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DRIVERLESS ELECTRIC CARS



 
 
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  #61  
Old October 10th 17, 04:30 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Frank Krygowski[_2_]
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Posts: 7,511
Default DRIVERLESS ELECTRIC CARS

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.)

- Frank Krygowski
Ads
  #62  
Old October 10th 17, 04:40 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
DougC
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Posts: 1,276
Default DRIVERLESS ELECTRIC CARS

On 10/10/2017 12:19 AM, John B. wrote:
....
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?

...
--
Cheers,

John B.


I would imagine that your insurance rates would be lower if you used the
self-driving feature a lot.

A computer will drive a lot more consistently than a human will, and
somehow the insurance companies will find a way to tell how much you use
it.

They can already tell how you were operating a newer car when you get in
a collision, and in addition to all the usual contrls, Teslas already
indicate if the autopilot was in use or not.


  #63  
Old October 10th 17, 05:16 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Jeff Liebermann
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Posts: 4,018
Default DRIVERLESS ELECTRIC CARS

On Mon, 9 Oct 2017 22:37:43 -0400, 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."


Well, let's pretend that the "Smart Driverless Highway of the
Future(tm)" is funded with our tax dollars, in order to provide a
suitable arena for testing driverless vehicles. There's little room
in urban areas to build such a highway, so it will likely be carved
out of the existing infrastructure, such a replacing the car pool lane
or ripping up light rail. In order to use this highway, you need a
fully automated and instrumented driverless vehicle, which can be a
car, truck, motorcycle, IoT thingie, eBike, or maybe even a bicycle.
It should be possible to coordinate this mix of speeds and sizes with
proper programming.

The "shove it down our throats" would be at the front end, when the
"Smart Driverless Highway of the Future(tm)" is funded, probably at
the expense of diverting funds for existing highway construction on
the assumption that soon everyone will be driving or riding a
driverless vehicle. "Research" funding will continue in this manner
until the numbers become sufficiently large for a taxpayers revolt.

More simply, "If you want to play in my sand box, you need to follow
my rules".

All this begs the question "Why would the government do this"? Well,
the auto makers have quite a bit of pull in Washington and will not
hesitate to use it to promote their interests. Saving 30,000 lives
per year sounds really good during an election. Promoting the highway
of the future makes normally reactionary politicians sound progressive
which should fit in nicely with "Make America Great Again". More
mundane is that building a highway involves the movement of huge
amounts of public funds, much of which can be diverted for other
purposes. Of course, there's a substantial demand for a driverless
car, initially at the high end, but which will eventually expand to
less sophisticated vehicles, like bicycles. Nothings says "I want it"
more than paying for it in advance:
"Over 35,000 Tesla owners bought ‘fully self-driving’ feature despite
still being unavailable, sources say"
https://electrek.co/2017/10/10/tesla-autopilot-owners-bought-fully-self-driving-capability/

Bonus Drivel:
"Disney's Magic Highway - 1958"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwA7c_rNbJE (8:47)
The driverless car starts at about 3:30.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D
http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
  #64  
Old October 10th 17, 05:46 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Jeff Liebermann
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Posts: 4,018
Default DRIVERLESS ELECTRIC CARS

On Mon, 9 Oct 2017 17:45:53 -0500, DougC
wrote:

Oddly enough, the wiki page for bicycle bomb has no mention of Israel at
all, even though it's probably had to diffuse more bombs than any of the
other locations mentioned (maybe even... all of the other locations
combined?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_bomb

In the Arab/Israeli version I read of, the bicycle frame tubes were
packed with explosives and a timer and just left somewhere in a public
place.


Things have really changed in Israel over the years. When I was there
for a short time in the 1970's, there were few bicycle racks. That's
because if you left a bicycle unattended, it was assumed to be a
bicycle bomb. The bomb squad would arrive, attached their own
explosives, and disarm it by blowing it up. Decorating someone else's
bicycle to look like a bicycle bomb seemed to be a popular pastime. As
a bonus, on Saturday, cars were designated targets for rock throwing
Hasidic kids enforcing the orthodox ban on travel on the Sabbath. I
don't recall if they threw rocks at bicycles, but probably not. It
was quite a zoo.

When there was an explosion, the reaction of the crowd was rather odd.
I was in Tel Aviv on Friday evening in the entertainment district when
something blew up nearby. Half the crowd was running away from the
blast, while the other half was running towards the blast to see what
had happened. More people were injured in the ensuing crunch than by
the bomb.

Roll forward about 40 years, and bicycles are now quite popular,
mostly because of high taxes on cars and an extreme shortage of
parking places:
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/blocking-the-sidewalk-tel-aviv-s-inspectors-got-your-bike-1.463015
https://www.tel-o-fun.co.il/en/
Even the rock throwing has become more subdued:
"Minister Threatens to Cut Funds From Tel Aviv Bike Project if Allowed
to Run on Yom Kippur"
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/minister-threatens-to-cut-funds-from-tel-aviv-bike-project-if-allowed-to-run-on-yom-kippur-1.462288


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D
http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
  #65  
Old October 10th 17, 05:49 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Jeff Liebermann
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 4,018
Default DRIVERLESS ELECTRIC CARS

On Mon, 9 Oct 2017 11:20:58 -0700 (PDT), Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On Sunday, October 8, 2017 at 11:32:54 PM UTC-4, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
Now, back to my question. How much are you willing to relinquish for
the privilege of riding your bicycle on the driverless highway of the
future? Are you ready for robo-bike?


I'm not willing to relinquish my right to travel by bicycle.
- Frank Krygowski


I didn't say you couldn't ride your bicycle. I said that you couldn't
ride if safely on the highway of the future. At worst, all it would
require is that you carry or attach several thousand(?) dollars in
technology so that the driverless vehicles would be able to detect and
avoid hitting you on your bicycle. Well, maybe a guidance computer
that would control your speed and direction in order to optimize
traffic flow.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D
http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
  #66  
Old October 10th 17, 06:06 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Jeff Liebermann
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Posts: 4,018
Default DRIVERLESS ELECTRIC CARS

On Tue, 10 Oct 2017 08:28:36 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

Some guy was driving a Tesla in self driving mode and was typing on his
laptop when a large truck cross an intersection in front of him. The self
driving thought it was an overhead and continued under the truck cutting
the top of the Tesla off and beheading the non-driving owner.


"Man killed in Tesla 'Autopilot' crash got numerous warnings"
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/20/man-killed-in-tesla-autopilot-crash-got-numerous-warnings-report.html

While this was the sort of thing that any programmer should have
foreseen the Tesla programmer didn't.


Nothing is totally 100% safe. The only question is what percentage of
safe is considered acceptable? When I get on an airplane, there's a
finite and calculatable risk involved in flying. Fortunately, it's
sufficiently small to accept the risk and continue flying, but
airplane still continue to fall out of the sky occasionally. How much
risk is acceptable for a driverless car? Dunno. The current
assumption is that the risk of a driverless car is LESS than dealing
with drunk, clueless, or stupid drivers. Too soon to tell if that's
true.

There is absolutely no way a self driving car can work in all cases.


Agreed. Please name me one device or activity that is absolutely
safe. There are none. My Sharpie marker pen is now on the unsafe
list because I stepped on it last night and landed on my butt.

It's fairly easy to prove that something is unsafe. All you need is
one example of an accident or even a hazardous condition. Even of the
odds of something happening are minute, it's deemed unsafe. Similarly,
it's impossible to prove that something is safe. We can design,
tweak, and test the device until it's totally obsolete, and there will
always be some fool that misuses the device and hurts themselves.
Many years ago, I used to collect magazine clipping of stupid product
liability lawsuits. I stopped when the box of clippings became too
large and I couldn't find anything.

So, how safe do you want to be before you'll buy a self-driving
vehicle?

--
Jeff Liebermann

150 Felker St #D
http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
  #67  
Old October 10th 17, 06:08 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
AMuzi
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 13,447
Default DRIVERLESS ELECTRIC CARS

On 10/10/2017 11:46 AM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Mon, 9 Oct 2017 17:45:53 -0500, DougC
wrote:

Oddly enough, the wiki page for bicycle bomb has no mention of Israel at
all, even though it's probably had to diffuse more bombs than any of the
other locations mentioned (maybe even... all of the other locations
combined?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_bomb

In the Arab/Israeli version I read of, the bicycle frame tubes were
packed with explosives and a timer and just left somewhere in a public
place.


Things have really changed in Israel over the years. When I was there
for a short time in the 1970's, there were few bicycle racks. That's
because if you left a bicycle unattended, it was assumed to be a
bicycle bomb. The bomb squad would arrive, attached their own
explosives, and disarm it by blowing it up. Decorating someone else's
bicycle to look like a bicycle bomb seemed to be a popular pastime. As
a bonus, on Saturday, cars were designated targets for rock throwing
Hasidic kids enforcing the orthodox ban on travel on the Sabbath. I
don't recall if they threw rocks at bicycles, but probably not. It
was quite a zoo.

When there was an explosion, the reaction of the crowd was rather odd.
I was in Tel Aviv on Friday evening in the entertainment district when
something blew up nearby. Half the crowd was running away from the
blast, while the other half was running towards the blast to see what
had happened. More people were injured in the ensuing crunch than by
the bomb.

Roll forward about 40 years, and bicycles are now quite popular,
mostly because of high taxes on cars and an extreme shortage of
parking places:
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/blocking-the-sidewalk-tel-aviv-s-inspectors-got-your-bike-1.463015
https://www.tel-o-fun.co.il/en/
Even the rock throwing has become more subdued:
"Minister Threatens to Cut Funds From Tel Aviv Bike Project if Allowed
to Run on Yom Kippur"
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/minister-threatens-to-cut-funds-from-tel-aviv-bike-project-if-allowed-to-run-on-yom-kippur-1.462288



while the other half was running towards the blast to see what
had happened.



maybe gawkers, maybe some ZAKA volunteers, maybe both.

http://www.aish.com/jw/id/48894137.html

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971


  #68  
Old October 10th 17, 06:10 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Jeff Liebermann
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Posts: 4,018
Default DRIVERLESS ELECTRIC CARS

On Mon, 9 Oct 2017 14:55:03 -0500, DougC
wrote:

I think eventually self-driving cars will be a lot more efficient than
what we have now...


Maybe. Personally, I see some initial problems where a line of
self-driving vehicles proceed at the speed of the slowest vehicle.
Even if a passing algorithm is perfected, there will still be a
tendency for similar speed vehicles to "clump" together in traffic. My
guess(tm) is that the self-driving vehicle will be the equivalent of
filling the highway with very conservative drivers, that follow every
driving regulations, never go past the speed limit, and are courteous
to other vehicles to the point of paranoia.



--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D
http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
  #69  
Old October 10th 17, 07:15 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Frank Krygowski[_4_]
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Posts: 10,538
Default DRIVERLESS ELECTRIC CARS

On 10/10/2017 12:16 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Mon, 9 Oct 2017 22:37:43 -0400, 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."


Well, let's pretend that the "Smart Driverless Highway of the
Future(tm)" is funded with our tax dollars, in order to provide a
suitable arena for testing driverless vehicles.


But they're testing these things now on ordinary streets. They're
attempting to make the cars, not the highway, "smart."


--
- Frank Krygowski
  #70  
Old October 10th 17, 07:16 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Radey Shouman
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Posts: 1,747
Default DRIVERLESS ELECTRIC CARS

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.
--
 




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