On Tuesday, October 10, 2017 at 2:54:38 PM UTC-7, AMuzi wrote:
On 10/10/2017 1:16 PM, Radey Shouman wrote:
Frank Krygowski writes:

On Tuesday, October 10, 2017 at 1:19:43 AM UTC-4, John B. wrote:
On Mon, 9 Oct 2017 22:37:43 -0400, Frank Krygowski wrote:

On 10/9/2017 3:13 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Mon, 9 Oct 2017 11:30:40 -0700 (PDT), Frank Krygowski wrote:

I wasn't doubting that auto-cars will exist and become popular. I was
doubting that the government will "shove them down our throats."

I wonder whether they will ever become popular given that they quite
obviously will be more expensive, perhaps much more expensive, I am
reading numbers as large as $75,000 for Google's autonomous driving
vehicle. Didn't SMS recently post something about buying a new car? I
seem to remember numbers in the range of a third of that value.

I imagine you're right, that in the short term these things will be
expensive. But I expect that long term the price difference will be
greatly reduced. (I imagine the phone in my pocket would have been
worth ten thousand dollars 10 years ago, if it existed at all.)

But what do you get for this money? After all probably everyone
reading this is capable of driving an automobile so what advantage
does this, rather expensive, self-driver provide?

Well: To my astonishment, I find that I'm driving long distances much
more often since I retired. It's not just retirement that influenced
that (although it enabled it); there have been family matters that
have arisen, new obligations and avocations, different circles of
friends, etc. But driving an hour each way is now far, far too
common. And sitting behind a steering wheel always seems damned
unproductive.

Even if self-driving worked only on limited access freeways, it would
ease a lot of frustration. I think it would make the experience of
freeway driving much more like the experience of riding a train in a
private compartment. The couple times I've done that, I found it to be
fairly pleasant.

Another problem that might arise. Will a self-driver work if one
visits Canada, or Mexico?

I guess it would depend on whether the system required a two-way
communication network. If so, Canada might achieve that before the
U.S. did. (I assume a bunch of U.S. states would declare this to be a
muslim or communist conspiracy and refuse to buy into it.)

With current technology recognition of traffic signs is still very
brittle, see for example:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-...ing-algorithms

or

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/09...-driving-cars/

An octagonal red sign may scream "stop" to you and me, even if it
actually says "alto" or "pare", but we're not machine vision programs,
which are "taught" to recognize signs without anything like
understanding of the concepts human beings use. For example, flat
surface, road sign, octagon ...

I suspect that if the powers that be (not all strictly government)
desire widespread autonomous vehicles that some system of transponders
not intelligible to unaided human beings will be required, and
pedestrians and cyclists and drivers of antique vehicles will have to
adapt or be squashed. To many of those powers this is a feature, not a
bug.


Fleet drivers in 2017/2018 18-wheelers are already
experiencing troubles such as random panic braking by
computer where no danger exists. The first complaint I heard
was last spring from a driver who came near a lane split sign:
http://www.trafficsignstore.com/merc...0001/W12-1.jpg

and the truck brakes locked up, followed ten seconds later
by a call from dispatcher, "Why did you brake?"

Maximum Homerdrive