Driver-less cars on the roads...

[Workingman]

....from January 2015.

The government says the driverless cars will be allowed on public roads, but only for testing purposes - for now.

Do I want one? Might be OK to get me back from a night out, but apart from that: No!

Here's why. On the BBC website article something as simple as the comments page, where many comments are extolling the virtues of driver-less cars, has crashed!

You couldn't make it up.

[TheOstrich]

Being in a somewhat ironic mood today, it did occur to me that Google have timed these driverless cars very nicely, considering (if you follow the increasingly hysterical DM) that we'll all have died from Ebola by Christmas .....

[cromwell]

Interesting point about going to the pub in a driverless car! My guess is that you'd still get arrested.
There was an article a few weeks ago on these cars. They are OK with traffic ahead and behind; traffic filtering in from the side, at an angle? Not very good at all.
In general this is another step into the general population becoming drones with no free will or power.
The UK unfortubately has thousands of politicians, fake charity bosses, "campaigners", quangocrats and think-tankers who love having control over people, and the advent of driverless cars will just strengthen their power.

[Kaz]

Would one stop if a child ran out in front of it, or a dog?

[Suff]

Faster than a human would. Computers may be confused from time to time, but they don't need to rest or sleep and they don't get distracted by that cute body walking down the pavement in the summer.

Where they do fall down is in the very rare instance where two children or dogs were to come at it from different directions at exactly the same time. The computer would probably not be able to choose which one to avoid and therefore run them both over.

Computers are only as good as the programming they run. People on the other hand are as good as, well, the morning after the night before, how distracted they are, whether or not the phone rings or a message tone pings from sms or facebook, or whether they are smoking or had one too many at the pub before leaving.

I find it quite funny really. In my youth I read a lot of science fiction about how technology would be there to make our lives easier, remove the mundane, make it safer. How wonderful it would be to have all that time to one's self and be able to do other things.

Of course, when it truly arrives, reality invades. It's an encroachment on our lives, it's taking away our options, it's, well it's, well, bad.

Funny how life turns out isn't it.... One mans dream and all that.

[cruiser2]

What will happen to boy racers?

Like others have said, OK for front and rear obstructions but not with multiple interactions at the same time from different directions.

I know planes fly on auto pilot for most of the journey but the pilot can take over very quickly.

[Aggers]

I wonder how good they would be in getting out of an over-crowded car park where
other cars are often carelessly and sometimes stupidly parked. The car park at our
retirement lodge is often like that, and it can take ages to negotiate sometimes, by
inching backwards and forwards umpteen times with the front wheels alternating on
full lock.

[Suff]

Probably better than us. This is something which is easy to program and the cars will be studded with sensors telling the computer to the mm whether or not it's going to hit something. Much more precise than a human "judging" from up to 10 feet away though a slivered mirror. Good as we are, we can't look down over the wing and see just exactly how close we are.

The thing is that this is a progressive technology. Google and others have been working on this for decades. My best man worked on a Ford grant to see if it was viable to fit radar or laser sensing equipment on cars to stop accidents in fog. They can see, we can't.

As the technology progresses, it will be like having a dishwasher. A labour saving device and will be accepted as such. After all the similar argument was offered up to "horseless carriages" and the irony of that was we have more control over a mechanism than we do over a living thinking horse which might decide to bolt.

This is typical technology shock. Something that was thought to be the premise of humans becomes the premise of machines. Think about it the next time you step in a lift and press the button for the 25th floor. Lift programming is quite specialised and the lift is, quite literally, thinking.

[Aggers]

I must admit, Suff, that you are, no doubt, absolutely right.

I wish I had your analytically-programmed brain.

[Suff]

I wish I had your analytically-programmed brain.

Probably not. It isn't helpful in a social setting. Even worse when your wife is a technology luddite and every single social event you go to someone is trying to get technical knowledge from you and it's impossible to have a normal conversation and it's always your fault for not telling everyone to stop talking about things which they are unlikely to get an answer to any other way....

Long ago I was an analyst programmer. I used to think through and write decision logic. I'm not really that good at it but, then again, I don't live in a dark room with a PC for company either....