U.S. to decide soon on GM’s request to deploy cars without steering wheels::U.S. regulators will soon decide on a petition filed by General Motors’ Cruise self-driving technology unit seeking permission to deploy up to 2,500 self-driving vehicles annually without human controls, a top auto safety official said on Wednesday.
From the article, the cars will be used as autonomous taxies. It is too bad. I was hoping that by removing the steering wheel, GM would have to add in the most important important self driving car feature: a release of liability. I will not fully trust autonomous car controls until I stop being legally responsible for the actions of my car.
Public transport should be the primary target for the technology at this time. At least in parts of Europe, the primary issue with increasing public transport capacity is lack of drivers.
There isn’t a chance in hell I’m buying a car without a steering wheel.
I reckon it’s going to be a car-as-a-service so don’t worry your head about ever buying one
I just love owning nothing! I’m so happy to never have anything I can call my own!
OceanGate Titan on wheels.
We’ve all seen this episode of Silicon Valley.
No, no, no, no. This is right up there with my state wanting to let 18-year-olds carry concealed deadly weapons in classrooms with no permit. A deal breaker for my continued participation in this society.
Yeah self driving cars are totally the same thing as giving a teenager a gun in a school.
Given their track record, yes.
Their track record is literally better than the track record of the average human driver. The data doesn’t back up what you’re saying at all
Source?
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Not sure why you feel the need to insert an unsupported bitchy answer. This isn’t Reddit. No one cares about your karma.
That said, I’ve also read that accidents per thousand operating is higher for autonomous vehicles compared to the average human. I’m not going to look it up for you but if you really want to know then Google it. <shrug>
This is waymo, not cruise, but it’s a comparison between 1 million miles with no humans behind the wheel and the human average. That’s about 80 years worth of human driving, and while that’s not long enough to provide meaningful data on reducing fatalities, they do show that self driving cars reduce both the frequency and severity of more minor accidents
What a disgusting point of view.
I recently learned that the state where I’m from considers a baton a deadly weapon so it can’t be purchased as a means of defense, but an Ak-47 is perfectly fine to purchase AND open carry.
Having just seen several Cruise vehicles being recovered by human drivers, this is quite early for such a request. I think the hype cycle is drying up for them and they need to keep pretending they’re doing better than they really are.
I don’t understand how cars would work on their own with no input from a driver small-scale
I understand being able to type in “Drive to Walmart” and it can back out of your driveway and go to Walmart, but then what? It goes into the parking lot? It finds the first available space? What if you just wanted to go there to pick something up curbside? How can you tell it to go to a specific stall? What if you’re disabled and need to go to the handicap space? How can it tell if your authorized to use that space?
There’s so many little nuances that I don’t understand not being able to have a steering wheel to take control of and manually do things at some point.
Read the article, this isn’t talking about consumer-owned vehicles but the Cruise Origin robo-taxi service. They’re small autonomous shuttle-style cars.
Basically GM reinvented the bus but made it smaller.
So to answer “How does it park at Walmart” - it takes the passenger to the front and drops them off then continues on its way. I believe the intent/current trials using Bolts have an app similar to Uber, you put in your current location + destination, then it comes and gets you, then drops you off.
Almost 0 value in removing a steering wheel or any kind of input to a consumer-owned car like that, makes some amount of sense for robo-taxis. (They specifically wanted passengers sharing the ride to face eachother to ease safety concerns, and they probably don’t want random Joe getting up at the emergency controls and driving it off road)
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I think that’s a fairly common reaction, but it’s important to remember what you’re currently trusting your life to. Right now meat machines made for hunting and finding berries are operating giant death machines at speeds that they didn’t evolve to understand, and sometimes that meat machine needs to constantly remind itself to pay attention and not shut down while driving, or to look for children, or to go the right speed, because driving isn’t natural for meat machines. Not to mention that they take entire seconds to respond to stimulus (which can be hundreds of yards at speed), and they can only see in one direction at a time. And even if they do everything right, they can have a stroke at any time and kill everyone in their car and the car they hit.
Compare that to an actual machine, built to pay attention to everything in a full 360° at all times, never drives drunk or drowsy, and has double redundancy to prevent mechanical failure. They always drive at the right speeds, and react to problems within milliseconds.
Comparing humans to robots, it’s honestly a testament to how chaotic driving is that robots didn’t take it over a long time ago. But within our lifetimes I guarantee that we’ll look at it the same way that we now look at chess. Humans may have been better at one point, but very soon computers will be so much better than us at driving that it’s not even a competition. And it’s fairly likely that they’re already past that point, these GM cars already crash less than the average human driver
That is a very optimistic opinion, but I’m sure those GM cars truly are about as close to the fully autonomous vehicle that could fully replace a regular human driven car in its regular setting as ChatGPT is to AGI.
They already operate on the road without a driver behind the wheel at all, haven’t they already “replace[d] a regular human driven car in its regular setting”?
I don’t think so. This particular Cruise is a robo-taxi (source), not a fully-autonomous (level 5, or at least 4) personal vehicle. And other projects claiming level 4 seem to be more of a public transit thing.
First off you can knock off that arrogant way of speaking right now. I have been building, repairing, designing automated systems for the past 15 years of my life and none of us call humans meat machines.
Secondly when you are talking about automation being better what you really mean is the human who wrote the software. Which is often the case is me. Software is dogshit and always has been. A big part of my job is having to explain to process engineers and project managers why I made something less automated not more. Operations needs a way to get out of crisis, this is why you allow manual overrides. Operations also needs to be able to alter process, this is why you separate recipes from functionality. The goal is to enhance the human, not to do something for them. Man on a bicycle metaphor you can read up for yourself.
I have no idea what double redundancy means. Why don’t you explain it exactly? I could use a laugh.
none of us call humans meat machines.
I phrased it that way for emphasis, I didn’t think that anyone would assume I was trying to use industry lingo when I call humans “meat machines”.
Second, I’m also a developer, I write code for a living, I doubt that’s particularly rare on the fediverse. Yes, sometimes I write shitty code, but that shitty code still runs at a million times the speed that I can think, it can be proven for accuracy, and when it has been will make fewer mistakes than I do. There are a lot of things that computers are just better at than we could ever be, regardless of the quality of the code that it’s running. There’s also a lot of things that humans are great at, I wasn’t trying to undermine that fact, I was just trying to emphasize that there’s really no reason to think that driving can or should be one of those things. We give teenagers licenses after a week of drivers ed, we get distracted while driving, we drive under the influence of drugs, we fall asleep, we have strokes and heart attacks. Driving is something that we’re statisticallyvery bad at.
Operations needs a way to get out of crisis, this is why you allow manual overrides
Sure, and there will always be manual overrides, but it won’t rely on whatever passenger happens to be sitting in the vehicle (if any), it will be handled by an employee in an operations center. That’s what they’re doing now, which is why the steering wheel isn’t necessary.
I have no idea what double redundancy means
Yeah that was a dumb way to phrase that. I apologize for failing to have my lemmy comment properly peer reviewed before posting it
Hey next time try using phrases for accuracy not emphasis. You get taken seriously that way instead of being seen as a troll out of their lane.
I write code for a living,
I am sure your Facebook game is very nice.
Sure, and there will always be manual overrides, but it won’t rely on whatever passenger happens to be sitting in the vehicle (if any), it will be handled by an employee in an operations center.
Sure just give him a call when it falls into a river or catches on fire. Your call is very important to us, please stay on the line. Doo Doo Doo. Do you know you can get most of your questions answered online?
Yeah that was a dumb way to phrase that. I apologize for failing to have my lemmy comment properly peer reviewed before posting it
Just go get a job doing what I do. Spend the next decade and a half automating big scary machines. You will learn a lot.
Please go back to reddit if you want to pontificate
Back in the 80s or 90s GM (specifically Buick) teased a car with no steering wheel. It instead used joysticks. I’m curious if GM is basically thinking of that. Something more motor friendly, but joysticks also free up space for either more electronics (bad idea) or more safety equipment. The other thing people forget about is that a steering wheel is a giant spear aimed at drivers in a collision. We’ve gotten better about breakaway systems and shears, but it’s another point of injury and failure. The more enclosed a cabin the better. Anyways, all this to say that it might be that direction that GM is thinking and not a fully no input vehicle. It could also be a fleet based vehicle that only drives on main roads which effectively makes it a train that follows a “digital track” and doesn’t allow for nuance and is built for taxi service.
You just made me realize that we created a disconnect between the driver input and the car response on most thing except for the steering that for whatever reason is still a physical column down to the direction.
At this point electronic joystick and steerings are ancient in the PC gaming space, I don’t see why that physical link is still required.
I fantasize about the day that I could get into a self driving car and just shout a destination at it, then go there. My commute is over an hour a day and I could use that time for myself. I don’t think that day will be here soon.
These companies need to demonstrate that their vehicles are capable (more capable than MOST drivers), and they need to do it transparently. Whats more important to me, would be the manufacturer taking the liability, licensing, and most importantly take responsibility for their mistakes (again openly).
I can’t wait to drive with a 20 dollar Logitech gaming controller instead
I wonder if this came from engineering or the marketing department.
I’m getting “Let’s do this, and if it fails (which it will), it’ll look like we’re really confident in our self-drive and are a challenger in the market” vibes.
Even if you have excellent self-drive, there is no logical reason not to have a backup steering wheel just to intervene in case. Tbh, I had no idea they were even in the self-drive market which may be their true problem. No one really knows.
I remember being shocked that my third generation smart phone didn’t have a pull out keyboard. Or that headphone jacks became a casualty. I think in the long run this is the goal.
Well you know now! So it worked.
Funny thing about ai is there isn’t really a moat. Once an idea is out there it’s easy to catch up, so don’t be surprised to see the big players ahead now get caught up by competitors very quickly.
if there’s no one in the driver’s seat to pay attention, then why would you have a wheel to intervene “just in case”?
Has anyone proven a technology for that long and that consistently that it is safe. I’ve seen quite the contrary and sensible legislators expect a human there in case of issue.I’d expect that for years before a reasonable level ofconfidentce is reached.
Everyone keeps saying no in this thread, but I trust that it will be a better driver than my 80 year old grandpa who can’t see 10 feet busy still manages to retain their drivers license.
It’s okay to say “No” to two things at the same time without having to choose one or the other.
Except that in this case, one might prevent/reduce the other. There is a certain amount of mutual exclusivity here. We can’t take drivers licenses away from old people, but we might be able to get them in an autonomous car.
I’m pretty sure the technology is not ready to go this far
It’s not. It absolutely is not
It already exists… https://youtu.be/ilcrMz_hWz8
No, actually it doesn’t.
You’ll notice that a) Waymo cars kill people (there’s pending litigation,) and b) they’re only in places with basically perfect weather.
Self driving cars cannot handle any sort of real winter driving.
I can’t find anything about waymov cars killing people. Not saying it didn’t happen, but id like to see your sources on some (assuming more than one since it’s plural) of the deaths.
Regardless, the technologies existence is what is being debated here. Not the moved goalposts of “operable in all weather” or “has never killed someone” using those same goalposts I could claim that passenger aircraft isn’t here yet since you can’t take off in bad weather & they have killed people
apologies… I seem to have conflated a few items from my feed. There were no deaths. that said, Waymo is defending itself from a lawsuit in SF (iirc) because of an uptick in accidents, and the NTSFB peeps say that waymo is involved in the most accidents (per road hour, IIRC) of all the autonomous vehicles.
They’re also suing (or were suing) the California DMV to keep their accident records secret as a “trade secret”. lol.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/ilcrMz_hWz8
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
