Workingman wrote:Many thousands of words cannot alter the fact that self-drive vehicles are a solution to a problem that does not exist, and an expensive one at that.
Being blind in one eye I do not have true 3D, but I can get from A to B safely, and in my own city and the neighbouring ones I do not need SATNAV. I can consult a map, and then only for the last mile or so, sometimes. I can also deviate from my route at any time on a whim - no reprogramming necessary.
The tech is very clever, no doubt about that, but for me and millions of other drivers a major point of having the car is to drive it. It is an enjoyable experience. In fact I have yet to meet a driver who likes being a passenger, especially if sat in the front.
I've met a few who prefer to be a passenger WM. They tend to drive less than 5,000 miles a year, only in the city and are scared of driving over 60mph.
For some of the driving I've done not having cruise screwed my right knee and right ankle. With Cruise I still suffered. I'd love a vehicle that can drive me for 19 to 20 hours and then I can get out and still be fresh, be able to get up early in the morning and continue the journey without being totally shattered.
I, also, use satnav relatively minimally. In fact I have most use for it when in cities where it works the least. I have driven more than 1,000 miles with minimal input from satnav and tend to use it as a way marker for distance when driving over 500 miles. I often miss signs because I'm not paying attention and over journeys of that distance you need to know when to break and where to break.
The main driver I see for self drive vehicles is to remove the reliance on vehicles for people who really only have a need irregularly. Literally tens of millions of vehicles are owned for the express purpose of shopping once a week. Mainly because of the cost and unreliability of taxi's when shopping. People want the flexibility of boot space, a vehicle which is simply there, something they can be in control of rather than being at the mercy of a driver who wants to do things their way. Autonomous hired vehicles, to the point of leaving it in the shop car park till you get back, at low cost, is a real possibility.
But if we don't use the opportunity of the mass market to fund the development we won't see it for another 25 years and, personally, I don't want to see hundreds of millions of vehicles produced, driven a few thousand miles and crushed 10 years later, all because there is no other choice.
Telsa managed 3 billion miles on Autopilot at the beginning of 2020. With over 1m autopilot capable vehicles this will increase even faster. It is the real world mass market opportunity to get this AI off the ground and into vehicles. Once there, a whole new world of opportunity opens up and things we never thought of before change our lives forever. You and I both used the Internet before web 2.0 and the rise of Amazon and Google and the amazing world we have today. Almost nobody saw what it would become, or it would be regulated to death by now.
When seeing AI driving I look forward, not down at the floor or back over my shoulder. Which is why I think it is vitally important to make sure that reporting of AI related incidents is factual, responsible and not speculative to try and drive fear and sell news. During my trawling through the accident stats something was very clear. Deaths for that 3bn miles are at least 6 times higher for human drivers. But the number of accidents are around 500 times more prevalent. Once the issues with detection clash are ironed out, that number of deaths will be halved.
But it is really important to note that at least half of the incidents in which accidents happened, which were the same as the one's which caused deaths, the humans did not react either. Which means some of these deaths would have happened anyway AI driver or not. But the press is not interested in that. They just want you scared so you will buy their news.
