Are self-driving vehicles a good idea?

http://www.popsci.com/sites/popsci.c...WdZzq&fc=50,50

Self-driving cars. Uber. Autonomous operations. Is it really a good idea? Quite the interesting stuff we've seen come out these past few years. Cars that are driving themselves with humans on the road - Uber Technologies being the biggest producer. Think of a world where all of the cars, taxis, etc drive themselves. Does that sound good to you?

We have two sides of the story:

Self-driving vehicles are our future and are shaping our ever evolving technological society. The ease of having self-driving cars would greatly improve the lives of our people. Self-driving cars will and are perfectly safe. Loads of time go into developing these vehicles to follow specific commands based on our human input. Accidents caused by the car will not happen.

OR:

Self-driving vehicles are a danger in a time where we have very stupid drivers. Regardless of whether or not the vehicles are safe and up to standard as created by highly strategic/problem-solving scientists, there's a multitude of confusion when it comes to lawsuits if someone is hurt. Is the car liable? Or is it the vehicle's occupants? We can't afford to suffer through the mess. Just as well, no robot can make a life-saving decision like a human can in a time of danger.

You might be able to tell where I stand on the issue based on what I have typed. Let me know what you think, and debate!

It is the future, AI will be able to drive a lot better than humans and predict future actions a lot better than a human.

Their integration with normal drivers is where it's dangerous as humans actions cannot be calculated, so it would be hard to program human actions as they're mostly illogical.

If all cars on the road were self-driving it would be a hell of a lot less dangerous than currently.



My only issue is driving would be a lot more boring if I'm not actually driving.

Undoubtedly safer, but I'm always interested in how, in a situation where a crash is absolutely inevitable and someone will be injured, the car decides which person will be the one injured. Obviously it's going to be some kinda utilitarian approach, but I do wonder how people would feel about it.

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Originally Posted by scottish

If all cars on the road were self-driving it would be a hell of a lot less dangerous than currently.

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Then we'd have issues about some self-driving car companies being compatible on the road with other self-driving technology and many fights and wars about whose fault certain things were. It'd suck

There wouldn't be anyone at fault as there wouldn't be accidents as every action is predictable and calculated.

Humans are unpredictable and their actions cannot be calculated = accidents occur.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by scottish

There wouldn't be anyone at fault as there wouldn't be accidents as every action is predictable and calculated.

Humans are unpredictable and their actions cannot be calculated = accidents occur.

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That is a good point. I guess we'll only be able to tell when that time comes if our programming and AI is good enough for it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by scottish

There wouldn't be anyone at fault as there wouldn't be accidents as every action is predictable and calculated.

Humans are unpredictable and their actions cannot be calculated = accidents occur.

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Sadly i don't think it will be simple as that. One issue is technology is never 100 percent reliable.

I've heard of someone who's breaks stopped working going down a hill and it was either hit the back of another vehicle or hit children. The safest thing was to hit the vehicle and the person inside that vehicle was fine. The issue is how a computer would act in this situation.

Humans might bring risk but they also bring other things such as intuition.

If all cars were on one "network" and could communicate with each other, it'd work. They'd communicate like "I'm changing lane now watch yourself", "yeah I'm braking", so they wouldn't crash

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Originally Posted by hungryfront

If all cars were on one "network" and could communicate with each other, it'd work. They'd communicate like "I'm changing lane now watch yourself", "yeah I'm braking", so they wouldn't crash

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That would start a monopoly. Modern business doesn't work like that. Always gonna be competition.

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Originally Posted by Landon

That would start a monopoly. Modern business doesn't work like that. Always gonna be competition.

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Just because they use one 'network' doesn't mean they can't talk to other cars by different competitors.

It could simply be a protocol in which they communicate and would standardised among all car manufacturers.

Was talking to my dad about this When cruse control first came out years ago people were hesitant to use it as it was seen as taking the control away from the driver. Over the years from the time of the old manual cars things have progressed at a steady rate improving what a car can do for us. If I look at myself these days when I am on the open road all I now need to do is steer the car, the car does everything else. So is the next step now that of the car steering itself and making it even safer for us all round with added built in safety devices. Even though yes, technology is not 100% reliable.

self driving cars do begs the question "will a driving license and test pass be required?" Guessing they will need a little bit of human interaction.

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Originally Posted by nat965

Was talking to my dad about this When cruse control first came out years ago people were hesitant to use it as it was seen as taking the control away from the driver. Over the years from the time of the old manual cars things have progressed at a steady rate improving what a car can do for us. If I look at myself these days when I am on the open road all I now need to do is steer the car, the car does everything else. So is the next step now that of the car steering itself and making it even safer for us all round with added built in safety devices. Even though yes, technology is not 100% reliable.

self driving cars do begs the question "will a driving license and test pass be required?" Guessing they will need a little bit of human interaction.

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I think there's a difference between cruise control and automation. So for instance with cruise you still need to be attentive to the road and such, you're always going to be in control so if you need to slam the brakes then you can do so quickly. Whereas in an automated vehicle, you may not know of danger coming and whether or not the vehicle is going to do something about it, so response times are going to be worse. Especially when the occupant/s of the vehicle may be on his or her phone lol

Deffo a safer option to be fair, not sure how it will all work though

You never know what could go wrong with a car that drives itself. I would not trust those cars at all.

But what happens if it malfunctions?