Preliminary NTSB report on Uber accident

[zack1234]

This topic comes up time and the again it’s ridiculous

Is this technology an attempt to stop accidents or to create cars that drive themselves

If it’s a driverless car it’s the stupid idea ever created for a car

If you want to sit in a driverless car your a moron, get a taxi or. Chauffeur.

And the most ridiculous thing about car topics which you lot will laugh at is in 30 years time the majority of people will not be able to own a car because they will be earning $3 a hour.

😂🛵🇬🇧👍😀

[Meatwad]

Everybody will be driving a horse and buggy and listening to AM radio 

[Skuzzy]

I have no interests in an autonomous car.  I like to drive.

I do find it entertaining to watch two factions go at it.

You want electric cars or autonomous cars?  Can't have both, today anyways.  According to Bosch, who makes most of the hardware for autonomous cars, it takes about 1500W@12V for all the hardware needed to do it right.  That is 125A. It does not take a rocket scientist to see how that impacts an electric car.  Even a hybrid would struggle to keep up with it.

Slap all those goodies on a hydrocarbon powered car and the gas mileage suffers while increasing exhaust emissions.  Added weight, and electrical loads and so on.

It is a hoot to watch people argue about it though.  Although I do find concern in seeing so many people welcoming change, without truly fleecing out all the issues first.

[Shuffler]

I agree with you.

But this raises the the big question - What the hell is the point of a self driving car when a human operator is still required to be present and alert?

There lies the stinker..... it is actually "driver assist".   

[artik]

From what it looks like.

It looks like the car was on early stage of development.

I assume that the car was designed not to break is high rate of false alarms by the system that could cause more accidents by emergency braking on highway. It should be proven 100% safe.

Maybe it was also the reason the alarm wasn't given to the operator since basic instinct could be break hard...

Bottom line it was impossible to see the pedestrian / bicycle on time using human eyes only, only lidar detected it.

If a human was driving the car it was just an accident because pedestrian wasn't doing what she had to ...


All guys who tell that you don't trust robot. Do you trust a clueless inexperienced  teen who drives 2 tonnes car on the same road? Do you trust drunk, reckless or overconfident driver? Do you trust tired driver? I don't trust my early self I was driving horribly when stated.

Bottom line is that the sad reality is that humans are horrible drivers.  And you can't upload driving skills to a teenager who gets behind the wheel, but you can do it for a computer.


Regarding power consumption. Don't forget it is testing models. I don't think anyone have really done full optimisation. All these machines are GPU heavy. But they all are getting faster and consume less power per tflops.

[Skuzzy]

A robot is only as good as the software that drives it.  Do you trust some pimple-faced-pepsi-sucking nerd, who has never lived in the real world, to make perfect software?

There are other ways to improve drivers than to just replace them with another potential error looking for a place to happen.

[artik]

A robot is only as good as the software that drives it.

I don't want to disappoint you but you are already being driven by software every day -  every modern aircraft is flown by software (auto-landing, autopilot, fly by wire, glass cockpit) and all the computers helped improving safety.

Even today many high end safety car features are software driven (the car had emergency breaking system in modern high end cars)

You put your life in hands of software engineers that designed software for MRI, Ultrasound imaging and so much more. Even today in many fields diagnosis is frequently can be given by machine much more accurately than by an average physician (which is by the way very-very sad)

It is sometimes frightening but we really live in future today and the world is changing.

Do you trust some pimple-faced-pepsi-sucking nerd, who has never lived in the real world, to make perfect software?

(a) Be kind to nerds... lots of stuff you use happily every day was created by nerds. 

(b) We don't need the SW to be perfect - it just must be significantly better than an average experienced driver - and to be honest looking on the state of the roads I start to think it isn't that hard 

(c) Yes I do want to have safety features so I can take control if something goes wrong (similarly - like a pilot as an ability to override an autopilot) and that is probably what should really be at least during first decade or two once the auto-cars will hit the roads.

[MiloMorai]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q5Nur642BU

There are other ways to improve drivers than to just replace them with another potential error looking for a place to happen.

Doesn't look like any improvements in over 100 years.

[Skuzzy]

Hate to disappoint you artik, but there are still pilots flying those planes.  The stick/yoke is still there and the pilot can take control and fly it at any time.  They are already talking about building cars without any analog inputs available. Huge difference.

I have experienced the simple smart cruise control system which merrily slams on the brakes if someone crosses in front of you changing lanes.  Damn near got rear ended.


Milo, I do not do utube so have no idea what that link is about, but the comment you made suggests we have not done everything we can to make it better.

How about really good training?  Here we give drivers licenses to people like they were candy.  No real tests, no real education about driving.  It is assumed to be a right everyone has.


So what happens when autonomous and driven vehicles are mixed on the roads?  Think about that one, long and hard.  People are unpredictable and computers have been, and continue to be confused by how people drive.

You want to trust your life to a piece of hardware which can fail at any time, or generate an error, or a programmer who has not thought of every possible condition a ground based vehicle can operate in, then go for it.  I'll stick with the wheel.  I trust me more than I do a computer programmed by someone whose fallibility is an unknown.

[Wiley]

I don't want to disappoint you but you are already being driven by software every day -  every modern aircraft is flown by software (auto-landing, autopilot, fly by wire, glass cockpit) and all the computers helped improving safety.

Very true.  Now, look at the difference in level of complexity in terms of traffic and stuff around you moving unpredictably in close proximity between flying an airplane, and driving for 20 minutes on a heavily used city street during rush hour.  There's a *teeny* bit more going on around the car.

As to driver "assists" I'm not a fan of many of them.  Backup cameras/view aids are awesome.  Adjusting how much your steering controls move the wheels during an emergency just makes absolutely no sense to me.  When conditions are bad, you want to know exactly what moving your wheel a certain amount does, not have the car adjusting your input to some unknown.

Being a good driver can save you from a ton of other peoples' stupidity if you're aware and not overdriving conditions.  The one thing you're in control of on the road is your vehicle, and taking that away means trusting the software and trusting the implementation of the system.

The sad thing is though, you're right Artik.  It's not going to take long for them to be statistically safer than most drivers.  It's likely to be quite a while before it's statistically as safe as a good driver though.

If your autonomous vehicle needs you to be ready to take over in an emergency (which generally happens in under a second) what's the material difference between that and having control of the vehicle?  Also, how many people are going to be able to maintain that concentration when they're not actually controlling the vehicle?  My money's on "very few".

Wiley.

[Puma44]

I don't want to disappoint you but you are already being driven by software every day -  every modern aircraft is flown by software (auto-landing, autopilot, fly by wire, glass cockpit) and all the computers helped improving safety.

I don’t want to disappoint you, but “every modern aircraft” is not flown by software.  Not every modern aircraft has auto land capability.  Not every modern aircraft is fly by wire.  Not every modern aircfart has a glass cockpit.  Some modern aircraft have some of theses options.  Some have none. All of these items are intended to reduce pilot work load, not take over the pilot’s job.  When it comes down to it, a well trained pilot will go “hands on” and make an aircraft fly as intended. All the “modern” technology is great but, it can and will malfunction and cause a world of hurt in short order. 

[MiloMorai]

Skuz, the video is of Market St San Francisco a few days before the big quake in 1906.

Agree, driver licences are handed out like candy these days. Whe I took my test in the mid '60s I cliped a curb on a right turn. Thought I would fail but didn't (the tester said because the rest of test was good he would forget that mistake). The test took place in rush hour traffic.

Be sure Wiley. Almost all driving assists imho make drivers lazy resulting in SA becoming less and less with each new assist.

[Shuffler]

I don't want to disappoint you but you are already being driven by software every day -  every modern aircraft is flown by software (auto-landing, autopilot, fly by wire, glass cockpit) and all the computers helped improving safety.

Even today many high end safety car features are software driven (the car had emergency breaking system in modern high end cars)

You put your life in hands of software engineers that designed software for MRI, Ultrasound imaging and so much more. Even today in many fields diagnosis is frequently can be given by machine much more accurately than by an average physician (which is by the way very-very sad)

It is sometimes frightening but we really live in future today and the world is changing.

(a) Be kind to nerds... lots of stuff you use happily every day was created by nerds. 

(b) We don't need the SW to be perfect - it just must be significantly better than an average experienced driver - and to be honest looking on the state of the roads I start to think it isn't that hard 

(c) Yes I do want to have safety features so I can take control if something goes wrong (similarly - like a pilot as an ability to override an autopilot) and that is probably what should really be at least during first decade or two once the auto-cars will hit the roads.

Another so called improvement just hit a parked police vehicle. Even Tesla says its cars are not designed to avoid accidents  they are driver assist only.

[Delirium]

Cars also weren't designed originally to break 30 mph, has that changed over the past 100 years? Trust me, this is the first step. I am eagerly looking forward to the day driver-less cars are the normal. I would much sooner trust a pack of CPU driven cars than what we have on the roads today, particularly now that we have so many vehicles on the road.

What I don't understand is this community is filled with history minded individuals but yet few on these forums can see past 10 years in regards to development.

[Skuzzy]

Cars also weren't designed originally to break 30 mph, has that changed over the past 100 years? <snip>

Certainly it has!  Advancements in every area have allowed cars to go faster and faster and be safer than they were originally were.  Much like the airplane industry.  Better materials, better designs and so on.  There is not a piece on an automobile today which has not been improved since their inception.  There is not a subsystem, on a car today, which has been been substantially improved since its inception.

Your comment about cars and the speed contradicts your lamenting how people cannot see the future.

Personally, I enjoy driving.  The Cobra club here hits the back roads of Texas almost every weekend, during the summer.  It is a blast.

If you think there are too many cars on the road, then advocate for better mass transit systems.