Och

iTrader: (3)

QFT.

If they want to solve traffic, one thing that would really help is to allow kids without supervision to walk to school. Here in NYC traffic is actually pretty light during the summer when the school is closed, but becomes a total mayhem once school starts and hordes of soccer moms in minivans are doing the school run.

SW17LS

Unfortunately thats just not realistic in the modern world anymore. Sad but true. Whether its allowed or not, my kids won't be walking alone to school, certainly not in NYC.

Och

iTrader: (3)

And with this mentality the overprotected, over-pampered millennial kids grow up to be narcissistic antisocial mutants, incapable of anything besides being annoying.

SW17LS

Hey now, watch yourself.

My kids can certainly be raised not to be all the things you describe, while we also do what we reasonably can to keep them safe. Keeping them from walking around a huge urban city alone when they are younger than a certain age is one of those things. The world is dangerous out there now compared to when we were kids.

I don't consider driving my kids to school, or putting them on a school bus, or keeping them safe from predators "pampering" them. Sorry, I don't feel comfortable letting my young children go out into a public area and play without me keeping an eye on them. Too many sickos in the world. I don't think I ever walked myself to school actually, and I think I turned out pretty good.

Och

iTrader: (3)

Oh please, the world is safer than ever, and nothing wrong with kids learning sense of self preservation by not being completely isolated from the world. Otherwise they grow up to be manginas that are completely oblivious to the dangers out there, and can't seem to understand that they shouldn't stare at their iphone while crossing the road or driving.

DaveGS4

iTrader: (2)

OK guys let's take the child rearing discussion to PM and get the personal commentary out of this thread.

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

yes it should be, and eventually will be, but progress isn't a straight line and we don't get everything we want all at once usually.

with self-driving cars, who cares about traffic, you can get stuff done or entertain yourself while the car does the drudgery of getting through a congested place.

yes, that's likely a good idea and perhaps it will come, but there's many absurdities with modern vehicles. why can some go over 200mph? what possible value is that, unless you have a runway handy.

so while we're about making phones locked out and other nannying, how about making the car be INCAPABLE of exceeding a speed limit by more than say 5-10mph (the overage to allow for some margin to avoid something)?

if there's some tube you have to blow into to start the car, how disgusting will that become over time? what if there's multiple drivers of a vehicle? um, no. however, there's many other 'tells' when someone is intoxicated besides a breathalyzer. and besides alcohol how about other kinds of impairment like drugs? cars will likely become smarter to know if someone is driving poorly/erratically, and simply pull over and stop. how would you feel about that?

sorry, that's hogwash perpetrated by the media. the world is safer than it's ever been. overly protective parents ferrying their kids to schools and then later the giant lines of vehicles most all with engines running waiting to pick them up is absurd. at the least it would be better for busses to bring them to a pickup/dropoff point so the school isn't inundated with vehicles twice a day and the resulting traffic tie ups.

SW17LS

It’s all a question of your personal freedoms. Why don’t we have limitations that require phones to shut down when driving or breathalyzers for every car that must be used every time? Because having those things limit the freedoms we have when choosing how to use our property. I’m not in favor of that sort of thing.

As for it being safer today than it was when we were kids, I just don’t agree with that at all.

mmarshall

Sometimes, even if they are a distraction, phones are needed in case of an emergency....that is simply the chance one takes while driving. I'm not in favor of actually shutting them down. People, in general, just need to be more discreet in their use while driving. It's not an emergency, for instance, to be yakking with wife, husband, or kids about dinner or estimated ETA home......that can wait until the car is stopped or parked.

On the Breathalyzers, in some circumstances, definitely...IMO, they should be on any car that anyone with a DUI/DWI conviction will be driving....with court-orders to use them or face re-arrest. At the D.C. auto show, the manufacturers that allow people to test-drive vehicles on the local show-circuit sometimes (not always) require you, in addition to the usual driver's license-check, to take a test-puff before they schedule you for a test-drive. Makes sense to me.....not only do many thousands of folks attend that show after drinking, but may (?) even be buying and consuming beer on the premises.

Crime statistics can vary wildly from place to place, often just a few miles apart. Take D.C., for instance...not very far from where you and I both live. West of Rock Creek, in Ward Three, the violent crime is generally much lower than it is east of the creek....and, of course, takes another sharp jump in Wards Seven and Eight, south and east of the Anacostia River. The high crime rate pervades such of Prince George's County, but tapers off towards both the south, towards Charles County, and northwest, towards Montgomery County, where you live. But, even in Montgomery County, there are sharp differences...crime in Silver Spring, for example (where I used to work) and Takoma Park, is much higher than further north in the county. In Fairfax County, where I live, there is a relatively high-crime strip down along Route 1, towards Mount Vernon, but most of the rest of the county is much safer.....on the whole, one of the safest counties of its size in the U.S.

Back to the topic.....safe-driving vehicles. They may (?) even enhance the safety of kids, on the way to school, by providing a sealed cocoon for the kids to ride in, directly to school, pre-programmed to not stop anywhere else and be a potential target for perverts, and safely delivering the kids (maybe in another long line of self-driving cars LOL) to the school's front door. The kids would generally be safe...unless hackers figured out a way to override the car's security-systems. And that, of course, is one area where the engineers that design these systems have to earn their money.....cyberspace protection.

mmarshall

While we're on the subject of self-drivers, I can't help but wonder one thing (that no one else seems to have brought up). What if you are in one, on the way home, after eating one too many burritos at the Tex-Mex place, and halfway home, nature, all of a sudden, (and I mean ALL OF A SUDDEN)....decides to call? Or if all of that caffeine you drank, earlier at Starbucks, finally starts to hit your bladder? The vehicle is programmed to take you all the way home, and not stop (or delay) anywhere else. Just something to think about...it might be wise to keep a bottle of Kaopectate and a spoon in the glove-compartment LOL.

Another interesting question is how the police are going to conduct traffic-stops on self-drivers. Presumably, self-drivers will not be speeding, running red lights, making illegal turns, or violating other traffic laws....and probably not need many traffic-stops. But, if, say, a known criminal, with an arrest-warrant, is riding in one, and the cops know it (or find out), how are they going to be able to stop the car and make the arrest? The only practical way I can think of (short of doing something drastic like shooting the tires out and immobilizing the car) is, assuming they know where the car is going, having a team of officers (even a SWAT team if necessary) waiting the vehicle's destination.

A third interesting question is how self-drivers will be programmed to recognize and stop (or slow down) in temporary-construction or work areas. Often, especially on tow-lane roads, those work-areas areas will have a couple of persons at either end, holding up a rotating STOP/SLOW sign. At suitable intervals, the persons alternate the stop/slow so that traffic safely flows in one direction. If the GPS in the car is programmed for the normal speed-limit on the road, and doesn't know that there are guys up ahead with stop signs, that could cause a real problem.

I'm not saying that these are insurmountable problems.....but something that might take a lot of work and design to overcome. It's why we aren't likely to see many of these types of vehicles buzzing around very soon, without a lot more potential work.

KahnBB6

iTrader: (5)

Of course, and by that token the world is going to have human driven and self-driving cars mixing together for quite some time yet and one would expect indefinitely even if the usage rate for one is lower than the other. Similarly we're going to have L2, L3 and L4 self-driving cars much sooner than we will have true L5 self-drivers that will never require human takeover even if the car has a steering wheel and pedal controls.


Hmm. So... what am I supposed to entertain myself with that is of any value when I could be operating the car and actually getting my zen time from that? Watching a movie should not be done in a car-- it should be done in a darkened home setting or in a theater without distraction from the audio-visual and mental experience of viewing a film. Tool around on YouTube or social media? Those are not really great uses of time anyway. Reading a book in the car doesn't really work for me, sorry. Too much going on around me. Listening to music, a podcast or audiobook or notes I have to memorize from audible playback I already get to do when I'm driving a car so the only difference in a self-driver is that now instead of listening and concentrating on the driving experience-- even the version of it in traffic-- I'll now be extremely annoyed that there isn't a steering wheel or controls.

As for "getting stuff done", if you mean now the commute to a workplace is actually the real start of the workday... hmm. No. That's the place that one has to oneself to prepare and organize thoughts and approach for the day for when you actually arrive at work. Even in traffic I find the drive there to be a zen experience. Further, in my profession the actual work happens in stationary workstation environments for long hours or in physical locations you have to travel to. Other than listening to pre-recorded notes and memos to orient myself with in audio form only in morning commutes you just have to be where you need to be at the right time. Once I come home for the day which can be very late the last thing I want is to not be able to enjoy driving myself home. Even when I hit traffic, which can be very annoying and wearing, I'd still be bored out of my mind and quite annoyed at the experience if I couldn't operate the vehicle myself.

Plenty of people in cities don't feel this way and would prefer and love an auto-driving car to take over for them. If that's what they want then great for them. I don't. I already don't have a problem with operating a manual transmission in traffic and even today that's incomprehensible to some.

For me, I'm really not interested in not piloting my own personal vehicle no matter how sparse or dense the conditions are.

Now if I were to rent a Level 5 autonomous Uhaul truck I can see the exception there in allowing that to be an experience as just a passenger someday. However I've rented 16-20ft cab-over Isuzu NPR box trucks many, many times and I've actually enjoyed the experience of driving those big machines too-- including all of the adjustment to their size, braking, handling and following not just the speed limit in them (it's a utility truck, not a Corvette) but also all the yellow *recommended* speed signs when negotiating turns in those big things.

I suppose I'm the odd one out when it comes to preferring to drive and observe the surrounding conditions even in less than ideal conditions and even vehicles that aren't generally considered "fun".


How many cars in actual circulation can go 200mph? How many of them are constantly driven at or near 200mph on public roads? How much gasoline (or electricity) do you think gets burned when traveling at near or at 200mph? How often do you think you can really get to 200mph before you hit eventual traffic on highways where no one observes the "drive right" rule religiously as they do in Germany? Also significant is the question of how expensive is the average 200mph capable car?

Why make a car that can go 200mph or more? Because you can make such a thing and because it's an amazing feat. That doesn't necessarily mean you can actually use the car at that speed very well at all outside a race track or that you won't be in for hell if you cause trouble and/or get caught at such a speed on a public road trying to. There are people who have tempted this but eventually it doesn't go very well for them if they don't take it to a track to explore a car's truly insane capabilities.

Most of the time with the most common affordable cars I find it difficult to even find a respectable minimum of 200 horsepower with a transmission that isn't a terrible CVT and a top speed of more than 120mph or so. And just because many regular cars that aren't sports machines may have speedometers that read up to 120mph it doesn't mean you actually WANT to drive those cars at such a speed. Some cars are absolutely stable, smooth and confident in three digit speeds while others are downright scary by the time you get to 70-75mph.

On the other end of the spectrum I would ask why some cars are made to be so incredibly slow and unstable at highway speeds that you actually feel scared that you won't be able to merge into traffic safely or that you feel at 75mph the car lacks confidence and stability to the point that you truly do not feel safe in them? And then some cars have truly undersized braking systems that barely feel adequate.

Still, there is a place for those very bare minimum and basic cars just the same as there is a place for the extremely rare and difficult to obtain cars that can do 200mph or more.

5-10mph only limitations over any posted speed limits would require speed limits to be geo-location marked in a universal system of some kind and all cars would have to have a GPS-based speed governor. And that would also assume that EVERY time a speed limit is changed the geolocation data would ALWAYS be updated. That's a significant addition to DOT infrastructures everywhere let alone standard equipment on the cars themselves.

But I can think of many situations where 10mph over was actually just the regular flow of traffic in some areas, usually in 55mph-65mph zones. Uniform traffic engineers are supposed to observe this and the average conditions and follow the 85th percentile rule to determine what the actual speed limit should be in a certain area. Of course in the real world that doesn't always happen and sometimes this is can also be due to some cities or towns preferring to have a much easier excuse for issuing more speeding tickets for local revenue even though they are well aware that most people safely drive at a speed slightly higher in certain corridors than the official posted speed limits. That's not always the case but it's not like it hasn't ever been heard of before in some areas.

(Of course if we did live in a world with a predominance of Level 5 self-driving cars then there would be no human element to actually determine what the safe average speed is in a given area according to the 85th percentile rule. And the revenue stream from speeding tickets would dry up. So on the up side there would hypothetically be few to no speeding tickets in this scenario but on the down side there would no longer be speed limits determined by a majority of human users of the roads they travel on. Who, then, and by what metrics and values determines what the speed limits are actually supposed to be?)

Add to this an emergency situation where you need a LOT more than just a 10mph jump to get away from a fast approaching bad situation (if braking to avoid it is not the answer) and I would not support that kind of restriction. If I feel I am about to be in danger and rocketing forward to get away from something very bad is my only option I'll use every single bit of power my car's engine has to give and then I will slow back down to a normal and prudent speed AFTER I have averted that danger. Again, there are many times when slowing down is actually the best way out of such a situation.

Also there are the people who refuse to observe the "drive right" rule and selfishly box you in with adjacent traffic moving at the same speed as you are and they are. Sometimes even if you are following the correct social use of the lanes... few others are. And you may encounter a very passive aggressive driver who feels you are slighting them when you finally see that you have a safe opening and politely signal that you want to pass. Most of the time it is not worth it to do so but sometimes when I see this happening or if a person has refused to let me pass over and over while they sit in the left lane as if they own it rather than pulling into a right lane as they should... I do appreciate some ability to use a safe opening when I see it to rapidly take a window of opportunity to pass rapidly, clear some distance, slow back down as I assume my right lane and... just... move... on. There are times when a 5-10mph over the limit restriction would simply make that and rapid exits from all sorts of other complicated situations completely impossible. That would be more dangerous and counter-productive if it were implemented.


That's how the technology has been for many years but there are newer designs currently in the works that can passively take a reading from the driver. These systems get built into an area around the instrument cluster or steering wheel. When the more compact, less complicated version of the breathalyzer ignition interlock technology becomes available you can expect to see it get talked about at the Federal level. Driver impairment due to alcohol consumption concerns me far more than extremely rare and expensive 200mph capable toy supercars and the ability for cars operated by their drivers to exceed posted speed limits (we have a system to generally control that already).

If there are multiple drivers of a vehicle then the passive breathalyzer ignition interlock just evaluates whoever happens to be activating the ignition. It doesn't matter who gets into the driver's seat.

Other impairments due to weed or other drugs don't have readily available detection systems at this time but statistically the biggest and worst driver impairment issue due to something consumed is drunkenness due to alcohol. The idea behind a standard ignition interlock is that rather than catching drunk drivers in the act (or worse, once they've caused an accident with another car) you just make it impossible to start the ignition while intoxicated. If the system doesn't require any steps from the driver other than not being drunk then I can't see there being an issue with that.

Cars hypothetically becoming smart enough to understand when you are intoxicated from alcohol or other drugs (preliminary passive detection for ALL such conditions does not exist at this time) I don't have a problem with.

Cars analyzing whether or not you are getting drowsy... I do see the benefit of. I do not like it that it involves very sophisticated facial tracking and analysis systems considering the growing level of consumer metadata that is such a commodity these days. However I can see an argument for that as a fully closed system function so long as it is otherwise not something that will never glitch up on you. I would want to see it proven to be infallible.

Now... cars analyzing driver behavior for what they would deem "erratic" or "abnormal"... that I do not agree with because it gets into the area of driving style which, even when following the rules in the driving manual, is very subjective. I would want to know what metrics are being used to determine how my style of driving is erratic or too abnormal to be allowed to continue without the driver assist functions coming on. If in fact something about my driving style would be subjectively determined to be truly abnormal to a ridiculous degree or dangerously erratic enough to warrant intervention then I would expect that intervention to come in the form of flashing blue and red lights in my rear view mirror.

Sometimes in some areas ferrying kids to school is the way to do it. Sometimes that ferrying is just to the bus stop itself where the public transport completes the last leg to arrive at school and return the child back to the original bus stop for parents to pick them up. It's interesting to look at how children in Japan learn very early on how to get themselves to their school mostly or all by themselves using the public transportation system in the major cities. In rural areas it's a bit closer to what we're used to in the U.S.

KahnBB6

iTrader: (5)

Actually this has been solved already in prototype Level 5 self driving cars. They have a "stop ride" button which is intended to make the vehicle cancel or temporarily interrupt whatever route it is going on and safely pull over and stop. The passenger can have the option of resuming the original route as planned, programming in a new route or aborting and exiting the vehicle entirely.

Additionally, you can tell an L5 self-driving vehicle (or any L1-L4 self-driving vehicle), unless it's an Uber or Lyft I guess, to immediately re-route you to the nearest restroom asap. If it's an even more critical call of nature than that... you would use the "stop"/"cancel ride"/"interrupt ride" button.

This is a part of the technology and infrastructure implementation that does bring up some hypothetical concerns with false identification, people posing as law enforcement officers who actually aren't and generally the notion that you can be automatically stopped or re-routed against your free will.

Self driving cars having full control over their own operation will probably be programmed to cooperate with a LEO vehicle overriding their own user defined route programming and suddenly only responding to the control and route commands of the officer who has intercepted them. Or that control could hypothetically be centrally administered. I mean, Teslas and other cars now have over the air firmware updates so that is also not inconceivable.

Police cars chasing civilian cars would probably not be necessary if that were allowed to be the case unless some Federal law managed to show up preventing any autonomous car from being legally overridden by any outside control.

Of course that doesn't mean it couldn't still be done by someone else with sufficient hacking. And there isn't anything that isn't possible to hack even if it's still very hard and complicated to do.

But generally that's been my understanding of how that will work. Police would just override the car to slave to their control in those situations. Overall it's a very unsettling concept.

This would have to be done either by REALLY intelligent real-time analysis... or by means of a local to that area broadcast signal to indicate to the car new speed reduction info and other construction zone metadata... or by means of over the air centralized database GPS geo-location metadata to do the same thing.

L5 self-driving cars will also have to be able to interpret what local road works people, traffic officers and even regular people waving their hands to indicate drivers need to go around their car stranded in one lane of the road but for this question it's really the three major options above to communicate that construction zone metadata to the self-driving cars that are incoming.

It also means those road works projects have to coordinate this data in addition to everything else they do.

Or it could be much simpler: a couple of devices are brought with the road works crew. One at a starting point is flipped on and sends out a signal to temporarily reduce speed to XX miles per hour and use extra cautious driving. They'd still need the regular signs because you're still going to have some people driving their cars in addition to the self-driving cars. Then at the end of the construction zone you have another device like the first one that sends out an "end temporary reduced speed zone" signal and the self-driving cars would then know they can speed up to the normal speed limits again.

It might be more than one of these solutions used in actual practice.

Oh yeah. These are all very complicated problems to solve. The last figure I read for the worldwide investment in self-driving car research, R&D and prototyping to date has been over $80 Billion and counting.

Johnhav430

As people rely more and more upon automation, and I believe cars can clearly park themselves, I've been in cars while the driver used that feature, what skills do drivers actually need? For example, do automated vehicles know what to do when stuck? I got stuck yesterday in my LS430, and I know what to do. In this case, the vehicle has no capability to get unstuck (snow mode did not work). It kind of reminds me of amortizing a mortgage. Our grandparents did it with pencil and paper. Our parents did it with a calculator. We did it with a spreadsheet. The typical person today a) doesn't understand how amortization works b) without an internet connection, cannot determine a monthly payment (this is a generalization but an overall trend)

when I say what skills, a former colleague stated before his kids can drive, they must be able to drive a stick, change the oil, and change a tire. Three minimal requirements which if not met, means no learner's permit. His son was born 2013 and daughter 2011 to put it in perspective. I agree with this thinking.

KahnBB6

iTrader: (5)

Your friend is good to take that approach with his kids. I also agree with that. It's never a bad thing to teach self-reliance and basic skills.

As for what skills drivers actually need as they rely more and more on automation... I would say the goal of the people making the products is to reduce the number of required skills more and more so that there is an even greater reliance on the automation they provide.

The solution to that is to choose not allow every single thing in your life be automated Some things are monotonous of course and it doesn't make sense to have absolute zero automated assistance from technologies but it's also good to pick and choose what you want to continue to do yourself.

Back to the question of what skills drivers actually need... I feel it's better answered with this question: what skills as a driver do you actually WANT? Use them and/or learn and improve them if you want to keep them sharp and continue to enjoy the use of those skills.

Everyone has different personal answers to that question of what driving skills they actually want.

MattyG

Volvo plans to supply Uber with self-driving taxis based on the 90 series sedan and the XC60 SUV.

http://www.latimes.com/business/auto...120-story.html