No, but you need to know how to drive. When I was 16 the hardest part of the driving test, and the one where the most people failed, was not the on-road portion. It was the low speed “maneuverability” test. Low speed maneuvers don’t cause fantastically expensive P&C claims; a lot of low-speed accidents aren’t even reported to insurers, I’m sure. But they’re trickier than road driving IMO. Allowing the drunk/blind/kids to perform them is not a good idea. Even just drunk or kids is not a good idea.
Will it know that it should pull all the way forward on my side, until it is literally touching the snow-blower? I need max space behind me to be able to get to the trash & recycle cans.
Will it know to park slightly further to the left on the last trip into the garage before trash night or when the empty cans need to come in because those two times only I am willing to sacrifice space between cars in order to get the cans out of the garage, but the rest of the time it should park as far to the right as possible?
Will it know that my husband should park as close to the rear of the garage as possible without interfering with the garage door but more centered left/right than my car?
Will it know that when my husband is on a trip this all goes out the window and it can be a garage hog and park roughly in the middle from a left/right perspective but still as far forward as possible because I still need to be able to get to the trash cans?
Will it know that my husband prefers to back in if he has a lot of stuff in the trunk?
This is stuff that is trivial for humans but it seems like would confound a computer, or would be extremely tedious on my part to code in.
I will say that there would be some advantage to it knowing precisely how much space I need to get the garbage can out. I’m really threading the needle there as if I go too far right then it’s not physically possible to get the cans out. But too far left is really obnoxiously close to hubby’s car and we’re running a real risk of giving each other door dings, particularly if we have crap in the back seat that we’re getting in or out of the car.
A few times I’ve misjudged the cans and had to repark the car a little further to the left. I can see an AV getting that right every time once it knows the exact distance it needs to leave on the right. It’d be kind of obnoxious to measure that and program it into the car, but once it knew, that would be nice.
At least until my car spends the night at the shop and I have a loaner car.
One place AVs would struggle is parts of the current Garden State Parkway. They’re doing construction and have decided to add dashed lane lines while the old ones are still quite visible so it takes a bit of mental adjustment…
Yeah, I think there’s all sorts of issues with road construction.
I frequently ask the question but never get an answer as to whether AVs will be able to follow the hand signals of cops, school crossing guards, DOT flaggers, etc. I assume that means they can’t.
Heck, since I just brought up trash day, how will it do at going around garbage trucks, delivery trucks, mail trucks and city busses, but not school busses?
When it suits your argument you bring this up. But then when presented with something that an AV will struggle with you switch tacks and say that a human will take over.
Well… which is it? If it’s going to allow people to go places by themselves in a vehicle when they can’t currently do so then it’s got to be able to handle the situations I mentioned without a human driver in the car.
There’s a lot of space between zero-intervention and very rare interventions. For example if you’re weird about costco parking lots.
If the vehicle is able to safely recognize a situation it can’t handle (which admittedly is a big IF in the first place), or the human wants something extra, then it could let the human drive.
One relatively simple version would be to have geofenced areas where the vehicle is allowed to go (ie. chandler, az). This could deliver your pizzas, pick your kids from soccer practice, and take care of your daily commute… but still not be able to handle driving through LA or whatever.
That may well be an incremental step. As Lucy correctly points out, having a tractor trailer that can drive itself the length of I-90 but needs a human driver to get it from downtown Boston to the interstate a few miles away and from the interstate to downtown Seattle would be huge. I don’t deny this, although I may be more pessimistic about the timeframe than some of the optimists.
Even picking up the kids from soccer practice seems like it will have hidden landmines. It’s still got to be able to navigate around garbage trucks and city busses but know not to pass school busses unless the driver waves them past. It’s got to be able to distinguish between objects in the road (fine to drive over an empty plastic grocery bag, but not fine to drive over a Chihuahua) and know that it’s picked up the correct kid(s) and be able to follow detours.
If it can’t be programmed fairly last minute to also pick up Timmy who lives two streets over and whose mom’s car isn’t AV and her dentist appointment is running late then that’s an inconvenience.
You mean like adding a stop to Waze fast? Checking on who gets in might be more interesting, but I imagine you can verify by checking a camera on/in the car. Recognizing school buses with the big red signs and lights is easy, even understanding hand signals from cops or construction is easy. Video game systems have been doing it for years.
Worried about where in the garage to park. It’ll learn from you for two weeks, then replicate what you did. Your husband is away and pattern changes, it’ll learn that by knowing his phone isn’t connecting to your wifi. They will screw up at first, but eventually people will adapt or the AVs will get smarter. I imagine you can completely rearrange your garage because the cars can pull in, let you out and then readjust to take up less space.
Drunks and blind people won’t have concerns about where in the garage to park on different days. They’ll be happy to get home safely in their own vehicle. Same for kids. They don’t get to picky. (I don’t think these are compelling advantages of AVs. Maybe blind people.)
You can’t be thinking about how will an AV handle the world as it exists because something like AVs will change the world. Look at what COVID did in less than a year. I don’t expect true AVs for a while, but when they reach critical mass, everything will adapt.
Is it? I thought this would be hard. Even assuming it could distinguish between a cop and a civilian, it’d have to recognize the difference between a cop giving traffic signals vs one just making hand gestures during a conversation.
Yes, and no. There’s going to be a multi-decade period where AVs and non-AVs need to co-exist. AVs will have to function during that multi-period decade.
There will be a period where some businesses have redesigned their parking lots for AVs and others haven’t. AVs will need to function in that timeframe. etc
They can read stop signs and lights. They can also just slowly drive through a lot of scenarios.
I’m not as confident that they could recognize a cop or hand signals, but that might be rare enough not to matter. At least it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a cop without a stop sign.
What would be really handy would be if I’ve parked in the middle of the garage and then learn he’s coming home earlier than planned if I could just hit a button on my phone and it would move itself to the appropriate place in the garage.
Or if he could press a button on his phone and make it do this when he arrives at home after a long trip only to find that his inconsiderate wife left her car in the middle of the garage. (Not that this has ever happened, of course. )
I see it more after car accidents when they’re directing traffic around the mangled cars and occupants. And while accident frequency will likely decrease, there will still be accidents. Some are unavoidable, such as a deer jumping in front of you at the last minute. I’m sure AVs will eventually get to the point where they handle that better than people, but there’s still going to be the occasional accident.
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