U.S. clears way for truly driverless vehicles without steering wheels

Still not sure exactly what you mean. Perhaps you are laboring under the mistaken idea that everyone has an active cellular telephone on their person at all times, or a car that communicates with the outside world.
Electromagnetic wave is like light, travelling at speed of light at the medium. Usually you have more than 1 cell tower able to reach your signal and they can calculate your location based on timing. Pretty much how GPS work as your GPS device or phone receives usually at least 3 (I heard typically 6+) satellite time signal and then its algorithm figure out your location by that time differences.

A lot of phone got updated when the E911 mandate went in effect, basically at that time all phones would require GPS signals and use that to feed into a 911 call because if not a landline you need to know the location in an emergency if you passed out during a call.
 
Rebelling against the future where AI vehicles can transport people from place to place with much less than 1% of the death rates that we accept today as normal and not something to worry about and citing some garbage about big government taking over control, is about as smart as someone many years ago who use to drive a horse and buggy getting mad about a future of horseless carnages that have to stop sometimes at intersections that have traffic lights.

It's not a future I plan to take part in and is pure vaporware at this point. However, for the sake of argument let's assume that unlike the many broken promises made by advanced tech advocates over the decades this actually comes to fruition. Will that low death rate hold as those miraculous driverless cars age? Will a 10, 15, 20+ year old driverless car still be reliably safe and accident-free when it racks up a few hundred thousand miles and it reaches beater status?
 
Electromagnetic wave is like light, travelling at speed of light at the medium. Usually you have more than 1 cell tower able to reach your signal and they can calculate your location based on timing. Pretty much how GPS work as your GPS device or phone receives usually at least 3 (I heard typically 6+) satellite time signal and then its algorithm figure out your location by that time differences.
I don't have an active cell phone or a GPS device.
 
We're a long way from having independent driver-less vehicles (ie not having steering wheels and other controls). But given time, it will come.

When driver-less vehicles have become the norm, drivers and driven vehicles may become effectively uninsurable because of their much higher accident rate.

The other possibility is that driver-less vehicles are able to interact safely with one another but driven vehicles become a danger That could be due to tight spacing (a few inches apart at 100 MPH), rapid coordinated acceleration or braking, very high speeds, etc.

I can see there being a transition period or even transition zone where rural areas permit driven vehicles but cities become strictly driver-less. Kind of like riding your horse to the city. You could ride your horse to town but it's not really practical to ride it down 7th avenue.
Pretty much. Cops might pull you over if you try riding a horse in downtown now.

People didn't realize how much our road and traffic laws have changed since automobile became popular. Back then they were running all over the place with no right of way for anyone.



When / If one day driverless car is the way to go, you probably wouldn't want to drive in the traffic among other driverless cars anyways. I can see why people would still want to drive on an empty road but in traffic? It wouldn't be enjoyable at all. It would be like operating your own elevator manually when you can only go up and down the shaft.
 
It's not a future I plan to take part in and is pure vaporware at this point. However, for the sake of argument let's assume that unlike the many broken promises made by advanced tech advocates over the decades this actually comes to fruition. Will that low death rate hold as those miraculous driverless cars age? Will a 10, 15, 20+ year old driverless car still be reliably safe and accident-free when it racks up a few hundred thousand miles and it reaches beater status?
You will likely get the equivalent of check engine light and your car will be moving in a "fail safe" mode, limping along until you fix it.

Moving much slower means the driverless mechanism has a lot more room to work around defects (say fuzzy camera, noisy sensor, etc). It would also annoy the passengers enough to fix it.

Your cars probably aren't allowed on the road if they blow out black smoke and cannot drive straight, leak coolant and oil all over the road, with bad headlight and was dragging the muffler on the asphalt today.
 
Your cars probably aren't allowed on the road if they blow out black smoke and cannot drive straight, leak coolant and oil all over the road, with bad headlight and was dragging the muffler on the asphalt today.

Yes, but those are very extreme examples. Many old cars have a litany of problems that are not as painfully obvious to others as you go down the road, and can be compensated for by a human driver. I expect that a car totally dependent on its sophisticated electronics and sensor network to go down the road will have an economically viable lifespan that is pretty short.
 
You do have a computer to browse BITOG forum no? They already knows everything about you.

No, they don't. While privacy is never complete unless you live out in the woods in a shack, for those of us who understand the technology (I've been working with the internet since early 1980s) there are measures that can be taken to limit the flow of information. So "they" have some information of course but it's pretty spotty overall. A pretty good metric is that I do not see any targeted ads, for that matter hardly any ads at all.
 
Yes, but those are very extreme examples. Many old cars have a litany of problems that are not as painfully obvious to others as you go down the road, and can be compensated for by a human driver. I expect that a car totally dependent on its sophisticated electronics and sensor network to go down the road will have an economically viable lifespan that is pretty short.


A likely scenario here is that you won’t own the vehicle outright but instead subscribe to a service. That way you can order the vehicle you need. Family vacation? Everyday commuter?
 
A likely scenario here is that you won’t own the vehicle outright but instead subscribe to a service. That way you can order the vehicle you need. Family vacation? Everyday commuter?

Sounds awful. Sorry, I do not subscribe to the "you'll own nothing and be happy" mantra.
 
A likely scenario here is that you won’t own the vehicle outright but instead subscribe to a service. That way you can order the vehicle you need. Family vacation? Everyday commuter?
Probably unlikely IMO. Human always want to "own" a toy even if the "ownership" is really an illusion, like our houses.
 
Yes, but those are very extreme examples. Many old cars have a litany of problems that are not as painfully obvious to others as you go down the road, and can be compensated for by a human driver. I expect that a car totally dependent on its sophisticated electronics and sensor network to go down the road will have an economically viable lifespan that is pretty short.
My understanding is they would self checks if something doesn't make sense and ask you to fix it. All the recognition sensors I used before (they call them OCR sensor reading letters, before the AI days) gave confidence level and would warn you before it gets too bad and they cannot recognize what it is. Usually the one that break is the sensors and the processing unit would live pass the mechanical life of the car, just like on your old beater you can always go on eBay to buy a junkyard pulled one, and they are not expensive.

If it fail frequent enough you will see aftermarket units, and factory recalls.
 
Probably unlikely IMO. Human always want to "own" a toy even if the "ownership" is really an illusion, like our houses.
On this we can agree. It's really a matter of having control over the item and having it at your disposal at all times.

Another issue with the leasing rather than owning scenario is the cost. You're talking about vehicles that will likely have a short economically useful lifespan. They will be expensive. Most of the people who talk about this shining future are in a position to be driving new or late model vehicles. Today you have many people who rely on old, inexpensive, even marginal vehicles that they can manage to keep running at low cost to get to their low-paying jobs and have available for their other transportation needs. Such people will be left out of the shiny high-tech future being envisioned.
 
My understanding is they would self checks if something doesn't make sense and ask you to fix it.
Sounds expensive, both for the car itself and for the needed repairs. I guess the proles driving beaters now will just have to take the bus.
 
Sounds expensive, both for the car itself and for the needed repairs. I guess the proles driving beaters now will just have to take the bus.

You can buy a dash cam for $50 today, those "sensors" that may wear out on the future driverless cars are probably going to cost about the same when they are mass produced.

You know what is expensive? Insurance. Especially liability insurance if you are not a dead beat. Injury lawsuits typically start at 30k and can easily reaches 200k these days.
 
You can buy a dash cam for $50 today, those "sensors" that may wear out on the future driverless cars are probably going to cost about the same when they are mass produced.
That's supposition and it's more than just the sensors, though those will be expensive. From what we see today, failure in the electronic modules and electrical systems in late model cars can cost many thousands of dollars to repair even though they are mass-produced. Self-driving cars will be more complex yet.

You know what is expensive? Insurance. Especially liability insurance if you are not a dead beat. Injury lawsuits typically start at 30k and can easily reaches 200k these days.
Not necessarily. People on the low end of the economic scale typically carry relatively inexpensive, minimum legal coverage for their beaters, and usually have few if any assets.

Even having a decent amount of insurance doesn't have to be ridiculously expensive. I drive old cars because I'm a cheapskate, and refuse to spend new or late model car money on a depreciating "asset". It does not cost all that much to carry $500K worth of liability insurance if you have a good driving record. I carry liability only and I'm paying far less for insurance than I would have to pay for a new or late model car, which of course would need more expensive full coverage.

I expect that whether bought or leased, a self-driving car of one's own is going to be beyond the means of many people and subscribing to a "service" where you just summon a vehicle when needed doesn't come close to the convenience and freedom of having one of your own available at all times.
 
That's supposition and it's more than just the sensors, though those will be expensive. From what we see today, failure in the electronic modules and electrical systems in late model cars can cost many thousands of dollars to repair even though they are mass-produced. Self-driving cars will be more complex yet.


Not necessarily. People on the low end of the economic scale typically carry relatively inexpensive, minimum legal coverage for their beaters, and usually have few if any assets.

Even having a decent amount of insurance doesn't have to be ridiculously expensive. I drive old cars because I'm a cheapskate, and refuse to spend new or late model car money on a depreciating "asset". It does not cost all that much to carry $500K worth of liability insurance if you have a good driving record. I carry liability only and I'm paying far less for insurance than I would have to pay for a new or late model car, which of course would need more expensive full coverage.

I expect that whether bought or leased, a self-driving car of one's own is going to be beyond the means of many people and subscribing to a "service" where you just summon a vehicle when needed doesn't come close to the convenience and freedom of having one of your own available at all times.

You just don't have much asset to be sued for and that's why you can get away with minimal insurance (liability, not the car).

Those expensive electronics is because of people buying a car from a startup company. One day Toyota would make it and one day they will be cheap like a Prius today.
 
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