Google Self-Driving Car..

[wisdonm]

All these driver's aids are just making stupider and even less attentive drivers. We can't afford to fix our bridges, how will we pay for the infrastructure nationwide?

[Danno]

The problem in this country is that just about all you need to be able to do to get a license is have the ability to fog a mirror. Actual driving skills are apparently optional but not required, at least from what I see on the road daily.

Exactly.

[Harry P.]

We can't afford to fix our bridges, how will we pay for the infrastructure nationwide?

That's easy. Open a new casino!

[Danno]

All these driver's aids are just making stupider and even less attentive drivers. We can't afford to fix our bridges, how will we pay for the infrastructure nationwide?

Exactly also.

[Dave Van]

It will happen......folks get dumber everyday.......Much more concerned about 'Dancing with the Stars' or The Bachelorette than anything that may deeply impact their lives. Ask a fifteen year old today if they'd rather drive a car or be driven around while they play on their phones......I bet I know the answer.....

[Danno]

It will happen......folks get dumber everyday.......Much more concerned about 'Dancing with the Stars' or The Bachelorette than anything that may deeply impact their lives. Ask a fifteen year old today if they'd rather drive a car or be driven around while they play on their phones......I bet I know the answer.....

Automatic answer: WWJBD?

What Would Justin Bieber Do?

[ratdoggy]

It's been my experience that conversations sometimes digress into related but not exactly specifically-the-same areas.

The point is, I think, that the public and industry just seem to have a lot of mis-conceptions regarding what's SMART to do...what actually makes SENSE and makes cars BETTER...as opposed to more un-necessary whiz-bangie BS that is ill-advised at best, and vulnerable to hacking, unforeseen computer bugs and viruses, etc.

If your desktop computers all had histories of being 100% reliable with NO bugs, NO unforeseen back-door vulnerabilities, and NO out-of-the-blue crashes...EVER...then I'd think the "driverless car" might be a good idea.

That's simply NOT the case. Commercial aircraft have triple-redundancy on flight-critical systems, and they STILL sometimes crash.

A "robot or AI driver" of a surface vehicle is going to live in a much more demanding environment than an aircraft system, and will be required to interact much more rapidly with many more other objects than any aircraft. And unless ALL the vehicles within the "driverless" car's environment are AI controlled and linked, the individual onboard system will be required to also interpret and react instantaneously to the random dumbness of other HUMAN drivers, and the possible software / hardware malfunctions of other vehicles. This is a tall order for human-brain processing. It's a VERY VERY tall order for machine intelligence.

THINK about it. This isn't resistance to "progress". It's resistance to stupid.

If your computer or smartphone crashes, so what?

But if an onboard AI vehicle-control system fails, people die horribly.

These are my reasons why it shouldn't be. Sensors don't always sense and hardware has bugs that aren't foreseen. Foreseeing evry possible combination of problems is probably impossible for a programmer. What about the pitot tube on the Sealth bomber icing up and causing a crash on take-off. Or roads not existing that the GPS thinking are there