Whoa, Gov Jerry Brown just signed into law a bill that will make self driving cars legal in California.

Not sure about you, but I guess I'm old school, I'm going to have a hard time driving on roads with a "Google" directed and driven car sans driver.
I don't like it or more clearly stated, I don't trust "it" or them (self driving cars).

Google has been working to perfect the self driving Priuses that operate completely by themselves, brake when something comes in the way, avoid obstacles and everything else a good attentive driver should do, and admittingly they have done a pretty good job (see the youtube videos below)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9Fxp3HK6DI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdgQpa1pUUE
for what they can do...BUT...

The FIRST time or anytime one of these cars fail in any way, we'll have chaos and possibly someone hurt. Not sure if we're going to be able to deal with that situation.
And not clear if I want to give up control of the car to a computer...well at least not yet.

What say you?

Governor Moonbeam has his head up his ass. 

If we let them develop driverless cars, businesses will lay off drivers and buy the robot cars and we'll have another class of workers outmoded and in the ranks of the unemployed.

Now, you might say, "Maxwell, are you f**king serious?"

Well, serious is a relative term when we're talking about cars that can drive themselves!
:D :D :D

----------------------------------

Why did Helen Keller run the stop sign?
Her car is blind too!

Finally a car for women!!  :P

I hate to drive. It's so boring. I would love a car that could drive itself.

But what about when cops pull someone over and they find nobody in the car?  ???

I love to drive, but this is admittedly a technology who's time has come.  Stop thinking of autonomous vehicles as Johnny-Cabs from Total Recall...

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_mLlzOnL7nec/RyN5zzvsXKI/AAAAAAAABgQ/6tG7-CMevhs/s400/johnny-cab.jpg

...and admit that computers are better at driving than the average Joe, present company included. 

Can you do this?  (Check out the third try.  They're testing three completely different models here.  They start to nail powersliding/parallel-parking, backwards, on the third -- with not a cone hit.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY93kr8PaC4

Now dig this: that's not Google's driverless car.  That video is two years older than what Google's got on the road today.  Still wanna try to outdrive that robot's smarter brother?

The writing is on the wall for humans behind the wheel.  Even after the Motor Law passes, I'll go for a nice morning drive (it took until 2012-2022 instead of 1982, but the 1973 author got the general idea right) in memory of my late uncle, but I won't ever pretend that I can outdrive a sufficiently-well-programmed robot.  Bicycles have no business on the freeway.  Human-controlled vehicles have no business doing 120MPH bumper-to-bumper in an autonomous road train.  Last month, 90 km/h - tomorrow, 190 km/h.)

When will they come to New York?  ???

Whoa, Gov Jerry Brown just signed into law a bill that will make self driving cars legal in California.

Not sure about you, but I guess I'm old school, I'm going to have a hard time driving on roads with a "Google" directed and driven car sans driver.
I don't like it or more clearly stated, I don't trust "it" or them (self driving cars).

Of course California is always trying to be ahead in the future. I wouldn't trust it though if it was made by Google, if it is anything like Google Maps. It will probably take the longest route possible.

You mean the Hoff was driving an illegal car back in the day?  Well, I guess when Hoff was driving, it wasn't illegal, just when KITT drove itself...  :-\\

http://www.webklik.nl/user_files/2010_06/142672/kitt_animated.gif

You mean the Hoff was driving an illegal car back in the day?  Well, I guess when Hoff was driving, it wasn't illegal, just when KITT drove itself...  :-\\

http://www.webklik.nl/user_files/2010_06/142672/kitt_animated.gif


But that's a TV Show not real life.

I'm sure the time selfdriving machines  will come, and I'm not jokking at all. Plus it will also come a time when the mass won't have any car.  World is being quickly crowded and individual locomotion is an issue impossible to keep as we now know it. So very soon things about people moving along stuffed roads must change if we dont wanna lead into a collapse.

In the meantime they try nowadays what in the near future we'll unavoidably have.

I can dream up on highways of selfdriving cars going by....very useful for unwilling women to drive a long way as Gibbo saw and said.
It's so easy to imagine a fluent fleet of trucks as a long steel worm going north towards south or west to east or crossing desserts of sand in Arizona or ice in Alaska, with only one driver ahead of the string. In fact in Sweden there's already a truck equiped with a system so that a string of cars could follow it without fault.

I  can also see these bus lanes  at some cities rolled by selfdriving buses everything under control by..... the majors....

It is a pity but it is real that industry is a facility to make money for capitalism not to make things better for humanity. So.... welcome to selfdriving machine if it is good to make tons of dough

Being a legally blind person, this is good news for me. However, it is also kind of scary, too.



Cat

This is really cool! I really hope it becomes mainstream in my lifetime. Word's cannot describe the amount of lives this technology can save and how many accidents it can prevent on the road.

Whoa, Gov Jerry Brown just signed into law a bill that will make self driving cars legal in California.

Not sure about you, but I guess I'm old school, I'm going to have a hard time driving on roads with a "Google" directed and driven car sans driver.
I don't like it or more clearly stated, I don't trust "it" or them (self driving cars).

Google has been working to perfect the self driving Priuses that operate completely by themselves, brake when something comes in the way, avoid obstacles and everything else a good attentive driver should do, and admittingly they have done a pretty good job (see the youtube videos below)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9Fxp3HK6DI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdgQpa1pUUE
for what they can do...BUT...

The FIRST time or anytime one of these cars fail in any way, we'll have chaos and possibly someone hurt. Not sure if we're going to be able to deal with that situation.
And not clear if I want to give up control of the car to a computer...well at least not yet.

What say you?

The chances and impact of something going wrong with the computer and people getting hurt are miles and miles less than the chance of death from drunk driving currently today as we speak. Look at the numbers of vehicle accidents from drunk driving, it is enormous. Every 5 minutes somebody is hospitalized due to a car accident or drunk driving. Do you really think this number can stay the same if a highly skilled/tested computer controls the vehicle? There is chaos and deaths today by human impact in vehicles and it is not improving. How can a computer driven car be any worse? (If anything, it can only improve the current numbers of vehicle accidents that causes so much damage and deaths) So many lives can be saved with this technology....

When will they come to New York?  ???


I still want to know.

But that's a TV Show not real life.


Are you saying KITT is not real?

:\'(

Are you saying KITT is not real?

:\'(


don't be silly you damn well know he's not real.  ::)

The chances and impact of something going wrong with the computer and people getting hurt are miles and miles less than the chance of death from drunk driving currently today as we speak. Look at the numbers of vehicle accidents from drunk driving, it is enormous. Every 5 minutes somebody is hospitalized due to a car accident or drunk driving. Do you really think this number can stay the same if a highly skilled/tested computer controls the vehicle? There is chaos and deaths today by human impact in vehicles and it is not improving. How can a computer driven car be any worse? (If anything, it can only improve the current numbers of vehicle accidents that causes so much damage and deaths) So many lives can be saved with this technology....

Have we really thought about what it would mean if we had a entire society of self driven cars? The human driven automobile has been with us for over 120 years, and entire industries and economies have been built up around it.

So, if we're not driving, then we don't need drivers licenses right? No more DMV, no need for them really (the only good thing I see so far). No more drivers licenses or points on your license or, for that matter, any types of traffic citations or speeding tickets at all. They won't occur anymore as an efficient, computer driven automobile is ultimately concerned with safety and efficiency. There are no traffic accidents or speeding issues per se, as the self-driving car would simply get  you to where you are going without any regard to speed, or traffic lights or any sort of traffic laws. It simply routes itself around obstacles and finds the best, collision avoiding route in the fastest possible time to get you to your destination.

Also , no need for state inspections as a good computer controlled car would (as cars they already do this, but it's us stupid humans that ignore the warning lights) monitor all aspects of a cars mechanicals to ensure that it is "safe" and would not drive if it is "out of spec".

And so, along with all these things that would go away is the revenue that many cities, counties and states depend on from the fines, penalties, and regulations that are generated by human driven vehicles, that and all the jobs associated with them or the industries built around the human controlled vehicle.

What industries are those? There are the road crews that paint the stripes down the road and put signs up and the companies that make those signs, traffic signals and make guardrails, they are no longer needed. Ultimately a computer car doesn't need the visual cues of a sign, a traffic signal or a solid or broken line on the road to get you where you need to go, that’s for us humans, a programmed computer doesn't need that. Guardrails and K-rails and the like are for the event of an accident, and a computer car doesn't have that possibility to need those either.

This also means no more auto insurance (yay), well there shouldn't be any need for them really. Computer driven cars are perfect, right? So, no more accidents, no more risky behavior defined by past driving history, your location, the distance you drive to work, or the car that you drive, that’s all gone. And gone is a large profitable chunk of the insurance industry with it. Don't know how well that'll go over, not that I'm a fan of insurance companies, just sayin…

What does that bring us? Well, let's think about this. If the average Joe no longer needs to drive, and a computer controlled, self-driving car does the job, much better than a human, then why have humans drive any vehicles at all for that matter? Humans are too risky, we should just leave the entire trucking industry up to computers too. Why not? They can drive endless hours without sleep or rest, bypassing any need for DOT regulations regarding driver fatigue. They would certainly be able to drive w/o accidents and we'd have less issue with big rig/car collisions and accidents that happen when humans are involved. Those jobs, truck driving jobs, go away. That’s a lot of people, if you consider the number of goods and products that at some time, HAVE to travel by truck in this country to get to the consumer, that’s a huge game changer for a lot of people who make their living driving a truck, bus or commercial vehicle. A LOT of companies would save themselves a big amount of $$ by reducing or dropping insurance and other costs for a human driver, by getting a self driving truck, bus or commercial vehicle, why deal with the extra cost and risk of having a human being behind the wheel?

And as an aside, what then happens to the hundreds of millions of still human operated vehicles that are out there? Are humans going to be allowed to drive your old '57 Chevy that you inherited from your Grandpop on the weekends? How can we possible ensure the overall goal of a more safe and secure transportation network of self driven cars if we still let humans drive on the roads, that'll screw everything up. The human is the wild-card in the deck here.

I know, TL:DR…

Here's my conspiracy theory (and the end of my rant). If the benefits of the self-driven car are to come to be, we will have to ban humans driving cars at some point.

I'm against that, and unlike many, I like cars and I like to drive. Great cars, Ferrari's, Corvettes, old muscle cars, great cars period, all go away, or at least go to museums, 'cause there is no reason for them in that world, not if we can't drive them. Auto enthusiasts like me become like the gun-nut trying to explain why he has to have a 600 rounds a minute automatic machine gun in his possession…. I'm not looking forward to that.

you damn well know he's not real.  ::)


I do now.  Thanks alot for destroying my childhood :\'(

Governor Moonbeam has his head up his ass. 

If we let them develop driverless cars, businesses will lay off drivers and buy the robot cars and we'll have another class of workers outmoded and in the ranks of the unemployed.

Now, you might say, "Maxwell, are you f**king serious?"

Well, serious is a relative term when we're talking about cars that can drive themselves!
:D :D :D

----------------------------------

Why did Helen Keller run the stop sign?
Her car is blind too!


If they develop driverless cars then they'll certainly develop driverless trucks as well, which means I'll be out of a job.

And if that happens then I'll just become a raging alcoholic because a) I won't have to worry about DWI's anymore and b) I really don't want to live in that kind of world anyway.  :(

I do now.  Thanks alot for destroying my childhood :\'(


;D

What happens if the police stops the car and finds there is no one in it? ???

Are you saying KITT is not real?

:\'(


I like KITT

http://www.biography.com/imported/images/Biography/Images/Profiles/K/Eartha-Kitt-9366124-2-402.jpg

What happens if the police stops the car and finds there is no one in it? ???


Imagine a police cruiser with no one in it pulling over a car with no one in it!
8)

Imagine a police cruiser with no one in it pulling over a car with no one in it!
8)


so that means no one gets a ticket.

What happens if the police stops the car and finds there is no one in it? ???


I just assume it's a ghost.  :o :o

I just assume it's a ghost.  :o :o


that's a good idea.