Age of Robocars about to be unleashed
 

The US House approved self-driving cars; a sweeping proposal to speed deployment of self-driving cars without human controls and bar states from blocking autonomous vehicles. The measure could help many automakers and tech companies get self-driving cars on the market by 2020 or 2021. If the Senate approves and the president signs it into law, it would allow automakers and others to obtain exemptions to deploy up to 25,000 vehicles without meeting existing auto safety standards in the first year and sell up to 100,000 vehicles immediately over three years. House unanimously approves sweeping self-driving car measure | Reuters

Toonces can finally take the wheel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fvsItXYgzk

I thanked you but it was for the Toonces part.

Tesla can now claim AutoPilot won't kill their passenger no matter what.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCcwqbf6_iU

Just saw a Dateline episode last night where a kid who was being charged with vehicular manslaughter hit another person and killed them.

Accidents won't go away, but they will become more scarce over time.

On a tangent, the lowest trim Leaf 2.0 will come standard with automatic emergency braking. This should become standard equipment just like airbags. Better to avoid the collision altogether.

What have auto safety standards ever done for me?

Have I mentioned hitting an elk and driving that Accord 100 miles to the junkyard?

[recently]

Coincidence!

I'd not hold my breath for fully-autonomous cars and trucks to become so widespread, while I believe semi-autonomous drones (semi-autonomous because they would still need a dispatcher, much like regular aircraft still rely on traffic controllers) are very likely to become commercially viable for short hauls.

I'm in two minds about robocars. On the one hand it will mean safer per car mile driven. On the other hand to avoid parking, cars will be driving both in and out of the CBD at rush our, increasing traffic.

Robobusses, that's what we need. Or people could just use regular busses

The end of the bus age is neigh. When Uber-like service is cheaper than mass transit, people won't put up with a service that takes you from where you don't live, to not quite where you need to be.

Cheaper than mass transit? There's an order of magnitude in it right now. I don't think any single occupant vehicle can compete, unless some company specifically manufactures cheap, two-seat, self driving electrics then hires it out themselves.

Mass transit is heavily subsidized. Even so, autonomous electric vehicles will be cheaper to purchase and operate than mass transit.


Skip to 22:04 or watch the whole thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxryv2XrnqM