4 ms·

One of the few pleasures of modern world is now slowly being removed! :-D I guess I will treasure my memories of driving Lamborghini Murcielago over 200mph for

by bitL 12y ago

One of the few pleasures of modern world is now slowly being removed! :-D I guess I will treasure my memories of driving Lamborghini Murcielago over 200mph forever and will tell my grandchildren there was a time when you actually could drive a car yourself! And to those that argue young people don't want to own the car - it's mostly about not wanting to spend your life commuting, hunting parking spots or in traffic jams, and frankly, daily driving to work in the States is as boring as it can get. I don't own a car, I rely on public transport which is usually faster in European cities than driving your own car, allowing me to work on a lot of stuff while traveling. Whenever I need I rather rent a car - it's newer, serviced, no hassles and I can try different cars at will. From that point of view self-driving vehicle is wonderful (if it becomes eco-nomical/logical), though as a car-geek and F1/CART fan I really love to drive for pleasure.

jpadkins 12y ago
in the self driving future, there will be a place for off road trucks and fast cars on race tracks. We probably won't let those type of vehicles on the main roads.
- bitL 12y ago
  Still, if you think about it, what will be then the difference between having all cars self-driving, and public transport? All cars will be queued automatically, possibly flow-"optimized" at junctions, behaving like a special type of public transport (if we manage to create a proper real-time highly intelligent scheduling). When you look at how Google computes the fastest route in their maps/online navigation, they basically have some precomputed grid of "main" traffic centers, and they route all local traffic to the nearest of those centers. The main centers have pre-computed distances/times/routes between each other, so they can be stored in a distributed hashmap, and the lookup of the fastest route takes nanoseconds. The remaining "local" part is then computed on the fly. I am curious if a similar algorithm will be used in our self-driving future - you'd have local part of the route where you'll board a self-driving car and that will lead you to one of those "main" centers where a super-fast transport will move you to another "main" center, either by having you to board an express-train like device, or putting the whole car or just its interior there. What do you think? I think Chinese can probably experiment with such approach in one of their experimental cities ;-)
lmm 12y ago
> One of the few pleasures of modern world is now slowly being removed! :-D For most people the driving commute is the most unpleasant part of their life. > I guess I will treasure my memories of driving Lamborghini Murcielago over 200mph forever and will tell my grandchildren there was a time when you actually could drive a car yourself! Driving over 200mph has never been safe (and rarely been legal) on the public roads; if that's where you did it you were recklessly endangering the lives of others (I'm sure you thought you were perfectly safe; everyone does right up until the point they crash). If you did it on a track or other controlled environment, guess what: those places will still exist. Just as people still ride horses for pleasure, people will still drive cars. But those of us who just want to get to work in one piece will be able to.
- bitL 12y ago
  Well, I live in Germany so go figure. And please stop with your condemning talk! The ladies returning from a supermarket go often over 120mph over here on their way back home (legally!), you can see Porsche test drivers going full speed at 2am on an Autobahn almost every day, yet the accident/fatality rate is actually lower than on interstates in your country (I assume you are from the US). People here are drilled like crazy to obtain a driving license, unlike driving around the block and doing simple parking, and they behave well on the highways, letting faster cars ahead and not blocking them going 65mph in the fast lane or hastily switching lanes. Not far from my city is probably the most hardcore racing circuit in the world open for public - Nürburgring, and what other car would be suitable for reaching 200mph if not one like perfectly serviced Murcielago? Yes, it's risky. So is eating HFCS in all your food daily and sticking to high-carb diet, depriving oneself of sleep due to working long hours or not taking vacation to recharge due to constant stress. I am not talking about stupid reckless street racing - that's very uncommon over here.
  - lmm 12y ago
    Wrong guess, I'm not from the US. I've turned down high-paying job offers because they expected unreasonable hours or didn't have enough holiday allowance, and would do so again. 120mph maybe, but 200mph simply can't be safe, sheer human reaction times dictate otherwise. We don't allow trains to go above 125mph without in-cab signalling because that's too fast for a driver to observe lineside signals - and that's as simple as observing a coloured light when you know exactly where it's going to be. No-one's going to close the Nurburgring, you'll be able to continue driving 200mph there with other people who've chosen to drive on a circuit like that as long as you like. But not on the road I have to take to work; I shouldn't have to put up with that risk.
nlh 12y ago
I hear ya. And I don't think it's going to be quite so bad in the future. I doubt we'll see a time anytime soon where "traditional" cars completely disappear, but I bet cars like a Murcielago will be relegated to an even-smaller niche than they already hold. The best analogy I can come up with is this: Plenty of folks still ride horses, it's still possible to get a horse-drawn carriage in many places, and there are more than a handful (though not much more) of Model Ts still on the road. But in all cases, that's not the majority anymore, and those that do that do so as hobbyists. I bet that's the future we'll most likely see, at least in the near term (~50 years).
- bitL 12y ago
  I agree with your assessment. It's probably inevitable and actually will do a lot of good allowing people that are unable to drive to reach their destinations, as well as avoiding the need to waste time on learning how to drive (I know in the US it's pretty easy, but in most of other countries it's a fairly difficult and non-trivial endeavor to acquire a driving license). If we can really pull it off in all real-world conditions, it would be pretty cool. At that point I wouldn't see any future for old school technological marvels like Murcielago anymore, as they wouldn't be allowed to interfere with automated traffic (human factor is unpredictable and we probably won't crack the problem of safely handling all situations automatically, though maybe with a huge sensor coverage the risks could diminish). Personally, I can't wait until we invent teleports capable of transferring living subjects, though that seems to be a task for a century far away ;-)
drbawb 12y ago
Many people also seem to be under the mistaken impression that GPS provides sane routes for 100% of the driving you'd ever need to do. Every summer I visit a shooting range at the end of a handmade [grass/dirt] road that has no mailing address. Even if I could program that route into a self-driving car: it can be a very difficult road for a skilled driver to navigate in a truck. You have to know where the ruts are, what angle to have the wheels at [lest you get stuck], where the soft spots are [after a rain], etc. Attempting it in a 4-door sedan loaded down w/ firearms is another matter entirely [unless you like picking grass out of your radiator.] For some reason: I can't imagine engineers from California have given much thought to this particular use-case. --- Google Maps can't even figure out my morning commute. Google would have me take a _non-existent road_ up to a drainage ditch. Then I'd need to scale a 60% grade up to the chainlink fence that surrounds _the rear_ of my building. I'll reiterate: I drive a 4 door sedan w/ a 4 cylinder engine... even if I managed the hill I don't know what Google expects me to do about the fence. --- I'm not saying driverless cars can't overcome these challenges. After all the TerraMax[1] was built by a Wisconsin company. Not everyone wants to own a brutish truck when a bit of human ingenuity can get a Ford Ka through the muds[2] just fine. ;-) [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraMax_(vehicle) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraMax_(vehicle) [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66yISwURzE4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66yISwURzE4

by bitL 12y ago

jpadkins 12y ago

in the self driving future, there will be a place for off road trucks and fast cars on race tracks. We probably won't let those type of vehicles on the main roads.

bitL 12y ago
Still, if you think about it, what will be then the difference between having all cars self-driving, and public transport? All cars will be queued automatically, possibly flow-"optimized" at junctions, behaving like a special type of public transport (if we manage to create a proper real-time highly intelligent scheduling). When you look at how Google computes the fastest route in their maps/online navigation, they basically have some precomputed grid of "main" traffic centers, and they route all local traffic to the nearest of those centers. The main centers have pre-computed distances/times/routes between each other, so they can be stored in a distributed hashmap, and the lookup of the fastest route takes nanoseconds. The remaining "local" part is then computed on the fly. I am curious if a similar algorithm will be used in our self-driving future - you'd have local part of the route where you'll board a self-driving car and that will lead you to one of those "main" centers where a super-fast transport will move you to another "main" center, either by having you to board an express-train like device, or putting the whole car or just its interior there. What do you think? I think Chinese can probably experiment with such approach in one of their experimental cities ;-)

lmm 12y ago

> One of the few pleasures of modern world is now slowly being removed! :-D For most people the driving commute is the most unpleasant part of their life. > I guess I will treasure my memories of driving Lamborghini Murcielago over 200mph forever and will tell my grandchildren there was a time when you actually could drive a car yourself! Driving over 200mph has never been safe (and rarely been legal) on the public roads; if that's where you did it you were recklessly endangering the lives of others (I'm sure you thought you were perfectly safe; everyone does right up until the point they crash). If you did it on a track or other controlled environment, guess what: those places will still exist. Just as people still ride horses for pleasure, people will still drive cars. But those of us who just want to get to work in one piece will be able to.

bitL 12y ago
Well, I live in Germany so go figure. And please stop with your condemning talk! The ladies returning from a supermarket go often over 120mph over here on their way back home (legally!), you can see Porsche test drivers going full speed at 2am on an Autobahn almost every day, yet the accident/fatality rate is actually lower than on interstates in your country (I assume you are from the US). People here are drilled like crazy to obtain a driving license, unlike driving around the block and doing simple parking, and they behave well on the highways, letting faster cars ahead and not blocking them going 65mph in the fast lane or hastily switching lanes. Not far from my city is probably the most hardcore racing circuit in the world open for public - Nürburgring, and what other car would be suitable for reaching 200mph if not one like perfectly serviced Murcielago? Yes, it's risky. So is eating HFCS in all your food daily and sticking to high-carb diet, depriving oneself of sleep due to working long hours or not taking vacation to recharge due to constant stress. I am not talking about stupid reckless street racing - that's very uncommon over here.
- lmm 12y ago
  Wrong guess, I'm not from the US. I've turned down high-paying job offers because they expected unreasonable hours or didn't have enough holiday allowance, and would do so again. 120mph maybe, but 200mph simply can't be safe, sheer human reaction times dictate otherwise. We don't allow trains to go above 125mph without in-cab signalling because that's too fast for a driver to observe lineside signals - and that's as simple as observing a coloured light when you know exactly where it's going to be. No-one's going to close the Nurburgring, you'll be able to continue driving 200mph there with other people who've chosen to drive on a circuit like that as long as you like. But not on the road I have to take to work; I shouldn't have to put up with that risk.

nlh 12y ago

I hear ya. And I don't think it's going to be quite so bad in the future. I doubt we'll see a time anytime soon where "traditional" cars completely disappear, but I bet cars like a Murcielago will be relegated to an even-smaller niche than they already hold. The best analogy I can come up with is this: Plenty of folks still ride horses, it's still possible to get a horse-drawn carriage in many places, and there are more than a handful (though not much more) of Model Ts still on the road. But in all cases, that's not the majority anymore, and those that do that do so as hobbyists. I bet that's the future we'll most likely see, at least in the near term (~50 years).

bitL 12y ago
I agree with your assessment. It's probably inevitable and actually will do a lot of good allowing people that are unable to drive to reach their destinations, as well as avoiding the need to waste time on learning how to drive (I know in the US it's pretty easy, but in most of other countries it's a fairly difficult and non-trivial endeavor to acquire a driving license). If we can really pull it off in all real-world conditions, it would be pretty cool. At that point I wouldn't see any future for old school technological marvels like Murcielago anymore, as they wouldn't be allowed to interfere with automated traffic (human factor is unpredictable and we probably won't crack the problem of safely handling all situations automatically, though maybe with a huge sensor coverage the risks could diminish). Personally, I can't wait until we invent teleports capable of transferring living subjects, though that seems to be a task for a century far away ;-)

drbawb 12y ago

Many people also seem to be under the mistaken impression that GPS provides sane routes for 100% of the driving you'd ever need to do. Every summer I visit a shooting range at the end of a handmade [grass/dirt] road that has no mailing address. Even if I could program that route into a self-driving car: it can be a very difficult road for a skilled driver to navigate in a truck. You have to know where the ruts are, what angle to have the wheels at [lest you get stuck], where the soft spots are [after a rain], etc. Attempting it in a 4-door sedan loaded down w/ firearms is another matter entirely [unless you like picking grass out of your radiator.] For some reason: I can't imagine engineers from California have given much thought to this particular use-case. --- Google Maps can't even figure out my morning commute. Google would have me take a _non-existent road_ up to a drainage ditch. Then I'd need to scale a 60% grade up to the chainlink fence that surrounds _the rear_ of my building. I'll reiterate: I drive a 4 door sedan w/ a 4 cylinder engine... even if I managed the hill I don't know what Google expects me to do about the fence. --- I'm not saying driverless cars can't overcome these challenges. After all the TerraMax[1] was built by a Wisconsin company. Not everyone wants to own a brutish truck when a bit of human ingenuity can get a Ford Ka through the muds[2] just fine. ;-) [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraMax_(vehicle) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraMax_(vehicle) [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66yISwURzE4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66yISwURzE4