The future is here and the future is going to be sleepy:
As Ford Motor Co. has been developing self-driving cars, the U.S. automaker has started noticing a problem during test drives: Engineers monitoring the robot rides are dozing off.
Company researchers have tried to roust the engineers with bells, buzzers, warning lights, vibrating seats and shaking steering wheels. They’ve even put a second engineer in the vehicle to keep tabs on his human counterpart. No matter — the smooth ride was just too lulling and engineers struggled to maintain “situational awareness,” said Raj Nair, Ford’s product development chief.
Maybe a taser collar or a spike to the bottom would help. And such technology would also help the S&M market to really take off.
“These are trained engineers who are there to observe what’s happening,” Nair said in an interview. “But it’s human nature that you start trusting the vehicle more and more and that you feel you don’t need to be paying attention.”
The struggle to prevent snoozing-while-cruising has yielded a radical decision: Ford will venture to take the human out of the loop by removing the steering wheel, brake and gas pedals from its driverless cars debuting in 2021. That sets Ford apart from most automakers including Audi and General Motors Co., which believe drivers can be counted on to take the wheel if an accident is imminent.
I’m an old Luddite when it comes to cars. I don’t even trust an automatic transmission to find the right gear, and prefer to row my own. Even carburetors have their limited upsides – like simplicity if you’re a home wrencher. But I’m also the sort of guy who hates driving long distance, so in the future a self-driving luxury barge could be added to my fleet.
BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen AG’s Audi plan to roll out semi-autonomous cars starting next year that require drivers to take over with as little as 10 seconds notice. On a scale embraced by the U.S. government, these cars would qualify as Level 3 — more capable than cars where drivers do everything, but short of full automation.
Ford plans to skip that level altogether. The automaker has aligned with Alphabet’s Inc’s Waymo, which made similar discoveries related to human inattention while researching Google’s driverless car.
…snip…
“There’s evidence to suggest that Level 3 may show an increase in traffic crashes,” Nidhi Kalra, co-director of the Rand Center for Decision Making Under Uncertainty, said this week during a U.S. congressional hearing. “I don’t think there’s enough evidence to suggest that it should be prohibited at this time, but it does pose safety concerns.”
Well that fills me with good cheer. I can already imagine hordes of self-driving cars skittering into an ice storm as the passengers sleep, smoke the Devil’s Weed, or fornicate. On second thought maybe paradise has finally come to Earth.
One matter both sides agree on is that too many requests for human intervention could wreck the autonomous experience.
As part of its testing, Ford used sensors that monitor facial expression and track eye movement to determine if a driver was alert and ready to take over. This led to an unenviable experience in which drivers felt they were being constantly reminded to pay attention. “The car is actually yelling at you all the time,” Nair said.
My Mother The Car comes true! My dream has been broken. Now the roads will be filled with cranky passengers who just want to sleep, fuck, or smoke but instead are being badgered by the Nanny Car. Maybe it would be better to just pay someone to drive me around. Now I know where the Open Borders folks are coming from.
I will keep my steering wheel thank you very much.
The people designing these things are making cars for people that commute to work, the grocery store, the mall, and mom visits. I drive off-road quite a bit. Maps and geolocators dont show potholes, mud pits or fallen trees. It isnt all that unusual for me to have to stop, crank up the chainsaw and cut fallen trees or brush out of my way.
As for long highway trips, yeah, an autonomous car would be handy. What would be even handier is a flying car. Given the fantastic drone technology available why aren’t they working on scaling that up for human passengers? My five hour drive to my brother’s house would be a scenic one hour flight, save a ton of money on fuel and time I could be using more productively. Maybe not productively, but save time anyway.
Where is my goddamned flying car?
Yea, no steering wheel is a deal breaker for me. I don’t trust a machine to swerve safely to avoid the massive potholes that plague New England roads.
All it needs to do is know it’s there to avoid it. All the cars will have stereo cameras, radar, lidar after the cost goes down in a few years, and crowdsourced landmark maps to localize themselves against. And they all have neural nets to detect objects in all that data. So detecting that sort of thing isn’t and won’t be a problem.
On pavement, sure. There are far too many factors involved in successfully navigating a mud pit that has been pounded into an unimproved logging road than any existing machine can process. Hell, more than most people can process. It really takes experience…knowing where the deepest parts hidden by water are, the likely firmness of ruts vs. deceptively smooth squish, when to count on slow and steady vs. momentum carrying you through etc.
We are talking about a learning machine on par with humans. The vast majority of the population wouldn’t need this, but some do, and those that do dont need it all of the time. I still want it available to me.
I’m not sure why you think off-roading is a unique challenge. It’s harder than driving on pavement, but not by that much. DARPA projects have been doing it for years.
And it’s a lot easier in one major respect, which is that you don’t have to worry about traffic and predicting what other drivers will do. Which, really, is the hard part.
Curious – how well do self-driving cars handle winter weather? Being a Michigander, we deal with black ice, high snow drifts, and road signs and markings that are obliterated.
I dunno. As well as they can see the road, and as well as their control is designed to handle slippery conditions. Probably shitty.
Also, for many detection tasks and most planning tasks, machines already are on par with humans or better.
Really?
I am just not familiar with the current state of the art. It seems there are too many factors to weigh and take into account. Hmmm. I am impressed.
*looks at Warty’s link below*
Get the hell off of my lawn.
“Also, for many detection tasks and most planning tasks, machines already are on par with humans or better.”
*Ponders possibilities for sexbots*
Ok, maybe not.
They’re working on it. I think some of Land Rover’s autonomous terrain switching is pretty freakin’ awesome.
Terrain Response
y mas
NOAA charts have a solution for this for non-charted/updated inlets.
Slap a big Use Local Knowledge stamp on it.
Im sure it can avoid most potholes, but I seriously doubt they would program a car to move into the oncoming traffic lane (even just briefly) to avoid a pothole, even if no car is coming your way.
“Where is my goddamned flying car?”
It’s available now if you have the bucks.
I work on this shit for my day job, and I dunno. I know it will be better when most cars drive themselves, but I still don’t want my car driving itself.
I dont mind the car driving itself. It is the car driving me that gives me reservation.
“There’s evidence to suggest that Level 3 may show an increase in traffic crashes,” Nidhi Kalra, co-director of the Rand Center for Decision Making Under Uncertainty, said this week during a U.S. congressional hearing. “I don’t think there’s enough evidence to suggest that it should be prohibited at this time, but it does pose safety concerns.”
A statistical calculation for Mr. Kalra is a horrific life ending/altering even for me. I have been driving for 40 years without incident. I would like another 40 years of that. Being self reliant is very difficult to let go.
I’ve been driving to Kansas City every couple of weeks. Autonomous vehicles would be a blessing since I could get shitfaced on the way. Or, I should say, MORE shitfaced. I have no particular love for the steering wheel.
You driving to KC from the East or from the west?
From the west, almost anything can be self driving.
From Chicago. So more or less from the north. Massive traffic, 80% of which is trucks side by side blocking both lanes, doing ten under the limit.
I’d love the option for drives that’ll take more than an hour, but for short distance drives I’d rather drive myself.
Looking forward to not needing to be stuck in traffic to masterbate on the long island expressway.
I hadn’t thought of that.
/checks to see if data plan covers movie downloads
I used to drive to vegas every now and again from central California. I can assure you that downloading movies on your iPad and zip tying it to a steering wheel is a safe thing to do. Not sure if adding “jacking it” to the calculus reduces the safety factor, but I’d be curious to know. For a friend, of course.
I’ll gather my zip ties and crusty sock–gimme an hour and i’ll let you know.
I just want to know who is going to pay for all of the concrete barriers needed for these autocars to smash into when someone leaves a stroller in the crosswalk.
OT: Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug
http://www.dailypress.com/news/politics/dp-nws-kaine-scott-aca-20170217-story.html
So he’s afraid for his son on the Russian border because Trump isn’t saber-rattling enough. I assume he was happier when Hillary was threatening to shoot down Russian planes, that somehow that made his son safer.
I think Trump is a dangerous ass, but these people are insane, or at least you have to be functionally retarded to accept what they say at face value.
Fuck Tim Kaine, and fuck his son. His son is a piece of shit who used to bitch about the State Troopers following him around him, but used to speed and drive drunk on the reg counting on the same Troopers to bail him out if he got pulled over. Also a lying rat bastard piece of shit in general, all around sneaky asshole.
I feel real fucking sorry for any Marine under his command.
I ain’t no senator’s son
I just saw a report on TV that some Dem congresscritter is submitting a bill requiring Trump to have a psychiatrist in the whitehouse to keep an eye on him. It’s like the democrat party has become a troupe of absurdist performance artists. Who the hell do they think they are winning over with this batshittery? They think this is a winning strategy? Are they just shitting all over everything out of spite? When they lost the election their response was to call the voters a bunch of idiot rubes, did that win anyone over?
Another D congresscritter is refusing any meeting attended by Steve Bannon because Bannon is a racist, white supremacist nazi. Really? I keep hearing that but have yet to see a single bit of evidence for it. Not one whit. If there is any I would love to see it. The truth is they have invented a narrative out of thin air that has no relation to reality, stubbornly living in make believe land and hammering everything into a square peg to fit that narrative.
Leftism really is the political manifestation of mental illness.
I’m pretty sure at this point they’re shitting over everything out of spite.
And the thing is that the Congresscritter could have actually looked at the Constitution and found a basis for a modified bill.
The 25th Amendment allows the Vice-President to challenge the fitness (mental or physical) of the President with the approval of a majority of the Cabinet. But Congress could replace the Cabinet with some “other body.” So Congress could create a Commission on Presidential Disability to which the VP could refer questions of Presidential qualifications. And the statute could specify that the membership of this Commission could include psychiatrists.
But these guys aren’t into legal reform, they’re into Trump-baiting.
“Congress could replace the Cabinet with some “other body.” So Congress could create a Commission on Presidential Disability…”
What could go wrong?
The VP would have to question the President’s compentency. Then the Cabinet (or other body authorized by Congress) would either disagree or agree with the VP – then if they agree the President can take it to Congress. Congress needs a 2/3 vote in each house to declare the Pres disqualified, otherwise the Pres is back in control. So it’s not a system well suited to partisan manipulation.
Think of of Poor James Garfield slowly dying after being shot, with his own doctor helping him into the grave. Think of Woody Wilson prostrate in bad after a stroke. Make all the jokes you want about “huh huh, a do-nothing President, how cool!” but in a scenario like that you want Congress – on the initiative of someone in the executive – to be able to hand over power peacefully to the VP.
Suthen,
If you really wanna know how bought into the narrative the left is? Try this experiment.
I recently got cut off from my cable. With a digital antenna I get four channels of PBS, and I get “the NPR” on the radio. That all I get for broadcast news where I live. Either I am completely insane, or the domocrat/progs/left have completely decided to live in a non-existent world and ignore the reality of the one they walk through daily.
It is hard to kick against the pricks
James Coburn is no longer available.
Heck with self-driving cars, let’s develop teleportation.
Although I read a Larry Niven short story where teleportees were always running into each other during transportation.
I’m with Bones on teleporters.
Wormholes I’m ok with.
OT: Obama was a damn good resident, and you’d know that if you had a history degree.
Less than a month after exiting the White House, Obama received high marks from presidential historians for his pursuit of “equal justice for all” and for his commanding “moral authority,” ranking third and seventh among all former presidents in each respective category. The 44th president also cracked a top 10 ranking for his “economic management” and public persuasion.
Ugh…*President*
Insert Resident Evil joke here
Still technically correct, maybe even more so
I saw that earlier. Someone should remind them that opinions are like assholes…
I should have just posted this to save everyone some reading. It’s the top 15. I’m thinking from a libertarian view, this is closer to a worst presidents list?
1. Abraham Lincoln
2. George Washington
3. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
4. Teddy Roosevelt
5. Dwight Eisenhower
6. Harry Truman
7. Thomas Jefferson
8. John F. Kennedy
9. Ronald Reagan
10. Lyndon Johnson
11. Woodrow Wilson
12. Barack Obama
13. James Monroe
14. James Polk
15. Bill Clinton
That Coolidge was rated one better than Nixon is a tell.
And Woodrow Wilson was a criminal as far as I’m concerned. These ignorant assholes wail about Trump but conveniently forget the Sedition Act of 1918.
Why did Jefferson get such a high rank as a President? Much of the stuff he did was before his Presidency.
The key achievements were the Louisiana Purchase, which was imperialistic, and the war with the Barbary pirate-states, which was Islamophobic.
Why is Jefferson on that list?
And Washington? Why is he in the rogues gallery?
I can sort of see Washington because of the Whiskey cronyism thing, but Jefferson?
Maybe I’m missing the sarc or something, but to be clear, that is the top 15 from the historians best presidents list.
Well, I should learn to read upthread before commenting. Now I definitely feel the sarc. Clinton and Obama? Yikes! But it is quite the eclectic list they have there, no? Maybe that’s why I didn’t get the sarc. Jefferson and Reagan on the same list with Wilson and Obama? What does that even mean? Is the author of that list confused or something? Bad case of cognitive dissonance?
Yeah, it is a hell of a list. I mean, they have Grant at 22. Weren’t a lot of his advisors corrupt? I’m not up on my US History as well as I should be, but it seems like the Grant Admin was one of the worst…?
Washington’s forgoing of dictatorial power and voluntarily leaving office after two terms lets me forgive him for a lot of things, but yeah, I have to bite my tongue on the Whiskey debacle.
Obama did a damn good job of persuading people to vote for TEAM RED legislators.
So is this site following the lead of…other sites…and not doing morning links on weekends?
If so,
Asian-American campus activists decide that the victimhood game is fun and they’d like to play too
They sure go to a lot of trouble to keep from naming the guilty party. I am guessing it is because the guy is Asian himself.
Note that the complainant was female. There unfortunately seems to be a trend among young Asian women to adopt the proggie line. I’ll put money she’s in one of the grievance studies programs.
It aint just Asian females. Young women in general seem to be disproportionately attracted to collectivism. That couldn’t possibly have some root in the social and biological, could it?
It kills me to see all these hot chicks waving proggie protest signs.
That couldn’t possibly have some root in the social and biological, could it?
I typically get shouted down for pointing out natural differences between the genders, even when I hedge the hell out of it. I do think that one confounding variable is feminism. Many people (not just women) buy into the line that the left is pro-woman because they have the shrieking harpy feminists on their side.
I dont hedge it.
What I dont understand are the young women who naturally feel the powerful innate desire to have children yet still insist that the sexes are inherently identical, that gender is a social construct. Internally and externally the evidence disagrees yet they ignore that.
I’m giggling at y’all.
As you were. Don’t mind me.
It’s a little known fact that shortly after he was shot, Cincinnati Zoo staff harvested Harambe’s semen and froze the samples.
#MakeHarambeAliveAgain
That’s pretty weak. A better response would be to name your ping-pong team “Phoenix Program” and beat them. At ping-pong.
You mean beer pong. That’s different. Or so I hear.
That having been said, in the parallel universe where 40-something year old college professors and their wives party with co-eds, my wife would have gotten in their face too, as the VietCong were the reason her mother, at 18, had to cross the Mekong with nothing but the clothes on her back and live in a dirt floor hut. The larger problem is that we have kids coming out of high school not knowing history well enough to know that VietPong is as tasteless as coming to the party as the Pong Nazis. But even if they did, it wouldn’t be an occasion to get the fucking ADL involved. A simple, “Dude, what the fuck?” suffices.
The whole modus operandi of progressives is to institutionalize the enforcement of civility. This stems from their origins within the White, Protestant, upper-middle class of New England and the Midwest during the 1890s to 1920s.
Here is a decent primer on the state of the art.
https://youtu.be/n8T7A3wqH3Q
Disappointed that was a constructive, substantive link and not Toonces the driving cat.
Being someone who has been driving in MD for nearly a decade, I sometimes start to consider the virtues of driverless ‘zones’. By zones, I’m thinking by area+time+traffic volume at any given time. I was watching a documentary a while back about how Germany has a system sort of like that, only without the driverless cars. It might actually work there because people will actually obey speed limits? Here in MD, there is not even the slightest hope that anyone will voluntarily obey any traffic law. So what I’m thinking is that you have driverless mode based on the criteria I just described. for instance, at rush hour, there’s so much traffic on 695 that everyone slows down and magically becomes less aggressive and more polite. At that time, people will actually let you merge or change lanes. In off hours when there’s not much traffic, you don’t really care if the one old guy is doing 40mph in the inside lane or if the crazy in the Porsche is doing 110 in the left lanes, because you have room to avoid both of them. The problem time is, for example, around 4PM when traffic volume is light enough that you’re stealing dealing with 110mph guy, but he’s now cutting in and out of lanes and then you get stuck behind 40mph guy. Of course for mandatory auto pilot mode to be feasible, everyone has to have a driverless car.
My experience in MD was that cars were sold without turn signals.
Oh yeah, especially in Baltimore City. I’m not really sure if those people don’t even know the things exists or they just can’t find them.
I’d love the option to flip on an autonomous mode for when I’m driving seven hours up to visit my grandfather. But only as an option – if I’m not in control of my car, then someone else will be. “Greetings, citizen! You have exceeded your daily driving ration and your vehicle will be disabled until tomorrow for the good of Mother Gaia!”
“Greetings, citizen! You have exceeded your daily driving ration and your vehicle will be disabled until tomorrow for the good of Mother Gaia!”
Yeah, that’s the scary part.
The first step will be semi-autonomous driving – basically autopilot cruise control. And that will be really, really nice.
Well, as long as it combats climate change, then it’s ok I guess.
You are fined two credits for violation of the driving morality statute.
Since I can only do one link at a time to avoid the moderation feature, I’ll provide this link about Narragansett’s Unnamable beer, and H. P. Love craft-brew.
““Those orthodox, sun-dwelling New Englanders remain deaf to my pleas,” said Carter. “For months I have argued the ramifications of growing elements for this potation in such a place – with ingredients nourishing themselves from such unmentionable and noxious earth. O, though I may have been mocked or called mad, those who are not blind to history’s warnings will understand these words to be what they truly are: the implicit truth! Save yourself, Jarrett, don’t open that can!””
You may also want to Google an article entitled “Narragansett Beer Distances Itself From Lovecraft’s Racist Views” from GoLocal Prov.
You make a program that watches the program driving the car. Uh, duh?
And just to be safe, you make a program that watches the program watching the program driving the car.
In Maryland, before the peasant rebellion against the red light cameras, they had cameras that watched the cameras that were watching the cameras. Because the peasants were taking pitchforks to the cameras. And if I’m not mistaken, the company installing all of these cameras were one and the same. Friends of O’Malley I would assume.
I guess that finally answers the old Latin question.
Is there a suggestions box? I don’t want to be littering the comments section with that stuff. The Monocle extension definitely helps with the comments.
These are trained engineers who are there to observe what’s happening
Do trained engineers pee on the newspaper?
Heh. Good chuckle there.
I kind of understand people not wanting to drive themselves. But what about those that do? It seems almost impossible to have both groups sharing the same roads. I’m not interested in turning in my keys (or manual transmissions, for that matter).
Is the problem they are trying to solve here safety or convenience? Because if it’s the former, I’d like to see an experiment with a reduction in traffic control, a la Bohmte. If it’s the latter, we already have driving services.
Finally, if the cars are automated, how will the cops shake down motorists? City budgets won’t balance themselves, you know.
Finally, if the cars are automated, how will the cops shake down motorists? City budgets won’t balance themselves, you know.
Emissions testing of course. Allowable levels of “bad stuff” will be tightened up and emissions tests will be monthly. If you car emits anything other than unicorn farts, it’s fine time.
some sort of use tax. 20% of the value of the car up front.
Good morning duderinos and duderinas. I’ve been a loyal and consistent reader of the magazine / website for the last 21 years and on/off lurker of the comments section. Unfortunately, they’ve lost all reason in their quest for clickbait hits and Facebook likes over the last year. I got so pissed at one point this year that I stopped visiting the site for several months. The only thing that brought me back were the comments section. Since all the cool kids moved over here, I thought I’d tag along.
This is the greatest machine of morals of All Time.
That was hilarious!
Honestly, isn’t this better than the self-driving gumdrops?
I know I’ve linked this before. R1 engine and trans in the front of a mini.
So cool. I love the creativity of car nerds.
A lot of people put honda engines in. which is fine, but the R1 lets you stay in the 1000cc classes.
It looks like a pretty economical build, too.
Got the new seat foams, by the way. Not cheap, but cut exactly right. I’ve got some more work to do on the frames and covers, but I’m amazed at what good shape they are in. While I have everything out, I’m gonna build a better access in the trans tunnel, so I don’t have to take so much apart to check/fill/bleed. Spring is coming!
That’s great! I should have been more careful. when I put bedliner on the floor, I hit a few of the bolts on my trans cover. I can get to everything from underneath, but I should probably replace those bolts.
This whole thing is just the latest chapter in a longer debate that started with the differences between how Boeing and Airbus handle autopilot. Tyler Cowen wrote about this back in 2013.
So when everyone is using a self driving car, can we fire all the traffic pigs?