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Autonomous cars are coming and it's going to be glorious

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sm625 said:
Pretty much all the design, engineering, and manufacturing of the driverless control systems will be done offshore. The only people who will profit from them will be the richest of the 1%. And it will cost millions of middle class jobs that will be replaced with... what? You can only have so many walmart greeters. This is purely the result of the top 1% totally running away with the entire economy. And the middle class and poor being so completely mindfucked as to go along with it like the good little germans did in the mid 1930s.

And the real killer is going to come when we get thousands of these things jammed together on a highway during rush hour. Just what the heck do you think is going to happen to traffic flows, when every single one of those cars will be following some stupefied program that says "increase space between vehicles to velocity in mph times 3 feet" every time the vehicle begins to accelerate in stop and go traffic. Traffic isnt going to flow at all. It is going to grind to a complete and total halt. You're going to have human drivers bobbing and weaving around all these stupid cars following their stupid traffic-choking programs. There is a reason there are so many damn accidents. It's because traffic flows together in a dynamic that far exceeds any reasonable safety specification. Cars are practically bumper to bumper at 30 mph in a traffic jam. They come to a complete stop, accelerate to various speeds, all the way up to 70mph in some cases, and then completely stop again. All the while many of them are practically bumper to bumper. No computer could match the flow rate efficiency of human drivers without building in so much safety margin that it completely decimates traffic flows. People who think that humans are such bad drivers are completely and utterly misunderestimating the amount of mental processing that occurs on the roadways in heavy traffic. Sure, like many, I'd rather not deal with it. I'd rather sit there and read a book. But I'm telling you that that convenience is going to come at a heavy heavy cost. In the end, we will have spent all this money and all these resources to implement something that only benefits the extreme wealthy, and costs each of us far more commuting time and therefore lowers productivity, not to mention all the lost jobs.

On the plus side, road construction spending would skyrocket, because the number of traffic lanes will have to effectively double to support driverless car algorithms in heavy traffic.
Click to expand...

Yeah, okay. Not only do you have things completely backwards, you're not even current on the pace of technology for the last 20 years if not more. People aren't even need to fly planes anymore and you think a driverless car is somehow difficult?
 
michal1980 said:
fantasy writers generally write nicely. And usually throw in some truth to make it see like they know what they are talking about.

The one thing I can predicate is that no one knows what the future will look like 10-15 years from now.
Click to expand...

Debbie downer, of course they don't know but they can predict.
 
since when are truck drivers non-value add? I'm pretty sure there is tremendous value to moving things around.

That being said, I'll buy one of these. for sho.
 
sm625 said:
And the real killer is going to come when we get thousands of these things jammed together on a highway during rush hour. Just what the heck do you think is going to happen to traffic flows, when every single one of those cars will be following some stupefied program that says "increase space between vehicles to velocity in mph times 3 feet" every time the vehicle begins to accelerate in stop and go traffic.
Click to expand...

I think that traffic flow will be massively improved in heavy traffic. Automated cars can pass on information about the traffic and then cars can drive in a way to mitigate the conditions.
Its the stupid, lane changing, stop start squishy meat bags that cause these traffic flow problems in the first place.
 
cbrunny said:
since when are truck drivers non-value add? I'm pretty sure there is tremendous value to moving things around.

That being said, I'll buy one of these. for sho.
Click to expand...

Transport is non-value add by definition.

7-wastes.gif
 
WelshBloke said:
I think that traffic flow will be massively improved in heavy traffic. Automated cars can pass on information about the traffic and then cars can drive in a way to mitigate the conditions.
Its the stupid, lane changing, stop start squishy meat bags that cause these traffic flow problems in the first place.
Click to expand...

Exactly. The problem was already solved millions of years ago, human brains are just not well adapted to the solution. Meanwhile, self-driving cars have already far surpassed humans in safety terms.
 
BoberFett said:
A non-autonomous car is great until a human gets behind the wheel.
Click to expand...

I bet the battle against autonomous cars will be really hard to win because people are irrational that way. It won't matter to some people if autonomous cars save 30,000 lives a year because sooner or later there will be some malfunction where a family gets driven off a cliff by their car in some horrifying way.
 
sm625 said:
And the real killer is going to come when we get thousands of these things jammed together on a highway during rush hour. Just what the heck do you think is going to happen to traffic flows, when every single one of those cars will be following some stupefied program that says "increase space between vehicles to velocity in mph times 3 feet" every time the vehicle begins to accelerate in stop and go traffic. Traffic isnt going to flow at all. It is going to grind to a complete and total halt. You're going to have human drivers bobbing and weaving around all these stupid cars following their stupid traffic-choking programs. There is a reason there are so many damn accidents. It's because traffic flows together in a dynamic that far exceeds any reasonable safety specification. Cars are practically bumper to bumper at 30 mph in a traffic jam. They come to a complete stop, accelerate to various speeds, all the way up to 70mph in some cases, and then completely stop again. All the while many of them are practically bumper to bumper. No computer could match the flow rate efficiency of human drivers without building in so much safety margin that it completely decimates traffic flows. People who think that humans are such bad drivers are completely and utterly misunderestimating the amount of mental processing that occurs on the roadways in heavy traffic. Sure, like many, I'd rather not deal with it. I'd rather sit there and read a book. But I'm telling you that that convenience is going to come at a heavy heavy cost. In the end, we will have spent all this money and all these resources to implement something that only benefits the extreme wealthy, and costs each of us far more commuting time and therefore lowers productivity, not to mention all the lost jobs.

On the plus side, road construction spending would skyrocket, because the number of traffic lanes will have to effectively double to support driverless car algorithms in heavy traffic.
Click to expand...

Seriously? Part of the reason traffic is so bad is that people don't know how to drive properly and accelerate too far and then have to slam on the brakes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accordion_effect

The accordion effect makes traffic far worse than a bunch of intelligent machines working together to keep traffic flowing.
 
cbrunny said:
since when are truck drivers non-value add? I'm pretty sure there is tremendous value to moving things around.

That being said, I'll buy one of these. for sho.
Click to expand...

You're correct, they add value... for now. Autonomous trucks will do the exact same thing except without the pill-popping OTR driver swerving his way cross country, at which point the human's value add will fall to zero.
 
eskimospy said:
I bet the battle against autonomous cars will be really hard to win because people are irrational that way. It won't matter to some people if autonomous cars save 30,000 lives a year because sooner or later there will be some malfunction where a family gets driven off a cliff by their car in some horrifying way.
Click to expand...

This is the last picture my conservative brain defect sees when I fall asleep at night.
 
Autonomous cars can't come fast enough.

Traffic just about disappears, and sooner or later people will stop owning their own cars, or own them and then rent them out like cabs.

Driving is such a waste of time and most people suck at it.
 
michal1980 said:
fantasy writers generally write nicely. And usually throw in some truth to make it see like they know what they are talking about.

The one thing I can predicate is that no one knows what the future will look like 10-15 years from now.
Click to expand...

Wars, pollution, disease, hopelessness, poverty, despair, rampant greed, fear, uncertainty, doubt, etc.

and in the midst of all this some of you will have your autonomous car that will memorize and drive you effortlessly around every pothole, closed lane, detour, and road impediment in your ever crumbling infrastructure to the safety of your armed gated community while the unwashed masses look on with awe and envy while they are scraping by.
 
1prophet said:
Wars, pollution, disease, hopelessness, poverty, despair, rampant greed, fear, uncertainty, doubt, etc.

and in the midst of all this some of you will have your autonomous car that will memorize and drive you effortlessly around every pothole, closed lane, detour, and road impediment in your ever crumbling infrastructure to the safety of your armed gated community while the unwashed masses look on with awe and envy while they are scraping by.
Click to expand...
I imagine that armor will be an option someday.
 
eskimospy said:
I bet the battle against autonomous cars will be really hard to win because people are irrational that way. It won't matter to some people if autonomous cars save 30,000 lives a year because sooner or later there will be some malfunction where a family gets driven off a cliff by their car in some horrifying way.
Click to expand...

Yep. Whilst I agree that it will be a lot safer if everyone else gets a self driving car because they're idiots who can't drive I'm certain that I'm a superior driver than some computer and I'd be safer driving myself.

Unfortunately I bet 90% of people think exactly the same.

Its really hard to give up control over your safety even if you logically know it's better that way.
 
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