Trust programmed vehicles… with your life?
Seems normally sorta-sane Texas is taking a big step forward in driverless vehicles. Taxis? Californee already done that (and after too many wrecks, pulled them.) Self driving Teslas? I hear it’s a great feature…provided it works. Bet we could populate another column like our FGS with how many articles I have seen where Teslas on whatever they call autopilot have wound up getting bent. Battery fires which need 10-20 times as much water to extinguish? Old hat.
Heck, in Texas we do it BIG. None of this namby pamby nonsense for us.
Driverless trucks with no humans on board will soon cruise Texas highways if three startup firms have their way, despite objections from critics who say financial pressures, not safety, is behind the timetable.
They ain’t talkin’ F150s, chum.
After years of testing, Aurora Innovation, Kodiak Robotics and Gatik AI expect to remove safety drivers from trucks that are being guided by software and an array of sensors including cameras, radar and lidar, which sends pulses of light that bounces off objects. The companies have already hauled cargo for big names such as Walmart Inc., Kroger Co., FedEx Corp. and Tyson Foods Inc.
And trucks pose severe dangers, opponents say, because they will be traveling at highway speeds and weigh as much as 80,000 pounds, or more than 15 times as much as General Motors Co.’s troubled Cruise driverless robotaxi.“We are concerned about the lack of regulation, the lack of transparency, the lack of comprehensive data collection,” said Cathy Chase, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety. The list of opponents also includes the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the 1.3 million member union that represents drivers and warehouse workers. Bloomberg
Category: "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves"
Maybe if they have AI’s in the driver’s seat, to assist the driverless truck……..
Soon, it’ll be able to get drunk and drive stupid all by itself.
I read that in some cases, EV drivers can sometimes find themselves locked in their cars when the power is interrupted, which could become a death trap if there is a fire.
Electric/computerized everything is just dumb
Indeed. I don’t use Siri or Alexa or any of those things. I also don’t let Google save my searches (only use Youtube as far as Google searching goes.) I already have too many things tracking me in addition to 17ish cameras and only a few less microphones in my house – I don’t need to invite something to actively listen to me if I can help it. Smart homes and cars? You can keep it.
A few decades ago I worked for a company that was trying
to develop a directed energy gun that could disable a car
engine with conventional ignition. Never went anywhere.
Now that everything is electronic seems to me it would be
easy peasy to develop something that works.
I have a “directed energy” gun that projects a 1 oz slug at about 1600 fps… 2484 ft/lbs of energy…
I have read that if a Tesla battery is disabled, it secures the car – locking the doors. putting the drivetrain in Park mode – so if you happen tobe in it at the times, you are stuck wherever you are (traffic lane, intersection, whatever) with no means of exiting the vehicle or moving it without a tow truck. Sounds like hyperbole to me but nowadays who knows. Hard to believe NHTSA would allow that, though.
Unions would still have us producing buggy whips if they could help it.
https://www.calranch.com/weaver-leather-stock-whip-sku6872468?queryID=ad571cfbc8d4f31f5960dc16fc3313d6&objectID=193851&indexName=Magento_Productiondefault_products
Aaaaaaiiiiiigggghhhh!!! They’ve succeeded!
This Good Idea Fairy needs to be put back into the glove box.
Skynet grins. Sarah Conner sez…Prepare
F**k the glove box! The GIF needs to be sliced, diced, entombed in a lead sealed box, add 500 pounds of weight, and dropped directly over the Marianas Trench.
That little twink has caused more trouble in the world than anything else.
I would wait for generation 3.
Let California beta-test this thing.
I’d love to have someone learn how to hack these AI driverless vehicles & steer them off the road – especially if they have cargo on them. No accidents, no injuries, no deaths, just steer them off the road somewhere rural, quiet, no traffic & turn them off. hehehehe
That’d be funny, but sadly, it’s more likely to be some terrorist hack a hazardous cargo and use it against innocents..
Then again, if the pantifa morons hijacked one, screwed it up, and ran it through their own rioters… that would be a hoot!
If those asshats had those kind of programming skills, they’d have jobs and wouldn’t have time to pull their shit.
Driverless vehicles? Yeah, the Nigerian Prince who is giving me his fortune in exchange for my name, social, and bank info is telling me not to trust the technology.
“I’m not shocked that the Teamsters are agin’ it.”
Has the International Sisterhood of Lot Lizards commented yet?
Traffic collision incidents and deaths would decline greatly as most crashes are operator error or violation, often compounded with substance influence.
In exchange will we get crashes that don’t make any sense such as running over a bunch of construction workers on the side of a road because a sensor went bad, running over jay walkers and driving into flooded areas or whatever.
This is in response to not having enough truckers and heavy regulation of the industry. I’d prefer responsible humans behind the wheel. While cars are mostly science, driving is mostly art. Computers are bad at art based skills.
For some reason, the auto-pilot on Teslas seems to be more of a targeting system for Fire apparatus. They’ve hit far more of them that the law of averages would suggest they should..
I always remember that, in spite of all the high tech, top secret, James Bond level equipment that was aboard, we still lost the USS Scorpion, and USS Thresher.
Comparing apples to oranges, I know, but it just sort of sticks in the back of my mind…y’know?