The Twit destroying Twitter is a Twaitor

Pocket

jumbled pile of person
Citizen
I do see a future for self-driving cars. But it involves doing something that nobody in government wants to do.

Tear up the highways.

Seriously, these things shouldn't be trying to calculate where other human drivers are. They should be asking the road where everybody is and going from there. But that would require actually investing in infrastructure the likes of which we haven't seen since the days of the Great Depression. And that won't happen because every politician will want to line something like that with as much juicy pork as they can.

Ironbite-the tech has a solution it's just nobody wants to implement it.
Also if we're going to invest that much in transportation infrastructure, we'd be better off bringing back rail travel.
 

Ungnome

Grand Empress of the Empire of One Square Foot.
Citizen
Self-driving cars can't share the road with human drivers because AI can't account for human stupidity. Hell, most humans can't even account for human stupidity.
AI isn't much better, really. It still has a hard time distinguishing shadows from people and often time errs in the wrong direction. Especially Tesla's AI since they decided to rip out the lidar sensors and rely on purely visual input to save a bit on the manufacturing costs. There are numerous incidents of Tesla's autopilot being more to blame than the unpredictable humans they collided with.
 

Cybersnark

Well-known member
Citizen
I like the take on (semi-)self-driving commuter cars from Star Wars: Skeleton Crew.

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See those lines on the pavement? All the "landspeeders" on At Attin are basically self-guided streetcars. You input your destination and the vehicle basically auto-steers along the selected course. All the driver/droid/AI has to worry about are braking and accelerating (and since the drive path is 100% predictable, it eases the burden of trying to image the entire road, interpret every possible object, and plan evasive courses. Simple instructions: if any obstruction enters the drive path's safety range, come to a stop).

There are some obvious drawbacks, though; if the power grid goes down everyone ends up stranded, and you can't travel anywhere there aren't tracks, unless you have a non-tethered vehicle (which is fine for pleasure driving, but let's be real, >90% of people on the road in the city are either commuters or hauling cargo).
 

Cybersnark

Well-known member
Citizen
I mean, it's a neat concept... but they're literally just reinventing trains.

Personal trains (well, for the adults, anyway. That's a schoolbus in the pic), that live in your garage, run on your schedule, and go directly to your destination.

The ease of public transit with the convenience of personal cars.
 


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