Driverless cars
Count me among those who hope for the dawning of the driverless car age to happen soon. If I live long enough, the day will come when someone—my wife, my daughter—will extend their hand to demand the car keys. The prospect of being able to summon a driverless car to take me to the grocery store, hardware store, doctor’s office, theater, etc. is alluring. If I lived in Manhattan, I could take the bus or subway to any place I’d likely want, but public transportation coverage is too incomplete here in Rhode Island.
There’s a lot of discussion around whether driverless cars are safer than the average driver. But the average driver won’t be able to afford their own driverless car for decades. Waymo is targeting the taxi business, where cars will be on the road most of the time earning money for their owners.
It looks like driverless taxis will be a practical reality sometime in the next decade in parts of the US that never see snow or rain. In the event of car crashes involving autonomous vehicles, seeking guidance from experienced Southfield car crash attorneys becomes crucial to navigate the legal landscape and ensure your rights are protected.
As the era of driverless cars inches closer to reality, the automotive landscape is undergoing a profound transformation. Traditional car dealerships are facing a paradigm shift in their business models as the focus shifts from individual car ownership to fleet-based services and autonomous taxi networks. These dealerships are gearing up to adapt to this new reality, exploring partnerships with companies like Waymo and others entering the autonomous vehicle market.
Amidst this shift, manufacturers like byd car are also reimagining their role in the automotive ecosystem. With their expertise in electric and autonomous vehicle technology, BYD Car dealerships are poised to play a pivotal role in facilitating the adoption of driverless taxis. Collaborating with ride-hailing services or establishing their own fleet management systems, Car dealerships offer consumers access to safe, efficient, and convenient transportation solutions in the driverless age.
Driverless cars aren’t ready for prime time yet
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/technology/cruise-general-motors-self-driving-cars.html
November 3, 2023
G.M.’s Cruise Moved Fast in the Driverless Race. It Got Ugly.
Cruise has hired a law firm to investigate how it responded to regulators, as its cars sit idle and questions grow about its C.E.O.’s expansion plans.
By Tripp Mickle, Cade Metz and Yiwen Lu
Two months ago, Kyle Vogt, the chief executive of Cruise, choked up as he recounted how a driver had killed a 4-year-old girl in a stroller at a San Francisco intersection. “It barely made the news,” he said, pausing to collect himself. “Sorry. I get emotional.”
To make streets safer, he said in an interview, cities should embrace self-driving cars like those designed by Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors. They do not get distracted, drowsy or drunk, he said, and being programmed to put safety first meant they could substantially reduce car-related fatalities.
Now Mr. Vogt’s driverless car company faces its own safety concerns as he contends with angry regulators, anxious employees, and skepticism about his management and the viability of a business that he has often said will save lives while generating billions of dollars….
The only driverless car I will ever trust enough to ride in is a Hearse!
I think this is a gift link
It’ll be a while …
@Ten,
That certainly appears to be a new and unfamiliar use of the term “driverless.”
Joel:
Using an old 24″ Apple computer in the screen. It was staring me in the face. Just forgot I had it. I watch Netflix movies on it. Good speakers too. Just old technology.
It was used for graphics.
I take ‘driverless’ to mean no human needs to sit behind the wheel.
It isn’t surprising that a support staff is monitoring what such a car is doing, whether its stuck, or operating erratically. In the future though, you’d expect AIs to be doing most of this. Got to get those labor costs down!
@Fred,
For marketing purposes, that’s what “driverless” means. Indeed, in some cases, these cars lack a steering wheel and pedals. So I don’t know what the word would be for a driverless/operatorless vehicle that is nonetheless superintended by 1.5 humans who intervene frequently along the route. In the end, reality is what matters.
I’m pretty sure I will be using a (driverless?) Flying Car before I climb into a driverless Tesla.
A flying car that anyone can use will soon go on sale
The Economist – October 10
You are more optimistic about driverless cars than I am.
Every point of contact between a driverless car and a human or animal is potentially an un-anticipated event that the programming cannot handle correctly. Even if the car responds perfectly in all situations there will be unavoidable accidents. How the public responds to that is unknown, but property destruction or injury and death may cause a backlash as it did in SF. There the car struck a pedestrian thrown into their path by another vehicle, then pulled to the curb and stopped, as is normal practice for an accident. Problem was the pedestrian was caught on the car’s undercarriage and dragged 20 feet while it was moving to the curb. A human can say they didn’t know the person was caught, show great remorse, and be forgiven. The car wasn’t.
@Jane,
If you read the link, you’ll see that driverless cars are “safer” than human drivers. If course, that’s a statistical statement. In your anecdote, the driverless car did do something stupid that probably a human driver wouldn’t have. But that’s likely offset by hundreds of stupid human tricks that computers won’t do. Driverless cars don’t drive drunk, they are never sleepy and they don’t check their texts while driving.
That said, I think a more salient comparison would have been the safety records of taxi drivers vs driverless cars, since that’s the target market for the foreseeable future. My guess is that the difference wouldn’t be nearly so large.