As I was saying about "Self driving Car"

[Assasin]

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/b...void-accidents

and no I am not against technology.

[Islandman]

What were you saying again? If I remember correctly you were questioning the readiness of the technology.What is there in this story to support that?

Clearly a lot of this technology is already being incorporated in newer model vehicles and they are safer as a result.

[Assasin]

Now you don't remember the trust of my argument. What I was saying is this technology currently will need a driver or co driver to make vital decisions.

I said think it will need help especially in cities and close driving areas and also in case of malfunction. I said I would drive this car but wouldn't be sleeping anytime soon while I drive.

[Islandman]

It will certainly need a driver/co-driver while the transition from human to autonomous driving is being made, yes.

However when the comfort level is reached and the technology is fine tuned I suspect that ultmately humans will be discouraged from or maybe restricted from driving in many situations because it will be seen as much less safe than autonomous driving.

I think some highway lanes will be restricted to autonomous-mode only within the next 10-15 years

[Assasin]

As I said before, it will take some time and the fact is, it may still need some assistance in certain areas. People were acting like you will see cars without drivers on the road in the next 3 to 4 years. As I said the rate of failure in technology such as hard drive, circuit boards etc. are pretty high and added to that is possible software flaws and you understand what I am saying.

It is not that the technology is not good but these are just natural thing as of today, and something you and I deal with on a daily basis.

[Islandman]

Sass, show me where anybody said fully autonomous cars will be on the road in 3-4 years. Nobody said that and i don't think anybody believes that.

The difference we have is that that you still think the major delays in rollout will be due to technology failure. That is not the case. The technology is probably already safer than human driving 90% of the time.

The major delay will be due to the slow rate that humans to adapt to technology changes. Laws, liability, insurance, comfort level, etc. Those are the problems that are more difficult to solve, because they are not technical in nature they are social.

[Tilla]

Hey, prototyping and testing is a part of the product development process. Things will happen at this stage and it gives the developer a chance to improve the product. Anyone who expected the trials to run without incident is living in a world of make believe. Even our best efforts will encounter challenges and no product is perfect.

[Tilla]

The system might be able to make better decisions than any human. Some people with always have this inertia when it comes to anything new. I suspect that you are one of them based on the postings you have made in the past on the subject.

[Mosiah]

The director of Google's self-driving car project wrote in a web post that all 11 accidents were minor - "light damage, no injuries" - and happened over 1.7 million miles of testing, including nearly one million miles in self-driving mode.

"Not once was the self-driving car the cause of the accident," wrote Google's Chris Urmson.

Nuff said!

[Tilla]

As I said the rate of failure in technology such as hard drive, circuit boards etc. are pretty high and added to that is possible software flaws and you understand what I am saying.

Sass: let me help to allay your fears about a car's hardware failure, especially when it comes to circuit boards and harddrives.

For your information, cars since the early 90s have been built with a lot of electronic control. I am not sure how much you remember, but if you recall that at one time, cars had to have their pioints gapped, capacitors and rotors changed maybe every 3000 to 5000 miles. Well, that system was replaced with an electronic control module (ECM), which basically took over the function and control of the engine's timing, order and time of spark plug sparking etc. The ECM resulted in a much more reliable system and cars were no longer plagued with this constant problem of getting their engine timing set and plugs gapped. Cars can run for 100,000 miles and more without any problems with the ECM.

Modern day cars will come with more electronics, but they will not have the hardware problem of hard drive and circuit boards failing as they won't have any. They will use microcontrollers as opposed to microprocessors you would find in your personal computer. So you will have a microcontroller which will control engine function another control transmission etc. They all communicate on a network called CAN Bus. So for more control functions, they just add more microcontrollers to do the job. All these microcontrollers communicate over CAN bus to get their functions done without the need for an on board computer as you know it.

BTW, the microcontrollers store their instructions individually in built in flash memory etc.

I hope I make sense without getting too techy.

[Mosiah]

I remember the discussion now and it would be good if we find that old thread.

Basically, Sass was concerned that there would a massive pile up on the I-95 if even just one car's robotics decides to malfunction.

I wonder if Sass knows that planes fly mostly on auto pilot.

The Amtrak accident in Philadelphia 2 days ago could have been avoided if more technology had been in place on the track.

And how I hated those gap settings and timing problems of older cars. Not to mention carburetor problems.

Things today run so much better that sometimes when you take stock you wonder if we were living in the Dark Ages. Even something as simple as a zipper. When last has one messed up on you? Back in the day - Maw, mi zipper spoil. You can put een a nedda one?

[Islandman]

That is what I remember from the discussion as well. The fear of driving down the highway and bam, Windows blue screen of death, literally!!!

[Mosiah]

Imagine all the car windows turning an opaque blue, and yuh can't see ntn! Yuh Ctrl-Alt-Delete till you yuhself get blue in di face! Mad ting!

[Islandman]

LOL!

[Assasin]

Do me a favor and go and find the old report. I spoke about Malfunction yes, that way a part of it. The fact is in driving every reboot, every freeze is a malfunction. The fact is electronic parts will often fail.

It easy to just say what you guys want but what I said is there for the record.
I have said all of this before but you can pick what you want.

Auto pilot do not land a plane, it pretty much keep it at the same height or there about and is pretty simple technology compare to computer operating in a city where there it is surrounded by constant movement and traffic.