Google Self-Driving Car: A First Drive

[TwistedAegis]

I really don't care for traction control. I would rather have control of the vehicle than have the vehicle decide when to let off the gas. Traction control and ABS really don't work on sand, gravel, oil slick, or ice.

Sure some of the stuff may be better than most drivers, but then again most people should not even be driving in the first place.

Have to agree that it appears to be overconfidence in abilities - i.e., everyone believes they're "above average". Don't have time to search for it now, I believe it was Top Gear, trained drivers, doing demonstrations on a car spinning out in a turn with TC on and off. It was shocking the difference - with TC on, it was barely slightly diagonal slid out onto the shoulder. With TC off, same driving technique, the car spun multiple times and was 20 feet off the track.

 

[ManofGod]

Manual cars pretty much don't exist in the US. have you tried to find one recently?

Yep, in my 2013 Dodge Dart SXT Multiair 1.4 Turbo with 6 Speed Manual. I am not unique in this just because people want everything done for them.

 

[Wierdo]

Main joy of driving. In other words, driving is more enjoyable than sitting down doing nothing.

I'm sure people can find many other things to do when not driving, I don't believe sitting there doing nothing is a requirement.

 

[evilsofa]

First one of these in public someone is going to throw themselves in front of it just to get huge Google money. Hell, I would think about it.

And they'll all look these idiots. Because if you think self-driven cars won't have a black box keeping video data on accidents, you're nuts.

 

[evilsofa]

That's over selling how difficult it is to process real world data. What happens when the sensor get dirty? What happens if they get dirty because you just drove through a mud hole on some dirt road in the bad part of town?

You know those little nozzles on the hood of your car where water comes out if your windshield gets dirty?

Not to mention the Kobayashi Maru scenario where this is no good ending, only less bad ones. You have the choice of a brick wall or a child. Now what if there are children in you car? How does a computer make that judgement?

A computer-driven car will almost always have more options and more time to use them because in almost every case the computer-driven car will be going slower than a human-driven car. I would estimate that human drivers will face Kobayashi Maru scenarios many thousands of times for every time a computer-driven car has to.

Computers are able to react to events that no human possibly could. Anyone who reads these forums should know how much a computer can do in the blink of an eye. Human drivers are killers because they speed, are impatient, and have an attention span of about 5 seconds. These faults are huge when it comes to road safety. Computers have none of these faults.