Uber Rolling Out Driverless Cars

[Divine Wind]

Self-driving cars will make traffic worse.

Consider these situations.

You have a job in town, one that does not provide parking. You have to pay for parking. So, what's the cheapest thing to do? "Drive" to work, then tell your empty car to drive back home and park, then tell it to come back at quitting time and get you.

Or, even worse, think of that happening with special event parking. No need to pay to park at the big game. There's just the problem of 20,000 empty cars suddenly converging at the stadium at the end of the game.

Or, you have an errand to run. You'll only be inside for 30 minutes. So, you tell your empty car to keep circling the block until you're done.

Possibly, but how about car pooling? Why shoulder the entire price of a $100,000 vehicle that spends 20 hours out of every 24 sitting? Why not have it be a "Mom Van" type vehicle which spends 10-15 hours a day running people around to do errands among a group of people who bought shares in the car?

Alternatively, as someone already posted, why buy a car at all when, for a few bucks, you can be taken wherever you want to go whenever you like? Anyone remember the robot taxi "johnnycab" in the first "Total Recall"?

 

[Divine Wind]

Cheap labor...american business rule no one.

So the average consumer gets the hurt....aint america great?

Says "In It For Me". ROFL

 

[Anathema]

You will NEVER find me in a car that is not being controlled by a human being, preferably myself. I have ZERO faith in a computer driving in traffic.

BTW - I HATE flying for the same reason.

 

[Divine Wind]

You will NEVER find me in a car that is not being controlled by a human being, preferably myself. I have ZERO faith in a computer driving in traffic.

BTW - I HATE flying for the same reason.

Ride a horse.

 

[GHook93]

Interesting no one sees the slippery slope of robots eliminating jobs.


I realize technology has always made many jobs obsolete in time, but a wave of robotics eliminating blue and white collar jobs might be the straw that breaks the camels back

There's no slippery slope. If there are no jobs, if we have tens of millions of unemployed Americans (80 million of them being armed!), WHO'S GOING TO BUY THOSE FUCKING CARS?

Good question. There will always be jobs, but there could be less of them.

 

[Anathema]

Ride a horse.

I have. Very enjoyable activity. Not practical for work. I will still NEVER ride in a driverless vehicle.

 

[GHook93]

Interesting no one sees the slippery slope of robots eliminating jobs.


I realize technology has always made many jobs obsolete in time, but a wave of robotics eliminating blue and white collar jobs might be the straw that breaks the camels back

Government funded supplemental income for the unemployed, working poor, and underemployed will just keep increasing.

That might be where it is headed.

Communism and socialism requires a slave class that works hard and doesn't complain. That is why it has always failed because socialism always destroys incentive. Slavery is outlawed and is not efficient means for difficult tasks.

However computer and hypothetically robots do what they are programmed.

Could robots bring about the left's Marxist dream? Maybe

If that is the case humans will become fat, lazy and stupid. We will devolve. Think the humans on the movie Wallie

 

[pwjohn]

Where are they? I haven't seen any driverless cars on the road!

 

[Al Azar]

They're being introduced in Pittsburgh.

ALT VEHICLES: Driverless Uber arrives, and Pittsburgh hops aboard

 

[Montrovant]

Where are they? I haven't seen any driverless cars on the road!

Google is testing their cars in CA, TX, WA, and AZ. Google Self-Driving Car Project

Ford is testing in CA, AZ, and MI. True self-driving cars will arrive in 5 years, says Ford

According to that Ford article, they want to have fully self driving cars, without even the option for human control, within 5 years. That sounds unrealistic to me, but I certainly haven't paid close enough attention to know.

I think the roads would be much safer if most people got around in self driving cars. I worry about the possibility that a somewhat even mix of traditional and self driving cars could end up being more dangerous than one or the other, though.

 

[SwimExpert]

According to that Ford article, they want to have fully self driving cars, without even the option for human control, within 5 years.

And then when the police want to arrest you they will tap in to the system and override the car's inputs, causing the car to deliver you to the PD front doorstep.

 

[JimBowie1958]

'We're just rentals': Uber drivers ask where they fit in a self-driving future

The technology is already there. They just need to beta test it and prove it is safe and reliable. Then the "expensive" drivers are cut from the cost margins. No thank you, no parting gift, no well wishes, no here is something to get by on since you made it possible for the company to make billions, NOPE it will be 'don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.' By 2018 it will start rolling out to every city across the globe.

There are 2 sides of the coin.
(1) The liberals will scream those poor uber drivers are losing their jobs to a greedy corporation, yet the reality is if uber didn't do this another company would have and then put them out of business. Think blockbuster refusing to change and Netflix innovations them out of the market place. So it would have occurred either way. Humans have been innovating and making things better since the dawn of time. Driverless cars were inevitable.

(2) The heartless conservative will say get a different job and cry on someone else's shoulder. Yes everyone loves innovation until it is their job automated out of existence. The reality is automation continues to grow the amount of jobs continue to shrink. Ex. The amount of people required to make a car has decreased 1000 fold in a just a few decades. The manufacturing and assembly sectors have been hit hardest, but won't end there. Low level service jobs are going to get hit hard. But it won't stop there, the medical field, legal field, accounting field, and really all white collar jobs will be reexamine and the list goes on and on. The number of people entering the workforce will only grow and the job market will only decrease.

What is going to be the solution? I don't know, but I doubt it won't involve less government intervention!

I tried to get some discussion of this topic here

CDZ - How Will the Robotics Revolution Impact the Democratic Party?

and here

CDZ - How Might We Soften The Blow of The Third Industrial Revolution, the Age of Robots?

and here

These Are The Careers to be Impacted By the Coming Jobless Economy

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

Google is testing their cars in CA, TX, WA, and AZ. Google Self-Driving Car Project

Ford is testing in CA, AZ, and MI. True self-driving cars will arrive in 5 years, says Ford

According to that Ford article, they want to have fully self driving cars, without even the option for human control, within 5 years. That sounds unrealistic to me, but I certainly haven't paid close enough attention to know.

I think the roads would be much safer if most people got around in self driving cars. I worry about the possibility that a somewhat even mix of traditional and self driving cars could end up being more dangerous than one or the other, though.

Self driving cars is kind of like computer software. They tell you never buy version 1.0, wait for version 1.2 because that's the version where they got all the bugs out of version 1.0.

Software, phones, games are all great during the test process, but once you pass it out to tens of millions of people, that's where you find the problems.

Don't get me wrong, I think self-driving cars would be great, especially for those that like to attend bars and not stop drinking. It could save a lot of lives. It would be great for senior citizens as well. It would save many store front windows from being driven through. But I think it will not come without it's own problems at least for some time. Then we have the insurance companies to consider since insurance companies run our entire country. Will the rates be cheaper or more expensive for self-driving cars?

 

[Al Azar]

Where are they? I haven't seen any driverless cars on the road!

I think the roads would be much safer if most people got around in self driving cars. I worry about the possibility that a somewhat even mix of traditional and self driving cars could end up being more dangerous than one or the other, though.

That will take some getting used to.

No matter how congested and seemingly chaotic traffic may be (think Bangkok), there aren't many collisions because the people drive with a pretty good idea what the other fellow is likely to do, and accommodate that in their own driving behavior.

Robots don't have human emotion and don't drive emotionally. They drive safely. Human drivers will have to get used to being in traffic with other cars that drive safely instead of normally.

One can adjust to driving where the rules of the road are a lot different, but there are going to be collisions caused by human drivers who are still trying to learn how to accommodate the robotic vehicle.

 

[Al Azar]

I was thinking about autonomous cars and that they would need no traffic signs nor signals. I don't see any reason why, once it starts on its journey, it would ever have to stop until it got to its destination.

Vehicles may arrive at an intersection of paths, even a lot of vehicles at one time, but still never have to stop completely because they will be funneled through the intersection by software, which will guide every one of them through in an orderly manner as they arrive. They will be communicating electronically with each other as they approach a perceived intersection of paths and will assert or yield right-of-way as needed without ever having to stop.

 

[koshergrl]

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

That will take some getting used to.

No matter how congested and seemingly chaotic traffic may be (think Bangkok), there aren't many collisions because the people drive with a pretty good idea what the other fellow is likely to do, and accommodate that in their own driving behavior.

Robots don't have human emotion and don't drive emotionally. They drive safely. Human drivers will have to get used to being in traffic with other cars that drive safely instead of normally.

One can adjust to driving where the rules of the road are a lot different, but there are going to be collisions caused by human drivers who are still trying to learn how to accommodate the robotic vehicle.

Although self driving cars may be safer, it may be more hazardous and annoying to other drivers on the road.

I'm a tractor-trailer driver locally here in Cleveland. About ten years ago my employer purchased a tractor with a VoRad® system on it. It was doppler technology used to supposedly help the operator of the vehicle.

It had a buzzer in the cab that constantly went off on the highway if you got too close (according to the system) to the vehicle in front of you. When using cruise control, it would take over the accelerator of the vehicle. If I got more than 60 feet of the vehicle in front of me, it would quickly slow down. Even if I kept a good safety distance so that didn't happen, it would only be a couple of seconds before somebody switched lanes in front of me and the system would once again react.

It was annoying as all hell to me and the drivers around me. Because once somebody got out of my way, the system would automatically accelerate to the speed I originally set on the cruise control. In short, my vehicle was constantly speeding up and slowing down.

Other truck drivers who were trying to pass me once my truck slowed down would get mad as hell and curse me out over the radio because when the vehicle in front of me left, my truck would speed up and they thought I was Fn with them. It was awful.

Because I had no ability to disable the radar, I finally took some tin foil to work and wrapped it around the radar in front of the truck. My employer was pissed, but I explained that if somebody was following me too close on the highway, and that truck let off the accelerator, I could get rear-ended.

Self driving cars would not only do that, but apply the brake as well once "it" determined you were too close. So you would have a bunch of cars speeding up and breaking quickly on the roads and highways.

 

[Al Azar]

That will take some getting used to.

No matter how congested and seemingly chaotic traffic may be (think Bangkok), there aren't many collisions because the people drive with a pretty good idea what the other fellow is likely to do, and accommodate that in their own driving behavior.

Robots don't have human emotion and don't drive emotionally. They drive safely. Human drivers will have to get used to being in traffic with other cars that drive safely instead of normally.

One can adjust to driving where the rules of the road are a lot different, but there are going to be collisions caused by human drivers who are still trying to learn how to accommodate the robotic vehicle.

Although self driving cars may be safer, it may be more hazardous and annoying to other drivers on the road.

I'm a tractor-trailer driver locally here in Cleveland. About ten years ago my employer purchased a tractor with a VoRad® system on it. It was doppler technology used to supposedly help the operator of the vehicle.

It had a buzzer in the cab that constantly went off on the highway if you got too close (according to the system) to the vehicle in front of you. When using cruise control, it would take over the accelerator of the vehicle. If I got more than 60 feet of the vehicle in front of me, it would quickly slow down. Even if I kept a good safety distance so that didn't happen, it would only be a couple of seconds before somebody switched lanes in front of me and the system would once again react.

It was annoying as all hell to me and the drivers around me. Because once somebody got out of my way, the system would automatically accelerate to the speed I originally set on the cruise control. In short, my vehicle was constantly speeding up and slowing down.

Other truck drivers who were trying to pass me once my truck slowed down would get mad as hell and curse me out over the radio because when the vehicle in front of me left, my truck would speed up and they thought I was Fn with them. It was awful.

Because I had no ability to disable the radar, I finally took some tin foil to work and wrapped it around the radar in front of the truck. My employer was pissed, but I explained that if somebody was following me too close on the highway, and that truck let off the accelerator, I could get rear-ended.

Self driving cars would not only do that, but apply the brake as well once "it" determined you were too close. So you would have a bunch of cars speeding up and breaking quickly on the roads and highways.

All those problems are understandable when the vehicle is rogue, i.e., not in contact with the other vehicles around it. If vehicles on the road were in constant communication with the ones in their vicinity (as mentioned in my previous post), there would be few surprises. All would know and process (in a manner appropriate for them) the same information that every vehicle gets from its sensors.

For example, if a human driver cuts in front of an autonomous vehicle, forcing it to abruptly slow down, all the other AVs in the vicinity would know that the human had just done that and would each react appropriately to the initial event, not just to the action of the AV most affected. Every AV in the area would react appropriately for itself to that movement because it would know why the first AV had to slow down.

That should smooth out changes in speed and direction as this information is constantly being processed by everyone in the area.

 

[Moonglow]

We'll absorb this new phase of robotics as we've always done. New jobs maintaining the machines will created and the old, unnecessary jobs will disappear. ATMs, self-checkout, 100K miles between tune-ups, cell phones replacing pay phones,.. The list of downsizing and obsolescence is endless.

Short haul drivers will complain. Long haul drivers, that's when truckers are replaced, then there'll really be squawking.

You can't fight the tide of technology. Adapt or perish.

One nuke and the savagery of manual labor will return...

 

[Moonglow]

Just because they have driver-less autos doesn't mean people will use them..