re: Google Unveils Self-Driving Cars

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What if you have an emergency, have to speed to get to the hospital for your wife about to give birth? Can you override the computer?

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The driverless cars will presumably let you turn off the feature any time you want.

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Yes this aspect of the self driving car is great and all but now it will be easier than ever for the government to track/trace your every move.

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#1 Do you think anyone cares about your every move?

#2 Do you think they aren't already tracking your every move via cell phone, OnStar, or whatever?

#3 Stop being so paranoid

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These are questions the consumer needs the answers for.

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You are asking questions about the speed limit of very early prototypes. You will have answers sometime in the next 15-20 years before these cars become common. Your pregnant wife will be fine.

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#1 Do you think anyone cares about your every move?

#2 Do you think they aren't already tracking your every move via cell phone, OnStar, or whatever?

#3 Stop being so paranoid

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#1 Someone does, I dont. I could care less what you do or where you go.

#2 Thats your choice to buy a product that enables a third party to track your location.

#3 Im not paranoid. Just dont like our government in my shite 24/7 without say so

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You said that self-driving cars are a "horrible idea", as if you think they are a big plan to track everyone. Why not go the cheaper route of just Lojacking everyone, assuming all of our cars aren't Lojacked already?

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I bet this guy owns or will own at some point in the future, a car equipped with GPS navigation.

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Im not paranoid. Just dont like our government in my shite 24/7 without say so

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You should have logged off a decade ago.

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Will Google collect real-time data on individual workers and/or police directing traffic? Will the radar's back-end (software) be "smart" enough to accurately read hand signals 100% of the time?

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They already read hand signals from people riding bicycles on the sidewalk and react appropriately, so if they don't already know how to obey other hand signals, it's definitely in the works.

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What if it encounters a ball popping out between two parked cars... Will it be able to deduce that there might be a child nearby running after it?

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This is one of the very first "selling points" I remember when these cars were first talked about. If something pops out from between parked cars, it knows something is there. Otherwise, it always drives at a safe speed and distance on the assumption that something/someone could be there.

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Or will it just "stop and wait" every friggin time it encounters something that doesn't figure into its logic routines?

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Well it's definitely not going to drive over the ball. If the roadway is clear, it can resume driving safely on the assumption that a child is nearby.

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And what is "very slowly" relative to 25 mph? Walking speed?

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I only said that the cars could probably make that trip because I'm pretty sure it's possible. But there is no way they are ready to turn these things loose in bad weather yet.

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But that's not anywhere near the case.

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A million incident-free miles makes a pretty strong case that they are better than most drivers.

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These things only perform "well" within sterile/controlled parameters and testing environments...

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You mean, like, on the road with thousands of other cars? That "controlled" environment?

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and as long as those myriad "sensors" remain functioning and unobstructed (which is why I brought up the winter storm scenario).

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These cars have sensors for almost everything imaginable, and sensors checking the sensors. If the car isn't 100% sure that it is making the right decision, it won't do it.

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Another thing, people seem to forget that ALL automated systems are ultimately programmed by humans. Aside from sensor failures/damage (or obstructions due to snow, rain, mud...), there are bound to be software bugs and crashes.

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While bugs are almost always possible, there are ways to practically eliminate (if not 100% eliminate) them. Stringent coding requirements, extensive testing, etc. Also failsafes for the failsafes.

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I mean, how many Windoze crashes have there been over the years?

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Thankfully, the cars don't run on Windows 98.

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I've yet to encounter a piece of software, no matter how well written and stable, that doesn't have some kind of bug that makes it do something it shouldn't do, or do it in an incorrect manner. All that is inconsequential on a PC (from a safety's standpoint), but in a driverless car??

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You talk about desktop software as if it is written to the same guidelines as software that is responsible for the safety of human beings. Planes fly themselves every day, you know.

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No matter how "smart" computers get, they can never be programmed for adaptive reasoning and creative problem solving

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Uh, I don't think any "creative" problem solving is necessary (or desirable) for driving. Adaptive reasoning, though, definitely. That's pretty much how these cars work, through machine learning. They can even learn from humans as they navigate through different scenarios, and then do the same thing except safer.

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things that an averagely smart human can manage without much fuss.

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You and I differ greatly in how much credit we give human drivers.

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Yep, as long as the cars are self-cleaning, shouldn't be a problem.

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just allow people to report unclean cars, shouldn't be an issue.

Car2Go are huge where I live, and i have yet to hear one complaint about cleaniliness.