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Self-driving Cars

ScreenXSurfer

Ain't no bitch who can do it like me
Overall the self-driving car could be another society changing revolution. I for one and super excited about this technology perfecting and changing society over the next few decades.

https://www.fastcompany.com/40441392/see-just-how-much-of-a-citys-land-is-used-for-parking-spaces
https://www.vox.com/a/new-economy-future/cars-cities-technologies

At the moment, cars spend around 95% of the time parked, and only 5% of the time in use. Huge swaths of cities, either in parking lots, garages, or street parking spaces, are used as storage for cars (while, at the same time, many cities struggle to find enough land to build housing to keep up with demand). "There's this huge space that's basically wasted," says Szell.

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Some cities are already trying to design ways to make the ride-sharing transit as a primary form of transportation for city residents.
San Francisco planned to shift 10 percent of single-occupancy vehicle trips to transit and ride hailing. To do so, the city proposed partnering with the University of California Berkeley and various tech companies to work out ways to:

1) Provide incentives to shift people from their own cars into car sharing

2) Make these services more affordable

3) Eventually move to automated electric vehicles

So far everything looks goo about all this.

So for the bad. I know there's a concern that self-driving cars are going to take away tons of jobs. My thoughts in the short term that will and won't happen. I assume due to safety regulations, a self-driving car is going to be monitored by an operator for years. I have to wonder what the economy transition will look like for the car industry. I imagine the ~6 million cars sold annually in the US is going to shrink as the ride share fleets come online. That will probably be the industry's largest customers. It's very likely going to cost jobs in the auto industry once sales start to decline. Same with auto-repair shops. The ride share fleets will either work on their cars in-house like dealerships do.


I also wonder what the new cost of transportations for Americans is going to be.
Right now they spend an average of 14% of their annual budget on transporation.
$3,000 on gas annually
~$900 on car insurance (wow American's mostly just get liability coverage?)
$225-$425/month on monthly payments.

It would be interesting to see how that changes and what ride share companies can come up with to become more acceptable for Americans to pay for a ridesharing subscription rather than all their combined transportation cost. I assume they'll have a 'rent' plan where the user can rent a vehicle for a certain length of time for various camping trips or cross country trips.

Anyway, just had to ramble a bit. This is an interesting piece of technology and I wonder how far it'll go in the future.
 
As someone who failed their drivers test 3 times, I am happy for this
 
As someone who failed their drivers test 3 times, I am happy for this
Then say goodbye to any resemblance of a functioning economy as transportation and jobs supporting it make up something on the order of 40% of US jobs. Most of those poor saps basically have only driving as their skill and if they can and try to go back to school they'll pretty much cause a collapse of the worth of degrees much like when the high schools got a graduation rate above 75% or something like that.
 
I'll never buy a self-driving car for one very simple reason: I enjoy driving. Especially in bad weather. It's one of the reasons I moved to north Idaho, because the prospect of winter 7 months out of the year means plenty of fun times fishtailing an AWD SUV on icy roads. :D
 
I'll never buy a self-driving car for one very simple reason: I enjoy driving. Especially in bad weather. It's one of the reasons I moved to north Idaho, because the prospect of winter 7 months out of the year means plenty of fun times fishtailing an AWD SUV on icy roads. :D
Problem, your insurance company will decline your insurance just because you don't use a self-driving vehicle. That or you'll need to have an income measuring in the billions just to drive your car.
 
Problem, your insurance company will decline your insurance just because you don't use a self-driving vehicle. That or you'll need to have an income measuring in the billions just to drive your car.
Eh, having insurance isn't necessary to register a car in Idaho. They just assume you have it, they don't actually check, and the first time I brought the card in just in case the clerk handed it back to me and said "we don't need this."

Beyond that, I get insurance with State Farm. They're expensive, but not patently ridiculous with who they choose to insure and who not.

csb: My dad wanted to get comprehensive insurance for two motorcycles, him and my sister. 21st quoted him $5500 each for six months. Geico laughed him off the phone line. Farmers wouldn't give him a quote. State Farm said "bring all your vehicles over and we'll cover you." I think it was something around $1100 for six months for ALL our vehicles, including the motorcycles.
 
Eh, having insurance isn't necessary to register a car in Idaho. They just assume you have it, they don't actually check, and the first time I brought the card in just in case the clerk handed it back to me and said "we don't need this."

Beyond that, I get insurance with State Farm. They're expensive, but not patently ridiculous with who they choose to insure and who not.

csb: My dad wanted to get comprehensive insurance for two motorcycles, him and my sister. 21st quoted him $5500 each for six months. Geico laughed him off the phone line. Farmers wouldn't give him a quote. State Farm said "bring all your vehicles over and we'll cover you."
Problem, that is based on the assumption that Insurance companies will want to insure your manual driven vehicle. The human element is the worst part of a vehicle, and if someone can get rid of it, then insurance companies will force you to get a self-driving vehicle just to satisfy their stockholders...
 
Problem, that is based on the assumption that Insurance companies will want to insure your manual driven vehicle. The human element is the worst part of a vehicle, and if someone can get rid of it, then insurance companies will force you to get a self-driving vehicle just to satisfy their stockholders...
Then they can buy me one. :rolleyes:

The fun thing is, the evolution of automotive tech tends to be such that any such development trickles in over decades. We won't jump straight from manual cars to fully 100% reliable foolproof automated vehicles within the twenty-plus year lifespan of your typical indestructable Japanese shitbox, by the time fully automated vehicles are beyond mainstream and have become mandatory, the only other things on the road will be vehicles with partial automation as standard, probably where the driver can opt to take manual control. And I have no doubt that by the time partial automation is the norm, there will be a huge market for vehicle modifications to make the manual driving mode the default, just like we now can reprogram engine control computers for greater performance. I'll happily pay a few hundred, or a few thousand, whatever, to rig such a vehicle for default manual control, reprogram it back if it ever needs to be dealer-serviced or state-inspected (we don't have state inspections in Idaho AFAIK), and who the fuck's gonna know?

Any insurance company crazy enough to force its customers to toss their perfectly serviceable partially-automated vehicle for full automation without flat-out buying them the vehicles won't be in the market long, and their shareholders will pretty much demand the assumed risk for the greater overall profitability of continuing to insure partially-automated vehicles versus their profit margins drying up because nobody's going to buy a new car just because their insurance company demands it. All it'd take is one insurance company willing to assume the risk when the rest won't and they have an instant captive market.
 
Not unopposed to them, but unless I have no choice, I wouldn't spend money on one for at least another decade, if not longer. My current vehicle is still relatively new, in good condition, and as long as I pay to maintain it, it should last me at least another 10 years, possibly even 15. That and I'd like to see the technology grow and mature a bit first, and let some of the support infrastructure get more developed.
 
@Diablo21, @Pyrion; you don't get how insurance really works. It's less 'you get X amount of money in case something happens' and more like a casino where the house always wins in the end. They will try to keep the money in the insurance by every legal (and in a few cases, barely legal) way they can because that money is coming out of their pocket which is something that the Stockholders will go apeshit for if it happens too often. That is partially why there is oh God why amounts of medical debt in the US, because insurance companies have constantly fucked people over one way or another in terms of medical expenses.
 
@Diablo21, @Pyrion; you don't get how insurance really works. It's less 'you get X amount of money in case something happens' and more like a casino where the house always wins in the end. They will try to keep the money in the insurance by every legal (and in a few cases, barely legal) way they can because that money is coming out of their pocket which is something that the Stockholders will go apeshit for if it happens too often. That is partially why there is oh God why amounts of medical debt in the US, because insurance companies have constantly fucked people over one way or another in terms of medical expenses.

Problem, that is based on the assumption that Insurance companies will want to insure your manual driven vehicle. The human element is the worst part of a vehicle, and if someone can get rid of it, then insurance companies will force you to get a self-driving vehicle just to satisfy their stockholders...

As someone who spent 7 years working for State Farm, and 2 years before that working for GIECO and I've spent over 10 years in the manufacturing operations side of the auto industry, no, not really, at least not within the next decade or so.

Going into the 2030s, 2040s, or well beyond that into the future, you may have a point, but for the next decade or so, probably more like 15 years, you're still going to see plenty of non self driving cars. From design phase to being available on the lot, it generally takes 2 to 3 years for a new car, or a new version of a particular model to roll out, so even though most major auto manufacturers are working on self driving cars and are going to have something out at some point within the next 5 years, you're still going to be seeing cars that do require a person to drive coming out for the next several years as well. Until large numbers of self driving cars do hit the roadways and we actually start getting hard date on traffic and vehicle safety statistics, a lot of insurance companies are going to wait until they have some solid numbers and data before they start making significant changes also.
 
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As someone who spent 7 years working for State Farm, and 2 years before that working for GIECO and I've spent over 10 years in the manufacturing operations side of the auto industry, no, not really, at least not within the next decade or so.

Going into the 2030s, 2040s, or well beyond that into the future, you may have a point, but for the next decade or so, probably more like 15 years, you're still going to see plenty of non self driving cars. From design phase to being available on the lot, it generally takes 2 to 3 years for a new car, or a new version of a particular model to roll out, so even though most major auto manufacturers are working on self driving cars and are going to have something out at some point within the next 5 years, you're still going to be seeing cars that do require a person to drive coming out for the next several years as well. Until large numbers of self driving cars do hit the roadways and we actually start getting hard date on traffic and vehicle safety statistics, a lot of insurance companies are going to wait until they have some solid numbers and data before they start making significant changes also.
You are only half-right. US Trucking companies want to switch to machine-driven lorries and trucks within a decade.
 
You are only half-right. US Trucking companies want to switch to machine-driven lorries and trucks within a decade.
Hahahaha, the liability issues, oh my god.

There's no way self driving cars can handle traffic as it is now. They will just cause accidents whenever they interact with an erratic human driver or erratic weather conditions.
 
Hahahaha, the liability issues, oh my god.

There's no way self driving cars can handle traffic as it is now. They will just cause accidents whenever they interact with an erratic human driver or erratic weather conditions.
Uh. Pal? That was the state of the art from SIX years ago.
 
Uh. Pal? That was the state of the art from SIX years ago.
If there is any evidence of Moore's Law, then things like general robotics (i.e. Bester) and auto-cars are evidence...
 
Uh. Pal? That was the state of the art from SIX years ago.
Until they can nail speech recognition well enough that my disabled mother can make herself understood, I very much doubt they can nail driving recognition well enough that erratic drivers can be avoided safely. I'm sure a self driving car right now is perfectly safe so long as every human driver on the road follows the rules and drives in a predictable fashion.
 
I feel some people wont trust the self driving vehicles. A glitch in the system, or worse hacking can cause some baaad situations.
And let's not forget different traffic laws when you cross borders. For example the Canada and/or Mexico borders. Or all the crazy borders on Europe and Africa and Latin America
 
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As a person who actually like vehicles, this is shit. Just some more soul-sucking appliances for the masses.
Don't worry, the legal challenges will far outweigh the technical ones, which are not completely resolved contrary to what the tech media says.
 
Self-Driving cars are a good concept I hope takes off well enough, but I'm with Jeremy Clarkson on this one.
Somewhere there's a guy called Keith who is eventually going to try and fix his own self-driving car because 'how hard can it be?' and then a horrible crash is going to happen.

Until rampant dumbassery on the road is gone Self-Driving cars are just going to be suicide-boxes on wheels, and this is speaking from 9 years of road experience.
 
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