Nevada Allows Google's Self-Driving Car: Super or Scary?
SodaHead News
2012/05/10 13:00:00
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Google's been working on patenting a self-driving car for a while, and now it's fully licensed to drive. In Nevada, at least. According the The Associate Press, the car received a license to drive after demonstrating its safe driving on the Las Vegas Strip. For whatever reason, the license requires that two passengers be in the car while it's on auto-pilot, doubling the risk. On the other hand, it's the perfect solution for those worried about Google's Glass project.
DMV director Bruce Breslow explained, "They're designed to avoid distracted driving. When you're on the Strip and there's a huge truck with three scantily clad women on the side, the car only sees a box." Any drawbacks? He adds, "It gets honked at more often because it’s being safe." It sounds like an amazing invention, and so far it hasn't gotten into any accidents, but does a self-driving car sound a little scary to you?
DMV director Bruce Breslow explained, "They're designed to avoid distracted driving. When you're on the Strip and there's a huge truck with three scantily clad women on the side, the car only sees a box." Any drawbacks? He adds, "It gets honked at more often because it’s being safe." It sounds like an amazing invention, and so far it hasn't gotten into any accidents, but does a self-driving car sound a little scary to you?
Top Opinion
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Scary
+8Kinda scary, actually. I love technology, but as anyone who deals with emerging techologies on a daily basis can tell you (and I do), there are always glitches and unforseen problems and scenarios. Always. For something like navigating a high speed vehicle down a road with changing traffic, weather, and road conditions, I'm not comfortable handing the wheel over to a computer yet. Anyone who has experience with GPS navigators knows that they are frequently wrong about routes and other trip data.
This will be the future.
Imagine something going wrong along the way to the destination, and the computer system fails and cannot tell the blind person where they are, if it's safe to step out of the car, where to find help, ... imagine them driving through South Central LA, or...
Why is it noone wonders about hacking?
Some airliners can't afford the newer, say from 2000 & up, airliners
These cars are ALREADY safer than human-driven cars.
while the glitches are very rare and hard to find... most people tend to find them just out of luck since it requires certain steps that normally some people would not generally stick to... apply this to a self-driving car run by a verrrrry complex code
a glitch is bound to happen at some point or another, be it a very minor issue to something that can cause detrimental harm, and in a machine where you have no control over that can kill you, the slightest glitch can make it or break it
However, what's really scary, is that we allow people to drive. People are so busy and distractable, and often refuse to follow the traffic rules, and many aren't courteous enough to use turn signals. I'd love to see computers take this task over. Consider all the people who can't drive. Old people with failing eyesight or inability to see well at night. People who can't judge distance, or who are prone to seizures or falling asleep.
Remember how air bags were foisted onto us by government, and then finally, we win the right to have a switch to disable the passenger airbag? Let's use that as a guide, and as cars prove to be safe to operate in "self-drive" mode, don't forget all the usual checks-and-balances against computer malfunction. Manual over-ride. Instant auto-rebooting in case of software crash. Auto-logging of possible problem "events." Sufficient redundancies. Battery backup in case of sudden power loss to the computer.
Self-drive should have many adv...
However, what's really scary, is that we allow people to drive. People are so busy and distractable, and often refuse to follow the traffic rules, and many aren't courteous enough to use turn signals. I'd love to see computers take this task over. Consider all the people who can't drive. Old people with failing eyesight or inability to see well at night. People who can't judge distance, or who are prone to seizures or falling asleep.
Remember how air bags were foisted onto us by government, and then finally, we win the right to have a switch to disable the passenger airbag? Let's use that as a guide, and as cars prove to be safe to operate in "self-drive" mode, don't forget all the usual checks-and-balances against computer malfunction. Manual over-ride. Instant auto-rebooting in case of software crash. Auto-logging of possible problem "events." Sufficient redundancies. Battery backup in case of sudden power loss to the computer.
Self-drive should have many advantages, such as defense from speeding tickets and other "revenue enhancement" crap of the government. (The computer would never forget the last speed limit sign, also use the GPS map database.)
I'd like to see self-drive cars drive much in the way that people, do, without requiring entire road systems to be redesigned, but that's a really tough challenge for programmers. Can a car's drive computer, really read and understand every road sign? Can the car's computer accurately recognize debris in the road, and safely execute a safe and sudden lane change? Can the car's computer recognize a parked car door about to open, a ball rolling out into the road, other car turn signals, unsafe or erratic drivers, spot bicycles and motorcycles and wandering toddlers and know the difference between a baby carriage or mere debris, and be wary of possible slick spots on roads or bridges, and know what to do if the car has mechanical malfunctions? And due to liability concerns, the computer must do everything BETTER and obey all the traffic rules, including policemen directing traffic.
Should the car be clearly marked that it's self-drive? Or would that make it a target for theft? How do we keep people from freaking out, if there's no driver in the driver's seat? Or if the "driver" is asleep? As in the first episode of Knight Rider?