[LINK] Will humans be banned from driving?

[Frank O'Connor]

Mmmm, 

As will the attendant hardware - and no I don’t just mean the cars.

Roads will need to be maintained with highly visible white marking and/or embedded sensors. GPS satellites will have to improve from their current accurate within 50 metres, to accurate within 5 … and not be subject to having the accuracy dialled up or down at the military’s discretion. Overall traffic redirection and control feedback will probably have to be centralised, as will real time in-car communications and traffic control algorithms.

I think Google may have ironed out some of the more obvious software and detection difficulties with their autonomous Google Maps/Street View cars (there’s been no serious reports of accidents that I’m aware of).

As for humans being better than their robotic counterparts - debatable. Human drivers are confused by emotions, varying capabilities, and a paradoxically a need for ‘efficiency' which in the final analysis makes traffic jams and high accident rates pretty much inevitable. Concentrate any 100,000 autonomous wet-ware drivers in two ton vehicles capable of sustained power output and high speed within a few square kilometres of driving space and you have a recipe for disaster - as our current traffic statistics show. (Indeed I’m surprised there isn’t even more death and destruction.)

For mine … there will be glitches yes, and the problem involves more players than just the car manufacturers - but if it’s universally supported and implemented it should be quite solvable. We already do it for trains, ships and to a large extent commercial planes … this will simply be an upscaling of that.

Just my 2 cents worth …
----
> On 1 Jun 2016, at 1:37 PM, Jim Birch <planetjim at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Driving software will improve relentlessly.  It's on a different curve to
> human driving.
> 
> (Smart and attentive) humans are currently better and more adaptable
> drivers.  It's a matter of when, not if, they get overtaken for each
> different driving requirement.  This is pretty much how goes, whether for
> chess, tennis line calls, or driving.
> 
> Jim
> 
> Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:
> 
>> My local shopping mall is being redeveloped. Driving through the myriad
>> diversions, obstacles, temporary traffic lights, traffic control
>> officers (workers waving flags) is hard enough for a human, let alone an
>> autonomous vehicle.
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