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A great number of us here at TTAC distrust autonomous vehicles, the predictions surrounding them, and — for reasons that become clearer with every reported mishap — most of the companies peddling this technology as a way of making our roads death- and traffic-free about 48 minutes from now. Or is it two years? These predictions come and go.
If we’ve learned anything recently, it’s that some companies place greater trust in their fledgling technology than they should, and that citizens would be right to take their forward-thinking claims with a heaping of salt.
An interesting poll just emerged from the snowy wastes of Canada, one that fills this author with a newfound trust in his countrymen countrypeople. Depending on where you live, you either can’t wait for the autonomous revolution, or you don’t trust it at all. Apparently, no country is more skeptical than Canada.
A survey of Canadians over the age of 18 by polling firm Ipsos shows that no other country is less enthused at the prospect of turning over the steering wheel to a mass of sensors and a computer that knows best. In terms of outright opposition to the idea, only Germany, home of the Autobahn and birthplace of the car, ranks higher.
The U.S. matches Canada’s tally of people who hate the idea, but ranks above it in terms of people who “can’t wait to use one.”
Could it be that Canadians are hip to the concerns we’ve stated for so long — that less-than-ideal infrastructure and bad weather poses a greater threat to the proliferation of autonomous driving than companies and tech websites suggest? Are Canadians more likely to recognize the hurdles standing in the way of this technology?
Just think of a snowy commute home to your house in rural Anytown, Canada. (North Dakota or Minnesota work, too.) The lane markers are blanketed and completely obscured by many inches of snow. Forward facing cameras and and proximity sensors have accumulated a nice crust of dirty slush or, if it’s colder, pure ice. Yes, that AV you’re riding in will really hold that lane. Is that your exit up ahead, or a farmer’s field? Looks the same from here.
There’s workarounds to every problem, but, as a former Managing Editor postulated, it’s infrastructure that’s key to making AVs work. The vehicles themselves are secondary.
Interestingly, when asked in what situations they would use a vehicle, “driving in bad weather” came in dead last. 32 percent of respondents said they would never operate a vehicle in self-driving mode in such conditions.
Canadians’ cynicism around self-driving vehicles didn’t end there. On every question asked about the supposed benefits of such vehicles, the country’s respondents came in well below the global average. Easier? Nope. More comfortable? Nope. More relaxing? Nada. More economical? Nuh uh. Friendlier to the environment? Hell no. Safer? Get outta here.
Either Ipsos contacted a group of well-camouflaged Luddites strategically sprinkled around the country, or the sentiment towards AVs is legitimately more negative than this author would have assumed. Who knew Canada would top the U.S. on the driving freedom index?
What say you, B&B — are these Canucks onto something? Has the hype surrounding the capabilities of autonomous vehicles hoodwinked too many people into believing it’s a viable near-term technology for the masses?
[Image: Ipsos]
One day we should have a “night of long knives” – burn all self driving cars
My chuckle for the day.
At least he didn’t call it “a night of broken glass”.
Two very different things. I’m OK with joking about Nazis killing each other off.
Maybe they and we here in the lower 48’s snow belts understand the extreme complexity that winter driving presents.
I never considered the cameras getting coated with snow and ice, not to mention the road grime spray painting that is ongoing on salted/mag chlorided roads in the snow belt. Let’s talk limited visibility, and the fact that snow/rain in the air not only limits optical systems, but also soaks up radar waves. Lets talk traction and skidding and prejudged braking distances, and judging the slickness of the snow covered road’s surface which can vary wildly. I can picture being stuck behind a self-crashing, er, driving vehicle in such conditions running along at near paralysis speed.
The irony is that autonomous vehicles do best in areas where fun cars thrive. Convertibles, muscle cars, sports cars are great fun out of the snow belt, but autonomous cars threaten to take that fun away.
Meanwhile, those of us stuck in the northern climes need to keep a stiff upper lip and carry on. We can’t use autonomous vehicles, but we could use tech that can see through fog and blizzards, along with V2V and V2I communications.
Your second paragraph also applies to those of us in the Southwest who have to deal with dust storms.
@azmtns, +1
Do you have four-month dust storms?
Don’t despair Scott Pruitt has a plan to terraform the planet solving those pesky long winters and its driving snow. Now granted he’ll just probably swap warm sunny weather on the coasts for your hard driven winter turning points south into Antarctic style hell hole but nothing comes without cost.
A self-driving car probably know magic tricks like when to run a stop sign to keep your momentum going to get up that hill, or realizing your made a mistake and misjudged your braking traction, so you steer out of the ruts and into unplowed snow because that will scrub your speed off better in this circumstance.
“A self-driving car probably know magic tricks”
For a moment, I thought you meant the car will ask you to “pick a card, any card” to entertain the driver and keep him awake on the road. :)
Yep, those are neat tips, and a level 5 AI won’t know them. Maybe a level 10, but then it would qualify for a better job than uber’ing around meat sacks.
I, for one, welcome our robot overlords.
Or slipping the transmission into neutral when attempting to brake in an icy intersection.
@ttacgreg – the backup sensors on my truck are a huge pain in the winter. Snow builds up and they continually give false alarms. Same can be said for the back up camera. I don’t trust autonomous systems for that reason. I doubt that these systems can tell the difference between some drifting snow that you can drive through or a cement wall.
That’s what the radar is for; it’s supposed to be able to tell that difference by the intensity of the radar return.
The question needs rewording for the Canadian market.
“Are you in favor of self-driving cars, if self-driving is fully managed by the government?”
Then see what happens!
Interesting, considering that their government seems to manage stuff far better than mine!
@FreedMike… “their government seems to manage stuff far better than mine ! ”
With all due respect sir. Our government can not manage “better ” than yours. Our government manages “differently” from yours , but by no stretch better.
Good point.
@mikey
And luckily for me, I don’t live in Ontario. The provincial governments have more effect on the average life than the feds. And provincial governments range from the merely incompetent to the utterly tragic. Probably like most US states.
Zeeeeeeee Germans are not far behind in their feelings.
Strangle HAL in his cradle I say.
I would argue that Germany is actually the country least interested in self driving cars….
I meant they hate self driving cars as much as the Canadians…
Look again, PD; Germans hate self-driving cars MORE than the Canadians. 6% more than the Canadians. And only like them 1% more than the Canadians. Dislike then, when taking the whole population into account, exceeds the Canadians by 5%; a statistically significant difference.
The overseas call center could not be clearly understood.
Self driving cars and AI associated with it will die a slow horrible death while lobbyist attempt making it a requirement. No amount of code covers all driving conditions and it’s become nothing more than a idea sucking huge capital while industry and enthusiasts cheer from the sidelines.
Recent Volvo crash exposed the underbelly showing manufactures sell components but leave building the system to car manufacturers thus limiting liability.
Just Let It Die.
I agree that no amount of artificial intelligence covers all driving conditions. However, no amount of natural intelligence covers all driving conditions either.
All the crashes appear to fall into one of two categories.
1. Uber – When it comes to autonomous vehicles, Uber appears incompetent. That doesn’t make everyone incompetent.
2. Misunderstanding – The only generally available autonomous vehicles are merely at Level 2. Level 2 requires the attention of the driver at all times. The crashes occur when people expect it to behave at a higher level than it is.
If there is a will there is a way. If the technology doesnt deliver the powers that be will just engineer the environment and the people to compensate.
It just takes one drive on a road that was plowed a few minutes earlier but still snowing. You can see thick white lines of snow that are nowhere near the white and yellow lines that would certainly confuse an AV to the point that it would sit still and wait until it melts in April. You get thin black lines where people’s tires went that don’t necessarily follow the lane markings (if we paint the lanes with RF transmitters that tell the AVs where to go if they can’t see the surface). Then factor in the radar scattering from the snow itself and the crap they use to deice the roads and it’s a non-starter.
Autonomous cars make sense for arranging cars in a smooth laminar flow in highway conditions were there are no intersections or pedestrians. There’s less efficiency benefit on surface streets, and no additional benefit on sprase rural roads. So realistically the majority of Canadians who would be interested in autonomous commuting would be the suburb to city crawls in the big city’s. However, go to a given Canadian city subreddit and you can see that some of the most contested conversations revolve around mass transit development.
Are you a road racing cyclist by any chance?
Nope, but i do get to hear a lot of stories from people who are!
Someone needs to start a conspiracy theory that Donald Trump is behind self-driving cars, and he secretly owns the IP, and that’s why he won’t release his tax returns.
Autonomous vehicles will be killed stone dead overnight.
“Autonomous vehicles will be killed stone dead overnight.”
…………but his loyal Trumpalumpa’s will line up and buy what ever ineffectual machine that gets produced!
But I see what you mean, popular vote and all………
When it snows, the self driving truck will have to park itself. In Canada that might mean: it will have to sit idly for a week. We will get lame jokes about excessively safety conscious autonomous vehicles.
It should not be too hard to get a self driving truck to leave a suburban parking lot in LA and have it arrive in suburban Phoenix, and I can easily envision this in the future.
Autonomous driving in the snow and mist through a downtown that was built in the middle ages, is riddles with obstacles, bikes, road construction, motorbikes, pedestrians: not so much.
@Robbie – agreed. In February my town saw record snowfalls. There were times when it was a challenge not getting stuck in my F150.
I agree that no amount of code from 30 something computer geeks can cover driving on icy, snow covered roads at night. Once those sensors are inactivated, will the vehicle switch to driver controlled, or just shut down, allowing one to freeze to death? Will a rookie driver, who has depended on electrical nannies, be able to take over in such a dicey situation??? The rapid decay of hard earned driving skills, by over dependence on electrical gadgetry, is a real concern to me.
Worries about ‘lane keeping’ might be moot, if all vehicles are ‘self driving’. Much like many southern/eastern European cities or Paris before the limits on vehicles, lanes, traffic signs, etc were just suggestions.
If all the vehicles on the road are self-driving then as long as they maintain a certain safe distance, then is there actually a need for lanes?
Do agree, regarding snow, slush, etc covering lenses, contact points, etc. Which is one reason why I have no use for back-up cameras. And wish that I could disable the one in our newest vehicle as I find the glare from it to be distracting/dangerous while parallel parking or backing up at night.
Backup cameras are useful tools – they’ve actually saved my bacon on a couple of occasions. But you’re foolish to rely 100% on them.
I love the backup camera on my truck. It is blatantly obvious when visibility is obstructed.
If we have rain-sensing wiper systems, then we can put sensors where we humans require visibility to operate cars. My dumb backup sensors are smart enough to know when they are obstructed, and warn me.
I live in a neighborhood populated by 30-something computer geeks. It’s up on a hill, and Portland is plagued by ice more than snow in the winter. Most of these guys can’t even drive on the stuff- I can’t imagine how they think they could code for it.
Hi, actual engineer who works on autonomous cars here.
Look, I like driving a lot, but the truth of the matter is autonomous vehicles are an eventuality. Will they ever be perfect? Nah. But will the risk per mile is on the downward trajectory whereas human piloting is going the opposite way. Want to talk about operation in hazardous conditions? Absolutely a challenge. Impossible to engineer an autonomous pilot better than a burgeoning TTAC writer who knows wheel slip by the feel of his Accord Coupe’s steering wheel? Get real.
The real reason there’s skepticism here is because our automotive infrastructure is ‘good enough.’ It’s why the U.S. is slow to adopt contactless payment and Japan was slow to adopt smartphones- they’re broken systems, but work well enough so why bother with the effort to update it. But the reality is elsewhere the world is already demanding it and the U.S. can choose to be the economic leader or just forfeit its brain trust and build products the world wants or find itself hilariously outmoded.
It’s difficult for those of us who romanticize about rowing our MX-5 through canyon roads who dread seeing it get clogged behind one of our minivans (in all likelihood last time you went for a joyride you probably got stuck behind a rental Corolla or Altima anyway) But for a lot more people there’s a real, tangible benefit.
I vote for hilariously outmodded.
AVs are the hill I die on. The only way I’ll ever use one is through threat of imprisonment.
“Hi, actual engineer who works on autonomous cars here.”
Welcome. I’m sure you can develop an autonomous car functioning to spec. My question is, do you have human factors person on your team? A psychologist? Getting an autonomous car to interact properly with a human is part of the equation and thus far, seems to be ignored.
That said, I’m sure autonomous cars will be inevitable, but on dedicated corridors. They won’t be allowed on roads like the FDR Drive in NYC. The idea that all of our infrastructure will be fixed well enough to support autonomous vehicles is more far-fetched than the long ago promise of cable TV with no ads.
WheelMcCoy,
I work in aviation maintenance and engineering and human factors play a huge role in every aspect of our work, from flying to even the cleaners. It was actually the aviation industry that created human factors in the workplace, or better still formalised human factors and other industries caught on.
I can tell you we have in place processes and procedures that are d!ckhead proof, but yet we humans can make a “fool proof” system fail.
I believe for autonomous vehicles will not be 99.9999999% safe until all road infrastructure and driving regulations are designed to facilitate autonomous technology.
This is where we are failing. We have a great amount of work to do in using autonomy in all environments.
@Big Al from Oz
Thanks, regarding human factors in the aviation industry, that’s reassuring. But Tesla doesn’t seem to be using them for “autopilot.” A tweak to the amount of time hands are detected off the steering wheel and an increasingly louder warning shows me they haven’t done their homework regarding human interaction. It amounts to little more than a Windows “Are you sure Y/N” dialog box.
They also don’t see the apparent contradiction calling level2 autonomy autopilot. With level1 — abs, forward collision detection — I know the bots are helping me. With level2, I have to help the bots, which doesn’t make any sense.
The human factors people, if they exist, are being silenced by the marketers.
Nuclear weapons were inevitable. We never use them, thankfully.
People are skeptical because giving away our transportation autonomy means we can be easily controlled. It’s bad enough we have multi-billion dollar corps trying to program our minds and surveil our every move. Autonomous vehicles will compound the problem exponentially, and companies will merely need to program your vehicle to travel the route they designate, passing the things they want you to see or whatever. Furthermore, whoever controls guidance can control coverage and access. Mileage taxation and congestion taxation are much easier to administer when the government requires vehicles to report their location and road usage, etc.
The “advanced people” should feel free to get in their autonomous vehicles and be driven directly to the soylent green factory. I will not go. I don’t ride in boxcars, either.
We’ve spent trillions on roads and incurred incredible risk relative to other forms of travel to make sure we can move freely at a local/state/national level. Giving away our autonomy so we can watch American Idol during our commute is incredibly dumb. I don’t need my vehicle to pick up fast food for me THAT badly. I’ll manage.
“Nuclear weapons were inevitable. We have not used them yet, thankfully”
Fixed it for you.
There have been many accidental close calls and incidents in the past 60 years. How many years,decades,or centuries to we sit on locked and loaded doomsday machine before chance, or some ignorant mentally ill person gets the “codes” and tosses nukes around in a delusional temper fit?
If we were an intelligent species, we would know how to build them, but we would never consider actually doing so. We are living on borrowed time.
Hey TTAC how about you lengthen the edit function’s timing out? I finished maybe two minutes of an edit and was blocked by the time out function.
“Nuclear weapons were inevitable. We have not used them since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thankfully”
Fixed it for you too.
But I get the sentiment… too much power in the wrong hands… or any hands.
“People are skeptical because giving away our transportation autonomy means we can be easily controlled.”
1) It ain’t all that difficult to control people in non-autonomous vehicles.
2) We DO have a method of control over autonomous vehicles, and it’s called a “wallet.” As in, don’t open it for a car that drives itself.
I don’t think consumers will ever fully buy into this technology.
“It’s bad enough we have multi-billion dollar corps trying to program our minds and surveil our every move.”
At least someone on the right is acknowledging election meddling ;)
My new Honda Accord, while not yet autonomous relies on similar tech for lane and distance follow as well as auto cruise. It fails miserably in even mild slush and ice pellets. Heavy rain also causes a similar shutdown; thereby turning the car into a not so useful manual highway cruiser. The system has taken as long as 12 hrs to reset itself and no amount of restart reboots clear the sensors. Wiping is useless when the weather is still inclement.
I love the car although the smarter than thou attitude of tying the entire driving experience into the fragile sensor packs is rapidly becoming old.
I frequently manage teams of tech enthusiasts who do not consider the obvious failure modes of systems and am astounded at their naive approach to failure mode analysis.
I always keep in mind that SNAFU is an acronym.
The “tech enthusiasts” might recognize FUBAR (evolved to foo bar) better. Meaning is pretty much the same. :)
Actually I believe that Fubar, is 2 steps past Snafu, and 1 past Tarfu.
Each one being incrementally worse.
I like the “SN” part of SNAFU. There are unfortunately times and places where AFU has become the new normal.
A repeating theme I have experienced in the ongoing wave of automation is that I’m forced into stupid irrelevant courses of actions and choices that the engineer behind the automation built into said device has imposed on me.
In lots of ways AI and automation are pre-empting personal freedom.
My brother and I have F150s with sensors and HID lights that get iced and slushed over I hear the LEDs are worse. My Raptor did not start once because a oil flow sensor faulted even though the oil was at the right level and the Oil pump is mechanical and attached to the crank shaft. I have had to train sensors for the TPSM system on multiple vehicles. I don’t see how these systems will work in the long term.
Speaking as a crazy Canuck, I currently don’t even use cruise control if the roads are wet. Having the vehicle take over is just not my cup of maple syrup.
Which is the correct answer, cruise control should not be used in wet conditions due to the possibility of hydroplaning. Do AVs have programming that can recognize hydroplaning and react accordingly?
Most AWD vehicles have that capability now to one extent or another. But such depends on the tires as much as on the vehicle.
The better question would be whether the system has the ability to detect puddles and attempt to either avoid them or back off the throttle before hitting them. Hydroplaning merely makes a surface slippery, puddles generate enormous drag on whatever wheels hit them, which can and will attempt to pull the car to that side rather than maintaining a straight path.
I believe that autonomous systems will perform like ABS and traction/stability control. They work fine for all BUT extreme conditions. I’ve been put into troublesome situations due to the nannies “thinking” that I need saving.
I love my radar cruise control in wet and snow because it can see cars in front of me better than I can…
Which means I shouldn’t be driving, I know… I know…
I don’t even use my cruise control when the roads are dry.
So, as a society where should we park our kagillions in R&D?
Cancer cure? Nah. Space travel? As if! Clean environment? Who needs it.
How about, autonomous vehicle transport? Yes we can!
-Create mega regions of population.
-Encircle them in constant CCTV and drone surveillance.
-Turn portable cell phones into a duopoly of tracking and surveillance devices with addictive properties.
-Mandate limited range EVs the market does not want and could not be hacked or used with chemical fuels.
-Introduce autonomous vehicles which can be easily controlled or overridden remotely.
-Automate society in such a way 60-75% of the population is not needed and thus is 100% dependent on the overlords for basic survival.
Create and mandate GMO seeds which cannot produce new seeds and put control of food production into the hands of the overlords.
Agenda twenty what?
Forward comrade!
Tinfoil hat snugly adjusted!
I would poo-poo your ideas as ridiculous, but unfortunately your points all seem to be the trajectory that a certain part (& a politically devious part at that) of the population wants. The all embracing hug of an omni-present government….
The only time an AV makes sense is getting back safely from the pub!
The proles did not heed the warnings of Robocop.
OCP loves you citizens!
“The only time an AV makes sense is getting back safely from the pub!”
Agree, but we have Uber for that now.
My parents could have used AI cars in their sunset years.
I guess I get to use this clip two times in a single week.
youtube.com/watch?v=s-kdRdzxdZQ&t
@28-Cars-Later – “Cancer cure? Nah”
Goldman Sachs just released a study where they actually looked at whether or not it was a sound business model to “cure” patients.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/04/curing-disease-not-a-sustainable-business-model-goldman-sachs-analysts-say/
Yet another reason to dislike Goldman Sachs.
I read of a similarly article about cigarettes not straining the health care system because the smokers die sooner than average anyway. Thinking like this is cold, calculating, and short-sighted. While AI has limits when it comes to autonomous driving, I think it can replace bankers readily.
“Cancer cure? Nah. Space travel? As if! Clean environment? Who needs it.”
This is exactly the main reason I’ve been against autonomous vehicles since the beginning. It’s absolutely the most ridiculous way to burn money I can think of, and think of every way else these billions could be spent…
Germany wants nothing to do with them. Seems like actually LIKE to drive over there. That aligns well with the cars they build since they tend to more driver focused, based around excellent handling and high speed cruising. Plus I think even they know their crappy electronics can’t be trusted.
If you’ve seen any footage of driving in India it makes perfect sense that they can’t wait for this technology – that place is a mess.
Yep, those were my conclusions too. I remember reading an article about GM needing to make the horn on the steering wheel more durable for cars exported to India. The drivers there would use them a lot, and break them. Note that they don’t use the angry American lean-on-your-horn flip-the-bird technique. In India, they issue short rapid beeps to tell the other cars “I’m on your shoulder”, or “look out.”
Until I actually drove the Autobahn, I never understood why German cars were a bit late to provide cup holders and cruise control in their imports in the 70’s.
Yeah. The autobahn was designed to avoid Highway Hypnosis by ensuring numerous sweeping curves keeping the drivers alert.
American freeways are straight unless they HAVE to curve.
What may put the kibosh on self-driving cars is the question of liability. With real meat-sacks in charge, blame can be apportioned when an accident happens. Billy-Bob was drunk, Donna was texting etc etc. When an AV ploughs into a group of nuns doing saintly works, all of the sensors and tech that will have been supplied by mega-corp and associated lawyers will ensure court cases galore as each party tries to deflect blame on to another. Just look at the recent Tesla Model X crash for a glimpse into the future!
At the moment there are a lot of tech firms ‘bigging up’ the technology to ensure juicy IPO’s with the commensurate number of big paydays! They pay off politicians and insert media puff pieces that the drooling masses lap up, it’s basically a bubble designed to make a few well connected individuals rich.
Rant over!
Couldn’t 99 percent of things on the planet be described as “basically a bubble designed to make a few well connected individuals rich”?
I suspect the more revealing information is who is at the top of the list, not the bottom of it. India, Malaysia, China – countries with terrible traffic, where driving isn’t fun or freeing, but an exercise in frustration as you sit effectively parked for hours at a time. Who wouldn’t want to turn over control to a computer in that situation and get on with something useful?
Countries where driving can actually be enjoyable, on the other hand, have more people who want to continue to enjoy driving.
Considering 1 in 6 Canadians live in the Greater Toronto Area, you’re probably on to something (that ties in rather nicely with the 18% who embrace AV’s).
There are relevant countries missing from the survey. Where are Holland, Denmark, Norway?
What did the survey ask? Were vehicle to vehicle communications mentioned? Most people are unaware of such important aspects of autonomous car operation.
Lane lining design can be altered to better work with the cars. Roadside signals can warn of places unsafe for the systems.
Who commisioned and paid for the survey, or does Ipsos do surveys on their own?
Snowy roads? Big deal. My primitive adas system just displays an error code on gravel roads or roads with enough snow on them. No problem to notify the driver and shut down in a safe manner if there’s no response. Aviation practices can show how to combine automation and situations.
Humans struggle with difficult driving conditions also, by definition. The important question is whether these systems do better than people, and whether they are a net benefit to society.
I suspect that the most ardent proponents of AV are the least engaged with cars and driving. They include stock market watchers who want to see that their automotive investments are charging ahead of the pack on this new disruptive tech; urbanists who see AV’s as the way to perfect efficiency; and futurists who think all new tech is just swell. Combined, these forces are pushing the carmakers to get ahead of their skis.
I like driving tech features that enhance my situational awareness, like blind spot warning, backup cameras and cross traffic radars. Coincidentally, those are the advanced features endorsed by car owners in Consumer Reports’ latest story on AV tech. More advanced features like lane following and auto cruise control were more trouble than they were worth, said an owners’ survey.
“…. it’s infrastructure that’s key to making AVs work.” There are a lot of miles of unpaved roads (about one third of the total) in the United States. In addition, rural homes rarely have paved driveways. AVs may work on well marked roads but it will be necessary to retain conventional controls so that they can be driven where there are no markings.
I really question how this technology will work where I live in rural West Virginia where in addition to all of the other problems mentioned we have disastrous infrastructure. Roads with no markings, dirt roads, gravel roads, flooded roads, mud and rock-slides, and pot-holes big enough to swallow a Fiat 500. You cannot even rely on GPS and Google maps in my area. I don’t think the Bay area technologists can even wrap their minds around my reality.
Look at that chart again; Germany is certainly more skeptical, even if they have a few more people who are all for it. With a difference of only 1% in people for autonomy, Germany has 7% more people opposed to it. Germany is even more skeptical than the US as the US shares Canada’s 24% opposed.
And remember, you can’t ignore that 58% of Canadians who are at least willing to consider autonomy…a number exceeded only by Central/South America and Eastern Europe.
I also wonder what the definition is..
I am PSYCHED for self driving cars. Thats because I firmly believe self driving cars will not be possible during my lifetime in non-highway, non urban settings.
In highly urban settings, V2I can coordinate essentially like trains.
In highways, its controllable enough that between V2V and V2I, I think its manageable.
I live down a dirt road. No self driving car is going to navigate it anytime soon… haha.
I bring that up because what does it “mean”? I’m psyched to put my car in V2I cruise control on the highway. Right now I use radar cruise control and LOVE IT. driving on the highway is so much better…
By the time we get to Level 5 autonomous vehicles we will have gone through the dedicated lane with embedded technology and heated roadway in an urban environment stage. True autonomy is a decade, at least, away.
“Countrymen” is fine, thank you.
I dare anyone to argue how autonomous vehicles are more “environmentally friendly”. Building new roads and rebuilding the entire infrastructure of the planet isn’t “environmentally friendly”. Making sure less humans die on the roads and raising the population even more isn’t “environmentally friendly” either.