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Something like that could wreck havoc in a world where all cars are self driving... !

• PhasmaFelis 10y ago
  Self-driving cars use GPS for route guidance; moment-to-moment driving decisions are supported by built-in all-around sensors. The worst that might happen in a GPS outage is that all the affected cars might safely and carefully pull over/become gridlock.
  • bennettfeely 10y ago
    > the affected cars might safely and carefully pull over/become gridlock. As a best case scenario I'd still file that under "wrecking havoc"
    • PhasmaFelis 10y ago
      That's the worst case scenario. Best case is that the cars are smart enough to fall back to navigating by road signs and stored maps, and there's no real interruption apart from maybe a warning light on the dash. It's not even that improbable; it's not uncommon to lose GPS signal in e.g. deep valleys, so any fully autonomous self-driving car would want to have some kind of fall-back scenario.
      • Piskvorrr 10y ago
        Deep valleys, such as Manhattan offers ;) In other words, this is one of the most often encountered scenarios, and for momentary dropouts, even consumer-level navigation apps have dead reckoning algorithms (I was surprised by this when my smartphone kept the "you are here" dot moving inside a tunnel, fairly precisely)
• mnw21cam 10y ago
  Wreak havoc. Wrecking havoc may be seen as a good thing.