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

Why did you drive it to the junkyard? I got hit by* a deer maybe 5 years ago. Hammered out the dents, replaced a the radiator & headlight, and still drive the car.

*Yes, hit by. SUV coming the other direction hit the deer, tossed it into the air, and it came down on my hood.

It broke by bumper, grill, hood, windshield, roof, and probably did bad things to the systems in the engine compartment.

I agree. I often see fancy busses driving around with a load of passengers that would fit in a 15 passenger or even a minivan. If they used minivans they could get much better pickup and drop off locations as well as more specific time schedules. You could have 30 minivans for the price of one bus. The cost problem would be with 30 drivers vs 1 but if you needed 0 drivers for 30 vans, problem solved.

I hit an elk in a Chevy Corsica at 65 mpg and it collapsed the roof. They actually still fixed it for $11,000 as it had only 3000 miles on it. It didn't even deploy the airbag as it undercut the legs and slammed it into the windshield. Big bull too, luckily those antlers didn't impale me or the passenger.

I am glad neither elk impaled anyone.

Mom had a Corsica. We called it the "Piece of Chevy." Hersbird, did you like yours?

That was a 1990 Accord. Honda did not offer airbags in the U.S. that year, but a body shop said it would cost $4,000 to fix, and my car had only been worth about half that.

And this is why I'm happy that our biggest road crossing animal is a deer the size of a small Labrador..

I have hit a fox once, at high speed (flat out) on a dual carriageway - saw it just in time to hit it in the centre line of the car - an enormous bang, a screech that could weld steel from the (up until that point) sleeping girlfriend and a very ginger limp to her parents place - it split the bumper like there was a zipper up the middle but amazingly zero other damage. Didn't even bend the front crossmember. I suspect it was just low enough to only clip the bumper.

God alone knows what would happen if I hit an Elk or something like that in a Renault 5 at the same speed.. although it might just fit between the legs of one, it's quite narrow - but probably time to duck (think James Bond and that Renault 11..). I saw one R5 argue with 3 artics at 70mph once in France, the car was wiped out but the idiot boy driving it didn't have a mark on him (at least until the 3 hgv drivers got a hold of him anyway), blocked that autoroute for 6 hours apparently.

It was a GSA government car, I hated it. It got replaced with a Jeep Cherokee 4.0 4x4 which meant we could go fishing all over Humboldt and Del Norte county while "working". We were the local navy recruiters there, the elk one of the Roosevelt herd at Redwood National Park. I did have a similar year Chevy Beretta GTZ that was my own car and the first car we ever bought new. That was pretty sweet with the HO Quad 4 And a 5 speed along with probavly the best sorted FWD handling of its day. (1990). Then again it crapped a head gasket under warranty thank God because they put a whole new engine in bit off the assembly line.

What was different between the Beretta and the Corsica?

I remember reading the latter was a fourteen-second car.

0-60.

Back in the day a bunch of us engineers were at lunch and we joked about developing an eating machine to spare humanity from all that repetitious lifting of the utensils to the mouth and arduous mastication. It would basically have been a robotic arm and hydraulic jaw assist.

It was in jest but I see now that human laziness is limitless... so I better get busy on a prototype. :rolleyes:

Considering the cost of tyres, brake liners and suspension components throughout the operational life of vehicles, I still have my doubts about any individual robocar to become effectively cheaper than some sort of autonomous mass transport. Sure it needs to be scaled according to the demand.

Individual ones can't be cheaper than mass transit. Unless you have a robo-velomobile

Both individual and mass transport options would get cheaper.
Thus, less people would be prepared to accept the inconveniences of mass transport when individual transport gets them from A to B with minimal delay at not too much extra cost.

Just give everyone a nutritious Slurpee as we ride hover chairs and play on tablets.

The GTZ was a package car otherwise the same. The big thing was the 180 hp "quad4" motor. That motor would have been great in the Fiero that had just died but they tweaked the suspension on the Beretta and added fat 16" wheels and bit held its own pretty well. 7.7 sec 0-60 and .84 on the skidpad was the best FWD factory stock they had ever tested. I think the styling was pretty awesome for the time, much like a Buick Grand National in
March Article of the Month – Flashback: 1990 GTZ Road Test « Beretta.net
http://www.beretta.net/wp-content/up...oad-Test-2.jpg

Have seen this movie, scared me out of my Lazyboy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-kdRdzxdZQ

The Beretta has a 0 - 60 60% as long as the Corsica.

Crazy.

Did it corner any better? Mom always told me how much better my old Prelude drove when her car was down, but mine happened to be running.

I love "Wall-E." I have several Disney\Marvel\Star Wars (still Disney) storybooks I read to the kids with whom I work and I have several hard questions these second graders simply cannot answer.

Hey! Something on-topic! Would Cab-over-Engine designs work better for self-driving trucks?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJUQXkgHM48

Autonomous vehicles are more about safety and efficiency than laziness. Perhaps you don't have to contend with gridlocked traffic on a daily basis, but many people do, and relieving the tediousness goes beyond allowing laziness, and verges on improving mental well-being.

I would rather safely text than anxiously avoid humans indifferent of whether or not I live.

How about the episode of The Simpsons with Tony Hawk? "All you need to do is stand on this board. Okay. Step on."
"All I need to do is stand?"
"Okay fine."
[Tony picks up Homer and sets him on the skateboard]

They're automated vehicles. Autonomous vehicles are controlled by a human driver.

Electric vehicles advance safety and efficiency. Self-driving cars advance social control. I have serious concerns about the Arcimoto SRK which has gone from Minimum Viable Product to 'autonomous ready'.