these people more work now do we.

I have already explained this but I suppose ill do it again. These cars wont be taken to a mechanic shop. More than likely it will be sent back to the manufacture or a technician from the manufacture will be sent to fix your car. The mechanic shops you see all around your town would close shop.

Most dealerships - erm what? so we are going to buy these cars from god or something?

Yeah. Buy it from god or more sensibly you would buy them online since the only practical difference is the interior of the car. There wouldn't be near as many makes and models as we have now so what would be point of a dealership? Especially when the cars can just deliver themselves.

Things like Biker clubs/bars - the problem here is?

For selfish people like you nothing I guess.

Traffic guards - these policemen already have plenty of work and are underfunded, it would be nice if they could use the resources to fight crime instead of standing on crossroads because theres always idiot drivers around.

Police are underfunded. So lets take their primary source for income away? You do realize most of the money that is given to law enforcement is generated by traffic regulations right?

Whoever produces road signs, traffic lights, and other road related materials like traffic cones - why would these loose jobs? are new cars going to fly around?

No... But computers wont need lights to tell them when to stop or signs to tell them when to yield.

Because everyone knows that a company getting larger profits means bigger paychecks for its employees right? -.-.... Seriously this wont happen. Also how do you propose these people find alternative employment? How many jobs would this create compared to how many jobs are lost by its implementation?

So you propose the top 1% pay for everyone to live? Also what do you mean by 'lack of taxation of corporate entities?" last I checked my business is taxed damn near into the ground.

"Humanity controls Google" What the hell does that even mean. Do you understand how business works? Do you understand how life works in this day and age? I dont think you do....

it should. and if it isnt so we need to enact laws to change that. we, as a human race.
as far as alternative job creation. assembly line didnt create as many jobs as it took over. it wanst a bad thing to start using though. becuase the net gain was spectacular. we create new industries all the time, and we already ahve more resources than we would need to make sure everyone has a minimum living resources. the problem is that these resources are in hands of corporate entities and not people. as far as taxation goes, you do know that your business is very likely being taxed far more than the big boys right? and if its not and your still failing then maybe your just a bad businessman?

Haha, "It should." Yeah and 'I should' be on a beach with models running my back right now but that ain't happening is it? (Since you can't see me I have to tell you its not.)

Yes lets make more regulations on what private business has to pay their workers! This is the land of the free after all right?

I already explained how the assembly line was one a much smaller scale than this would be. The Cold War and World War 2 are both wars but they are on differently scales. See how that works?

You have no idea how business works do you? You are some kind of extreme idealist with a big tin foil hat on. How do you propose we fix this problem then? I would love to hear what your idea is for dealing with the fallout this would create.

I never said my business was failing. We are fine despite the government taxing the hell out of us.

Why would companies pay for bus drivers or even have buses at all if these cars were around?

really? looks like you know fuck all about public transport. its more efficient than private cars. and if you have a good network, its far better option of going to work.

Really? Looks like you know fuck all about life in general. The whole point of these cars is cheap and safe transportation is it not? Didn't you just tell me it would be cheaper because we wouldn't have to pay bus drivers or taxi drivers? Moron.

Our unemployment rate is already high.

No its not. US was always overworked nation and its about time you get on the level with the rest. your current unemplyment rate as of Alril 20104 is 6.3% [http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate]. this is a perfectly acceptable unemployment rate for the natural unemployment (which is around 5%) plus the moving unemployment (such as people changing jobs, ect) which is usually 2-5%. in fact, your BELLOW the expected unemployment rate of a healthy economy.

5% is the average and notice that 6.3% is not 5%. If you would look at the link you used you would even notice that its only been this low for less than a month. Thats not enough to say unemployment is fine. It has to keep going down AND stay there for a while. Notice most of this year its been about 7% and last year 7-8%. Our unemployment is still high.

We are nowhere close to below the expected unemployment rate. Did you forget how numbers work?

 

[Ragnar47183]

The current system isn't broken

Yes it is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year]

Did you read that link? Road deaths have been almost exclusively dropping relative to population since the 80's (longer than some of the people working on that driverless car have been alive), and have actually dropped in real numbers consistently over the last decade. There's nothing to suggest that trend won't continue.

In real numbers, 0.01% of the population were in a fatality involving a motor vehicle accident of any kind, and roughly 90% of these were in-car fatalities, something a "self drive" car doesn't resolve - unless you remove all other road traffic, and make the necessary changes to infrastructure that would let the automated vehicles aware of things like roadworks. That won't happen, particularly removing all other traffic. How would you propose to remove all other traffic? Buy cars from people? Legally demand that they don't drive? Interestingly, one thing that those stats don't (and can't) show, is how many fatalities are avoided by human reaction.

Go further into the stats and you'll find that motor vehicle deaths are only considered a major cause of death for senior citizens - for those who are younger, there are far more risks than road deaths. Given that this is where there is a "need" for driverless cars (if we assume that the system is sufficiently "broken" to need a change), I'd suggest that the cars won't sell well - senior citizens aren't known for being active purchasers of modern, up-to-date vehicles, which no doubt affects the likelihood for road fatalities.

I Strazdas actually knows what he is talking about and only wants this to happen so he can show off his new computer car.