![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Skeptical of automated driving
Feb. 9th, 2018 10:13 pmWhen I lived in the US and had more money I enjoyed driving a sports car. ( It was not outrageous environmentally and ) it felt decidedly safer: with greater ability to change my speed and direction on a dime I had far more options for responding to the unexpected which made defensive driving much more pleasant.
In considering what cars may be in my future I have wondered about the hype around driverless cars. For them to cope with anything like current roads the artificial intelligence problems seem very tough to me: in my own driving I am often addressing unexpected situations by applying much flexible thinking with a lot of background knowledge. Driverless cars also have a public relations issue in that the first few people that they kill will cause very large news headlines in comparison with the routine road deaths that society lives with rather more quietly. I anticipate that human drivers will be needed for some time yet.
However, I also fear semi-assistance in driving. Even in routine highway driving I have had a ladder fall across my lane from a truck ahead. Back with our four-wheel-drive cars in Ohio, that drive was under manual control: I specifically avoided buying cars that switch from two-wheel to four-wheel drive when detecting trouble: I am comfortable with skids in front-wheel-drive cars but I do not want to try dealing with them in a car that qualitatively changes its handling unbidden. Similarly, if I am to avert sudden disaster when automated driving assistance realizes that it needs to abruptly abort back to manual control then I do not want that to be when I have but passing awareness of how the car is currently handling and how the traffic around me is positioned and behaving. I expect that having to remain sufficiently attentive while the car drives for me would be far more taxing than simply doing the driving myself.
As a side note, I do not eschew cruise control: ( it is not about to thrust me from daydream to panic. )
In considering what cars may be in my future I have wondered about the hype around driverless cars. For them to cope with anything like current roads the artificial intelligence problems seem very tough to me: in my own driving I am often addressing unexpected situations by applying much flexible thinking with a lot of background knowledge. Driverless cars also have a public relations issue in that the first few people that they kill will cause very large news headlines in comparison with the routine road deaths that society lives with rather more quietly. I anticipate that human drivers will be needed for some time yet.
However, I also fear semi-assistance in driving. Even in routine highway driving I have had a ladder fall across my lane from a truck ahead. Back with our four-wheel-drive cars in Ohio, that drive was under manual control: I specifically avoided buying cars that switch from two-wheel to four-wheel drive when detecting trouble: I am comfortable with skids in front-wheel-drive cars but I do not want to try dealing with them in a car that qualitatively changes its handling unbidden. Similarly, if I am to avert sudden disaster when automated driving assistance realizes that it needs to abruptly abort back to manual control then I do not want that to be when I have but passing awareness of how the car is currently handling and how the traffic around me is positioned and behaving. I expect that having to remain sufficiently attentive while the car drives for me would be far more taxing than simply doing the driving myself.
As a side note, I do not eschew cruise control: ( it is not about to thrust me from daydream to panic. )
