Posted on 03/22/2023 5:23:03 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
Truck I owned had drive by wire throttle body. Motor kept going out
Glad is wasn’t drive by wire steering, which it will be with self driving cars
NO THANKS. Keep them off the roads
to those who think “oh, that’s a wacko conspiracy theory”, well, I submit that 1 out of 4 (maybe 1 of 3) humans on earth live in that system today, without the cars.
tech-savvy geeks who are almost pathological about pursuing technological advances for no other reason than to just do it.I enrolled a student of mine in a Verizon code-a-thon, and out of curiosity I attended to see what went on. As I wandered about listening to the groups try to decide what they would "solve," I was amazed by their life-ignorance and utter disconnect from the real world. One group was working on an app to "group source" office supplies, because they fretted that you can only buy 20-packs of pencils at Staples, for example, when you only need one. So if users each signed up for a pencil, they could divide the purchase.
https://benchlaws.com/an-rv-cruise-control-lawsuit/
The previous link claims that this wasn’t true
This link takes you to the actual lawsuit he filed (and won)
Interestingly, I think ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft have diminished the appeal of self-driving cars for the elderly. I work with one client that is developing a phone-based interface for Uber and Lyft -- so they can be used by elderly people who have no idea what a smartphone app is.
Good comments. I work for a company developing autonomous vehicles. Our company has a different path to that end as we consider what we’re doing is developing an uncrashable car. Our motto is “save 100 million lives in the next 100 years.”.
To be fair, many of those seemingly useless applications may be very transferable to other things that can be developed at much larger scales and for different uses. Many entire industries were born this way — like Post-It notes, microwave ovens, etc.
That sounds good—I do think that self-driving vehicle technology will gradually improve—and for those of us who live out in the sticks that is what we really want.
There are going to be more and more industries catering to the old timers—demography is destiny.
Not totally unrelated was a presentation I saw from a small/mid-sized city transportation manager sharing highlights from their ultimately unsuccessful bid to become a self-driving car test/smart city.
The vision included communal self-driving cars. So if you would regularly drive to work or to a train or bus station to get to work, a self-driving car would come give you a ride. Then it would continue on to other commuters or shoppers or whatever through the day.
He wasn’t a millennial, but he sounded like one, gushing over how much better and more efficient that would be than having people own their vehicles.
That 95yo geezer shouldn’t be at the wheel:
https://nypost.com/2023/03/22/dick-van-dyke-97-involved-in-malibu-car-crash/
Yeah—I saw the Dick Van Dyke story—reminded me of the intro to the old TV show where he fell over furniture—bet he is back to doing that again these days....
There is a dark humor to the world of the very old—everything goes wrong—even the simplest things can turn into a psychedelic nightmare.
cuz everybody knows the toughest part about a car bomb
is finding a driver
Good point.
How does Ford keep losing billions of dollars and the stock price remain where it is? Must be the entire market is completely corrupt.
So, no Johnny Cab?
same thing... they’ve been sold on this “it takes a village” crap, which is nothing but socialism.
Real community emerges and isn’t forced from above.
I’ve been involved in both automotive and aerospace. I did the device drivers & “BSP” for the Boeing 747 flight management computer. I’m currently working on next gen passenger vehicle architectures.
There are vast differences between the two. As pointed out, the use-cases are very different, as well as the economics. So are the regulatory environments.
In systems requiring functional safety at the highest levels, software has high standards - you must be able to show that every execution path in the code has been tested. Avionics systems are really far less complex, hence the ability to generally fly themselves. For passenger vehicles, to successfully navigate the complex environments and drive, at least, as well as a human, all kinds of exotic software must be used. Neural networks, massive parallel processing, complex operating systems, all mount up to be 10’s of millions of lines of code. You can show that it works but you must also be accountable for HOW it is developed and tested. It’s too complex. The standard practices break (economically).
I’ve seen many autonomous vehicle start-ups (along with OEM programs). Most of the people involved are R&D types. They’ve no idea what “functional safety” is respective to software. Many executives have been shocked, you have a working prototype only to be told that the development must be done again from the ground up - to be done *properly*...all these exotic architectures need certification, which isn’t happening (cost).
I appreciate the comments, I understand each and don’t necessarily disagree. Autonomous vehicles are inevitable, at some point - but it’s going to have to take another path. I hope by getting things to the point where cars are just really hard to crash.
For those that don’t want software in their car doing anything, I can only say good luck - but the industry has become better. The Toyota Prius runaway throttle cost them billions. There’s some really good YouTube videos on the matter for those interested, all kinds of lessons learned.
I have those safety features on my car, as well as some others. When I back out of a parking lot space, not only do I have a rearview camera and back-up beeper, but a warning if cars are approaching from the sides at the rear - very handy but sometimes annoying. If I go 5 mph over the speed limit I hear a beep, weird. Also, if I'm veering out of my lane the steering wheel vibrates. I always drive defensively so these features aren't necessary. I won't use any assisted self-driving features, that's a sure way to get in trouble.
It was BOUND to fail….
Fully autonomous driving is multiple decades (at least) away. Whole lot of BILLIONS burned on snake oil.
This is an 80/20 90/10 problem. The first 80-90% are the easy part… the remaining 10-20% are the hard part and represent 80-90% of the overall effort… and it took 30-40 years to get to the 80-90% (east part) done.
Whole lot of fools burned a whole lot of cash thinking it was “almost there”… and it’s not… not even close.
I have a take on this that might seem completely out of left field, but it's based on years of experience working on the "highway" side of motor vehicle operations. I truly believe that one of the biggest obstacles in place for the adoption of automated vehicles is that the whole concept is based on the wrong fundamental principle of how the system works.
I started my career in civil engineering back in the 1990s when "Intelligent Vehicle-Highway Systems" (IVHS) first became part of the jargon of people involved in planning and designing transportation infrastructure. If anyone remambers those days, there was a fundamental issue that had to be addressed before any serious progress could be made in making a great leap in vehicle technologies that would eventually culminate in the development of self-driving cars.
The two competing paradigms at the time were: (1) Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) technology, and (2) Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) technology.
V2V technology is what the automotive industry is developing today, where cars and trucks instrumented with all kinds of sensors and transmitters "talk" to each other and help guide themselves safely on a highway network. The vehicles drive themselves.
V2I technology involved instrumented vehicles operating on a roadway system built with roadside sensors and transmitters that guided the vehicles. The road and associated hardware drive the vehicles.
Very early on in this process, V2I was largely abandoned because it was determined that V2I infrastructure was far too expensive for state highway departments to adopt across entire road networks. V2V won the day almost out of necessity because the automotive industry was far more adept at testing and implementing technology than government agencies were. And it helped that people who buy cars would still retain a lot of control over their operation and aesthetics.
I believe we should be going back and thinking about this all over again ... because V2I will ultimately work better, and will eliminate many of the legal and technological obstacles that are holding V2V development and implementation back.
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