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Nissan to sell multiple affordable self-driving cars by 2020

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JCH13 said:
Okay... that's nice and all... but if you can find a car/driver combination in the US that even approaches a $4M of liability for $100/year I will award you 1,000 internet points.
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Well not likely for $100 if you can even find a $4m policy without calling. However I upped from $300k to $1m and it wasn't hardly anything.
 
Google's self driving car: (designed from the ground-up, no steering wheel)

http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/27/google-whips-up-its-own-self-driving-vehicles-that-ditch-things/

http://www.treehugger.com/cars/more-thoughts-googles-self-driving-car.html

http://www.core77.com/blog/transportation/googles_self-driving_agenda_27036.asp

http://gizmodo.com/googles-self-driving-car-is-the-future-we-need-1582830787

"Tom Simonite of MIT Technology Review explains why Google ditched the steering wheel: Humans were no good at taking over if something went wrong."

When people began riding in one of the vehicles, they paid close attention to what the car was doing and to activity on the road around them, which meant the hand-off between person and machine was smooth. But that interest faded to indifference over weeks and months as people became too trusting of the car’s abilities. “Humans are lazy,” says Fairfield. “People go from plausible suspicion to way overconfidence.”
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Mercedes' semi-autonomous truck lets its driver relax on the highway:

http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/06/mercedes-semi-autonomous-truck/

Mercedes says this is 10 years away, but I think this is a great idea. I have several friends who are truck drivers & it can be a hard job due to the monotony & extreme schedules. Plus there are a lot of dangers involved. In my road travels over the U.S., I've seen a lot of bad big rig accidents on the highways. There was a recent high-profile accident involving actor Tracy Morgan where a truck driver hit his limo at 20 MPH over the speed limit. The truck driver ignored the construction signs (something Mercedes' system can take care of), had been awake for over 24 hours, and had been driving for over 9 hours:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/19/showbiz/tracy-morgan-crash-probe/

I could see this being a huge benefit to people who live on the road like that, even people who have large RV's. The reality is that people have deadlines to meet & feel the pressure of being under the gun to stay on top of their requirements, so accidents like these will continue to happen until we put in a system that can help manage these problems.
 
The driver, in the Tracey Morgan, case was completely at fault and driving against company policy. There are strict regulations on their driving times, IIRC. They wouldn't send products on a truck if it was so time sensitive it wouldn't make it without breaking said policies.

I think this could be good, especially if you're driving east / west through somewhere like New Mexico. I-10 is literally a straight, flat road with nothing on either side the entire way through.
 
smackababy said:
The driver, in the Tracey Morgan, case was completely at fault and driving against company policy. There are strict regulations on their driving times, IIRC. They wouldn't send products on a truck if it was so time sensitive it wouldn't make it without breaking said policies.

I think this could be good, especially if you're driving east / west through somewhere like New Mexico. I-10 is literally a straight, flat road with nothing on either side the entire way through.
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Well, yes and no. The reality is that there's a lot of gray area in the field. Most semi-trucks in my area do at least 5 to 10 over & a lot of them will ride your bumper if you are preventing their cruise control speed from maxing out. There are definitely strict regulations, but that doesn't mean they're actually followed. Some companies are good about keeping tabs on their trucks, tracking transit times & locations, and so on, but other ones...not so much. You'd think that Walmart would have time & location tracking on their trucks to alert them to possible danger situations, but that didn't stop the driver in the story above either way. Really unfortunate. Yet another area where technology could improve our lives!
 
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You'd think long haul trucking would be a natural first step for SDC. You have it just take care of the intercity driving and force the driver to take over approaching large metro areas. Highway driving is the easiest problem for SDC.
 
Ferzerp said:
Can this thread die now?

http://jalopnik.com/nissans-autonomous-car-plans-were-nuts-and-ghosn-admi-1606940173
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"Self-driving cars, remain a long-way from commercial reality." Ghosn said. "They are suitable only for tightly-controlled road-environments, at slow speeds, and face a regulatory minefield."

From the article. The main reason why it won't happen sooner. I don't think there is any question that we'll have tech that will do it. The question is if they'll be allowed and will all the liability issues be worked out. I fully expect Somewhere in asia to deploy first for those reasons.
 
MakerBot chief believes self-driving cars will spur a need for 3D-printed organs:

http://www.engadget.com/2014/08/18/self-driving-cars-to-spur-3d-printed-organs/

Self-driving cars are safer by their very nature, since they avoid the mistakes of human drivers. However, that improved safety may create some new problems -- at least, according to MakerBot founder Bre Pettis. He tells Fortune that scientists will likely have to step up work on 3D-printed organs if and when robotic vehicles take off, since a significant chunk of organ donations (which are already scarce) come from car accident victims. Pettis isn't disputing the value of reducing road fatalities, of course. The issue is more that hospitals have to be ready for possible shortfalls in natural transplants
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That's an interesting perspective...if cars quit crashing, then we lose a huge chunk of donated organs (tens of thousands of people die in car accidents in America alone ever year).
 
Cadillac to launch Super Cruise semi-autonomous technology in two years [w/video]:

http://www.autoblog.com/2014/09/07/2017-cadillac-super-cruise-semi-autonomous-video/

Take a ride in Honda's self-driving car (video):

http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/08/self-driving-car-its-honda/

Verizon CEO: Self-driving cars just years away from reality:

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/...elf-driving-cars-just-years-away-from-reality

The comments from McAdam came the day after the announcement that Michigan will install cameras and sensors along 120 miles of Detroit freeways to connect cars wirelessly to highways and each other. While the notion that self-driving cars — or at least cars that automatically slow down or stop for hazards or can be rerouted to avoid traffic jams — seems like something from the far-off future, it is an approaching reality, McAdam said.
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There was also this interesting little tidbit from that article:

Plus, it could take the waste and hassle out of something is as simple as parking which, in Brooklyn, accounts for 40 percent of the fuel consumed.
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