Talking Cars Tuesday: How autonomous do you want to go?

None. None autonomous. Primarily because I see very little good about the perpetually increasing reliance on external things to tell us what to do. From software sifting through emails to guess at and tell us where to go, to systems that allow us to not pay attention to driving. I don't see the overall cost as lower, and there is a huge cost in becoming dependent on never-ending external prompts to pay attention (not the least of which is the ADHD epidemic).

For 'fun' cars we have a 2008 Saturn Sky Redline, a restored 1987 Fiero GT with an upgraded 3.4 V6, and a 1959 Austin Healey Sprite with an upgraded 1275 BMC A-series with a hot cam.

The Sky and Fiero are mine. The Sprite is wifey's. The Sky makes almost three times the horsepower of the Sprite, but the more I drive the Sprite, the more I prefer it- no electronics outside a vintage Lucas radio. No power steering, stability control, antilock brakes, lane guidance, oxygen sensor, launch control, no lift shift. etc. etc.  The car does what the driver tells it to do; never trying to second guess or out think. You have to pay attention. There are no cupholders.

We need to participate in more activities that demand full attention and concentration, not less.

is me.

Full autonomy, fuck driving, fuck traffic, fuck it all. The single most dangerous thing any American does, and we do it every goddamn day, and some of you just love it. Fuck that shit.

So that DUI's become a thing of the past.  I imagine the governement will find some way to make it illegal to sit behind the wheel of an autonomous vehicle while drunk so long as you possible could have been operating in non autonomous mode.  So I guess it's full autonomy or nothing?

Seriously though if the move to autonomous vehicles makes DUIs a thing of the past I'll sing its praises.

I want to retain control of my car, but want everyone else to be autonomous so they stop driving like idiots.

Depends.  Do we still have a knob to control our average "cruising" speed on the freeway, or will it only go the speed limit and nothing more?

Speaking of Speed Limits...hasn't it been 70 forever now?  There are so many times when the highway is free and clear enough to go 90 + with zero hazard.

But ... I know .... People are idiots and would be doing 90 + in traffic too (pretty much like they do already!)

It depends on the situation. Driving to work, picking up my kids from school, running an errand to a particular store, driving to a specific address (relative's home, etc.) I am fine with autonomous vehicles. Problem is, what happens when you remember another errand or needed stop while on the way? Or when you see something you weren't planning on in the least? You need the ability to take control.

The other thing is exploring and driving off the beaten path. I can think of places I've driven in West Virginia, in Colorado, in Montana, in Wyoming, in Nevada, in Arizona, even in northeast Georgia, where I'm really dubious about the ability of autonomous vehicles. I remember driving from Ely, Nevada to Round Mountain on Highway 50. That is a desolate area. Exploring ghost towns out there, and camping in Great Basin National Park. I remember driving in a national forest in Wyoming outside of Yellowstone on dirt roads where we encountered a grizzly bear. I'm somewhat dubious about the ability of autonomous vehicles in remote areas like these.

Any car that can be remotely controlled I do not want. Prefer MT

My family has been doing annual trips to Florida and each time it reinforces to me what a pain in the ass it is (and expensive) to pack for a week+ and fly with two young kids.  If I could load the family hauler to the gills, hit the road, flip to AUTO and then grab some take out and a movie before going to sleep and waking up within shouting distance of the Mouse-- all while skipping the airport, jammed airplanes, rental cars, baggage limits, TSA, etc, then sign me up.

This would keep the morans off their phones, no lap dogs, or distracted driving.

The only exceptions being San Francisco or other extremely hilly cities.

Put me in the all automated camp. I live near an intersection where people run the red light 100 times a day. I can't remember how many times I've almost been tboned. No parking, no/little traffic, no car maintenance, no pumping gas, no worrying about car after having a few beers, safety of my kids, etc. All of this trumps any fear of a rogue hacker.

Love my 392 HEMI with the stick. THe driving experience is fantastic for me. I don't want to lose that freedom.

To ensure everyone still possesses manual driving skills in the case of a massive glitch/hack/EMP situation, you'll only be allowed to purchase/operate an autonomous car past the age of 35. That way you still had roughly 20 years of being a driver.

Cruise control, automatics are fine, though not my ideal choice. 

I love to drive. I love sticks. 

I don't mind that people want automated cars, except that their interconnectivity seems to make them a major hacking target and that too often the 'visions of the future' seem to mean that I can't drive the way I want. 

Read through much of this thread but haven't seen a good tie in to our cause. Will autonomy help ease the traffic jam on Main Street after whomping Staee or OSU this year? If so, I'm all for it!

When my brain and reflexes are no longer able to drive a car safely, but not a day sooner. 

After graduating High School I got a job in a factory.   Every robot in the factory had a flaw, it did exactly what it was told.  Well it didn't take us very long to figure out that if we wanted a break we could just aim a flash light at one of the sensors.  Eventually the engineers figured out what we were doing and tried fixing it.  Didn't matter, we just figured out a new way to get our unscheduled coffee breaks.

Now times that by millions of robots, driving cars, that do exactly what they are told.  I'm sure NOBODY will find a way to turn that into a fucking mess.

Commuting: fully autonomous so I can work in my car, thus eliminating "commute time" from my day. This could be a purchased service (buying rides) and not owning the car.

Trips: configurable, depending in whether I want to cover distance while doing something else, like sleeping, or want to "explore", either on or off road. This could be a rental.

Weekend fun: Mustang 5.0L GT with a stick, because driving is an "art", like dancing. I would own this car.

OR

The 'Stang and a configurable F150 Super Crew that would do all the other stuff above. Own both.

I'd prefer to have input on where my car takes me. Beyond that, I want nothing to do with the driving experience. I'm not sure people really grasp how transformative this could be. Cars being able to drive themselves without humans in them is a crucial part of all this too.

That is all.

So when going fully autonomous, thinking I-94 here, there's some max value of speed, whereas today there's a reasonable distribution from 55-85mph.

But, if everyone is throttled to 70mph, it could create big backlogs, because nobody can pass.  Somehow the lanes have to be used but it could be a moving-gridlock situation.

Now suppose the car in the middle lane has to exit right to I-275.  But the right lane is jammed with cars spaced 1 ft apart because they can.  So the vehicle has to plot a path to the right lane.  

Me, I would look for gaps and either use a larger numerical throttle position or drop back via decel or braking.  But my guess is the AI (logic) has no choice but to drop back.  Now the entire middle lane behind must drop back.

There are some big issues when the system gets gridlocked or a lot of flow that may not actually be better.  No telling until we get there.

I feel like while it feels like we are jumping straight to Buck Rogers, the earliest AI/logic versions will have to be conservatively designed, sort of like flight control systems, its like 1980s tech but it doesn't screw up.  It almost needs a time-enforced scan like a PLC (1960s tech there), rather than allowing the CPU to bog if a lot of tasks show up or the software starts to glitch

Many issues to be resolved.  I don't think its arriving as fast as everyone thinks.

I have rocket ships, heavy towing/haulers, effiicient commuter cars and family wagons parked in my lot and enjoy driving them all.  That said I would add an autonomous vehicle but I don't think it would be the best choice to go from say  AA to Atl because of the need to charge up that would kill the benefit of being able to sleep and browse the net.

Have your fun with your fossil-fueled flivver while you can. All you whippersnappers out there will eventually drive (or ride-share in) some sort of electrically powered, semi-automonous vehicle. That's the way most advanced automotive research is trending. The auto industry could eventually become an amalgam of Google/Alphabet, Apple - Ford, GM, Fiat and others, with vehicles possessing a full array of computerized driving assists on a carbon-fiber platform. 

I recently purchased a block of Ford stock. Not necessarily for myself, but for my 10-year-old grandson. Sometime in the next decade or two Ford will partner with some tech giant to produce a near-revolutionary line of passenger vehicles. Other auto manufacturers will do the same. 

Welcome to the brave new world. Gasoline will remain available, but will be about as accessible as EV charging stations are today.

Not a chance I would ever get on the freeway in a vehicle that wasn't human driven.  Technology is not bulletproof and I deal with the automation used in these vehicles in my line of work.

This stuff is fine for low speed and segregated routes but is not suitable for highway speeds with other people.  Blowouts happen, people not maintaining their vehicles happen, crap flying off the back of trucks hitting your windshield happens...too many unknowns that software programming is inferior to the human mind.

When a catastrophic accident happens, and it will unfortunately, this stuff will be re-evaluated.

 

is writing/testing/shipping software. As such, I'm painfully aware how hard it is to make a complex system free of impactful bugs. Depending on the implementation (following tags in roads, or trying to perceive arbitrary environments, etc), this can range from really complicated to incredibly complicated.

So here are some of things I would use "autonomous" driving for:

- Proximity warnings (lane changes, rear/front/side prox)

- Backup warning (different alert than rear prox when moving at speed)

Things I would never, ever use:

- cruise control (even the very simple cruise control is buggy as hell, both mechanically and "software")

- Arbitrary environment - IMO, this is basically impossible to get right. A road environment is an incredibly complex one. Control steering and speed to traverse the intervening roads from origin to dest is the beginning of the beginning of the problem. Static and dynamic weather conditions, other vehicles, construction, animals, pedestrians..Just the start of the complexity.

- More controlled - Installed tags - Less impossible, but unless you are going to separate roads and everything else, many of the above problems remain.

- automated parking - The current implementations are an insurance companies nightmare and a body shop guy's dream. This gives you limited value for substantial risk.

I may sound like I'm suggesting that autonomous cars get off my lawn, but really, they feel to me like a more informed person's version of flying cars. :) Totally impractical, but cool enough sounding (and of course, real people are working on it) that it will be perpetually 5-10 years away.

Important point - The best counter I've heard to the above is: Ok, yeah, there will be problems, but haven't you heard? Auto accidents kill lots of people all the time now. This is absolutely true, auto travel is already pretty frickin dangerous. I want to be clear: The problems I forsee with anything that's been proposed or is being worked on would (IMO) cause problems substantially worse than the current level of stupidity, inattention, incompetence, stubborness, anger, and random awfulness that comprise the driving experience.

Why? As I said:  I don't think we're far enough along that a software/hardware system can be contructed to deal with this hard a problem. Further, the problem can't be simplified without ENORMOUS changes to our road infrastructure and the relationship between that infrastructure and everything that surrounds it.

     Rob