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THE FUTURE! Your right to drive a car, denied.

sportage

sportage

Lifer
Cars are about to get the ability to drive themselves. No steering wheel required. So it occurred to me, the automobile industry is about to go the route of aviation. The airplane. Not just anyone can own/fly any type of aircraft they choose. Aircraft must be safe and airworthy. Meet certain FAA standards so to cooperate with other craft and regulations.

So... We come to the automobile.
If the cars will be driving themselves, interacting with other cars on the road through technology, keeping the traffic flow safe and uniform, where does that leave your pre-2020 automobile? Banned from the road, thats where.

We can not have high tech intelligent cars sharing the roads with some guy at the wheel manually steering his 1998 Ford Focus.

Yep! That day is coming. Where all cars must contain the necessary technologies to interact with other automobiles on the road, driving themselves, automobiles interacting with technology built into the pavement, and the surrounding environment.

So get ready for it.
The day the BIG BAD government bans the non intelligent automobile from the US highway. Banned from all roadways.
And all cars on the road MUST comply with the new government set standards of technology.
Just exactly as with the aviation industry.

The FAA controls the skies.
The AAA to control the pavement.

Thats good. No?
But oh boy... That day when you are told to either park it and walk, take a bus (which will also be driven by technology), or forced to buy that new intelligent car.
If you want to get from point A to point B, those are your options.
That new intelligent automobile that you sit back and let the technology do all the driving.

I can just hear it now... "Kids, when I was a your age, I had to walk 10 miles in the snow to school".
"I can beat that dad. I remember my first car actually had a steering wheel".

Imagine, no longer needing car insurance because the driver is taken out of the equation.
And no more accidents, DUI's, pile-ups, and best of all you can text all you want while speeding along @ 85 MPH.

It's coming. Much sooner than you think. It's coming. 😉
 
sportage said:
Cars are about to get the ability to drive themselves. No steering wheel required. So it occurred to me, the automobile industry is about to go the route of aviation. The airplane. Not just anyone can own/fly any type of aircraft they choose. Aircraft must be safe and airworthy. Meet certain FAA standards so to cooperate with other craft and regulations.
Click to expand...

Drivers are licensed, and cars have to be maintained, have functioning equipment (lights, etc.) and pass inspection. Exact requirements vary from state to state, but if your car is a danger to other drivers, expect to be pulled over.

So... We come to the automobile.
If the cars will be driving themselves, interacting with other cars on the road through technology, keeping the traffic flow safe and uniform, where does that leave your pre-2020 automobile? Banned from the road, thats where.

We can not have high tech intelligent cars sharing the roads with some guy at the wheel manually steering his 1998 Ford Focus.
Click to expand...

The first model year of Ford Focus was 1999, at least in North America.

Yep! That day is coming. Where all cars must contain the necessary technologies to interact with other automobiles on the road, driving themselves, automobiles interacting with technology built into the pavement, and the surrounding environment.

So get ready for it.
The day the BIG BAD government bans the non intelligent automobile from the US highway. Banned from all roadways.
And all cars on the road MUST comply with the new government set standards of technology.
Just exactly as with the aviation industry.

The FAA controls the skies.
The AAA to control the pavement.
Click to expand...

The AAA isn't even a government agency.

Thats good. No?
But oh boy... That day when you are told to either park it and walk, take a bus (which will also be driven by technology), or forced to buy that new intelligent car.
If you want to get from point A to point B, those are your options.
That new intelligent automobile that you sit back and let the technology do all the driving.

I can just hear it now... "Kids, when I was a your age, I had to walk 10 miles in the snow to school".
"I can beat that dad. I remember my first car actually had a steering wheel".

Imagine, no longer needing car insurance because the driver is taken out of the equation.
And no more accidents, DUI's, pile-ups, and best of all you can text all you want while speeding along @ 85 MPH.

It's coming. Much sooner than you think. It's coming. 😉
Click to expand...

fud2.jpg


Honestly, though, I think it will happen eventually. I just think it will happen a long time from now, and when it does, nobody will really care except for a few libertarian concern trolls. Or whatever the equivalent is in the grim darkness of the automated post-scarcity future.
 
It's still legal to ride a horse on roads (other than interstate highways), so I doubt they will ban manually driven cars in our lifetime.

Although I would gladly give up the ability to drive the car myself, if it meant that there would be no more aggressive drivers since everyone would have to use robocars.
 
It's technically doable right now but first you have to install the infrastructure on EVERY road then EVERYONE will have to have a vehicle with this ability so no, not "in the near future" at all unless you want the Government to buy everyone a brand-new "smart-car" so all the cars on the road will be in compliance.
 
Bullshit.

If driving is ever outlawed it will be in the distant future and only after practically everyone has voluntarily given it up. Autonomous cars do not require driverless roads and no politician on the circuit today will ever endorse such a ban, it would be political suicide worse than publicly talking trash about one of the people on our money.
 
PLUS the fact that the individual states make the rules for licensing drivers, inspection of vehicles, etc. I could see the possibility of this happening in major metropolitan areas, like LA or NYC, but never across the entire country. Too big, would take forever to set it up. Hell, they can't even bring high speed internet everywhere in the country, yet! 🙄
 
In 5 years? We can't even get smartphone batteries to last a full day consistently in 5 years, and you think driving will be entirely automated in that time?
 
sportage said:
We can not have high tech intelligent cars sharing the roads with some guy at the wheel manually steering his 1998 Ford Focus.
Click to expand...

Why not?

This whole thread rests on this premise, but you give no supporting evidence that it is true. I have worked with teams involved in V2V communication, non-communicating cars are expected and the systems are designed to handle them. The self-driving systems that Google et. al. have today drive on roads with human drivers around without an issue.

Your premise is flawed.
 
So it looks like we can all agree OP is talking out his ass. The only people likely to have their right to drive denied are drunks, and even they have been known to receive a pass, thread closed.
 
First of all, driving is a privilege. As it is, too many people shouldn't be driving already. But yeah, your OP is full of shit.
 
sportage said:
Cars are about to get the ability to drive themselves. No steering wheel required. So it occurred to me, the automobile industry is about to go the route of aviation. The airplane. Not just anyone can own/fly any type of aircraft they choose. Aircraft must be safe and airworthy. Meet certain FAA standards so to cooperate with other craft and regulations.
Click to expand...
Went to a seminar on this very topic this week. Your scenario was brought up. In a nutshell, absent some draconian legislation, given the current cost of equipping a car with the enabling technologies, the size of the current US car fleet, and how long cars last these days, it is unlikely that a majority of cars in the US fleet will be completely autonomous until after 2050.

Your FAA analogy was brought up, too. Instead of stopping at a light, you are given a time and space to go through an intersection just as air traffic control gives instructions to pilots. There are no stop signs in the sky. They used this video of the time/space concept for intersection control--https://vimeo.com/106226560

The takeaway of the seminar was self-driving cars is closer than you might expect. Complete autonomous cars are going to take a lot longer. (I went in a demonstration of a self-driving car on a closed-course last September. The system was not ready for prime time. Others are farther along.)
 
Driving is not a right in the US its a privilege
privelege. Thats why its already licensed and controlled. This has some benefits of course (keeping drunk drivers off the streets)

Sounds like maybe you want an amendment to the constitution?

I think realistically driving manually will be phased out gradually due to things like huge insurance premiums if its really that much riskier than autonomous. But thats also yet to be proven

All it will take is a few horrific crashes of early autonomous cars to push their adoption waaaay out.
 
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kranky said:
It's still legal to ride a horse on roads (other than interstate highways), so I doubt they will ban manually driven cars in our lifetime.

Although I would gladly give up the ability to drive the car myself, if it meant that there would be no more aggressive drivers since everyone would have to use robocars.
Click to expand...
Or how about thinking of it as "You get your own personal chauffeur who doesn't expect a tip, is on-call 24hrs a day, and won't complain if you want to go to get pizza at 3am on a Sunday morning."

Or "You can dick around on your phone in the car without having to worry about trivial things like other drivers, traffic lights, or steering the car."

Or "You can sleep while your car drives you to work."


Given things like that, I'm still a bit surprised that people aren't throwing money Kickstarter-style at self-driving cars. However...
The main reason I think that this is an issue is because cars are a first-world rite of passage. It's an ego thing for many people.
How much outrage was there when passenger jets started flying themselves on autopilot for most of the trip? It's normal nowadays to trust a computer to operate a very complex flying machine, but not a consumer-level ground-based vehicle.




yottabit said:
Driving is not a right in the US its a privilege
privelege. Thats why its already licensed and controlled. This has some benefits of course (keeping drunk drivers off the streets)

Sounds like maybe you want an amendment to the constitution?

I think realistically driving manually will be phased out gradually due to things like huge insurance premiums if its really that much riskier than autonomous. But thats also yet to be proven

All it will take is a few horrific crashes of early autonomous cars to push their adoption waaaay out.
Click to expand...
That'll be the biggest issue: Irrational reaction.
If you've got people or autonomous cars clocking 10,000,000 miles, and the autonomous ones have a single accident versus 1000 for the people, the autonomous cars will still be seen as horrifying menaces that intentionally seek out orphanages so that they can run over children more efficiently.

You'll also have assholes who will see an autocar and deliberately try to screw with it. The car will still figure out how to handle the problem, but the idiots will end up crashing and blame the autocar.
 
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sportage said:
We can not have high tech intelligent cars sharing the roads with some guy at the wheel manually steering his 1998 Ford Focus.
Click to expand...

This is inevitable, isn't it? Just as horses shared the roads with early automobiles dumb cars will have to share the road with smart ones.
 
sportage said:
...Banned from the road, thats where.

We can not have high tech intelligent cars sharing the roads with some guy at the wheel manually steering his 1998 Ford Focus...
Click to expand...
They wouldn't let you drive a 1998 Ford Focus even today because it would be a gray-market European import. The first year model in the USA was 2000.
 
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I don't think so. There's no reason a computer driven car can't share the road with human driven cars. There shouldn't be any significant difference between how they act on the road other than the fact that they should make fewer mistakes. Automobile accidents will slowly decrease as human operated cars are phased out, but there will always be a die-hard few who insist on the old cars. When they all die out, manually operated cars will probably be a kind of hobbyist item, kind of like classic muscle cars are now.

It is interesting to think that some day way down the line there will be potential for someone to look out a car window and see someone with their hands on the wheel of another car, manually driving it, and suddenly feel afraid. Perhaps they'll even instruct their car to change lanes at the next safe opportunity to put some distance between them and the daredevil. After all, this will be a world where everything has been sanitized, softened, protected, and had all it's sharp corners and rough edges filed away. Think that people are easily alarmed and prone to kneejerk responses to elements of questionable danger now? We have nothing on what the future will hold. Having someone driving next to you is hardly dangerous, but even the tiniest possibility of accident introduced by inferior human reflexes and judgement will be seen as good reason for all out panic. Come to think of it, the OP may be right. These people will be the voting populace after all. They will have voted themselves practically into padded cells by then I'm sure. Manually driven automobiles will just be the next thing they see needing to be addressed. Tyranny of the Majority and all that.
 
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Some huge pluses for driver less cars -

- Huge efficiency gains as people can now multitask
- Much cheaper to transport goods as 18-wheelers can drive 24/7
- Much cheaper insurance
- No more drunk drivers
- No more shady can drivers
- Lives will be saved
- Safety features removed from cars will allow them to be much lighter and achieve much higher MPG
- Your kids can taken to school, car returns home, car picks up kids, returns home


Regular cars will have their place on the race-track but not for everyday driving. I welcome this.

And for those of you who are doubters, consider where we were 20yrs ago with technology.
 
Apple co-founder on artificial intelligence: ‘The future is scary and very bad for people’

In an interview with the Australian Financial Review, Wozniak joined original club members Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk by making his own casually apocalyptic warning about machines superseding the human race.

"Like people including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have predicted, I agree that the future is scary and very bad for people," Wozniak said. "If we build these devices to take care of everything for us, eventually they'll think faster than us and they'll get rid of the slow humans to run companies more efficiently."

... Musk was among the earliest members of this club. Speaking at the MIT aeronautics and astronautics department’s Centennial Symposium in October, the Tesla founder said: "With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like, yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon. Didn't work out."
Click to expand...

Some smart people making dark predictions...

Uno
 
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