You really think people would trade the ability to completely focus on something else during their commute (autopilot) for the ability to go faster but have to focus on the road?
Not long ago I seem to remember people listing the lightning fast speed at which an automated car could drive as just one of the many blessings the technology would gift to us. Now we want them to drive the speed limit? Boring.
> Why does the autopilot need to speed to be safe?
For the same reason driving below average speed is dangerous. If you drive 10km/h slower than everyone else you are a problem, even if everyone else is driving at or slightly above the speed limit (very common in Germany).
I wish they would scrap them entirely. I used to do very long commutes in the car. If anyone here has done a lot of driving they will know that you tend to go into "autopilot", you are paying attention and know exactly what going on but you probably have no recollection of the last 20-30 miles.
Typically unless you are gunning it on the motorway you will be somewhere between 65-75 to be cruising with the other traffic and that variation of speed is normal unless you have cruise control.
I don't have cruise control in my car. The amount of worry and stress these things induce because I can't remember whether I was travelling at the correct speed (I didn't get a ticket so I must have been fine) drives me insane.
It makes sense to me, as otherwise a manufacturer could supply the car with a 50mph speed limiter (which users would instantly disable) to boost their EPA-measured range.
I don't understand why limiting the upper bound of speed when a user is using autopilot would be difficult at all? These cars can already recognize speed limit signs and have settings for 'how much over the speed limit do you want to be'.
>they do it because they don't care much about the speed limit.
Oh, certainly, and I apologize if my argument came across as "It's not possible for people to not speed" or "People only speed because of the properties of speedometers or cruise control"
My point is that speed within a few mph is already inaccurate, and that 3mph is pretty much within the current margin of error.
>speedos universally over-read in my experience
I don't know that there's a common leaning one way or the other in actual variance due to speedometer construction, but over-reading is the most common occurrence due to tire pressure being low causing it, and a huge amount of people drive with low tire pressure. Overinflated tires, or moving to larger tires in general, will result in under-reads.
>I would expect a fully autonomous vehicle to be able to accurately obey the speed limit and I suspect the reason it wasn't/doesn't is because that behaviour has been programmed in or developed.
I don't agree. lagadu covers this plenty well in his comment, however.
I argue that a more effective measure would be to use the onboard data services in modern cars to calculate the $ cost of speeding! Sure, you CAN drive 85 MPH, but if you drove 70 you are saving $/hour driving.
One thing I'd like modern cars to implement, given that they're supposedly close to self-driving, is to cap your speed at some percentage above the speed limit.
There is no reason why a driver should be capable of driving the car 130 km/h in an 80 km/h zone.
half of all the driving I did on the autobahn on my way to France this summer was crawling slowly through trafficjams so it makes sense. Also who would want to let a autopilot do +100k h while manual drivers whizz by at double that speed?
I have a car with adaptive cruise control and speed limit detection, and this would absolutely drive me nuts. Not for any philosophical reasons, but because speed limit detection is fallible. On the expressway my apartment is a block away from, which has a speed limit of 50 mph, my car fairly frequently tells me the speed limit is actually 30. It's fairly common for it to read speed limit signs that have conditions on them -- only in effect certain hours, or during school hours, or when light is flashing, or if you're driving a truck -- and incorrectly assume that's the speed limit.
Maybe you'd be perfectly happy with "if you don't want the cruise control to make mistakes, just never use it, because gosh darn it, that's better than allowing people to set the adaptive cruise control five miles an hour over the speed limit like they've been able to do with non-adaptive cruise control since it was a thing." I would not, and I would argue I am not the one taking an unreasonable stance.
Ignoring the cost for a second, I don't want max possible acceleration all the time. Modern gas pedals are already sensitive enough, no reason to need an even lighter touch in stop+go traffic.
I think there's something off about your arguments, human drivers speed, but they don't do it because of properties of the speedometer or the cruise control, or air resistance, or potholes - they do it because they don't care much about the speed limit.
It's completely possible to stay below the speed limit in a car, a lot of people just don't bother. Cruise control won't apply the brakes (at least in older cars) if you encounter a significant downhill gradient - that's up to the driver, and while speedometers are often out and GPS is more accurate, speedos universally over-read in my experience. If you're doing GPS 38mph your speedo is probably reading 40, which is not really within an excusable error margin of 35mph IMHO.
I would expect a fully autonomous vehicle to be able to accurately obey the speed limit and I suspect the reason it wasn't/doesn't is because that behaviour has been programmed in or developed. You could make arguments that doing what the other cars around you are doing is safer than being an outlier, but that's not the same argument you're making. I think the 38mph figure is significant.
Because I want to know if I'm speeding—and if so, by how much—without doing math calculations in my head. Or even without having to look closely enough at the speedometer to be able to parse the numbers. Mentally, that process is a lot slower than looking at where a thing is pointing.
I was thinking more 50km/hr. That will pace cars on residential streets which can be enough to get around for many types of trips, still safe, and has a chance of flying under the radar of most authorities.
You really think people would trade the ability to completely focus on something else during their commute (autopilot) for the ability to go faster but have to focus on the road?
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