Driverless cars.

Not quite the same thing but I saw a commercial over the weekend - Cadillac maybe? - that has some sort of "cruise" feature that you can turn on so the car will keep itself in it's own lane.  It implied it was only for freeway driving.  I haven't taken the time to look into it yet.

 
Non driverless cars kill pedestrians too. 

What's the rate?

Seeing as there aren't many driverless cars in the road, 1 death might be a high rate.

Other thoughts: when you have a big company behind the wheel instead of a human, what do you do about something like this? Do you shut the company down? Who gets charged with manslaughter? What happens now when there's a faulty car that causes death - I guess that would be the model that would get used.

 
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Before we blame autonomous cars, which I still believe will be the future of cars, lets get all the facts of this.  Did she step out in front of the car, not giving it a chance to react to stop?   Or was this a failure of the car not "seeing" her and not braking?  And if it was the failure of the car not braking, what was the emergency driver doing?

 
Pedestrian Fatalities by State

2017 data

Looks like Arizona had 113 pedestrian fatalities in the first six months of 2017. That would be about 2 in every 3 days.

I would also guess that autonomous vehicles run almost exclusively where pedestrians are prevalent which would increase their exposure rate. Just some food for thought.

 
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BigRedBuster said:
This is just one huge horrible idea. 
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Autonomous cars? I think this is the only fatality and autonomous cars have driven millions of miles. If that trend continues, then autonomous cars are orders of magnitude better drivers than people (at least for pedestrian fatalities).

 
BigRedBuster said:
This is just one huge horrible idea. 
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Autonomous cars are really the greatest idea in automotive in at least 20 years. People are terribly unequipped to deal with driving. They get distracted easily, loose focus, make poor decisions consistently, can't see in adverse conditions, are unable to make quick decisions reliably under pressure, and have poor reflexes. Computers can counter all of those things.

Of course people are still going to get hurt and die, but the reduction in accidents from autonomous vehicles will be amazing!  If you're not comfortable with it then you better work hard to be, because every OEM is working on implementing some form of autonomous driving on all their vehicles.

 
ZRod said:
Autonomous cars are really the greatest idea in automotive in at least 20 years. People are terribly unequipped to deal with driving. They get distracted easily, loose focus, make poor decisions consistently, can't see in adverse conditions, are unable to make quick decisions reliably under pressure, and have poor reflexes. Computers can counter all of those things.

Of course people are still going to get hurt and die, but the reduction in accidents from autonomous vehicles will be amazing!  If you're not comfortable with it then you better work hard to be, because every OEM is working on implementing some form of autonomous driving on all their vehicles.
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Not to mention, drunk/impaired human drivers and falling asleep at the wheel.

 
One thought I've often had is that almost everyone drives.

We all went to high school and played sports at least in gym. Not everyone has good hand-eye coordination. There's no way everyone should drive (I feel the same way about raising children). Given how many dumbos and crazies I see in the road, I'm gonna throw up a made up number of 60%. That's what % of people who drive I think should actually be allowed out there on the road.

I think automated cars should definitely improve things in the long run.

 
Autonomous transportation will have crazy impacts on our lives (or maybe our childrens' lives). Some examples:

  • Your car can drop the kids off at school, soccer practice, etc.
  • You don't need a CDL to operate/use a semi
  • Traffic management (cars can automatically avoid heavy traffic where possible)
  • Lease/rent/hire car service instead of owning a car (or maybe initially just own 1 car in a family and use car service when you need a 2nd car)
  • Car swapping (need a truck today - swap your car for a truck; taking a trip, just get in a new car while the one you were traveling in recharges/refuels/gets repaired; flat tire or car trouble, just call for another and leave the broken one on the side of the road for the repair crew)

EDIT: I forgot about parking lot density. You can fit way more cars into a parking lot because you don't need all the driving lanes to be able to get out of a spot - the other cars can just move on their own when you need to get out. (And your car can always drop you off near the entrance and then go park itself.)

 
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My opinion of this isn't just based on this one incident.  I shudder at the thought of semis driving down the road at 65 miles per hour in the winter with icy roads and constantly changing conditions.  That's just one fear.

IF we ever get to autonomous transportation, I believe our transportation systems (roads) will need to be very very different than they are right now.  That is a huge huge huge investment.

 
BigRedBuster said:
My opinion of this isn't just based on this one incident.  I shudder at the thought of semis driving down the road at 65 miles per hour in the winter with icy roads and constantly changing conditions.  That's just one fear.

IF we ever get to autonomous transportation, I believe our transportation systems (roads) will need to be very very different than they are right now.  That is a huge huge huge investment.
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I work in the field of autonomous systems, and I'm more afraid of a person driving that semi in those conditions than an autopilot that's been thoroughly tested. Autopilot's have become amazingly good at driving. A large part of that is the variety of sensors available to a vehicle that a human can't match, like multiple cameras pointing in multiple directions, ultrasonic ranging, light ranging and detection (lidar), radar, GPS, etc. Autopilot's will keep getting better as sensors get better (and more affordable), but people are essentially as good at driving as we're going to get.

I don't think we'll change anything about the roads themselves for autonomous transport. I'm not sure what changes you're envisioning.

 
BigRedBuster said:
My opinion of this isn't just based on this one incident.  I shudder at the thought of semis driving down the road at 65 miles per hour in the winter with icy roads and constantly changing conditions.  That's just one fear.

IF we ever get to autonomous transportation, I believe our transportation systems (roads) will need to be very very different than they are right now.  That is a huge huge huge investment.
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Idk if autonomous semis would ever find that safe enough to do, but a human being driving that semi at half the speed in the same conditions is a much scarier, and worse, idea, imo.

It's not if, but when, we get to autonomous transportation. There's a good chance that a lot of babies born now in urban areas will never learn to drive. Car ownership might become more of a highly regulated hobby, like collecting vinyl or hunting or something. Our monkey brains are not at all equipped to reliably operate metal bullets flying around at speeds 10x how fast our brains evolved to process decision-making. Computers are perfect for that. 

 
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