Three-Quarters of Americans “Afraid” to Ride in a Self-Driving Vehicle

"The real simple solution to traffic is no more monkeys driving cars". Right, like that's going to happen any time soon. There will always be the rich monkey who wants to drive his car around faster than all the others, because he thinks he's better than everyone else, so that leads him to believe he deserves to. And it only takes one asshole to screw up the whole system. Unfortunately, most rich monkeys behave like assholes when it comes to how they treat the rest of us. Just look at what's happening with legislation right now: Screw the common man and the little guy. You really think that's going to change? Not as long as Richie Rich can buy his Ferrari to show off to everyone, and need to prove that he's a better driver than even AI. We don't live in a utopia, and it's not coming any time soon. The elevator analogy doesn't work here because rich conceited monkeys don't WANT to drive elevators. They want to drive expensive looking cars (not just because they drive nice, but especially to show everyone how much money they have. You can have a blast in a Miata. But no woman is impressed by the word Mazda, so Ferrari, Lamborghini or Porsche is necessary for many of these douchebags).
 
M76 said:
Yet they're perfectly fine getting in an elevator. That's also controlled by software. They're perfectly fine getting on an escalator, no human driver there either. They also get on automated trains, and so on.
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Elevators only has 1 degree of freedom: it can only either go up or down, so you know in advance what it is going to do.

Self driving cars are a different beast, they have a much greater degree of freedom than we are used to other automated machines doing, and because it's a new concept (people would be more open to say escalators after they know of Elevators for example, they are relatively similar).

I'd say the biggest change with self driving cars are though, is that you suddenly change from being the driver to being a passenger with a driver you haven't gotten a clue about. It's like getting into a taxi, only the taxi driver is mute and deaf.

And that's the primary fear. You have suddenly gone from being the one in control to the one being controlled.

Elevators, you are not typically the driver of the elevator anyway, automation won't really change that.

Frankly, I do not think Automated driving is mature enough, simply because it hasn't caused enough accidents or been on the road long enough so they can be programmed resiliently and reliably, especially in on chaotic roads.
 
M76 said:
Few remarks to that.
  1. If every person behind the wheel was clever enough to write software capable of navigating a vehicle in traffic, then I'd think the traffic problem would've already solved itself by now.
  2. peer review that every engineering project gets, what kind of peer review do human drivers get, apart from taking a highly inadequate test when they turn 17? Or 16 in some places?
  3. testing, that every piece of equipment gets that contains automation, and even those that doesn't
  4. what kind of device programming are you talking about? There are many systems where a fault would never cause any serious harm to anyone, but even there equipment gets tested before released to mfg.
So to sum it up. I'd rather trust a software that was created by trained monkeys and went trough a dozen other trained monkeys before it was activated, rather than trusting any random monkey texting away. I wish we only had as many accidents on the road as many embedded systems fail right now that are held to much lesser standards,
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2. peer reviews of software? uh. yeah. sure. Come work in the embedded world. The odds of there being more than 2 or 3 programmers assigned to a project are slim, most places I've been (and that is for larger projects). Each is assigned their own piece of the project and rarely, if ever, even looks at anyone elses code.

4. "but even there equipment gets tested before released to mfg" -- assuming you aren't behind schedule and it wasn't a last minute bug fix, and that any "real" testing time was built into the schedule (doubtful). The stuff I work on personally is unlikely to hurt anyone (due to mechanical interlocks on the system and a watchdog timer) but I've seen far too many projects at past companies that had nowhere near enough safety interlocks and nearly zero actual real world testing before it was released. A good example of this would be the software that controlled the power circuitry and the CRT HV of an older TV where, had the software crashed during the "quick on" part of the startup phase (where it was essentially overcharging things to get the HV to come up to voltage quicker), the HV would potentially have "failed on" and most likely proceeded to overheat and catch fire. I know for a fact that a lot of software that goes into embedded controllers for industrial control systems that run motors, flow valves, etc. usually gets WAY less testing than it really needs.
 
People fear change...so the results of said survey is about as obvious that water is wet.
 
Supporters of self-driving cars do not like to face the reality of "the market". As with Google-Glasses there will be severe resistance to self driving cars. People "will not" buy them. Those who do will be regarded like "Glass-holes" or worse...
 
nightfly said:
"The real simple solution to traffic is no more monkeys driving cars". Right, like that's going to happen any time soon. There will always be the rich monkey who wants to drive his car around faster than all the others, because he thinks he's better than everyone else, so that leads him to believe he deserves to. And it only takes one asshole to screw up the whole system. Unfortunately, most rich monkeys behave like assholes when it comes to how they treat the rest of us. Just look at what's happening with legislation right now: Screw the common man and the little guy. You really think that's going to change? Not as long as Richie Rich can buy his Ferrari to show off to everyone, and need to prove that he's a better driver than even AI. We don't live in a utopia, and it's not coming any time soon. The elevator analogy doesn't work here because rich conceited monkeys don't WANT to drive elevators. They want to drive expensive looking cars (not just because they drive nice, but especially to show everyone how much money they have. You can have a blast in a Miata. But no woman is impressed by the word Mazda, so Ferrari, Lamborghini or Porsche is necessary for many of these douchebags).
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The only thing worse than monkey's driving cars is monkeys riding in cars driven by buggy software programmed by monkeys... Your class envy is noted comrade...
 
thejokker said:
Supporters of self-driving cars do not like to face the reality of "the market". As with Google-Glasses there will be severe resistance to self driving cars. People "will not" buy them.
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Advanced cruise-control and automatic pedestrian/emergency braking are already popular features.
 
Why shouldn't we be, I don't think I can beat up a car in a fight. It's why all my dogs are medium to small sized.
 
chenw said:
Elevators only has 1 degree of freedom: it can only either go up or down, so you know in advance what it is going to do.

Self driving cars are a different beast, they have a much greater degree of freedom than we are used to other automated machines doing, and because it's a new concept (people would be more open to say escalators after they know of Elevators for example, they are relatively similar).

I'd say the biggest change with self driving cars are though, is that you suddenly change from being the driver to being a passenger with a driver you haven't gotten a clue about. It's like getting into a taxi, only the taxi driver is mute and deaf.

And that's the primary fear. You have suddenly gone from being the one in control to the one being controlled.

Elevators, you are not typically the driver of the elevator anyway, automation won't really change that.

Frankly, I do not think Automated driving is mature enough, simply because it hasn't caused enough accidents or been on the road long enough so they can be programmed resiliently and reliably, especially in on chaotic roads.
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Elevators used to have human "drivers" didn't you know? And early on probably there were people who refused to step into an elevator without a "driver".

Most people don't even understand the concept of "degree of freedom". Of course cars are more complex, but the problem is still the same: FUD.

mdburkey said:
2. peer reviews of software? uh. yeah. sure. Come work in the embedded world. The odds of there being more than 2 or 3 programmers assigned to a project are slim, most places I've been (and that is for larger projects). Each is assigned their own piece of the project and rarely, if ever, even looks at anyone elses code.

4. "but even there equipment gets tested before released to mfg" -- assuming you aren't behind schedule and it wasn't a last minute bug fix, and that any "real" testing time was built into the schedule (doubtful). The stuff I work on personally is unlikely to hurt anyone (due to mechanical interlocks on the system and a watchdog timer) but I've seen far too many projects at past companies that had nowhere near enough safety interlocks and nearly zero actual real world testing before it was released. A good example of this would be the software that controlled the power circuitry and the CRT HV of an older TV where, had the software crashed during the "quick on" part of the startup phase (where it was essentially overcharging things to get the HV to come up to voltage quicker), the HV would potentially have "failed on" and most likely proceeded to overheat and catch fire. I know for a fact that a lot of software that goes into embedded controllers for industrial control systems that run motors, flow valves, etc. usually gets WAY less testing than it really needs.
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Let's say I have confidence that they'll pay more attention to testing when the repercussions for a failure are huge.
 
mdburkey said:
Actually, the biggest issue with monkey's behind the wheel vs self-driving cars, is that these same monkeys are the ones who wrote the software that RUNS the self-driving cars.......

So, as someone who is a software engineer and does embedded systems programming and device driver programming on a daily basis, self driving cars scare the living crap out of me and there is no way in HELL I'll be getting into one anytime in the near future.

Basically, I know far too well what the software that goes into most automated control systems looks like "under the hood" and have seen the (rare) comments left there by previous engineers. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
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This. I too am an embedded software specialist, and like mdburkey, I have seen too much crap code to trust self driving cars. The only reason that medical device and avionics software is reasonably safe is because those are regulated industries. So far I have seen no efforts to put forth reasonable regulations concerning the development and testing of self driving car software. The Toyota unintended acceleration lawsuits gave us a glimpse under the covers of the ECU software used, and that scared the hell out of me. They violated every rule for developing safety critical software, and even invented a few new categories. They didn't even use a certified RTOS!

Sure humans are not perfect drivers, far from it, but complex multi-processor computers with millions of lines of source code will never be free of bugs either. Basically what we are doing with self driving cars is trading one set of (mostly known) faults for another set of (mostly unknown) faults. And they will be very different kinds of faults too. Just imagine what will happen when a bad update goes out and 10's of thousands of cars refuse to back out of the garage, or just stop on the road, leaving their occupants stranded.
 
I'll drive until it's banned. Simple approach to this.

Until our society become silent passengers of a robotic lifestyle, I wish to continue enjoying one of the most thrilling experiences what we are still in control of.
Drive a GTR and you'll be kicking and screaming to stay out of that Total Recall nightmare of a car.

I'm a Edgar Friendly type of guy.
 
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WorldExclusive said:
I'll drive until it's banned. Simple approach to this.

Until our society become silent passengers of a robotic lifestyle, I wish to continue enjoying one of the most thrilling experiences what we are still in control of.
Drive a GTR and you'll be kicking and screaming to stay out of that Total Recall nightmare of a car.

I'm a Edgar Friendly type of guy.
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I imagine there will still be leisure options for those who want to experience normal driving half a century from now, similar to how horses are handled right now.
 
I would walk everywhere before I would trust a self driving car death machine.

No one should ever trust software to pilot them around on an open environment not on a track with a near infinite number of variables.

Self driving cars are the worst invention ever and an example of one of the worst ways to take technology too far and use it for evil.

I am only 33 years old and I hope that terrifying evil of self driving cars do not become mainstream in my lifetime.

I trust humans and for everyone who complains about human drivers, at least humans have dignity. And as a passenger, I could always tell a human what to do and stop them if I felt uncomfortable as a passenger. Could never do such a thing with AI. Another thing that needs to be done is drunk driving laws need to get tougher to prevent them on the road. Self driving cars is not the answer to those problems and trust me when I saw that!!!

No one will ever take my car and keys and roads away from me and others who wnat to be in control of their cars. I would march on Washington before anyone did that to me in the name of sadistic self driving vehicles!!!!

Software Technology belongs in you smart phones, desktop PCs, TV, laptops, etc... It has no business driving a car for you.
 
Wierdo said:
I imagine there will still be leisure options for those who want to experience normal driving half a century from now, similar to how horses are handled right now.
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A half century fro now I will probably be on my death bed so I will not have to worry about living in that terrifying dystopic society if it comes to that.
 
It takes time to develop trust in any given technology. I don't think the tech is there quite yet for fully automated vehicles. Don't mistake prudence for fear.

Give it a decade.
 
Gorankar said:
It takes time to develop trust in any given technology. I don't think the tech is there quite yet for fully automated vehicles. Don't mistake prudence for fear.

Give it a decade.
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Nope will never ever trust such tech. I would never want a robot in my home either.

It would be a cold day in hell before I would ever ride in an autonomous car.
 
That is your choice. I may never own an autonomous car either, since I prefer cars built in the 60's and 70's. My daily driver is a Lincoln MarkIII. However, my sprinter van r/v I use for semi regular 3+ hour business trips to Coppell,TX , and 5.5 hour business trips to Springfield, MO? As soon as the tech matures and I have confidence in it, I would be all over it. Fuel the thing up the evening b4, tell it where to go, set my alarm, and go to sleep. Wake up in the parking lot at my destination. It would sure beat leaving the day b4, or getting up stupid early to make a morning meeting.
 
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