Self driving buses, trains, trucks etc

magicbastarder wrote: »

i'm 42, so maybe (hopefully?) have another 42 years to live.
when i was born, it was the year the first apple was released, which had 8kb of memory. now, your standard computer has one *million* times as much memory.

your lack of faith in technology is interesting.
actually, faith is the wrong word. we've gone from zero to the current point in probably less than a decade, where autonomous cars are driving on roads, albeit in limited or restricted circumstances, but you're still shouting at the tide.

self driving cars will happen; my main concern is that society should dictate the technology rather than the technology dictating to society.

Your use of the word 'faith is telling. The notion that there have been significant advances in science and technology in the recent past, therefore there absolutely will be success for this particular technology, is logically fallacious and is akin to religious faith. It ignores all the failures of technology and science. It's classic cherry-picking.

Apple bought the rights for the use of liquid metals in consumer products. They never did anything with it beyond making an expensive SIM ejector tool. Clearly they had a vision for something more than that, but it didn't pan out. They sunk millions into GT Advanced Technology for the promise of making sapphire for phone screens in large quantities, cheaply. That venture failed spectacularly.

Current Intel CPUs are so riddled with fundamental vulnerabilities, that really patching them would likely see performance drop more than 50%.

The Italians built a bridge designed to last at least a 100 years...

The US has sunk Billions into the F35 fighter program, it would seem, on exactly the same sort of techno-faith that so many autonomous driving boosters display with their baseless 'will happen' pronouncements. The F35 was envisaged as having a myriad of very advanced systems all integrated into a seamless super-system by software. The reality is they can't write that software.

The US Space Shuttle program was predicated on the promise of re-usability drastically reducing launch costs. From that aspect, it was a complete failure.

I remember when the Concorde was in regular service, pronouncements that soon there would be hypersonic travel - London to Sydney in 2 hours, no less. Hows that looking, 40 years on?

Side splitting comedy that - today you can't even fly supersonic, even if you are a billionaire - you could back in the 70's!

Limitless energy from fusion reactors is just around the corner, just as it was back in the 70's

Cherry picking technological success stories, while ignoring failures, is self-delusion.

As I said, I think driving is a far more complicated task than people give it credit for and autonomous driving will require nothing less than real AI, not all the garbage being touted as AI of late, which isn't even close.

People who think humans are bad drivers and need to be replaced by fault-free perfect and shiny technology, are talking out their 4rse. The fatality rate versus distance driven is actually remarkably low. Humans are generally very good drivers, actually.

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

And you were doing so well up to that!

Norway has 2.6 deaths per billion kilometres driven. I'd call that excellent.

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

Don't know much about Norway tbh, but I'm wondering why you picked it? How does it compare to Ireland?



Yeah, my problem is with the 'generally'. In my experience looking around me, and in all the data I've seen, Irish drivers are generally fairly sh1te. 3 or 4 out of 5 drivers break speed limits, depending on which year of the RSA Speed Survey you look at. We are 2nd from worst position on the European league table of mobile phone abuse while driving. We have van and truck drivers who routinely use the phone or handle their paperwork while they're supposed to be responsible for several tonnes of metal travelling at 20-120 kmph.


They're generally fairly crap drivers. I could probably write something in Basic to run on my old Sinclair ZX-81 that would be a better driver than the average Irish driver.

Going on UK stats, only 3% of road accidents are caused by speeding. Irish drivers aren't as bad as you think they are:



The numbers are deaths per billion kilometres.

doolox wrote: »

While they speed it is not by a large amount. In the States you have official vehicles of every description flying about the place in the arrogant assurance that they will never be caught and if caught they will not be ticketed for speeding. The only big offenders regarding speeding here are motorbikes which often do 160kph or more in congested traffic on the M50 with complete disregard for their own lives. Many Irish drivers may do 10-15 kph over the limit on occasion but this depends on time of day and the presence or absence of hazards. Unless and until we adopt time of day based speed limits or weather based speed limits ( slower in rain) then many of the speed limits imposed on Irish motorists make little or no sense.

Fortunately most police ignore the marginal offenders and seem to only hit the few who stand out from the crowd with greatly excessive speed.

We are also lucky that most of our official vehicles give very good example by keeping to the speed limits except when lit up on an emergency run.

It is sobering to observe fire appliances and ambulances mostly keeping to the speed limits even when lit up with the blue flashers, only the cops seem to noticeably exceed the limits, probably to save a life or in a dire emergency.

Your experience of the US is fairly different to mine, though the stats posted above do suggest they have an even bigger problem than we have. There is some truth in what you say about how most drivers are just a bit over the limit, but it is interesting to contrast the reaction to this issue to the reaction to the tired old 'but cyclists break all the red lights' trope. For motorists, people reach and stretch to find excuses and reasons for illegal actions, even though the motorists are the ones who are killing people on the roads but for cyclists, there is far less tolerance.


Check out the 'degree of violation' graphs in this report, and you will see a significant number of drivers going significantly over the limit, especially on urban roads.


http://www.rsa.ie/Documents/Road%20Safety/Speed/Survey%20of%20Free%20Speed%202015.pdf

cnocbui wrote: »

A 'factor' is not the same as 'cause'. Speeding does not of itself cause many accidents, yet it is the focus of seemingly 90% of enforcement efforts.

Motor vehicles are a factor in 100% of collisions.

If you want to reduce road accidents by over 80%, just stop all human speech inside vehicles.

Yes, a factor is not the same as a cause, and it is rare to find one single cause of any crash or collision (not 'accident'). But regardless, excessive speed is a major factor, despite our general societal tolerance of excessive speed. If you want to reduce road crashes by more than 80%, just get drivers to obey the law - slow down, put the phone down, put the pints down.

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Don't know about the rest of you, but I am looking forward to seeing driverless buses, trains, taxis and luas

It's really not as far away as people think

Why? It's just to do away with jobs and anyway will only work on self contained systems like Docklands.

30 to 50 years away for driverless vehicles!! You're having a laugh right?

They're coming and much faster than you think. I had a mobile phone in 2003 with a black and white screen and a 2 inch screen. 15 years later and it's basically a computer where I can watch TV, listen to music or take photos with.

Car companies are investing billions into their technology and it's not all on performance and safety.

markodaly wrote: »

Autonomous vehicles will be on our roads within the next 5 years, in some shape or form. Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

The only ones will be test vehicles.

Unbridled optimism is a suburb of ignorance.