Driverless Audi RS 7 at racing speeds at Hockenheim

[MatskiMonk]

I'm a bit skeptical about autonomous cars due to the faith and trust in the technology that's needed, particularly in this infancy stage where it's starting to roll out on production models, but as time goes on and as the tech improves, we will likely become more accepting of autonomous driving as it might become a new norm. It's the next leap in automotive technology and I for one, welcome it for the time being.

Of course there will still be a hardcore minority of people out there screaming "muh freedoms" as autonomous cars become more widespread..

It should be a balance.. as with anything. Is every mile I drive done for pleasure and freedom?.. nope.. is the majority of my mileage done for pleasure and freedom?... nope... it's done out of necessity, and frankly, however much I may or may not like my car, sometimes it's simply a chore... This week I'll drive from where I live near Rugby in the Midlands, to Spa-Francorchamps... sounds like a great road trip...! actually it's boring as crap motorway miles virtually from door to door... If I could push a button that meant my drive to work, or my drive to Spa could be done automatically, I would 9 times out of 10...

.. but, today was Sunday, so I went out for a blast in the car, only put 20 miles on it, but on my local back-roads it still feels like a workout.

If manufacturers can give you both, a car that's still great to drive, but can take over when it gets tedious and distractingly boring, I think the consumer will benefit.

As for the drink drive thing... whether the person behind the wheel remains legally responsible or not isn't the key issue, is a self driving car less likely to kill someone than a drink driver? The issue is reducing deaths, not shifting blame when it happens.

 

[McLaren]

What's interesting about the Google prototypes and other self driving cars that are being tested is they're already functional in a way that minimizes the downsides and maximizes the quality of life improvements from the cars. People seem to be more afraid of them driving on the highway erratically and less afraid of them around town, when the tech right now is actually the other way around. Relatively speaking it's almost trivial to have these things on the highway, all the cars are going the same direction and a similar speed, so it's just a matter of sensors around the car and regulating the speed and steering to keep a safe distance from other cars.

The challenges right now are getting the cars to interact with city traffic and the irregular patterns. Things like a delivery truck parked in a lane, a police officer directing traffic, or a pedestrian/cyclist motioning to a car to go. It's hard for a computer to interpret those symbols because they're kinda ambiguous and hard to program for. We're a long way away from fully automated delivery trucks that can navigate downtown traffic, but Google's prototypes are already really capable on the highway. I agree though, we're a long way away from having cars that can take over for drunk drivers entirely, I'd imagine the laws will require you to be sober and awake as they'll all still have manual override for years.

I'm assuming you mean Google's small fleet of Lexus RX's? We're kept fairly aware of their cars through work & that of all the 11 accidents they've been involved in, none have been shown to be at the fault of Google's vehicles.

Very interesting, advanced technology in those cars, though you're right about it still being a long ways off.