Imagine Computer-driven Vehicles

[danscope]

Hi Van, Currently on vacation on Cape Cod. You keep bringing up " Shown" as in "Proven" that such a scheme is infallible.
I keep saying and will maintain that every electronic system, and it's failure mode is a function of it's wiring harness, it's individual components( of which there are many many many parts, along with printed circuit boards (of which I have repaired and serviced) along with the myriad connectors( ever solder an80 pin amphenol connector) ; and all of that along with servo and feed back systems makes for an
inordinately complex and as such prone to failure system, which when such happens will KILL YOU and other innocent victims in the process.
As an aside, we are moving into a world where fewer and fewer people can afford a new car or even relatively new car, and you would have us double the cost of and maintenmance of these "wundercars" that can magically drive us about without a care in a world.
This scheme, in my opinion has no merit. It would work on a monorail for it works in one dimension only. It's position on rail and proximity to the next car and next station or mid-station is simple enough to detect and alaso to back up. No question. That is the way to go.


Best regards,
Dan

[Ara Pacis]

I keep saying and will maintain that every electronic system, and it's failure mode is a function of it's wiring harness, it's individual components( of which there are many many many parts, along with printed circuit boards (of which I have repaired and serviced) along with the myriad connectors( ever solder an80 pin amphenol connector) ; and all of that along with servo and feed back systems makes for an
inordinately complex and as such prone to failure system, which when such happens will KILL YOU and other innocent victims in the process.

No other failure possibility, eh? Why do you assume that any type of failure is catastrophic? Or are you assuming that everything fails at once, as if hit by an EMP? I mean, even if it did cause the automated car to commit suicide/homicide, you're suggesting that it would also somehow prevent seatbelts and airbags from working too!

This scheme, in my opinion has no merit. It would work on a monorail for it works in one dimension only. It's position on rail and proximity to the next car and next station or mid-station is simple enough to detect and alaso to back up. No question. That is the way to go.

Do you really think a monorail highway system stands a better chance of being adopted by the public than self-driving cars?

[swampyankee]

Let me see...I've successfully controlled cars that have had high speed blowouts, danced around somebody who pulled in front of me from an intersection, blocking the opposite travel lane, and the person behind him pulled partway out of the intersection, stopping in front of my line of travel, leaving me a gap no more than a foot wider than my car to get through, driven in snowstorms, and got to watch people spinning off the road all around me.

I don't consider myself a great -- or even particularly good -- driver (for one thing, I can't parallel park). I think that a properly thought out computerized car system could manage any of those situations. Either I or people I've known have survived every scenario that's been brought up, and quite a few that haven't. These situations would be included in the software design, as engineers do not tend to be stupidly optimistic. Sensor failures? Expected. System failures? Redundancy; expected. If somebody can bring up some unlikely scenario, it will be thought of. Some problems, the automation can't recover from. I've had a friend lose a driveshaft at 50 miles per hour, another throw a rod at highway speeds, an acquaintance have an engine freeze solid at highway speed, a friend have their car's hood open while he was on the highway. By somebody's logic all of these would be instantly fatal.

[danscope]

Yes... you were the pilot in command. Let's think about that for a bit. Hmmm.... pilot in command. Now, assume that the pilot just leaves the seat and goes back aft to shoot the breeze with the stewardess......
YES, no command . The system just stops working. YOU are just moving at 50 mph into traffic head on at 50 mph.
You dear reader are going to have a head-on collision with a rate of closure of 100 MPH. And it is going to happen so fast
that you will never know it happened. Tout finis.
" Farewell and adieu all you dear spanish ladies.
Farewell and adieu all you ladies of Spain ...
as we've recieved orders for to sail back to Boston;
and never no more shall we see you again . "

[cjameshuff]

Hi Van, Currently on vacation on Cape Cod. You keep bringing up " Shown" as in "Proven" that such a scheme is infallible.

Nobody's claiming such a thing. It doesn't have to be infallible, it only has to be better than humans. That's not hard.

I keep saying and will maintain that every electronic system, and it's failure mode is a function of it's wiring harness, it's individual components( of which there are many many many parts, along with printed circuit boards (of which I have repaired and serviced) along with the myriad connectors( ever solder an80 pin amphenol connector) ; and all of that along with servo and feed back systems makes for an
inordinately complex and as such prone to failure system,

Amphenol connectors are generally crimped, though there are exceptions. And yes, I've soldered mechanically complex parts, including connectors, and through-hole and surface-mount PC boards. You haven't provided any factual information indicating that these systems are as horrendously failure prone as you claim. In the real world, most cars on the road rely on computers for proper operation, and while computer trouble can be extremely annoying when it does happen, it is very rare. In fact, the use of computers allows massive simplification of the vehicle wiring, greatly reducing the number of opportunities for one of the most common types of failure. The computer is indeed complex, but not failure prone, and can replace other systems that are failure prone. Including the direct cause of most vehicle crashes and thousands of fatalities each day, the human driver.

which when such happens will KILL YOU and other innocent victims in the process.

You have yet to actually show this. Repeatedly making up nightmare scenarios and asserting that any failure will lead to catastrophe and death does not support your argument. Every time you do it, it only makes it more clear you have no grounds for your objections.

As an aside, we are moving into a world where fewer and fewer people can afford a new car or even relatively new car, and you would have us double the cost of and maintenmance of these "wundercars" that can magically drive us about without a care in a world.

I'm surprised you bring this up, given that what you've suggested would simply make it impossible for most people to drive, regardless of how cheap cars are. But guess what, computers and sensors are getting more capable and less expensive as technology progresses. Your reactions, senses, and coordination are not.

And it's not magic, it's technology. An assortment of quite well-understood engineering problems, in fact.

Yes... you were the pilot in command. Let's think about that for a bit. Hmmm.... pilot in command. Now, assume that the pilot just leaves the seat and goes back aft to shoot the breeze with the stewardess......
YES, no command . The system just stops working. YOU are just moving at 50 mph into traffic head on at 50 mph.
You dear reader are going to have a head-on collision with a rate of closure of 100 MPH.

It stops working. My car sounds an alarm and I take over. Uh-oh, nobody died.
It stops working and I don't respond in time. The fallback system brings the vehicle to a controlled stop. Sorry, still nobody died.
A highly skilled driver with 90th percentile reflexes, perfect vision, and healthy sleep patterns sneezes while driving into the afternoon sun and swerves into oncoming traffic. My car takes evasive action before I could even register what's happening and turns a head on collision with fatalities in both vehicles into a glancing one resulting only in minor injuries and a severe scare. Still nobody dead, in spite of a human driver being involved!

You assume that any failure at all will immediately send the car at full speed into oncoming traffic, and that such a failure is more likely than human failure, which kills thousands of people a day. You have yet to give any reason why this is fundamentally more likely to happen with machine drivers than with human ones. Why won't fallback systems work? Why will computer drivers be mysteriously more failure prone than anything else in the vehicle?

[danscope]

Hi James, You wrote..."You have yet to actually show this. Repeatedly making up nightmare scenarios and asserting that any failure will lead to catastrophe and death does not support your argument. Every time you do it, it only makes it more clear you have no grounds for your objections."
I volunteer You to test this scheme for twenty years. When it kills you, we shall place a small plaque near the site where your glorious trial of a roboticaly operated car failed while you were sleeping in the car. Wile E. Coyote always comes back as if by magic. And James? shrug...
You are betting much with this scheme,Sir.

[Van Rijn]

Hi Van, Currently on vacation on Cape Cod. You keep bringing up " Shown" as in "Proven" that such a scheme is infallible.

No, I did not. Here's the text of my question again, bolding added:

So what happens if you're shown that automated driving would reduce deaths by a factor of a hundred? Would you accept it then, or would you still say no?

So you can see your statement above is wrong. All I'm asking is what happens if you're shown it would substantially reduce deaths? You've been arguing safety, but when confronted with this question, you seem to be doing everything you can to avoid answering it, which strongly suggests that safety isn't your real concern.

[danscope]

Hi Van, In order to "Show" us all that this scheme is "safer" and more "Foolproof" than driving as we do now, you would have us take what I suggest is an extraordinary risk in experimentation . You can point to statistics all you like.
But you only have to look at and try to fix your "engine service light" to see the error of this scheme.
We agree to disagree. Like I said, sell it to the insurance companies and the government. Even the biggest long-shot Louie at Hialea wouldn't bet a dollar on this scheme.

Best regards,
Dan

[LotusExcelle]

Your inability to understand your own check engine light does not effect its usefulness to the entire transportation industry.

[Van Rijn]

. . . and the question is still avoided.

[swampyankee]

Every transport system where there has been a significant application of automation has had fatality rates reduced because of the level of insulation against human error that automation provided.

There is no rational basis to believe that this would differ for over-the-road vehicles.

[danscope]

When you have a minor failure with an engine, your car rolls to a stop. If you get rear-ended before you can exit the car, it's too bad, but you do have a chance.
If your automated steering sends you into head-on traffic, you are dead. kaput. Finis. Expired. You are a non-living person. An ex-driver, devoid of life and run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible... a late person. See?
You people have educations. And you drive each day. Suggesting this scheme is a bad joke. Or perhaps you live in a world where nothing ever breaks or fails? Is that your experience so far? Doubt.
Try selling this to the shark tank. LOL.

Dan

[cjameshuff]

I volunteer You to test this scheme for twenty years. When it kills you, we shall place a small plaque near the site where your glorious trial of a roboticaly operated car failed while you were sleeping in the car.

There we go again, "When it kills you". Given how poor humans perform at driving, what makes you sure I'd end up killed by the computer? You haven't given any justification for your assertions, you simply seem to have some irrational fear of computers that makes you think they'll kill people whenever given the chance.

Wile E. Coyote always comes back as if by magic. And James? shrug...
You are betting much with this scheme,Sir.

Everybody is already betting their lives every time they go on the roads. And the vast majority of the risk is not from mechanical or computer system failures, it is from themselves and other drivers. There are aspects to driving that make humans fundamentally unsuited to the task: repetitive activities performed over long periods of time dull the sharpest reactions, information overload and distractions lead to less attention being paid to important things, adaptation effects interfere with perception of speed, time, and distance, and even in the best conditions a human can only look in one direction at a time and simply can not react fast enough. This is not opinion, this is fact demonstrated by the constant stream of people dying in auto accidents.

Probability of any computer failure is low. Probability of such a massive systems failure that the vehicle isn't even capable of a controlled stop are extremely low...it does not take much to perform such a simple fallback action. A failure that somehow doesn't trigger any of the failsafes and leads to your nightmare scenario practically requires criminally incompetent design or malicious sabotage...compared to a sleepy/drug impaired/momentarily distracted/simply too slow driver the likes of which kill about three thousand people a day.

[adapa]

So what happens if you're shown that automated driving would reduce deaths by a factor of a hundred? Would you accept it then, or would you still say no?

I will answer this. I would gladly accept it. Now here is my question to you:

If I show real world evidence of the opposite (that automation overuse can compromise safety), would you be also willing to change your position?

Here is a paper written by a PhD from MIT about The Role of Software in Recent Aerospace Accidents. It has a lot of good information from which many people here could learn. In fact, here is one excerpt:

"Some of the technical inadequacies in high-tech
aircraft system design stem from lack of
confidence in the human and overconfidence in
the automation."

Also, here is a training video that was part of the response to the high number of accidents and incidents that resulted from automation overuse.



On another note, many here seem unable to discern between instrumentation and automation thus incorrectly crediting automation with the improvements in safety resulting from improved instrumentation. I encourage everyone here to please learn the difference in order to prevent arguing without sufficient knowledge of the subject.

[cjameshuff]

When you have a minor failure with an engine, your car rolls to a stop. If you get rear-ended before you can exit the car, it's too bad, but you do have a chance.
If your automated steering sends you into head-on traffic, you are dead. kaput. Finis. Expired. You are a non-living person. An ex-driver, devoid of life and run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible... a late person. See?

If it does that. Why would it do that?
Human drivers drive into oncoming traffic and get themselves and others killed in horrible accidents. What reason do you have to think computers will do the same?

You people have educations. And you drive each day. Suggesting this scheme is a bad joke. Or perhaps you live in a world where nothing ever breaks or fails? Is that your experience so far? Doubt.

I have an education and drive quite often if not every day. I live in the real world where things do break or fail, but where complex systems can and are engineered to handle failure, and where humans are the overwhelmingly most common failure point in auto accidents. This is not a joke...self driving cars could save millions of lives a year.

[swampyankee]

When you have a minor failure with an engine, your car rolls to a stop. If you get rear-ended before you can exit the car, it's too bad, but you do have a chance.
If your automated steering sends you into head-on traffic, you are dead. kaput. Finis. Expired. You are a non-living person. An ex-driver, devoid of life and run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible... a late person. See?
You people have educations. And you drive each day. Suggesting this scheme is a bad joke. Or perhaps you live in a world where nothing ever breaks or fails? Is that your experience so far? Doubt.
Try selling this to the shark tank. LOL.

Dan

I'm getting past the point where I'm going to lose my temper. You keep bringing up fantasies of what may happen in the event of automated vehicles. You have not bothered to accept the simple fact that in every transportation system, the accident and fatality rates have gone down with the introduction of automation. Give us some reasons that automated over-the-road vehicles will be markedly different from other transportation media in this regard, especially considering that system failures in any of them are equally or more likely to cause fatalities than in cars.

[cjameshuff]

Here is a paper written by a PhD from MIT about The Role of Software in Recent Aerospace Accidents. It has a lot of good information from which many people here could learn. In fact, here is one excerpt:

Aerospace systems are not very comparable. There's one huge difference...a car can always just stop. This is not an option for aircraft...an automated system must do what it can until a human takes over. Safeguards against human error can impede that in some situations, but the fact is that human error needs to be guarded against.

Spacecraft that experience a failure commonly do something that danscope seems convinced is impossible...go into a failsafe mode. They can't stop either, but there's often time to perform remote diagnosis and fix or work around the issue. System failures do not generally cause the spacecraft to explode or careen into a city.

[Jens]

If your automated steering sends you into head-on traffic, you are dead. kaput. Finis. Expired. You are a non-living person. An ex-driver, devoid of life and run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible... a late person. See?

A person faints at the wheel, sending the car into head-on traffic. You are dead, kaput, finis, expired. A late person. See? Letting humans drive cars is a bad joke. So according to your logic, we must ban cars in toto.

[danscope]

Dear james, you conveniently forget that untill impact, a space craft has the luxury of time to sort out it's problems or surrender control to the human on board..... or if no human is on board, entertain the loss of the mission.
"These things happen" is written on a very small plaque in the back of the JPL control room, face down and out of the way. But they do happen. A car in two-way traffic has milliseconds before severe impact, a fact that is lost on the advocates for this scheme.

[Jens]

A car in two-way traffic has milliseconds before severe impact, a fact that is lost on the advocates for this scheme.

But then it must be lost on advocates of the scheme of human driving as well, because a human cannot react within milliseconds either, a fact that is quite well demonstrated by the fact that many people die in car crashes with human drivers.

[cjameshuff]

Dear james, you conveniently forget that untill impact, a space craft has the luxury of time to sort out it's problems or surrender control to the human on board..... or if no human is on board, entertain the loss of the mission.

I did not forget that, I specifically pointed to that trait as something that made them closer to automotive systems. An automobile similarly has the option to just stop until humans can do something about the problem. That's right, it doesn't have to swerve into oncoming traffic!

"These things happen" is written on a very small plaque in the back of the JPL control room, face down and out of the way. But they do happen. A car in two-way traffic has milliseconds before severe impact, a fact that is lost on the advocates for this scheme.

Are you now claiming that computers have inferior reaction speed to humans?

Here's reality: it takes about a second under good conditions for a human to recognize and react to an unexpected event, varying widely due to unavoidable lapses in attention. Add in some fatigue or distraction and the reaction time goes way up. Computers on the other hand actually can react on millisecond timescales, and they can do so with precisely applied steering and braking while taking obstacles on all sides into account instead of a panic reaction that's likely to itself cause further trouble. So explain, please, how exactly are the fast reaction times required "lost on the advocates for this scheme"?

[Van Rijn]

I will answer this. I would gladly accept it. Now here is my question to you:

If I show real world evidence of the opposite (that automation overuse can compromise safety), would you be also willing to change your position?

If you showed that a particular system was riskier than human driving, certainly I wouldn't accept it. I would only be interested in a system that could be shown to have lower risk than human drivers.

[NEOWatcher]

If you showed that a particular system was riskier than human driving, certainly I wouldn't accept it. I would only be interested in a system that could be shown to have lower risk than human drivers.

That sounds like you saying that we assume the new system is safer until we can prove otherwise. Yikes.

I want to see it in real life before I will trust it.
Although I understand that it only needs to be better than human drivers, there are non-technical issues that still need to be addressed before I consider it safer than humans.

To expand on Adapa's comment:

"Some of the technical inadequacies in high-tech
aircraft system design stem from lack of
confidence in the human and overconfidence in
the automation."

And that's with highly trained operators.

Cost is an issue. Sure; mass production will bring the cost down, but there are huge political issues if it needs to be adopted by everyone.

Depending on the failsafe modes, we can really have a traffic mess on our hands if they are too sensitive or can't get the vehicle out of traffic.

It's not the problems we design for, but the problems that we don't see. I see things like the mysterious Toyota accelerator problem, and wonder how that would scale up to an automated system. Yes; there hasn't been a large number of injuries with that (compared to people who confuse pedals), but it's the potential that's there. You can take that bad driver out of the picture, but it's harder to address the millions of possibly defective systems.

Think of the Apollo 1 hearing portrayed in FTETTM. "It [the problem] was caused by a lack of imagination".

ETA:
Perhaps some kind of phased in approach would help. I've heard of some car free zones in urban areas. Maybe that idea can be extended to congested areas as automation only zones.

[danscope]

Hi Neowatcher, You make the point of employing "some" of the technology, as I had stated that speed govenors (velocity limiting as a function of gps location detecting speed limit ) and a good proximity sensor would keep the tail gaters at bay. Yes, I can see that sort of thing saving us all a lot of headaches. Of course, the police are going to stop writing speeding tickets and have to find their revenue somewhere else.
Best regards,
Dan

[NEOWatcher]

Of course, the police are going to stop writing speeding tickets and have to find their revenue somewhere else.

They'll find something... burned out light, obstructed plate, obstructed view...
Of course they'll have to start looking instead of having a radar beep wake them up.

[adapa]

Aerospace systems are not very comparable. There's one huge difference...a car can always just stop. This is not an option for aircraft...an automated system must do what it can until a human takes over.

Actually, if you read the source that you just critiqued, then you would realize that its relevance extends far beyond aerospace applications. Please read sources before critiquing them. Also, fail safe modes apply to recognized internal failures. In many cases, two or more systems will function as advertised but their interaction can still create a hazard. This means that there is technically no failure to detect, but it can still present a danger. Here is an excerpt:

"We are starting to see an
increase in system accidents that result from
dysfunctional interactions among components,
not from individual component failure. Each of
the components may actually have operated
according to its specification (as is true for most
software involved in accidents), but the
combined behavior led to a hazardous system
state."



There is also the case where the designers cannot foresee every possible scenario as mentioned by the following excerpt:

"Instead the issue is
whether software can be constructed that will
exhibit correct appropriate behavior under every
foreseeable and unforseeable situation"

For example, you wrote that the car can always stop. However, braking is not always appropriate especially if the anomaly was caused by driving on an ice patch.


On another note, I notice that the proponents of total automation seem to focus on reaction as opposed to planning and anticipation. Any reasonably competent driver knows that a big part of road safety involves anticipating potential hazards and taking steps to avoid/mitigate them instead of just depending on reflexes. For example, a decent driver who sees a potential ice patch will slow down and/or avoid it long before he/she reaches it.

If you showed that a particular system was riskier than human driving, certainly I wouldn't accept it. I would only be interested in a system that could be shown to have lower risk than human drivers.

The question which you chose to answer is not the question which I asked. I did not ask about a particular system, but about automation overuse in general. Here is the question again:

If I show real world evidence of the opposite (that automation overuse can compromise safety), would you be also willing to change your position?

Also, the sources that I presented were not about any particular system. Both were about automation overuse in general and the paper has relevance which extends far beyond the aerospace environment.

in every transportation system, the accident and fatality rates have gone down with the introduction of automation.

I have avoided correcting you, but you keep making this wrong statement over and over again. The improvements in aviation safety resulted from improvements in Crew Resources Management combined with improvements in instrumentation -not automation. Please learn the difference between the two. In fact, the video which I posted in post#194 was a response to the accidents caused by automation overuse.

[ShinAce]

I'd like to see the cost of building and maintaining roads versus actual revenue from moving violations. Actual revenue must take into account the cost of giving tickets, paying court costs, and collecting the revenue. I doubt that traffic tickets are keeping the road transportation system in the black. I feel that law enforcement is getting poor representation here.

Also, I want to point out that automation does not reduce the burden on the pilot. It actually increases it. Not only should I to study the rules of the road, and learn defensive driving, but now you want me to learn(to the level of instinct) several hundred pages of autopilot manuals. Yet I've been driving for over 10 years without a single accident or traffic ticket. Show me one automated car that has gone on public roads, in snowstorms, freezing rain, with obstacles occasionally flying across the road, and has accomplished over 100,000 miles without a single problem! The best part is, I have violated plenty of the rules of the road. Just last night, a police officer pulled someone over on the side of the road. I crossed the double yellow to pass safely. A computer would be programmed to not cross the double yellow. Meanwhile, I think the officer appreciated my courtesy to him.

Commercial planes have an immense investment in the plane itself, so adding the cost of an autopilot isn't that much. Even then, do commercial planes have collision avoidance? I don't mean an alarm that sounds when a collision is imminent. We've been handing the controls back to the pilot for this and saying "Heading for crash! Have fun!". I mean an autopilot that detects a possible collision and actively avoids it.

Full automation is just not a good investment. Let it take its course. Anti-lock brakes took time to trickle down. Are there cars without ABS nowadays? The direction of progress is always in favor of automation. Automation is usually an attempt to save costs. I don't get paid to drive, so it would save me nothing. Why should I pay more to have less?

I have a friend who is a neurosurgeon. When on call, he's not necessarily in the hospital. If he gets called in for emergency surgery on a critical patient, I want him to be able to speed. If his car is capped to the speed limit, people may die. If a woman goes in to labor, does it make any sense to drive exactly the speed limit if no one else is around? When people are allowed to take control in odd situations, they sometimes accomplish amazing things. Computer's do not think outside the box.

[Swift]

Actually, if you read the source that you just critiqued, then you would realize that its relevance extends far beyond aerospace applications. Please read sources before critiquing them. ...

I have avoided correcting you, but you keep making this wrong statement over and over again. The improvements in aviation safety resulted from improvements in Crew Resources Management combined with improvements in instrumentation -not automation. Please learn the difference between the two. In fact, the video which I posted in post#194 was a response to the accidents caused by automation overuse.

I'll pick on adapa's post, but this is actually a general warning to many people.

There are a lot of comments in this thread that are pushing our limits for polite discussion. For example, accusing another members of not reading a source is considered rude. Using exaggerated phrases for death or injury are not helping the discussion, even if meant as jokes. And this isn't ATM or CT: you can ask questions of each other, and it is good to answer them if one is going to participate in a discussion, but you can't make demands to answer them.

I'd like everyone to take a deep breath and pause a little bit before hitting the Post button.

Thanks,

[cjameshuff]

That sounds like you saying that we assume the new system is safer until we can prove otherwise. Yikes.

How can you possibly interpret "I would only be interested in a system that could be shown to have lower risk than human drivers." to mean that?

Depending on the failsafe modes, we can really have a traffic mess on our hands if they are too sensitive or can't get the vehicle out of traffic.

How much occasional inconvenience is a million lives a year worth?

For example, you wrote that the car can always stop. However, braking is not always appropriate especially if the anomaly was caused by driving on an ice patch.

Context. Bringing the car to a stop is a failsafe for a system failure, not for loss of traction. And computers are certainly much better suited for handling the latter situation, being able to actually monitor traction of each wheel, road temperature, etc.

On another note, I notice that the proponents of total automation seem to focus on reaction as opposed to planning and anticipation. Any reasonably competent driver knows that a big part of road safety involves anticipating potential hazards and taking steps to avoid/mitigate them instead of just depending on reflexes. For example, a decent driver who sees a potential ice patch will slow down and/or avoid it long before he/she reaches it.

I actually have referred to the enhanced capability for coordination among vehicles throughout this discussion. A self driving car could signal other self driving cars not only that it is braking, but how hard it's braking and why. It could coordinate with a city traffic management system to take less heavily loaded routes and minimize queues at traffic lights. It can take into account obstacles and hazards reported by other vehicles.

I have avoided correcting you, but you keep making this wrong statement over and over again. The improvements in aviation safety resulted from improvements in Crew Resources Management combined with improvements in instrumentation -not automation. Please learn the difference between the two. In fact, the video which I posted in post#194 was a response to the accidents caused by automation overuse.

It's not clear that it's a wrong statement. Improper application and faulty automation have led to a new category of failures, but safety has still generally increased.

Also, I want to point out that automation does not reduce the burden on the pilot. It actually increases it. Not only should I to study the rules of the road, and learn defensive driving, but now you want me to learn(to the level of instinct) several hundred pages of autopilot manuals.

This is simply not true. You assume an absurdly user-unfriendly design is a fundamental requirement of a self-driving car...utter nonsense.

Yet I've been driving for over 10 years without a single accident or traffic ticket. Show me one automated car that has gone on public roads, in snowstorms, freezing rain, with obstacles occasionally flying across the road, and has accomplished over 100,000 miles without a single problem! The best part is, I have violated plenty of the rules of the road. Just last night, a police officer pulled someone over on the side of the road. I crossed the double yellow to pass safely. A computer would be programmed to not cross the double yellow. Meanwhile, I think the officer appreciated my courtesy to him.

What we have here is a shining example of argument by anecdote.
Nothing happened to you...so what? Roughly 12 million people died in traffic accidents in that time. And I fail to see how your inability to adhere to the rules of the road supports your point in any way.

Full automation is just not a good investment. Let it take its course. Anti-lock brakes took time to trickle down. Are there cars without ABS nowadays? The direction of progress is always in favor of automation. Automation is usually an attempt to save costs. I don't get paid to drive, so it would save me nothing. Why should I pay more to have less?

Are you really saying you place no value on your life and health and that of others?

You are a bad driver. You are prone to lapses in attention and bad judgement under the best of conditions, and your reaction time is completely inadequate to the task of handling unexpected situations on the road. I know this because you are human...I don't need to know anything more about you. That nothing has happened to you yet means nothing...this is an expected result for some individuals on the road. Many others, including better drivers than you, have gotten injured or killed in that same timeframe.

I have a friend who is a neurosurgeon. When on call, he's not necessarily in the hospital. If he gets called in for emergency surgery on a critical patient, I want him to be able to speed. If his car is capped to the speed limit, people may die. If a woman goes in to labor, does it make any sense to drive exactly the speed limit if no one else is around? When people are allowed to take control in odd situations, they sometimes accomplish amazing things. Computer's do not think outside the box.

And if he gets himself and a family of five killed in a collision, or simply gets pulled over and delayed, how does the patient benefit?
Besides, prioritization of emergency traffic is something that has been brought up already as a possible benefit of automation, and even without that, a self driving car could take traffic hazards and loading on alternate routes into account and not just avoid traffic jams, but prevent them from happening in many situations. Rather more useful and less hazardous than letting your surgeon friend speed.

[ShinAce]

I'm all for safety. But let's recall that some of us used to smoke indoors and yet we are entitled to say "safety first!". We must tread carefully when accusing anyone of being a hazard. Sometimes I struggle to understand if we are proposing automated driving for certain situations or driverless cars. To make all cars completely driverless is a tremendous task that seems out of reach. However, that would be necessary since I am liable for anything that may happen. If I'm liable, I do very well need to know how it operates. That's the increase in burden that automation yields. You need a system that's 100% automated and shown to be 99.99999...% safe before the driver can safely relax.

If we overextend this type of argument, then we can say that all hunters are bad people. Why would you risk all those hunting accidents when meat can be safely grown on farms? There's something humbling about hunting, and getting involved with nature.

If safety is the only concern, why don't we just make the licensing exam very difficult? That will weed out a lot of traffic since public transportation becomes the only option for many. We'll also have the best of the best drivers on the road at all times.

The truth is, we depend immensely on our cars, as evidenced by the majority of cars containing a single occupant most times. Right now we have a mix of automated tasks and driving. Traffic lights themselves are forms of transportation automation. They have road sensors, and use traffic algorithms to plan accordingly. There is the beauty of them, that the algorithms are about anticipation. That's also the beauty of a human driver, that they can anticipate, for free!

How many accidents are caused by alcohol and speeding? Why don't all cars have breathalyzers built-in to the ignition? The most obvious safety concerns seem overlooked when we say that automation is the key to safe roads.