Uber

[a m ole]

Just some thoughts off the dome piece. I have doubts over whether self driving cars will ever be a thing.

It feels like a hugely over-engineered solution to something that isn’t really a problem (people having to actually operate the cars themselves).

The state of the roads if we had somewhere between 5% and 95% driverless cars would be chaos.

I also imagine having an Uber system, a BMW system, a Volvo system and a Tesla system operating under different rules for what to do in any number of situations would also wreak havoc.

The ideal would be rail based transport, with family sized pods all moving on one centralised traffic system - obviously the cost and time to develop that infrastructure rules it out, but.

[HanoiVillan]

Firstly, it's awful that this happened and your heart has to go out to Ms Herzberg. 

Bringing the topic back to Uber for a moment, this is really bad news for the company and will be underestimated by many. Uber has been relying on the promise of driverless cars as its latest long-term solution to the fact that the company is massively loss-making. The inevitable delays and set-backs in their driverless project are likely to put them behind their competitors. It was already hard to see what advantage they would have over actual car manufacturers, but this makes a weak position much worse. 

[Davkaus]

13 hours ago, a m ole said:

 

It feels like a hugely over-engineered solution to something that isn’t really a problem (people having to actually operate the cars themselves).

This is an interesting point of view.

1.3 million people die per year worldwide in road accidents (less than a couple of thousand in the UK, our roads are actually remarkably safe, despite the lunatics we'll all see driving around every day ) , yet we don't really have a problem with human drivers.

1 person dies due to an error with a self-driving car, and people are losing their **** minds.

 

Quote

I also imagine having an Uber system, a BMW system, a Volvo system and a Tesla system operating under different rules for what to do in any number of situations would also wreak havoc.

This is why standards exist. People can make competing systems, but their needs to be a global standard with a common set of rules. It can and will happen, and our roads will be much safer for it.

 

Edited March 23, 2018 by Davkaus

[Stevo985]

The human monitor in that video is interested.

I'd be interested to know their purpose.

Is it solely to be alert and make sure they override the car if it's about to do something stupid, like run over a woman.

Or are they there to also monitor a load of other things in the car? 

 

Basically I'm trying to figure out if the human in the car should have been looking down. If their sole job is to be there for safety reasons then it seems like a pretty big **** up on their part!
If whatever they were looking at is a laptop or something that they have to monitor during the journey then it's slightly different I guess.

[bickster]

40 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

The human monitor in that video is interested.

I'd be interested to know their purpose.

Is it solely to be alert and make sure they override the car if it's about to do something stupid, like run over a woman.

Or are they there to also monitor a load of other things in the car? 

 

Basically I'm trying to figure out if the human in the car should have been looking down. If their sole job is to be there for safety reasons then it seems like a pretty big **** up on their part!
If whatever they were looking at is a laptop or something that they have to monitor during the journey then it's slightly different I guess.

Over ride. The trials were only allowed to take place on that basis

[Stevo985]

2 minutes ago, bickster said:

Over ride. The trials were only allowed to take place on that basis

In that case it's surely a massive **** up. Assuming she's just there to override, then essentially she should be acting like she's driving the car? Looks like she was on her phone or something.

[Dr_Pangloss]

14 hours ago, a m ole said:

Just some thoughts off the dome piece. I have doubts over whether self driving cars will ever be a thing.

It feels like a hugely over-engineered solution to something that isn’t really a problem (people having to actually operate the cars themselves).

The state of the roads if we had somewhere between 5% and 95% driverless cars would be chaos.

I also imagine having an Uber system, a BMW system, a Volvo system and a Tesla system operating under different rules for what to do in any number of situations would also wreak havoc.

The ideal would be rail based transport, with family sized pods all moving on one centralised traffic system - obviously the cost and time to develop that infrastructure rules it out, but.

This is generally spot on. The objective doesn't really solve a major problem other than pacification, which is what human beings love. One less skill to learn and more time opened up to do never more pointless and asinine things whilst in transit.

[bickster]

3 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

In that case it's surely a massive **** up. Assuming she's just there to override, then essentially she should be acting like she's driving the car? Looks like she was on her phone or something.

 

[Stevo985]

3 minutes ago, bickster said:

 

You’ll notice in my first post I avoided using a gender specific pronoun  

I plumped for female in my last post though!

[lapal_fan]

24 minutes ago, Dr_Pangloss said:

This is generally spot on. The objective doesn't really solve a major problem other than pacification, which is what human beings love. One less skill to learn and more time opened up to do never more pointless and asinine things whilst in transit.

I dunno about that.  If my commute every day is about 2 or 3 hours, and this could be done quicker and without me having to sit there holding a steering wheel I'd do it.  Anything that gives me more time to do what I want is a huge bonus, especially this day in age. 

[bickster]

47 minutes ago, lapal_fan said:

I dunno about that.  If my commute every day is about 2 or 3 hours, and this could be done quicker and without me having to sit there holding a steering wheel I'd do it.  Anything that gives me more time to do what I want is a huge bonus, especially this day in age. 

I would imagine if your commute is 2 or 3 hours you won't be using a driverless car unless you are earning silly money. It's pretty hard to imagine a driverless car retailing at a price most normal people would be able to afford. Driverless cars will be owned by transport companies, not ordinary people. Not only would you have to pay a huge price for the vehicle (far in excess of current prices), you would also have to pay for a subscription to whatever technology service the car uses. If you will be in the position to afford a 2 or 3-hour taxi journey twice a day just to get to work you could probably afford a helicopter service and do it in a fraction of the time.

Don't for one minute think that driverless cars will be in the domain of the average private citizen any time in the near future

Driverless cars will in effect be taxis owned by huge corporations, they will hold onto that technology for as long as possible and it will take an awfully long time to filter out into public ownership

All driverless cars will do is make people unemployed

[villa89]

16 hours ago, a m ole said:

Just some thoughts off the dome piece. I have doubts over whether self driving cars will ever be a thing..

Your doubts are unfounded, Self Driving cars are the future for a variety of reasons. In the future we won't own our own cars. We'll just subscribe to a service, Uber or whatever, where we order the car we want when we want. It will turn up and drive us where we want to go and then drive off to collect someone else. You'll be able to order a small car if it's just for going to work or a large car if you need to transport shopping, golf clubs,etc.. Far less road deaths, no need for parking, no need for taxi's, no need for truck drivers, no need for car insurance, probably no need for petrol/diesel because the fleets would be electric. 

Self driving cars/trucks are the next big technological revolution and that's why there is so much money being poured into it. I can't wait for it to arrive but it probably won't happen for another ~20 years. 

Edited March 23, 2018 by villa89

[snowychap]

2 hours ago, Davkaus said:

1.3 million people die per year worldwide in road accidents (less than a couple of thousand in the UK, our roads are actually remarkably safe, despite the lunatics we'll all see driving around every day ) , yet we don't really have a problem with human drivers.

1 person dies due to an error with a self-driving car, and people are losing their **** minds.

That's really not a sensible way to put the situations side by side.

[ender4]

16 hours ago, a m ole said:

 

It feels like a hugely over-engineered solution to something that isn’t really a problem (people having to actually operate the cars themselves).

 

Its a massive issue, the quicker we move to driverless transport the better.

Its going to be the next big technological advance for civilisation, after the internet. 

[Davkaus]

24 minutes ago, snowychap said:

That's really not a sensible way to put the situations side by side.

Oh ok. Thanks for the constructive feedback.

[snowychap]

4 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

Oh ok. Thanks for the constructive feedback.

I'm not marking your post, I'm criticizing it.

[Davkaus]

34 minutes ago, snowychap said:

I'm not marking your post, I'm criticizing it.

It's not really a useful way to respond to a post on a message board though, is it? Typically when people disagree, they'll say why, then there can be a bit of discussion around that disagreement.

Why don't you think it's a sensible way to compare them? If you're not going to bother saying why, you may as well have not bothered posting and you could have saved us both some time.

[snowychap]

23 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

It's not really a useful way to respond to a post on a message board though, is it? Typically when people disagree, they'll say why, then there can be a bit of discussion around that disagreement.

Why don't you think it's a sensible way to compare them? If you're not going to bother saying why, you may as well have not bothered posting and you could have saved us both some time.

The 'why' was implicit in the phrase 'side by side', i.e. that making a comparison in the way that you did isn't terribly sensible. **Edit below

I'll help you save you some time, though, by suggesting that if you don't think I ought to bother posting what I have then you shouldn't bother yourself with replying to that post.

You really could have saved yourself a great deal of time by ignoring what I posted rather than following it up with your subsequent posts. That's if saving time and bother was really your point.

 

Edit: It seems pretty obvious that your comparisons are not looking at even similar things. That goes for the death rates versus '1 person dies' part and also the 'don't really have a problem' versus 'people are losing their minds' bit.

Edited March 23, 2018 by snowychap

[bickster]

1 hour ago, villa89 said:

 no need for taxi's

 

You've just described a Taxi Service. That's what driverless cars will be.

Don't for one minute imagine that driverless cars will improve the service levels of a taxi service, they won't in fact often they will degrade them.

Prices will rise due to the investment required

Also, the large number of vehicles required on the road would require a MASSIVE investment to cover the disparities between availability and demand. Given the cost implication, there would be far fewer available vehicles on the road than currently exist, this will increase your wait for a vehicle. Don't think for one minute that there's an algorithm that could accurately predict where demand will be at any one time, therefore as a consequence of that it would be impossible and uneconomic to have cars waiting for customers in the correct locations.

At periods of low demand, where would all the driverless vehicles be? They'd be parked up, so the assertion that parking places wouldn't be needed is also a complete fallacy.

Taxi services work effectively by supply exceeding demand as much as possible. For that to work in the driverless situation the investment would be phenomenal and the very nature of the desire for profit from large corporations and their shareholders would mean that the efficiencies of the business would be to keep the vehicles full as much as possible and not efficiencies leading to better customer service and availability.

I'll give you an example of one Taxi Service, the one I work for. Last year we completed 11 million bookings and we did this with an average of approximately 2000 vehicles. We probably have 25-30% market share in the area we cover (basically Merseyside). The costs just to cover Merseyside would be astronomical and that's just assuming the industry is a monopoly, it won't be, though a monopoly is what would achieve the greatest efficiencies.

[blandy]

4 hours ago, Davkaus said:

1.3 million people die per year worldwide in road accidents (less than a couple of thousand in the UK, our roads are actually remarkably safe, despite the lunatics we'll all see driving around every day ) , yet we don't really have a problem with human drivers.

1 person dies due to an error with a self-driving car, and people are losing their **** minds.

There's definitely a massive amount more focus on this sad accident than is the case for "normal" accidents involving a car and a person.

It's always the way with new fangled thingumajigs. Lots of focus and attention, lots of fear and trepidation about how the new fangled thingumajigs are going to be the ruin of us all and "I wouldn't go in one of them"

Steam Engines - travelling at more than 20 mph will be fatal for passengers,  the motor vehicle   - you need to go behind a man with a red flag because of the danger....aircraft... then aircraft where the control are run by computers, not actual physical wires and rods.

Eventually it becomes clear that the technology is safe and capable and so on, and the fuss just goes away.

Where there's a bit of an extra factor, with unmanned vehicles is the psyhcological aspect of there seeming** not to be  a person "who's in control and sorting everything out". The technology can do the job and it will definitely be able to do it, and do it better than humans in the future. Once the psychology breakthrough happens, they'll be all over the place. They are the future. Places like the UK won't be at the forefront of them being introduced widely  - I guess they'll start in some square grid desert town with a fairly constant, benign climate and wide streets and all that. Regulatory bodies (Government agencies needing to approve their introduction and use etc.) will be and are the "drag" (rightly so, safety etc.).

 

**there is and probably always will be a person "legally" in control. With a UAV it's an operator on the ground, with a car/truck it may end up being either one of the human occupants, or an operator in a hub somewhere else (Uber's underground lair, or wherever).