Driverless cars... how far off are they now?

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kingdragonfly

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# 244976 12-Jan-2019 10:02

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/26/motorsport/tesla-testing-mad-max-autopilot-mode/index.html

Tesla testing 'Mad Max' autopilot mode
By Motez Bishara, CNN

The futuristic film "Mad Max" is having a real-life moment, and those who drive in heavy traffic will understand why.

Electric vehicle maker Tesla is trying out an aggressive "Mad Max" driving mode in its prototype autopilot feature, chief executive Elon Musk revealed Monday.

The mode -- named after the post-apocalyptic 1979 Mel Gibson film -- is the highest setting of Tesla's blind spot detection system in its autopilot.

The setting, which allows for a smaller distance threshold to nearby vehicles, is made for highways with heavy traffic -- like Los Angeles' notorious Interstate 405 during rush hour -- when changing lanes can be challenging.

Musk responded to a Twitter user's creative image of a Tesla semi truck featured in a "Mad Max" dystopian setting with, "It's real."

He tweeted a photo of Tesla's development-stage autopilot display, showing "Mad Max" mode beside the lower "Aggressive" and "Standard" settings.

Musk, who reportedly owns multiple homes in the Bel-Air section of Los Angeles, appears to be influenced by the city's snarling traffic.

"We considered going beyond 'Mad Max' to 'LA Freeway' level, but that's too loco," he added in another tweet.

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# 2159605 12-Jan-2019 10:36

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Probably coming sooner than we think and I'm not sure as a society we are adequately planning for disruption that it will bring.

Take the US. Truck driving is the predominant job in the majority of states, employing 3 million people directly as drivers and up to another 10 million are employed servicing the driving industry (eg. truck stops etc). Most of these employees are white middle aged males - if you think they are feeling dispossessed and angry at the moment, there's more to come.

Aredwood

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# 2160010 13-Jan-2019 10:44

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Driverless cars would also disrupt Uber eats, courier companies etc. Just tell your car to drive to McDonald's or Mighty Ape. And the staff put your order inside your car. Maybe Mighty Ape were very forward thinking when they decided to build their warehouse next to the northern motorway.

They would also disrupt parking. Why pay for parking? When you can instead tell your car to drive home and park there. Or tell it to just keep on driving around the block. Traffic congestion will get far worse. As someone commuting between home and work will go from 2 trips per day to at least 4 trips per day.

As for truck driving - driverless trucks will be targeted by thieves. Shoot the cameras with paintball guns and / or jam the communications. By the time the trucking company finds out that a robbery has happened. The thieves would be long gone.

dafman

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# 2160018 13-Jan-2019 10:55

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Aredwood: As for truck driving - driverless trucks will be targeted by thieves. Shoot the cameras with paintball guns and / or jam the communications. By the time the trucking company finds out that a robbery has happened. The thieves would be long gone.

One option I read recently is that the driverless trucks would travel in caravan interstate and there would be a person travelling with each caravan.

wellygary

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# 2160112 13-Jan-2019 12:36

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Aredwood:

As for truck driving - driverless trucks will be targeted by thieves. Shoot the cameras with paintball guns and / or jam the communications. By the time the trucking company finds out that a robbery has happened. The thieves would be long gone.

That's an awful lot of effort for a truckload of toilet paper/baked bean etc..... :)

The safety of trucks has a lot to do with the anonymity of the cargo.... its really only worth knocking one off if you know whats in it....

Batman

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# 2160229 13-Jan-2019 14:44

dafman:
Aredwood: As for truck driving - driverless trucks will be targeted by thieves. Shoot the cameras with paintball guns and / or jam the communications. By the time the trucking company finds out that a robbery has happened. The thieves would be long gone.

One option I read recently is that the driverless trucks would travel in caravan interstate and there would be a person travelling with each caravan.

One person and what army?

Swype on iOS is detrimental to accurate typing. Apologies in advance.

blakamin

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# 2160243 13-Jan-2019 15:17

I think everyone is dreaming. It'll be years before anything can navigate on anything but major highways. In the US.

Can you imagine the suburbs? Wellington hills, where cyclists and pedestrians and even streets pop out of nowhere? Auckland CBD? The West?

Trucks won't even be able to do SH1 for years either.. Jeez, there's a part of Desert Rd that they can't even seal properly. Not mention bits with no phone signal.

As for Musk, all he does is over-hype his crap and the fanbois wet themselves with excitement, even though Tesla still can't build a car with better panel gaps and body work than a 1980's Yugo.

dafman

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# 2160246 13-Jan-2019 15:24

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blakamin:

I think everyone is dreaming. It'll be years before anything can navigate on anything but major highways. In the US.

Can you imagine the suburbs? Wellington hills, where cyclists and pedestrians and even streets pop out of nowhere? Auckland CBD? The West?

Trucks won't even be able to do SH1 for years either.. Jeez, there's a part of Desert Rd that they can't even seal properly. Not mention bits with no phone signal.

As for Musk, all he does is over-hype his crap and the fanbois wet themselves with excitement, even though Tesla still can't build a car with better panel gaps and body work than a 1980's Yugo.

It will happen within the US within 10 years for interstate. Drivers will still be required within cities for dispatch/arrival, but they will be locally based and only employed for a small portion of the overall transit.

blakamin

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# 2160247 13-Jan-2019 15:26

wellygary:

The safety of trucks has a lot to do with the anonymity of the cargo.... its really only worth knocking one off if you know whats in it....

Any truck driving south from Aucks to Welly at night would be a target. Whether it was NZ Post full or parcels, PBT, Mainfreight, even groceries considering Foodstuffs and Linfox trucks both carry alcohol (or used to when I worked there)

Meat is worth huge $$$ to the blackmarket.

The only thing you'll never know about is cigarettes. They're random and well protected. When foodstuffs shut down Silverstream, they had an escort to move the tobacco products out.

PolicyGuy

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# 2160248 13-Jan-2019 15:27

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blakamin:
I think everyone is dreaming. It'll be years before anything can navigate on anything but major highways. In the US.

Trucks won't even be able to do SH1 for years either.. Jeez, there's a part of Desert Rd that they can't even seal properly. Not mention bits with no phone signal.

This.
Most of the "autonomous" vehicle stuff seems to rely at least to some degree on the vehicle being able to get and send road and traffic data from external sources including other vehicles. If there's no coverage, then this becomes difficult.

When we can't even get comprehensive coverage on SH1, let alone alternative routes, we're a long way behind

blakamin

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# 2160255 13-Jan-2019 15:39

dafman:

It will happen within the US within 10 years for interstate. .

Possibly, in the US. I still wouldn't put money on it though.

gzt

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# 2160414 13-Jan-2019 18:25

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dafman: Take the US. Truck driving is the predominant job in the majority of states, employing 3 million people directly as drivers and up to another 10 million are employed servicing the driving industry (eg. truck stops etc). Most of these employees are white middle aged males - if you think they are feeling dispossessed and angry at the moment, there's more to come.

Washington Post: America has a massive truck driver shortage. Here’s why few want an $80,000 job.: Many trucking companies are so desperate for drivers that they are offering signing bonuses and pay raises. So why don't more Americans want this job? We asked truck drivers who have been doing the job anywhere from four months to 40 years for their views.

Hint: Average is more like 50k, some companies advertise fake bonuses, hard to keep a marital relationship, kids, etc.

Self driving trucks will continue to need servicing diesel or electric. Imo the short term is drivers will get more sleep on the interstate/intercity. Longer term drivers might be meeting trucks at an interstate/city demarcation for the last mile.

jpoc

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# 2160807 14-Jan-2019 11:18

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Driverless cars are here today.

In Phoenix, Frisco, Alington and Boston in the US as well as in Singapore, driverless ride hailing services have already been operating in 2018.

Some have been limited to a group of a few hundred so called early riders but others have been open to all.

Mostly, these services are running in a market research mode as the operator work out which business model will be most successful in this market but 2019 will see a significant increase in the services on offer.

jpoc

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# 2160820 14-Jan-2019 11:34

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Aredwood:

<snip>

As for truck driving - driverless trucks will be targeted by thieves. Shoot the cameras with paintball guns and / or jam the communications. By the time the trucking company finds out that a robbery has happened. The thieves would be long gone.

First up, any theft losses would be born by the insurance companies that are super keen on this tech because it will bring them massive gains due to lower accident rates. Self driving trucks have been running on Nevada freeways for over two years and they have already shown large reductions in accident rates. Furthermore, when a self driving truck leaves Nevada, its human operator has to switch from supervising driver to full driver as the self drive tech shuts off. In the subsequent human operated sector of a journey, accident rates are still down as the driver is less stressed and fatigued.

Secondly, good luck trying to rob a self driving truck. As soon as it is interfered with, it will either call home or drop off the net and the operator will know that the truck has a problem and also where it is. In fewer than five minutes, another truck from the same operator will be going past the location with cameras transmitting live images of the stricken truck. The driverless truck will not be going anywhere without its systems and so any thieves will be busy transferring the load to their own vehicle. Not only will they be on camera but a couple of minutes later another driverless truck will turn up and the thieves will rapidly find that their getaway vehicles have been neatly boxed in and the police are already on the way. You can talk about cellphone dead-spots but it will not be hard to ensure that valuable loads are driven along roads without such zones.

Thirdly, the software in the self driving truck is unlikely to phone a bunch of thieves and offer to tell them where they will be stopping for lunch with their load of thirty tonnes of booze in exchange for ten grand transferred to a cousin's bank account or their bitcoin wallet.

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# 2160825 14-Jan-2019 11:39

blakamin:

I think everyone is dreaming.

Yip I reckon it's much further away than people are expecting. The tech is promising but it's nowhere near ready for primetime outside of some very well defined scenarios. 20 years would be my estimate for real world consumerisation of the technology (e.g. public transport, personal vehicles, long haul vehicles, etc).

surfisup1000

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# 2160829 14-Jan-2019 11:51

I think it is at least 15 years away. Half the job is getting the tech to work, the other half is making it resilient against bad actors.

Little doubt that some will try to jam/ trick / confuse/ hack driverless car technology.

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