I'm waiting for the day we have automated cars and the windshield turns into a giant tv screen so we can play xbox or surf the web on our commute.

I will make them legal.

Only argument you need to support robot cars

Backwards Cornfield Races: I'm waiting for the day we have automated cars and the windshield turns into a giant tv screen so we can play xbox or surf the web on our commute.

Commuting is a bug, not a feature. Spending all the time and money to make up for poor city planning doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense to me.

I'm covered.

How else are robots gonna cruise chicks..?

We can always use their programming for self preservation against them.

These cars would be great for old people who suck at driving or can no longer navigate. It would help avoid them being shut-ins (assuming they could afford the thing). It would also be great for the blind and handicapped. I want one with four seats facing each other limo style with a big cooler in the middle. The bar business would EXPLODE in America if these became legal and you couldn't get DUI. Just add a tax on booze to offset the DUI industry most states run to fatten their coffers and it would be a push. You could order your fast food via cell phone as the car drove to McDonalds on the way home and then gorge, fall asleep and wake up in the garage like magic.

How about an RV that could do this. Your friends come over, you get in the RV, their cars follow along with nobody in them, you do whatever and when anyone wants to leave they just get in their car and go or alternately have their car come and get them. You could do Peapod without the truck, use the internet to enter your order, send your car for whatever and they throw your stuff in the trunk and back it comes - no more shopping trips, car picks up your kid at school, your friend at the airport etc. It would be like owning a retriever.

Personally though I would rather have a robot that could drive because then I could use the robot to do other crap as well like laundry. its 2012 - where is my damn robot already?

Are unmanned autonomous vehicles illegal? If I go to a rental car website and order one, and it drives itself to my location, nobody's the driver. At most my role would be equivalent to a taxi passenger saying where to.

a car that would return home, or not go without the owner may reduce some car theft

loonatic112358: a car that would return home, or not go without the owner may reduce some car theft

*steals loonatic112358's eye so I can steal his car and bypass the retinal scan*

I seen it in a movie once.

JC

All that we need is for rich people to have a few hundred thousand of these automated things on the road going on errands for them. They don't just move people folks .. they would move goods.

"What do they mean, 'only on private property', Michael?"

"Michael?"

"Michael?"

Do not put the Plymouth Fury into Maximum Overdrive.

mrlewish: All that we need is for rich people to have a few hundred thousand of these automated things on the road going on errands for them. They don't just move people folks .. they would move goods.

The real fun begins when there is a critical mass of robot vehicles and manual vehicles with human drivers are summarily banned...

In a world without traffic signals I think I'd be wearing my brown boxers every day, just in case.

If history (The Terminator Movies and TV series) has taught us anything, it's that Bipedal robots' only weakness are trucks and cars(and industrial machinery, but that's not really mobile.) We are giving up valuable ground in the war against skynet if we allow the machines anymore control of our cars.

It depends on how reliable they become.
If they work as well as predicted, they'll be legal and the insurance companies will pay for them to become legal.

/charge the same premiums for a prefect driver? SOLD!

Illegal? They should be mandatory.

I say, if red light cameras are legal, then robot cars must be.

The state can't have a monopoly on weapons in this fight!!! Second amendment!!!!!

JoeCowboy: loonatic112358: a car that would return home, or not go without the owner may reduce some car theft

*steals loonatic112358's eye so I can steal his car and bypass the retinal scan*

I seen it in a movie once.

JC

i knew I should have had that eye insured

labman: By this logic, is cruise control legal?

They're pretty obviously different. Cruise control simply maintains a set speed for a driver who is otherwise in complete control of a car.

An autonomous vehicle is completely capable of driving itself, with zero human interaction. There doesn't even need to be a human in the vehicle.

Suppose you tell your car to drive someplace, and there's no human even in the vehicle. If it were to hit someone, who can be held responsible? Arguably, the car manufacturers/designers/software engineers were in complete control of the car at the time of the crash, not the owner of the car.

You're all missing something important - this is the beginning of the end for mid-skill manual labour.

Why pay a driver for a cab? Why pay a courier to drive a truck? Why pay a driver for a big rig?

The people, parcel, & skid delivery industries are about to have MASSIVE layoffs.

Shortly thereafter, the significant percentage of police dedicated to traffic enforcement will be redundant, and you'll have another massive round of layoffs.

The driverless car will cause a very nasty economic disruption.

I'm also curious to see how these vehicles handle roads that A) aren't on the map, B) have a few inches of snow on them obscuring lane markings, or C) are under construction and have contradictory lane markings.

Hell, what happens there is an accident ahead, and you need to go onto the shoulder to bypass it? I'm guessing the current generation of automated systems would just sit and idle their fuel away awaiting human intervention.

I never want one of these damned things. This will remove all fun and freedom from driving. No thanks, I will pass...

Unsung_Hero: You're all missing something important - this is the beginning of the end for mid-skill manual labour.

Why pay a driver for a cab? Why pay a courier to drive a truck? Why pay a driver for a big rig?

The people, parcel, & skid delivery industries are about to have MASSIVE layoffs.

Shortly thereafter, the significant percentage of police dedicated to traffic enforcement will be redundant, and you'll have another massive round of layoffs.

The driverless car will cause a very nasty economic disruption.

You have good points. However, for deliveries, you will need someone to load and unload, to accept deliveries, inspect products, or leave a "we missed you" note. There will always be a need for grunt work, even though it won't pay enough to support anyone. On the flip side, you will have a lot more maintenance/mechanic/programmer jobs with the automated system, not to mention the temporary job bump of building up the infrastructure.

But you have a good point. Even if this makes deliveries cheaper, will it make cost of living cheaper too, to offset the depressed job markets & inexpensive workforce? It seems that things aren't much cheaper in today's world. Yes things manufactured with modern automation are cheap, but sweatshops are cheaper.

As for law enforcement - think of all the cops freed up to fight War On X.

Unsung_Hero: I'm also curious to see how these vehicles handle roads that A) aren't on the map, B) have a few inches of snow on them obscuring lane markings, or C) are under construction and have contradictory lane markings.

Hell, what happens there is an accident ahead, and you need to go onto the shoulder to bypass it? I'm guessing the current generation of automated systems would just sit and idle their fuel away awaiting human intervention.

None of these are entirely unsormountable. The systems will improve and eventually there will be so many of them that streets will be adapted and optimized for them. There aren't many major roads left where a horse or a man on foot would have an advantage over an automobile.

The only sort of problem that they won't be able to solve are the ones that nobody can anticipate. For thes sort of Out-of-context problems that would require human imagination to solve, robo-cars should be smart enough to phone home and power down to some energy saving mode while waiting for instructions or help instead of just ideling away.

I fully expect to live in a time when I have to tell youngsters that when I was their age, all cars had to be operated manually and almost everyone was capable of doing so. "Driving" will become a skill mainly associated with sports, hobbies, extreme siuation or third world countries without the right infrastructure. I might also tell them that automobiles used to work by burning gasoline.

Can a driverless car recognize a cop directing traffic? There are still a few things which might be hard to program the machine to do ... yet.

/Yeah, 99.9% of the time they probably will be safer than human drivers.

I seriously doubt we'll see this in our lifetimes. Less a matter of technology and more a matter of massive liability.

It's really a lot like gay marriage. In 1990 NOBODY (outside the gay community maybe) even though about gay marriage. Not even enough to actually put into licensing laws that marriage shall be between one man and one woman - even though that had been an implicit supposition in the law, and had actually been an issue in the admission of Utah into the union over 100 years before. Even though it was the social norm and would have been supported without too much fuss.

Maul555: I never want one of these damned things. This will remove all fun and freedom from driving. No thanks, I will pass...

Driving is boring. I just want to get where I'm going already. If I can take a nap while doing it, all the better.

To clear this issue up once and for all I am in favor of a Federal law being passed that says something along the lines of:

"All autonomous automobiles are legal to be driven on the roads once they pass a federally mandidated safety test and have a sober, licensed driver who is alert and ready to take over navigation in case of an emergency."

Problem solved.

Buckyballs: To clear this issue up once and for all I am in favor of a Federal law being passed that says something along the lines of:

"All autonomous automobiles are legal to be driven on the roads once they pass a federally mandidated safety test and have a sober, licensed driver who is alert and ready to take over navigation in case of an emergency."

Problem solved.

Well that's just stupid. The point of autonomous vehicles is that we can get loaded and then our cars can drive us home.

MrEricSir: Backwards Cornfield Races: I'm waiting for the day we have automated cars and the windshield turns into a giant tv screen so we can play xbox or surf the web on our commute.

Commuting is a bug, not a feature. Spending all the time and money to make up for poor city planning doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense to me.

Actually, with automated cars a lot of the commuting problems can/will be solved. Once cars are fully autonomous, taxi's will become a lot cheaper (essentially its a zapcar that comes to pick you up and parks itself instead of you needing to trek down to its lot, a large percent of the cost of taxi's are the driver). It will then become feasible/cheaper for a large percent of the population to not buy a car in the first place. You could then take a taxi/car from home to the train station, and from the drop off point you could take another to work. Cars can also link up on the highways to become nearly as efficient as a train as well. You would also need a lot less cars per person, as well as less parking spaces. (Interesting fact, there are almost 3 parking spaces per car in the US. 1 at your house, 1 at work, etc). Reducing the amount of parking spaces would open up a lot of currently wasted land use.

rubi_con_man:
Well that's just stupid. The point of autonomous vehicles is that we can get loaded and then our cars can drive us home.

How's plod going to know it's not you driving eh? Your upright, your hands are on the wheel and seem to be moving it to turn, indicators, lights all being used properly and any gadget that'd respond it's in automode to plod's query is safely stuffed in silver foil so it can't transmit for shiat or kludged to always respond "No" .

Your sir must of been the designated driver for your party. Correct?

"[...] pedestrians may expect that cars will stop [...]"

The unfortunate ones will only expect that once. The smarter ones in the area will learn from this mistake. Win - Win.

rubi_con_man: Well that's just stupid. The point of autonomous vehicles is that we can get loaded and then our cars can drive us home.

And the car will receive a DUI for the ethanol in its tank when it blows a 10%

/i'd like a self driving car just because of the sheer pain in the ass it is to drive the DC beltway