Sorry, but who is claiming driverless cars will solve all of the constraints and problems that exist?

For some reason, everybody in this thread who is convinced driverless cars are a far off thing also seem to couple that assumption with the notion that all other forms of transportation will be banned. Car ownership, for some reason, is being talked about as being banned. Hell, there's two particularly far off the reservation people who think that large crowds at football games will have to be banned?

My point about the contingency plans around natural disasters is this: why is it that a widespread implementation of driverless cars assumes no other options? Do you think that because car ownership will inevitably decline, there wont be buses on hand to handle evacuations? That trains will cease to exist? That the exact same contingencies that cities where car ownership levels are very low use today wont still be viable options?

Seriously, why is this conversation being had like it's a zero sum game? There are either only driverless cars or there are none?

Mostly because that's the way your side has presented your argument. You waited until page 4 before you revealed that this is, in fact, a phased solution, one that would allow for current preferences to prevail.

I suppose you could have made that clear earlier, but what fun would that be? When you were presented with the challenge of how do you haul pick-up truck type material, you chose to argue the Uber could handle it, instead of simply saying the above. Smart.

I'm a fierce conservative on economic issues. I don't view those against technological innovations like this coming from billions in private investment as fellow conservatives. When people start talking about government regulating the auto industry and their development of this technology, that sounds like a liberal stance to me.

There is ample opportunity to make a boatload of money off this. Not just investing in the companies developing this technology, but in appreciating how the lifestyle changes this brings on will ripple across other areas of the economy.

Think about real estate. Jeez. You understand how driverless cars can impact development and you're going to make big $.

I truly enjoy driving. I really like my cars and I like the freedom to go where I want, when I want. I'm not opposed to the technology, but I don't completely trust it right now. If a private enterprise can make money doing this, then it will show there is demand for the product. I definitely don't want to have driverless car mandates, however. I'd be fine with driverless cars being on the road next to me. I know a lot of people who don't enjoy driving and would use this.

I feel like I'm in control of my environment by being able to avoid accidents and immediately react to things that won't show up on GPS like a deer, a fallen tree in the middle of the road, or a child on a bicycle that I see well before any sensor on a bumper would. I have driven in snow all of my life. What happens when a driverless car encounters poor driving conditions? Will the passengers be stuck?

I'm not being a smart ass, I just don't undstand how a computer can handle things like poor weather. I do, however, believe a computer will be better able to handle an interstate merge than 80% of the idiots that still cannot figure it out.

Another old person interested in this conversation. I worked as a chemical engineer all my life so I am not against new technology. There was an interesting article in the Plain Dealer today and it was quoting one of Henry Ford's descendants. Ford is spending lots of money on this and he thinks as early as 2020 there will be quite a bit of usage. However, he feels there are many ethical issues that need to be resolved. One was touched on earlier in this conversation about how does the computer decide who lives and who dies if there is going to be an accident. His example was a truck ready to plow into the back of a car. Does the car veer to the right and run over innocent people walking or stay put and potentially killing those in the car? He feels the ethical questions need to be answered before this can go forward.

Since I have lived in NE Ohio for the last 28 years, I don't understand how these cars will drive in the snow. I am not sure you can enter all the inputs that would be needed to drive on icy roads.

By the way I am old, a conservative and a Republican, but I do believe in new technology, especially advances in medicine from which I have benefited.

There's an article in the Business section of today's (9/15) The Record on Uber's testing of driverless vehicles in Pittsburgh.
(Again,can't get it to link)

Some interesting points:

1.A lot of people don't like the idea of a driverless vehicle,without human back up.

2.The article say "many experts" believe the use of driverless vehicles by the general public is years if not decades away.

3.The article includes 2 quotes from an engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon concerning why he believes widespread use of driveless vehicles is a ways off.

A."Because vehicles are driving at 70 miles per hour on the highway,if something goes wrong,things could go wrong,very bad,very quickly"

B."This technology needs to be ultra-reliable before we can take the human out of the driving equation"

3.What is also interesting,a number of the posts on this thread talk about how driverless vehicles will improve safety and have other altruistic benefits.

Why is Uber doing it ?

The head of Uber's "Advanced Technology Center " said,in part," Removing the cost of the driver is one way to make rides more affordable".

To paraphrase Joe Pesci in "Casino",its about the dollars,always the dollars.

I already referenced what I do. In the post you just quoted. In your quest to understand my point of view and find common ground for constructive conversation, you somehow missed that and have decided -- for some truly odd reason -- that I must be a professor. And then arbitrarily attacked the very idea of professors. You won't see how odd that is, or how apparent it makes the close-mindedness with which you've approached this discussion. But everybody else will.

I offered my thoughts, that I've learned from working fairly closely with Google X, on self driving cars. At no point did anybody ask me for a timeline, at no point did I claim I had anything but anecdotal evidence about what that timeline might look like. And now, for no reason at all, you're trying to claim what I've shared as invalid because I didn't take a stab at a timeline?

The fact remains that I have raised very valid points about how driverless cars will impact mobility going forward. You have continued to get hung up on weird details. I still, for the life of me, don't understand why you think Trucks are some sort of trump card here. Uber just acquired a self-driving trucking startup called Otto for 600+ million. They have. . .self driving trucks. Does that answer your question about trucks? Honestly, I have no idea. I have no idea what the question is. Or what you think you're pointing out. You're mostly just raising edge cases and going "see, we're no where even close! I have a boat I need to get places." Of all the perfectly valid concerns about autonomous vehicles, you're hung up on U-Hauls. Take a step back for a second and think about that. You think you've won this argument because sometimes people have to move couches. And that's why the timeline's far away. Because, I guess, Uber/Google/Apple/Tesla will never be able to solve the tangled rubric of making automobiles with large interiors.

And again, I don't know why you think driverless cars are going to lead to a ban on car ownership. Nobody is going to keep you from getting your boat to a lake. I suspect the technology will exist for an autonomous vehicle to help you do so if you so choose. I don't think the problem(s) you're describing are particularly difficult ones to solve. More to the point, they don't at all run contrary to any of what I've said.

Widespread autonomous vehicles will eliminate the need to own a car. Does that mean they'll solve the mobility needs of 100% of the population 100% of the time? Of course not. But in many places, public transportation eliminates the need to own a car. Car ownership is already on the decline, and all reasonable estimates show it declining precipitously over the next 3 decades. That has everything to do with the advancements we've made in mobility, and autonomous cars are the next, inevitable step in that.

Further, the argument I made for the elimination of car ownership was a financial one. My point, made here:

"Think of it this way: your car is a huge investment, one of the most expensive things you'll own, and it loses value almost immediately. And most importantly, it spends 98% of the time sitting still, doing nothing. What purpose does that serve? If other people could be using it during that time, you could eliminate the need for parking, the construction costs around home garages, etc. It literally changes everything. Think of all of the additional land in creates in cities. All of the space that goes to parking which can now be used to extend pedestrian spaces, create green space, build new and essential buildings to provide services."

. . .Is that driverless cars will make car ownership a poor financial decision for many people. I know, I know: government, professors, socialism whatever. You disagree. No need to rehash it. We can agree to disagree, it's fine. No chapped asses, no hurt feelings over our failure to do so. We'll both live through the day.

And what you don't see, is that driverless cars and improved mobility will eliminate the NEED to own cars for a huge, huge number of people. That doesn't mean that many people won't decide that cars (or trucks) aren't a LUXURY that adds value to their lives. But America's reliance on car ownership will be greatly reduced, and I'm hard pressed to see an argument that that won't be a good financial thing for the vast majority of people.

I honestly just don't understand what you're so scared of. I mean, I know that conservatism is actually just fear (https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/2011... ). But I'm honestly just baffled as to what has you so riled up about this particular technological advancement. I truly, for the life of me, just can't make any sense out of what you're talking about. You keep harping on these really basic, solvable problems. What the hell do trucks have to do with anything? And you forgetting milk? I think, seriously, that just a little bit of reading on how the technology works and the vision for how these sorts of things would be implemented would go a long way toward addressing the concerns you have.

As I've said, and raised myself, there are very serious issues that need to be solved before self-driving cars are widely available. The issues that you've raised are, frankly, missing the point. You immediately decided to view this conversation -- as you seem to do with many things -- through the prism of right vs. left, and started reacting as if the government is going to steal your car, and college football games wont be as fun anymore because nobody will be able to get to them or whatever. It's truly, truly a weird reaction. At no point in any of this has anybody hinted at either of those things. I suggested that market forces (you might know market forces as the thing conservatives are supposed to masturbate to) will impact the rate of car ownership, and cited some reasons I thought that would be a positive thing.

You lost your mind because your life might change and you're having trouble figuring out what that might look like. Congrats. Keep fighting the good fight. I really, genuinely, hope you never have any issue getting your truck to lakes as long as you live.

Some peoples are intransigent, won't come off their point of view, won't consider new info.

I would only expend the typing power of this many words if we were arguing over *FLYING*, self-driving cars. Wake me up when we're airborn, people. Until then, I'm going to split the difference between leisure and driving and steer with my knees while enjoying a Blizzard.

Stick shift '94ish - about when I got tying a tie with knee on the wheel down pat. With auto trans it's a piece of cake.........

For anyone whose interested,the Associated Press put out an article about the Federal Government issuing guidelines (112 pages worth) for driverless vehicles.

The A.P. article says that the guidelines include a 15 point Safety Assessment.

The article goes through some of them.

Pretty much in line with the concerns raised here.

Why aren't trains autonomous? Takes too long to stop? Seems like they'd be easier to make driver-less, but I know nothing about the technology.

Actually many rapid transit systems around the world have some level of automation. Systems like the Copenhagen Metro don't have drivers at all. The automated system can actually stop the train much better than a human driver and allows for shorter headways between trains. That is, when the stops are expected. It's the sudden, unexpected stops that the automated system is bad at. A car stuck on the tracks, for example. That's one reason that longer, at-grade, commuter routes need to have drivers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_met...