U.S. Government Announces $4B Self-Driving Car Program

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Does anyone know exactly what this $4 billion program is supposed to accomplish? I read the linked .pdf and I still don't know what all that money will be spent on.

Turns out we're way closer to our self-driving car future than most of us expected. US Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx announced at the Detroit Auto Show (pdf) Thursday that the Obama administration will have a national blueprint for autonomous vehicle standards by July. What's more the administration is earmarking $4 billion of the 2017 budget to create a decade-long program that will support and accelerate development of the technology.
 
"DOT and NHTSA policy is to facilitate and encourage wherever possible the development and deployment of technologies with the potential to save lives."

Ugh, I read that and the first thought that came to mind is that they will outlaw self-driven vehicles in the future.
 
Yay, another waste of tax payer money.

And we have a winner.

This is just a 4 billion $ handout to the politically connected that will result in 100's of millions in campaign contributions to Democrats.

In other words, it's vote buying money.
 
And we have a winner.

This is just a 4 billion $ handout to the politically connected that will result in 100's of millions in campaign contributions to Democrats.

In other words, it's vote buying money.

Yep, dems are making sure they secure the next 4 years. And they're doing a good job of it.
 
Great. Now I'm funding to urge self-driving cars that will injure and kill people? About like me funding abortions of living children in the womb.
 
So I guess this can somehow be justified via interstate commerce or promoting the general welfare. I detest big government types with ever fiber of my being.
 
And we have a winner.

This is just a 4 billion $ handout to the politically connected that will result in 100's of millions in campaign contributions to Democrats.

In other words, it's vote buying money.

I am not going to blame D or R etc etc, both sides do it to extremes sadly. But you are right that it is only a hand out. If the market is there companies will develop it. If it is not, guess what is going to happen? Once they are produced with tax payer money, they will have to offer them subsidized with the likes of the tax credits used for electric cars and all the funding that went into that. The simple fact someone buying a Tesla can get tax payer money for a luxury car is just unbelievable. This will be the same out come here, this is nothing but a path for further subsidized car market that there is not enough demand for yet. Then, when that bubble pops because the market was propped up, they will scream "OMG WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING, THE ECONOMY IS CRASHING". Housing bubble anyone? and just like the housing bubble they will then redouble on tax breaks, lower rate loans on self driving cars and more tax credits, in a never ending cycle.
 
Decade long program to expedite. Not sure they are using that word correctly.
I guess that's the government interpretation of fast.
 
All that money will be spent wisely and we will reap the rewards!

Or not.
 
With our failing infrastructure, they claim that we have no money. What a bunch of corrupt pricks.
 
The money will most likely end up used to develop the structure under which autonomous vehicles will legally operate.

There will be safety tests and standards in place for vehicle autonomy systems, such that only approved ones will be allowed on the road.

The legality surrounding these vehicles, how insurance should be handled, how road ways will be impacted and should modified/adjusted.

It's easy to not see the big picture, but incorporating self-driving vehicles into our society is a lot more than simply developing a 'working' car.

When software is going to control machines that can kill you, better believe their will have to be a way to evaluate which are allowed on the road.
 
It's a worthy investment provided that it succeeds.

If America is the first to achieve this (not just the car but car, national road infrastructures, navigation programs, etc etc)... America will be the one to set the global standard for self driving cars that the rest of the world will emulate. The business opportunity (not to mention controlling the patents) is huge.
 
The sooner we have 100% self-driving cars on the road the better, cannot wait until human controlled cars are banned. Thousands of lives will be saved and countless injuries prevented.

Everyone is a terrible driver including the people posting in this very thread.
 
It also said "create a decade-long program that will support and accelerate development of the technology" isnt the private sector already doing a better job of this than the govt could?
 
It also said "create a decade-long program that will support and accelerate development of the technology" isnt the private sector already doing a better job of this than the govt could?

What do you think lit the fire under their ass?
Time to take credit.
 
The sooner we have 100% self-driving cars on the road the better, cannot wait until human controlled cars are banned. Thousands of lives will be saved and countless injuries prevented.

Everyone is a terrible driver including the people posting in this very thread.
What happens when a remote controlled car kills someone? All it would take is one failure in a system of remote controlled cars to screw the entire system. It would be like the situation on roller coasters where people are stuck there for ours waiting for humans to clean up the mess. ...and it would happen on a daily basis, because electronic failures happen all the time. Humans are much better equipped to deal with the issues.
 
More irresponsible spending? yeah.Just keep going with that. It's unlimited right?

That reminds me, i need to beef up my emergency food storage ASAP after reading this.
 
The sooner we have 100% self-driving cars on the road the better, cannot wait until human controlled cars are banned. Thousands of lives will be saved and countless injuries prevented.

Everyone is a terrible driver including the people posting in this very thread.

Considering I've been behind the wheel for 20+ years and have never been found at fault in an accident....um....no.
 
It's a worthy investment provided that it succeeds.

If America is the first to achieve this (not just the car but car, national road infrastructures, navigation programs, etc etc)... America will be the one to set the global standard for self driving cars that the rest of the world will emulate. The business opportunity (not to mention controlling the patents) is huge.

You do understand that the subsidized companies will hold the patents to this right? So lets give tax payer money so a already well off business owner can legally restrict other people getting into the market? Great idea!

You are also speaking of the US patent system as if it is some world wide system, its not.

The sooner we have 100% self-driving cars on the road the better, cannot wait until human controlled cars are banned. Thousands of lives will be saved and countless injuries prevented.

Everyone is a terrible driver including the people posting in this very thread.

That is a pretty wide sweeping statement there. As someone skilled in autocross, rallycorss etc as well as driving on public roads for over 13 years and never having an accident, this statement is definitely false. Maybe you are speaking of your own driving capacity.

Considering I've been behind the wheel for 20+ years and have never been found at fault in an accident....um....no.

Indeed.

How short sighted. It means you'll never need a designated driver again when going boozing. Hurrah!

I don't drink, no less drink and drive.

I also never said self-driving cars were bad or should not at some point be legal etc, however private money and investment along with demand should be what determines when this happens. Not tax payer money when we are already so far in debt. The government does not know what the market wants and when it wants it, this is shown by the subsidizing of the electric car market, something they pushed for and funded. Even if the government did know what the market wanted it is NOT the governments place to spend tax payer money in this way or to ever give tax payer money to businesses etc.
 
What happens when a remote controlled car kills someone? All it would take is one failure in a system of remote controlled cars to screw the entire system. It would be like the situation on roller coasters where people are stuck there for ours waiting for humans to clean up the mess. ...and it would happen on a daily basis, because electronic failures happen all the time. Humans are much better equipped to deal with the issues.

It's irrelevant if the car is driven by a person or a program, a failure in the control system can cause the same kind of damage regardless. Imagine loosing electric steering in a corner. In the cars you buy now everything is controlled electronically.

Self driving cars doesn't mean banishing the human entirely from driving the car. But I would love it if I could leave the car to drive itself in some situations.
 
It's irrelevant if the car is driven by a person or a program, a failure in the control system can cause the same kind of damage regardless. Imagine loosing electric steering in a corner. In the cars you buy now everything is controlled electronically.

Self driving cars doesn't mean banishing the human entirely from driving the car. But I would love it if I could leave the car to drive itself in some situations.

Plus humans 8 out of 10 times will react abruptly and incorrectly to emergency situations. There are so many situations where doing absolutely nothing would avert the collision, but Mary from down the corner panics starts yanking on the steering wheel and ends up crashing into "insert random thing here".
 
Where's the fun factor in a self driving car?

Doesn't exist and won't exist. These things are aimed at two things, the first being the elderly which is a great thing as it gives them continued mobility without the risk of age related accidents, and inexperienced drivers (which frankly is the damn majority of drivers). It is my hope that those of us who are extremely experienced drivers will be required to take an extensive test to keep our licenses to drive with the bulk of the population being required to use automated.

I'm a firm believer in the idea that driving is a privileged and in no way whatsoever a right and should be treated as anything where you are responsible for other peoples lives.
 
It's irrelevant if the car is driven by a person or a program, a failure in the control system can cause the same kind of damage regardless. Imagine loosing electric steering in a corner. In the cars you buy now everything is controlled electronically.

Self driving cars doesn't mean banishing the human entirely from driving the car. But I would love it if I could leave the car to drive itself in some situations.

I love motorsports (as I said before) so I love driving, but I would also enjoy using this on my commute, I drive an hour into work and almost 2 hours out. I could sleep, or catch up on some reports/emails etc etc, could make me allot more productive. But any other time I want to be driving because I enjoy it.

Plus humans 8 out of 10 times will react abruptly and incorrectly to emergency situations. There are so many situations where doing absolutely nothing would avert the collision, but Mary from down the corner panics starts yanking on the steering wheel and ends up crashing into "insert random thing here".

I am not so sure it is that high, most people might not make the 100% perfect reaction, but often times it is not totally wrong, in cases of avoiding something or a crash, I am extremely doubtful a self driving car would do much better, predicting trajectories of a flying car, or a random scared deer etc are in most cases impossible, and am willing to bet all the car would do would be to slam on the brakes, the same reaction of a person. Some areas might see improvement, others might get worse, looking at current tech, there is ALLOT they do not do very well, but they are coming along, however in the area of accident avoidance, it will be some time before they reach human level. In time new sensors and MUCH faster computers and I can see them becoming far better, big time over distracted drivers.
 
The sooner we have 100% self-driving cars on the road the better, cannot wait until human controlled cars are banned. Thousands of lives will be saved and countless injuries prevented.

Everyone is a terrible driver including the people posting in this very thread.

People are always concerned with saving lives, which...ya that's a good thing but we are already overpopulating the planet, we need some form of natural culling or we'll have to institute something retarded like in "The Purge".

What happens when a remote controlled car kills someone? All it would take is one failure in a system of remote controlled cars to screw the entire system. It would be like the situation on roller coasters where people are stuck there for ours waiting for humans to clean up the mess. ...and it would happen on a daily basis, because electronic failures happen all the time. Humans are much better equipped to deal with the issues.
This is something the automotive community is working on, programming cars to choose between passenger safety or collided object safety. Does the car protect its own passengers at the expense of a bus full of kids type scenarios.

Plus humans 8 out of 10 times will react abruptly and incorrectly to emergency situations. There are so many situations where doing absolutely nothing would avert the collision, but Mary from down the corner panics starts yanking on the steering wheel and ends up crashing into "insert random thing here".

Actually, it's been documented that autonomous cars on the roads right now are causing accidents because they react TOO quickly and too abruptly. Where a human driver might feather the break or apply gradual pressure for a temporary obstruction (think a car in the opposite lane of travel cutting across to get into a parking lot), the computer only sees an obstruction and applies excessive breaking assuming it's a permanent obstruction. This type of behavior confuses human drivers and causes low speed (so far) rear end collisions.
 
Actually, it's been documented that autonomous cars on the roads right now are causing accidents because they react TOO quickly and too abruptly. Where a human driver might feather the break or apply gradual pressure for a temporary obstruction (think a car in the opposite lane of travel cutting across to get into a parking lot), the computer only sees an obstruction and applies excessive breaking assuming it's a permanent obstruction. This type of behavior confuses human drivers and causes low speed (so far) rear end collisions.

That's true, but technically that's still the human driver's fault for not keeping enough of a safety distance.

Automated driving programs need a lot of work and this program aims to speed up that work. That in itself would be commendable if I didn't know that a lot of this money is not going to actual meaningful development.
 
The sooner we have 100% self-driving cars on the road the better, cannot wait until human controlled cars are banned. Thousands of lives will be saved and countless injuries prevented.

Everyone is a terrible driver including the people posting in this very thread.

LOL

This will NEVER happen. Computers fail. Do you want it to drive you off a cliff because it can't decide to turn into the mountain to avoid that goat and instead try to fly? Darwin award.

The world would crash without forward-thinkers protecting the non-thinkers. The non-thinkers all want self-driving cars so they can play with their phones.

Auto makers will be held responsible for crashes since it's THEIR programming that failed. Multibillion $ lawsuit. I guess being irresponsible with a self-driving car really could pay off to both parties...
 
LOL

This will NEVER happen. Computers fail. Do you want it to drive you off a cliff because it can't decide to turn into the mountain to avoid that goat and instead try to fly? Darwin award.

The world would crash without forward-thinkers protecting the non-thinkers. The non-thinkers all want self-driving cars so they can play with their phones.

Auto makers will be held responsible for crashes since it's THEIR programming that failed. Multibillion $ lawsuit. I guess being irresponsible with a self-driving car really could pay off to both parties...

I could definitely be wrong because I don't live around mountain goats...but I don't think they're prone to jumping in front of moving vehicles. Also, as I stated before, the automotive industry is actively working on programming ethics or risk management or whatever they call it into the computers to make decisions like this. Is it going to be perfect at first, definitely not, humans are programming them in the first place, we aren't going to think of everything on our first shot but I think they'll be pretty close. Is 100 lives lost to save 10,000 worth it? Most people would say that's a pretty good tradeoff.

Self-driving cars would also IMPROVE transportation considerably. If the entire system was autonomous, speed limits could be much higher as the entire system would be acting on the same set of rules without individual interpretation or differing levels of individual perceptions.

The dangerous time is now and during the transition when we will have a mix of autonomous and human drivers.
 
I don't drink, no less drink and drive.

I also never said self-driving cars were bad or should not at some point be legal etc, however private money and investment along with demand should be what determines when this happens. Not tax payer money when we are already so far in debt. The government does not know what the market wants and when it wants it, this is shown by the subsidizing of the electric car market, something they pushed for and funded. Even if the government did know what the market wanted it is NOT the governments place to spend tax payer money in this way or to ever give tax payer money to businesses etc.

Aaa I see so it was about you and not the few billion others on this planet. Clearly that justifies it! Pardon my ignorace :p
 
I could definitely be wrong because I don't live around mountain goats...but I don't think they're prone to jumping in front of moving vehicles. Also, as I stated before, the automotive industry is actively working on programming ethics or risk management or whatever they call it into the computers to make decisions like this. Is it going to be perfect at first, definitely not, humans are programming them in the first place, we aren't going to think of everything on our first shot but I think they'll be pretty close. Is 100 lives lost to save 10,000 worth it? Most people would say that's a pretty good tradeoff.

Self-driving cars would also IMPROVE transportation considerably. If the entire system was autonomous, speed limits could be much higher as the entire system would be acting on the same set of rules without individual interpretation or differing levels of individual perceptions.

The dangerous time is now and during the transition when we will have a mix of autonomous and human drivers.

Can you PROVE self-driving cars will "save lives" and "improve transportation"? So far, it's a hindrance and dangerous to other drivers. I will never give up driving my classic car, nor trust a driving computer with my life. It seems as though I'm being forced to trust self-driving computers by others. Safety is taking a back seat. Let's make self-driving bicycles and see how that works that way the only danger is to the riders themselves.

How about a deer that jumps out near a bridge? I guess you will go sailing whichever way the computer wants to go. I would personally drive into it and duck rather than fly off a bridge or into a lake. Is a computer going to know? I guess we won't know until someone dies because of it. Would you want to take that risk?
 
Can you PROVE self-driving cars will "save lives" and "improve transportation"? So far, it's a hindrance and dangerous to other drivers. I will never give up driving my classic car, nor trust a driving computer with my life. It seems as though I'm being forced to trust self-driving computers by others. Safety is taking a back seat. Let's make self-driving bicycles and see how that works that way the only danger is to the riders themselves.

How about a deer that jumps out near a bridge? I guess you will go sailing whichever way the computer wants to go. I would personally drive into it and duck rather than fly off a bridge or into a lake. Is a computer going to know? I guess we won't know until someone dies because of it. Would you want to take that risk?

Prove they'll be safer?? It's already common knowledge that the major cause for accidents in America is due to humans through failure to follow rules or ignorance of the rules. Everything else that we do when driving a car successfully can be done just as well by computers.

You're already relying on computers to drive your car now. Shut the computers off your car and you car will shutdown, it just doesn't have complete control over your vehicle's guidance. As I said in two previous posts now, they are working on programming in risk management. Being that deer are pretty commonplace, I'm willing to bet they get that one the first time. Also, being that I'm not incredibly biased against the concept, I'm willing to bet the computer will make the decision to attempt to avoid the deer by using another lane if available, if not it will then attempt to use brakes to stop the vehicle, prep the cabin for impact (lock seatbelts, warn passengers, deploy airbags a few ms before impact, and alert OnStar like services/emergency personnel, alert surrounding autonomous vehicles of impending impact). I'm also confident that the programming will be able to ascertain what exactly the obstacle is and deploy whatever protection systems would be necessary. A full size truck hitting a deer would not need to deploy airbags for example but all other precautions would still be deployed.

I'm just a lowly IT worker with an Associates Degree and I can come up with all that...imagine what teams of Engineers can come up with.
 
Aaa I see so it was about you and not the few billion others on this planet. Clearly that justifies it! Pardon my ignorace :p

Umm...Justifies what?

I am not the one stealing tax payer money to give to select companies, to develop a tech that will be subsidized to the rich and middle class first, again at tax payer expense. :rolleyes:

This is not the role of government.
 
Prove they'll be safer?? It's already common knowledge that the major cause for accidents in America is due to humans through failure to follow rules or ignorance of the rules. Everything else that we do when driving a car successfully can be done just as well by computers.

You're already relying on computers to drive your car now. Shut the computers off your car and you car will shutdown, it just doesn't have complete control over your vehicle's guidance. As I said in two previous posts now, they are working on programming in risk management. Being that deer are pretty commonplace, I'm willing to bet they get that one the first time. Also, being that I'm not incredibly biased against the concept, I'm willing to bet the computer will make the decision to attempt to avoid the deer by using another lane if available, if not it will then attempt to use brakes to stop the vehicle, prep the cabin for impact (lock seatbelts, warn passengers, deploy airbags a few ms before impact, and alert OnStar like services/emergency personnel, alert surrounding autonomous vehicles of impending impact). I'm also confident that the programming will be able to ascertain what exactly the obstacle is and deploy whatever protection systems would be necessary. A full size truck hitting a deer would not need to deploy airbags for example but all other precautions would still be deployed.

I'm just a lowly IT worker with an Associates Degree and I can come up with all that...imagine what teams of Engineers can come up with.

It's clear you don't know much about the auto industry then. Pretty much all of my cousins are mechanics at dealerships and computers that fail on brand new vehicles are commonplace.

Engineers are humans, and lots of them are ignorant just like people in any industry. Mistakes are made. A person programming a self-driving car isn't going to be able to program for every circumstance.

Yes, my vehicle has computers, but I'm not depending on them to make life altering choices. Huge difference there.

Why would a full size truck not need to deploy airbags? Your face has just as much chance to hit the dash or wheel. Eek! And what if it's a moose? Does the computer know? What if it's a rabbit or coyote? What if it is a person on a bicycle? Will it know to make extra avoidance killing a person vs a deer? I would personally know but a computer will not.

I don't know what I would do with myself if I made the choice for a self-driving vehicle and it end up maiming someone for life or killing a family. :(
 
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