I think that’s fantasy, not even science fiction.
He’s just projecting.
One part that I think would see immediate benefits is with stop lights. Currently you get this cascading effect where the light turns green so the first car starts to accelerate, followed by the second, etc. In theory with autonomous cars they could all accelerate simultaneously and thus more would get through the intersection in a given amount of time.
huh?
yup, that’s definitely part of the problem - when cars come to a complete stop. The more complete stops we can eliminate, the less traffic there would be. Humans can’t communicate with every other driver at the same time, computers can.
I am hugely skeptical that in my lifetime I will be able to purchase a car that can drive me from point A to point B for most values of A and B that I would wish to drive to in a year such that the technology would actually be beneficial enough for me to be willing to forego my me-driven vehicle. It would be cool if I was wrong, but I doubt I am.
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Oh sure, there’s lots of things we could do with all of that time freed up, as demonstrated by train and airplane and ferry rides.
But the technology still has a long way to go.
I have level 2 automation in my new car (adaptive cruise control and a steering feature where it basically steers itself as long as you don’t wish to change lanes or make a turn or exit or anything).
Both level 2 features stop working in moderate rain. Not even heavy rain… just moderate is enough to kill them both. At that point I can’t recall if the cruise control just stops working altogether or if it reverts to regular non-adaptive cruise control. Hopefully not the latter as that would actually be fairly unsafe if the driver is expecting adaptive and then it fails to adapt. I think it just shuts the cruise control off altogether. I hardly use cruise control except on a long road trip, and I’ve only been on one long road trip since I bought it, and it’s been several months.
If AV can’t stay in a clearly marked lane on the highway nor detect and avoid a car in front of it during a moderate rain, it’s got a lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllloooooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggggggggggggg way to go before it can truly be safer than a human driver.
I disagree. Some people know they are worse than average. We consider my mom in a race against time (as we all are really). There is a crossover point between her driving skills as they lessen and AVs. Not sure exactly when it will be, but we have said her next car will be as much AV as possible.
I do agree that AVs have a long way to go. FSD is a horrible name for a product. Tesla has actually revoked some people’s purchase of FSD because of lack of driver awareness.
Some things I would like to see in AV. Audio feedback about reasonably anticipated actions, so making a turn in traffic isn’t as much as a surprise as a collision avoidance maneuver. The most nerve-wracking part of training a teenager is when they don’t tell you what they are about to do. Also, selection of risk tolerance. If I want it to be extra sure, I should be able to do so.
Ok, I should have said “en masse”.
I have no idea what FSD means.
I can choose how close I want the adaptive cruise control to get to the car in front of me. Although even on the closest setting it’s still not as close as many human drivers would choose.
If you don’t have the option of going faster than the posted speed limit, that will piss off a large segment of car owners. Yeah maybe someday speed limits will go away, but that ain’t happening until people-driven cars are off the road, which will be at least 30 years after they stop making them, which will be at least 20 years after they start making AVs, which is still a long way off.
So, you are saying that many drivers choose to tailgate, and drive closer than a computer, with excellent reaction time, thinks is a safe distance? That sounds like an argument for requiring AV as soon as it’s feasible.
I’ve never once disputed that there are some things AV can or will do better than some people.
But those same tailgaters are also capable of driving in moderate rain, so right now they’re still way better than AV.
I wonder if your AV uses lidar or cameras? My understanding is that the industry is moving more towards using cameras, with things like lidar just as a backup, as ordinary cameras work better in more conditions.
It’s a 2020 model year. Whatever my manufacturer was doing in 2020. 
Or in 2019 when they designed the 2020, more accurately.
I disagree somewhat.
I expect that 30-40 years from now, it will be common for new private passenger vehicles to be expected to drive autonomously under most circumstances. I am uncertain as to whether your or my lifetime will extend that long, how much of the private passenger auto fleet will have such capabilities, and whether such vehicles will be “bought” or “subscribed to”.
I think the technology is probably “2/3rds” or “3/4ths” of the way there already…but the part that remains (handling “normal” difficult conditions) is the hard part, along with the legal questions.
It’d be easier if we had discrete roadways for autonomous vehicles / if there were a uniform development as to when all traffic made shifts to different degree of vehicular autonomy (e.g. self-drive prohibited on intercity freeways), but I expect that at a minimum, social pressures will keep self-driving as an option beyond that 30-40 year window.
So I think a lot of you have figured this out, but the 93 in my name is the year I graduated from high school. I’m 46. So 30-40 years takes me to 76-86.
I certainly hope to still be driving at 76. 86 I’m less sure of. That’s about the age where my grandmother had her drunk driving lamppost incident… something I never want to happen to me as she just as easily could have rammed her car into a pedestrian and it’s very fortunate that it was only a lamppost.
And the usefulness of “autonomously under most circumstances” is hugely dependent on the circumstances where it doesn’t work and what the alternatives are.
If it will drive from my house to my relative’s cattle ranch 800 miles away but just can’t navigate the dirt roads on the ranch but allows me to drive them in manual mode, that’s pretty useful.
If it stops working in inclement weather and I’ll suddenly come to a full stop on the interstate in the middle of a blizzard, and it won’t let me take over and manually drive it, then that’s extremely dangerous. I could be abandoned and unable to stay warm or get to food and water and I’ll die.
And yeah, if I’m spending Christmas with family, this could easily happen when I’m crossing the mountains. My family drove from Ohio to Boston and back every year for Christmas for decades, through many winter storms. Sometimes we’d be down to 25-30 mph on the interstate because conditions were so bad. But that’s radically different from 0 mph.
Yep, classic 80/20 rule. MPC and I have both been saying this for years.
What if you had to drive to the interstate, and you had to take over when you left the interstate, but the car could drive itself in the interstate, even if the weather was bad?
I think we might see that in a few years, quite possibly with additional infrastructure needing to be added to those interstates.
Full Self Driving
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I do this already.