Electric Vehicles: What have you spotted?

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Re: Electric Vehicles: What have you spotted?

Post by Mandrake »

GiveMeABreak wrote: 20 Mar 2018, 08:54 I agree, tech may be more clever and smart in some respects, but it will never be able to have ‘intuition’ or be able to perceive or anticipate some situations like a human being can. They cannot ever have the awareness of a sentient being.

I agree, however I'm also not going to jump to conclusions over what the cause of the accident was, especially when someone was killed. Let's let the investigation run its course and determine whether the accident was avoidable or not and where the blame should be laid.
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Re: Electric Vehicles: What have you spotted?

Post by GiveMeABreak »

I agree that they need to find out what went wrong if that is even possible, but it will never change my opinion of autonomous vehicles for the reasons I stated.

Assistive technology may have a role to play for example where a driver becomes unconscious at the wheel where the vehicle may be brought to a stop and an emergency call made with location info, but that is about as far as I would want it to go.
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Re: Electric Vehicles: What have you spotted?

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Re: Electric Vehicles: What have you spotted?

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Consider the fact that almost all airliners fly using autopilots, and can (to a degree) take off and land in most foreseeable conditions. It reminds me of a joke I heard about a new passenger aeroplane that had an unusual cockpit crew requirement. It had a pilot and a large dog. The job of the pilot was to feed the dog. The job of the dog was to stop the pilot playing with the controls!
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Re: Electric Vehicles: What have you spotted?

Post by GiveMeABreak »

So the Uber vehicle was speeding, doing 38 in a 35 according to that second article. We are often told the difference a few MPH can make between life and death. Why was it even speeding to start with?
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Re: Electric Vehicles: What have you spotted?

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GiveMeABreak wrote: 20 Mar 2018, 10:10 So the Uber vehicle was speeding, doing 38 in a 35 according to that second article. We are often told the difference a few MPH can make between life and death. Why was it even speeding to start with?

Good question on the speeding, but would a human driver have also been doing 38 instead of 35 ? Not to excuse it, but I'd say a human driver may have been going even faster again judging by all the roads I drive on...
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Re: Electric Vehicles: What have you spotted?

Post by GiveMeABreak »

Hell Razor5543 wrote: 20 Mar 2018, 10:02 Consider the fact that almost all airliners fly using autopilots, and can (to a degree) take off and land in most foreseeable conditions. It reminds me of a joke I heard about a new passenger aeroplane that had an unusual cockpit crew requirement. It had a pilot and a large dog. The job of the pilot was to feed the dog. The job of the dog was to stop the pilot playing with the controls!
Apart from the fact that there are always a pilot and co-pilot on these passenger aircraft, and crashes aside, it is a completely different scenario and not comparable. Roads have far more activity, bikes,cars, pedestrians, animals, debris, nutters and the like - and that is simply why they will never be able to account for human awareness and the ‘feel’ of a situation.
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Re: Electric Vehicles: What have you spotted?

Post by GiveMeABreak »

Mandrake wrote: 20 Mar 2018, 10:15
GiveMeABreak wrote: 20 Mar 2018, 10:10 So the Uber vehicle was speeding, doing 38 in a 35 according to that second article. We are often told the difference a few MPH can make between life and death. Why was it even speeding to start with?

Good question on the speeding, but would a human driver have also been doing 38 instead of 35 ? Not to excuse it, but I'd say a human driver may have been going even faster again judging by all the roads I drive on...
That is of course very true, as free will comes into it Simon and we have over cautious drivers as well as the psychos. But how this car was allowed to speed is what I’d like to know.
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Re: Electric Vehicles: What have you spotted?

Post by Hell Razor5543 »

I think that the designers of self driving vehicles are trying to accept too much data at a time. They have the electronics looking at everything all of the time. I cannot start to imagine how much data this is to accept and collate. Everything is trying to get the attention of the systems all of the time. For example, the systems are constantly looking in the rear view mirrors. According to the Highway Code human drivers should check the mirrors 12 times a minute (which works out as once every 5 seconds). Competent drivers are checking everything in a rotation cycle, with the majority of their attention being on the road ahead. If something then grabs their attention (such as the sight of flashing blue lights in the distance) they will focus on it for a moment or two, evaluate the situation (and how it affects them), and make the relevant adjustments. Until the blue lights are no longer an issue they (and their situation) will be in the forefront of the drivers' mind, but not to the point where nothing else matters.

This next bit may not seem relevant, but I think it is. In one of Isaac Asimovs' stories there was a new design of robot. There actually were six robots as a team, one in charge and the other five were workers. The system was being tested (these were a mining team), but there was a problem. Whenever a crisis arose (such as a ceiling collapse) the team would act erratically. They, effectively, started to dance. Anyway, to cut a long story short, one of the trouble shooters sent to sort the situation out cracked the problem. When these crises occurred the team leader tried to handle the situation, but then got overwhelmed with information overload, and started to twiddle his thumbs. Only when the information overload was removed could the team get back to work.

So long as there is sufficient capacity to handle an unforeseeable situation autonomous vehicles should be safe. However, should there be insufficient capacity the vehicle could, effectively, freeze should a crisis occur.
Last edited by Hell Razor5543 on 21 Mar 2018, 10:19, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Electric Vehicles: What have you spotted?

Post by MikeT »

The news of the Arizona accident (which I believe is at least the third reported autonomous vehicle accident to date) chillingly reminds me of our gummints budget speech last autumn where they lauded themselves of the aim to become "global leaders" in automation (a bit late methinks).

It concerns me because, first off the plan was to throw loads of money (which we apparently don't have but "it's good for the economy") at duplicating other country's R&D (also known as a resource-hungry game of try it and see). Second was to de-regulate the laws (this is the scarey part if Grenfell is anything to go by) that protect on us on the roads against automated interferences - though, de-regulation will have to be third on the list as they first need to successfully negotiate brexit.
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Re: Electric Vehicles: What have you spotted?

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

GiveMeABreak wrote: 20 Mar 2018, 10:18
Mandrake wrote: 20 Mar 2018, 10:15
GiveMeABreak wrote: 20 Mar 2018, 10:10 So the Uber vehicle was speeding, doing 38 in a 35 according to that second article. We are often told the difference a few MPH can make between life and death. Why was it even speeding to start with?

Good question on the speeding, but would a human driver have also been doing 38 instead of 35 ? Not to excuse it, but I'd say a human driver may have been going even faster again judging by all the roads I drive on...
That is of course very true, as free will comes into it Simon and we have over cautious drivers as well as the psychos. But how this car was allowed to speed is what I’d like to know.


This could be an explanation ( or equally likely internet BS) if the UBER "driverless" cab was using either out of date road speed limit information, or indeed if the speed limit was in fact 45mph.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/1714 ... ult-police
The vehicle was traveling 38 mph, though it is unclear whether that was above or below the speed limit. (Police said the speed limit was 35 mph, but a Google Street View shot of the roadway taken last July shows a speed limit of 45 mph along that stretch of road.)
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Re: Electric Vehicles: What have you spotted?

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Yes someone on speakev took the time to analyse the area of the accident on google street view and it is indeed a 45mph zone - at least at the time the street view images were taken - of course that may have changed since then.
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Re: Electric Vehicles: What have you spotted?

Post by Hell Razor5543 »

If the local authorities had changed the speed limit and had not clearly published this (and I don't mean street signs) it is possible that the Uber programmers were relying upon Sat Nav software to inform the car what the speed limit was (and if the Sat Nav software developers were not aware of the change then their package would still 'believe' the speed limit was 45MPH). I KNOW I have driven through an area where the Sat Nav software 'believes' the limit to be 40MPH but had been dropped to 30MPH. I also know that the Sat Nav companies have a disclaimer that says something along the lines that it is the drivers' responsibility to observe the speed limits, but how does this apply to driverless vehicles? If these vehicles ARE going to be commonplace the relevant authorities are going to HAVE to inform the Sat Nav companies of changes to speed limits before they occur, so that the software can be updated in time to reflect the changes (and this will have to be for ALL changes, not just the permanent ones, so that when there are road works where there are speed restrictions all Sat Nav software packages are 'aware' of this).
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Re: Electric Vehicles: What have you spotted?

Post by Hell Razor5543 »

GiveMeABreak wrote: 20 Mar 2018, 10:16
Hell Razor5543 wrote: 20 Mar 2018, 10:02 Consider the fact that almost all airliners fly using autopilots, and can (to a degree) take off and land in most foreseeable conditions. It reminds me of a joke I heard about a new passenger aeroplane that had an unusual cockpit crew requirement. It had a pilot and a large dog. The job of the pilot was to feed the dog. The job of the dog was to stop the pilot playing with the controls!
Apart from the fact that there are always a pilot and co-pilot on these passenger aircraft, and crashes aside, it is a completely different scenario and not comparable. Roads have far more activity, bikes,cars, pedestrians, animals, debris, nutters and the like - and that is simply why they will never be able to account for human awareness and the ‘feel’ of a situation.

I agree that the scenarios are different, but people can and do accept (at a distance) vehicles that can control themselves. It is when it is 'up close and personal' that people start objecting; Nimbyism!
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Re: Electric Vehicles: What have you spotted?

Post by GiveMeABreak »

I seriously doubt whether they rely on the same Sat Nav maps the rest of us have to use - they are too flawed in many regards. I suspect, certainly on the test routes, that they have done their own mapping - as they are unlikely to risk their reputation (such as it is) on potentially dodgy map data and end up in the local lake...
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