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When self-driving cars become available, will you actually buy one?
- Thread starter Mildredop
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And so far most( if not all) autopilot based accidents have been caused by inattentive drivers( sleeping, reading newspaper, etc) thinking autopilot is a completely self-driving system when it is not.
I forgot to answer, I would not buy a 100%, no manual driving vehicle, if I had a reasonable economical alternative. Being one with the car (manual stick) is too much fun. But a road tracking feature would be nice for droning down the highway, while acknowledging that complacency, considering the navigational requirements and hazards are 100x (1000x?) more demanding than an aircraft environment, and the temptation to nod off would be a serious issue.
It's going to being interesting to see how the auto insurance industry is going to handle self-driving automobiles. Who is going to be held responsible in a car crash? The Owner? The Person in the Car at the time? The Car Company? No One? The Other Car if it was manually driven?
I know they are spending billions on research, but I just can't fathom that they (auto manufacturers) have taken in every variable or scenario that can happen while driving? Take for instance a ball comes rolling across the street. There is usually a few seconds delay before a child comes scampering out to retrieve it? First does the car stop in time for the ball itself? Does the car start back driving once the ball has cleared the street, not realizing that there might be someone who doesn't pay attention to traffic to retrieve it? Then there are weather and road conditions. I know here in Michigan during the winter the roads can get very slippery and that one has to slow down in order to drive safely. Will the car know this? The answer is probably yes, but it hard for this old fuddy duddy to comprehend how a self driving car can make this distinction. I know driving on some roads that even the road conditions here in Michigan is sometimes tricky (I can't find the right word) for a person to navigate yet alone a self driving car. The lanes are poorly marked or not even marked at all, the lines have faded (heck I have even seen lines painted incorrectly) or the road itself kind of blends in with the surrounding scenery. Then there is the GPS itself, I know from having my GPS on that it tells the driver to turn right when in reality the person should go straight into my driveway. I have even had to tell the person that he/she parked in my neighbor's driveway thinking it was my driveway. Surely there is going to have to be a way to manually correct this and I can see this being a major problem if this is a busy road or highway.
To answer the question I don't think I will ever buy a self-driving car; heck, I'm still driving a 2002 Ford Explorer Sport.
I know they are spending billions on research, but I just can't fathom that they (auto manufacturers) have taken in every variable or scenario that can happen while driving? Take for instance a ball comes rolling across the street. There is usually a few seconds delay before a child comes scampering out to retrieve it? First does the car stop in time for the ball itself? Does the car start back driving once the ball has cleared the street, not realizing that there might be someone who doesn't pay attention to traffic to retrieve it? Then there are weather and road conditions. I know here in Michigan during the winter the roads can get very slippery and that one has to slow down in order to drive safely. Will the car know this? The answer is probably yes, but it hard for this old fuddy duddy to comprehend how a self driving car can make this distinction. I know driving on some roads that even the road conditions here in Michigan is sometimes tricky (I can't find the right word) for a person to navigate yet alone a self driving car. The lanes are poorly marked or not even marked at all, the lines have faded (heck I have even seen lines painted incorrectly) or the road itself kind of blends in with the surrounding scenery. Then there is the GPS itself, I know from having my GPS on that it tells the driver to turn right when in reality the person should go straight into my driveway. I have even had to tell the person that he/she parked in my neighbor's driveway thinking it was my driveway. Surely there is going to have to be a way to manually correct this and I can see this being a major problem if this is a busy road or highway.
To answer the question I don't think I will ever buy a self-driving car; heck, I'm still driving a 2002 Ford Explorer Sport.
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That was a point I made above.
I think back to one of my very favorite "fun" roads with a pair of 90º blind curves that are on an incline and a lane and a half wide. Heck, most of the road is a lane and a half, but that's probably the most treacherous part. There's also nowhere to go on it-if you meet a car coming the opposite direction, one of you is going to have to back up to a point where it's safe to pull off to the side and let the other pass. Fortunately, the drivers around there tend to be courteous enough that the one with the shortest distance to back will do so voluntarily.
Even so, as much as I love that road, it's not one where I'd trust anyone but myself driving. It's overall a fun road to drive(esp. in a small sports car) but on those curves I'm usually going 10-15mph with a periodic blast on my horn. The road is unposted, which means 55 in Kentucky, although I think the curves have yellow 25mph signs on them.
Here in Kentucky, we have our fair share of lane and a half roads all over the state. Fortunately, I'm usually on them for pleasure cruises, but some folks have to navigate them if they want to leave their house and go anywhere.
You're right, more stuff to break, and the cost of computerized car repairs has already skyrocketed as compared to what was before. My guess is that cars of today are 100x if not more, complicated than 50 years ago. I can remember when I disliked electric windows for that very reason.
Is the point to actually own them? I thought the self-driving thing was all about removing the need for private car ownership in cities. You just summon a car when you want one, it takes you where you need to go, then out you get. No need to find parking spaces or have a driveway at home, far less vehicles in total, and therefore a lot of urban land can be repurposed instead of sitting there as car parking that might only be partially used.
Outside of the cities you would still need a personal vehicle of course, but I don't think the driverless cars are really for that market. It's about making urban living easier IMO.
Outside of the cities you would still need a personal vehicle of course, but I don't think the driverless cars are really for that market. It's about making urban living easier IMO.
We will still pay for insurance, but we'll pay for it in the price of the vehicle. Manufacturers will be responsible for accidents so insurance rates for consumer will be low. However, manufacturers will build the insurance into the price.It's going to being interesting to see how the auto insurance industry is going to handle self-driving automobiles. Who is going to be held responsible in a car crash? The Owner? The Person in the Car at the time? The Car Company? No One? The Other Car if it was manually driven?
I know they are spending billions on research, but I just can't fathom that they (auto manufacturers) have taken in every variable or scenario that can happen while driving? Take for instance a ball comes rolling across the street. There is usually a few seconds delay before a child comes scampering out to retrieve it? First does the car stop in time for the ball itself? Does the car start back driving once the ball has cleared the street, not realizing that there might be someone who doesn't pay attention to traffic to retrieve it? Then there are weather and road conditions. I know here in Michigan during the winter the roads can get very slippery and that one has to slow down in order to drive safely. Will the car know this? The answer is probably yes, but it hard for this old fuddy duddy to comprehend how a self driving car can make this distinction. I know driving on some roads that even the road conditions here in Michigan is sometimes tricky (I can't find the right word) for a person to navigate yet alone a self driving car. The lanes are poorly marked or not even marked at all, the lines have faded (heck I have even seen lines painted incorrectly) or the road itself kind of blends in with the surrounding scenery. Then there is the GPS itself, I know from having my GPS on that it tells the driver to turn right when in reality the person should go straight into my driveway. I have even had to tell the person that he/she parked in my neighbor's driveway thinking it was my driveway. Surely there is going to have to be a way to manually correct this and I can see this being a major problem if this is a busy road or highway.
To answer the question I don't think I will ever buy a self-driving car; heck, I'm still driving a 2002 Ford Explorer Sport.
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That's a cute idea, but the idea that my ability to move around the world is controlled by a private company means this fantasy land won't work.
If cars turn into something like cable, we all lose. Private ownership is still the best experience.
Edit: And this doesn't include the fact that in Spotify for Cars you never stop paying for your cars. So many Americans have an old car they have long paid off.
I guess this is a difference between the US and Europe. We're much more used to public transport here, so the structure around it is organised differently. Take London, for instance. There are multiple companies involved with operating busses, trains and the Tube, but all do so under license from Transport for London, which oversees all activities and is ultimately run by the Mayor's office. I would see these driverless cars slotting into that strategy, lots of operating companies but under central oversight. I also don't think it's necessarily going to cost more than running your own car. When you add up ongoing costs for petrol, insurance, tax, and maintenance on your vehicle it still comes to a fair amount of money, even for those that own their cars outright. Use a driverless service and you offset the cost against what you would be paying out anyway. In the meantime the city itself gains.
I mean, think of most US cities and how much of them are taken up with parking spaces. The average car is probably used less than 10% of the time, so 90% of its time it sits there waiting. That's why there's so many parking spaces required. Replace half of the cars with driverless shared type machines that are used say 60% of the time and the amount of land you free up is huge.
Maybe in cities, but in the US at least a 3rd of the population has no access to public transport. The idea of Uber coming in and monopolizing the car market is horrible for everyone.
And you cannot cite petrol, insurance, tax, and maintenance, because wherever you get your car from will put those costs on you.
The cities are exactly where I think this will take off. It won't work once you get out into the suburbs, but to be honest the global trend is more towards urban living anyway. Exactly why I can see this happening.
The cost will be the same per vehicle in total, but the operators will be able to spread the maintenance/insurance costs out over many more people, because unlike with private vehicles the driverless cars will be in near constant use during working and leisure hours, by multiple customers. That's where the economies come in for individuals, because as individuals you only have to pay a small part of the total maintenance/insurance costs rather than the entire amount. So there's room for the operators to profit whilst still pitching the service as an annual cost saving to the end user.
Also, as electricity gets cheaper thanks to increased solar take up and electric vehicle tech gets better I would expect these to be electric rather than petrol fuelled. Another reason why it only works in cities. The vehicles would need to be able to take themselves to a charging station when their batteries need a boost, so you would need them to be somewhere with a fair density of charging points. Build the things with solar panels built in too and you can offset some of that, but it would still need to be properly plugged in to keep running.
Still not sure how this protects the poor. Spotify isn't getting any cheaper and neither is spotify for cars. A ten year old Camry is payment free with minimal maintenance. Perpetual car payments? To wait for a car that isn't at my door? Minimal government oversight? Yeah, that's going to go great. Keep up the dream; the rest of us will keep driving or buy private self driving cars.
Still not sure how any of that makes not owning a car better. Lack of government oversight and peoples' need to own their cars will keep car ownership active for a long time.
The issue with insurance will be interesting. If the insurance companies lower their rate (no chance in hell), the manufacturer may build the costs of insurance into the car. However, with a 99.9% safe car, a major accident or instance that affects a lot of cars on the road will cripple a company. The idea of fully autonomous cars isn't new. They've been doing testing since the 80s. Even today's systems have their own issues. Snow and very wet roads don't play nicely with radar and scanning functions on these current cars.
What is the point of having an self-driving car if you have to pay full attention the whole time? If the car is doing all of the work, your attention is going to divert. I would find it nearly impossible to maintain full attention to the road if I was not the one driving.
I've always enjoyed driving, it'd be a bit of a shame to give it up altogether. Having the choice to switch back and forth would be the sweet spot for me.
At least no one here is as nuts as one of the guys on a local forum I participate in. As far as he's concerned, we could (should) start closing all interstates now, and everything would just hum along fine as we come up with transit alternatives and self-driving cars. We don't need to have that stuff fin place before closing down everything else. We just do it, and everything will "just work". Everyone will just change jobs and live in super-high-density urban cores.
Because autopilot is not an autonomous driving system. It's cruise control on steroids. It can't determine if there is an object like a barricade is in the way. It doesn't know if a lane is closing and needs to merge.
Autopilot at best is adaptive cruise control with the ability to do minor steering adjustments to stay within a lane.
Please drop the hostility. I'm not advocating taking your car away and I honestly think the industry has already worked out what I'm describing as being likely. Hence all the investment into self-driving cars in the first place. They want to have product ready for a coming shift in attitudes, started by the likes of Uber. The shared car idea won't work in every location, but there are places it will. Some cities today have bicycle schemes where you just pick one up, ride it where you want to go, then leave it for someone else. Others have "car clubs". Lots of people still have their own bicycles or cars in those places, but the shared schemes fill a significant gap, enough for those bicycles or club cars to be used constantly. Why would the same strategy not work for driverless cars? It's more convenient than either of the current options, because you don't have to go where the vehicle you want to temporarily use is.
I'd want to know about the cost first. How much more do I pay for a self driving car that is equivalent to the car I drive now? How will it affect cost of insurance? Can I save on things like parking fees, can a self driving car manage to drive more fuel efficient?
And I think it's really a matter of how autonomous these cars are. Can the car drop me off right in front of the train station, and then find a car park on its own? Or even drive home on its own, so my wife can use it all day and we don't need two cars? At that point, self driving could be a real money saver.
In towns where parking spaces are hard to find, self driving cars could park much more efficiently. They can park closer together because they don't need to leave space for opening doors. You could have on a car park four self-driving cars parked without any gap; when one is needed at most one has to leave its spot for ten seconds and return.
Would it be legal to be picked up by your car while being drunk, or can you take a nap when you are dead tired? That alone would be so valuable. Can you read the newspaper, watch a movie, make phone calls, do some work on your MacBook, while your car does the driving? All these things would make a huge difference.
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There is no reason why insurance should go up. You are going to drive just as you are now, and not causing more accidents and damage than you are causing now. If self driving cars work well, there is even the chance that the other car avoids the accident from happening when it is your fault. Say I'm driving on a 50mph road, and I have the right of way. You turn into that road because you didn't watch properly and missed my car. Today, I might go 55, take some time to react, and hit you at 30mph. The self driving car might go exactly 50, react immediately, and manage to miss you. Doesn't make you a better driver, but the hit on your insurance premiums is not there.
I would also expect that bad drivers would more tend to buy a self driving car than good drivers, so that should help.
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And I think it's really a matter of how autonomous these cars are. Can the car drop me off right in front of the train station, and then find a car park on its own? Or even drive home on its own, so my wife can use it all day and we don't need two cars? At that point, self driving could be a real money saver.
In towns where parking spaces are hard to find, self driving cars could park much more efficiently. They can park closer together because they don't need to leave space for opening doors. You could have on a car park four self-driving cars parked without any gap; when one is needed at most one has to leave its spot for ten seconds and return.
Would it be legal to be picked up by your car while being drunk, or can you take a nap when you are dead tired? That alone would be so valuable. Can you read the newspaper, watch a movie, make phone calls, do some work on your MacBook, while your car does the driving? All these things would make a huge difference.
Even if your car would just go off on its own to find itself a parking space, that wouldn't be a benefit for the environment, but a huge benefit for me. (Actually, instead of driving around looking for a space near my destination as I do, a self driving car could go straight to a place two miles away with plenty of parking.).
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There is no reason why insurance should go up. You are going to drive just as you are now, and not causing more accidents and damage than you are causing now. If self driving cars work well, there is even the chance that the other car avoids the accident from happening when it is your fault. Say I'm driving on a 50mph road, and I have the right of way. You turn into that road because you didn't watch properly and missed my car. Today, I might go 55, take some time to react, and hit you at 30mph. The self driving car might go exactly 50, react immediately, and manage to miss you. Doesn't make you a better driver, but the hit on your insurance premiums is not there.
I would also expect that bad drivers would more tend to buy a self driving car than good drivers, so that should help.
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That's not worse than today. They don't have to be perfect that way, just not worse than the average human driver.
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If you drive your own car, you will almost always be found responsible in a self-driving world. There's no way your insurance stays the same.
Okay, so you're talking about current auto-pilot standards, not fully self-driving cars. Yeah, I don't think I could ever use auto-pilot. Having it assist is one thing. Having it do everything, but having to pay full attention at the same time? Ugh...that sounds exhausting.
I think you're deeply underestimating the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
I recall a statistic quoted in my driver's ed class, that 75% of drivers consider themselves above average in their own driving skill. I have no idea how true that statistic was, or which direction it's moved since. If it's even close to being right, it means 1 in 4 drivers are underskilled and unaware of it.
I still want one. I'm fine letting the machines take over mundane tasks. I hardly drive anymore unless it's a road trip and I'd love to just sleep most of the way and wake up just before I arrive.
Of course, I want it to be fully tested and reliable before I acquire one (I have no desire to be an early "transporter accident") but I'd definitely eschew self-driving forever.
Of course, I want it to be fully tested and reliable before I acquire one (I have no desire to be an early "transporter accident") but I'd definitely eschew self-driving forever.