I agree with everything you said. I do hope that eventually the tech gets to the point where it can take over full time. We recently took a road trip for our vacation and the amount of road rage we witnessed was ... mind boggling. Don't get me wrong, not everyone is a raging asshole, but there were enough to make me wonder just why so many people are so freaking angry.
I agree completely. My take from the situation is much more that we are far far too lenient with our standards for cars, roads, and particularly drivers. We've set the bar so low that the technology has a good chance of clearing it soon but only serve to reveal how actually uncomfortable we are with such a low bar that we've normalized over time.
Technology has helped a great deal. I'm saddened that enforcement hasn't played a bigger part, though. What I see around me on a daily basis is pure complacency. People switching lanes without turn signals, drivers with half their car in the bike-lane, tailgating, people who have their blinker on for several minutes (how did they forget? are they blasting music in their car such that they can't hear the clicking noise? are they that distracted??) etc.
It feels like my fellow drivers simply don't care about the human life that surrounds them. They'd rather text their friends than pay attention to the several-thousand-pound machine they are operating. In my opinion, obtaining and keeping a driver's license is just far too easy in the U.S., but I guess there is no hope to fix things on this end for two reasons: (1) losing your privilege to drive a car is a "death sentence"... how will you get to work and pay the bills?, and (2) police departments are facing budget cuts, so enforcement probably will not increase.
We have hope that self-driving cars will remove these negligent/distracted drivers from the road, but at the end of the day, what does that say about people that they can't take operating a heavy machine responsibly? Do we have any future tech that would emerge where ordinary people can threaten each other's lives?
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Also, road design in the U.S. appears to care more about throughput than safety. Traffic circles are far safer, but they aren't used enough. Anecdotally, near my hometown there is a 6-lane road intersecting an 8-lane (!) road. That is the most dangerous intersection in the town, and IIRC the county! It's no wonder why having so many lanes of cars hurling themselves through an intersection is dangerous, so why are people allowed to design these roads in the first place?
But consider this: If a human had the same problem, who would be blamed? If several humans, then the road would be changed, just like this. The process seems sound, but maybe the changes that make it more human-friendly make it more machine-hostile.
New thinking is needed on how we retrain machines after the change, as it necessitates uniformity - the machine would benefit with fewer variations in cattle grids for example. I reckon a simple change to the road markings for all cattle grids would be enough to make them logically identical - be it paint or signs or some other physical indicator.
This is an excellent point. My guess is that computer drivers will just have to be polite and will be taken advantage of.
But maybe they could offer some sort of incentive to other drivers on the road. Imagine getting a check in the mail for allowing a Google car to merge into your lane. Or on the flip side, a ticket for cutting one off?
I agree advanced automation would be needed to maximize capacity. A basic system only needs cruise control, lights and cameras installed at the merge points and a transponder like fasttrak that monitors your speed and automatically fines you if you hit the brakes.
Adaptive cruise control, lane assist, higher standards of maintenance and driver skill don't seem like too much to ask of a select group of people and vehicles licenced to use the lane and would help to maximize capacity and minimize incidents without getting too futuristic.
If the internet has taught us anything, it's that anything that facilitates conversation facilitates all types and styles of conversation. I'd posit that a more sophisticated inter-car communication system would add at least one new road rage incident for every one it prevents.
From recent headlines, it sounds like people are protesting the fact their city is being used as an alpha testing site and causing a nuisance.
I don't think its necessarily in protest of the technology in general, but the irresponsible way these things are let loose on the road without a person there to get it out of the way when it gridlocks.
Its an issue that can be solved by spending relatively little money on a test driver's salary that they're purposefully avoiding to save money and avoid responsibility.
I don't know if you've paid much attention to the other systems we allow on our public roads, but they're looking at their phones instead of avoiding collisions, or they're aggressively refusing to cooperate instead of collaboratively producing flow and throughput, or they're impaired by substances or medications or diseases or untested capability degeneration, or
Yeah that what I want to see when I'm in a crash, responders wasting time with tech support on some tech device.
And let me be super straightforward here: if a radio technician needs to be on emergency vehicle at all times, it better be that his salary comes out of self driving licenses fees and not my taxes.
In theory that's a huge problem. In practice we have 1.X billion miles of data and it does not seem to be such a huge deal. Either the systems are already fairly good, or people mostly pay attention.
Granted, I am approaching this from the perspective of a more relaxing driving experience not necessarily from a pure safety standpoint. People spend 20,000+ hours driving in a lifetime making that less stressful is a huge benefit even if they are still stuck in their cars and can't get work done.
It's entirely possible that this tech isn't yet ready for an expansion, but this article does a shit job of demonstrating that. The alternative is not perfect drivers. The alternative is real human drivers who make all kinds of mistakes every day. I completely believe that these incidents are real, but without comparison to the actual alternative, it's useless information.
I understand that my opinion on this matter may be controversial, but I feel compelled to share my experiences. In the past five years, I've noticed a significant increase in aggressive driving. I've been the victim of two hit-and-run incidents where I was rear-ended, and the drivers fled the scene. In a third incident, a driver collided with the side of my car as the road curved and had the audacity to tell the police that I was at fault. In Texas, I've witnessed rampant red-light running, failure to stop at stop signs, excessive speeding (more than 15 mph over the limit), tailgating, and failure to use turn signals.
I believe that telematics could be a valuable tool in addressing this issue by scoring drivers based on their driving habits and adjusting their insurance rates accordingly. This would not only encourage safer driving practices but also ensure that responsible drivers are not unfairly penalized for the actions of aggressive drivers. In my opinion, telematics should be required for operating a vehicle on public roads.
Driving on neighborhood streets is asocial and callous. Wether you use an "app' or not is irrelevant, you're still wrong. As social community feelings have eroded, I guess we now must use technology to combat those that are not polite enough to comply. Make all but the roads designed for transit prohibited to all but local traffic, enforce by cutting streets or ANPR cameras.
So what's the suggestion here? Put the cat back in the bag? Technology will continue to evolve, society has and can continue to put in place barriers for specific applications of technology. The same tech used for the Pepsi driver's "unsanctioned break" is also the same tech that provides for their federally-mandated rest periods.
I'm happy that progress is being made. I'm not excited as a person who likes driving to be sharing the road with a bunch of computers. I'm not worried that they'll crash into me. I'm more concerned that they will be in my way.
I think the criticism is real, but also that we market the pre-stage 4 technologies inappropriately by implementing them as binary "completely hands off, else emergency" systems. Integrated in a way that is more assisted, keeping the driver in control of the overall decisions but making some cautionary adjustments to implementation of those decisions to adjust speed or direction to stay in lane, avoid excessive tailgating, allow merges, etc., they could still be powerful tools to reduce some number of that death toll.
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