... and how many people it will kill before it is safe.
Using a driverless pod summoned by app in rural Devon won't happen in my lifetime.
How safe does it need to be? Safer than human drivers or way safer than that?
Yes, they weigh more, but everything else is better as a result. Less fuel used, less emissions, safer, more reliable, more comfortable.
I don’t know much about Tesla’s offering but I have seen the driverless taxis in San Francisco. No technology will be 100% foolproof but it can easily be better given the vagaries of human drivers
Same everywhere. Every town in UK is filled to capacity with parked vehicles. Parking on public roads and spaces should not have been permitted in the first place but nobody saw the boom coming, even the 1963 Buchanan report underestimated it.
I agree that it is likely to be closer for urban areas but I’d expect taxis and other public transport will be driverless everywhere within a few years.
Interestingly, we had to summon an emergency ambulance to our place on Friday night, for my Mum. We live in rural Cornwall and share a postcode with about a dozen other properties spread over about a mile of road. The ambulance crew did not know the area, but came direct to our house, with no stops along the way. They were using an advanced sort of system that I don't pretend to understand, but the point is, it brought them straight to us and they were confident enough in its abilities to be getting all their kit from the wagon before I even got to the front gate. I suspect we will see that technology widely available to the public within a very few years, so yes, I do expect it to be possible to have driverless cars operating smoothly in rural areas within my lifetime, and quite possibly in yours, unless you plan on popping off soon.
but if you dropped 100's kgs by having a 'normal' car with the same interior space as a big suv, you'd use even less fuel?!
I hope your mum is okay.
Driverless vehicles don't get angry, drunk, tired, emotional, argue with the boss, worry about money, hormonal, etc etc etc.
Ta! She is, 93 and stubborn - if she'd listened to me earlier in the day, she would have had a quick visit from the local GP and we wouldn't have had to waste the time of an ambulance crew, but she wouldn't give in until too late in the day. Lesson learned: next time I'll override her!
Approximately 84% of the UK population live in urban areas. Rural Devon may be amongst the last to adopt the technology. Plymouth and Exeter will likely be first - quickly followed by Torquay, Paignton, Exmouth etc.
Probably just a GPS sat nav with the exact location determined by your phone call.
I can agree to a certain extent. To be honest I'm amazed at how well our roads work considering we can be passing at 60mph with only a white line to separate us.
Whilst ABS, EBA, traction control and parking sensors do their job well, other bits of 'assistance' are pretty grim and have been introduced far too soon; Lane assistance can get things wrong far too often and I've yet to see anyone actually relying on an auto parking function.
We haven't replaced train drivers as there is very little benefit when one driver is transporting hundreds of people, the technology has existed for years. This is a different argument but we need to think carefully about replacing human jobs with technology, people need work or our society needs to be radically different.
Because the last time we were discussing at work about Pen tests, cyber-security (or lack of) and windfarms, the conclusion was a disaster waiting to happen.
