Driverless Taco, yay or nay?

Once on a long-haul flight I had a brief layover in Frankfurt, just enough time to take the train into town, grab breakfast, and stretch my legs around the historic old city. On that train were the usual morning commuters on their way to work, except I watched this one dude hop off at a stop, grab two bottles of beer, hop back on, and proceed to pound each in succession it as he slowly woke up and prepared for whatever job was waiting for him.

Screw autonomous driving, I only wish that the public transport of my city matches their level of sophistication, someday.


Look at these glorious fuckers, living the dream.

 

But if I hi jack it how will it drive itself?

 

What happens when the self driving car gets BSOD (blue screen of death)?

 

I'm certainly biased as I work for a self driving car company, but I definitely support getting self driving tech on as many vehicles as possible.

Humans suck, a lot, at driving. ~40,000 deaths in the US last year and 1.2 million worldwide, the vast majority of them being preventable collisions caused by humans.

I like the idea of telling my truck to get me out of the city, taking a nap, then manually driving once I'm somewhere interesting.

 

I specifically bought a Tacoma because I liked how it drove. The truck bounce and how the brake and steering provide good feedback.

If I wanted a driverless truck/car it might as well be just a square pod mobile... just sit in and connect up to the wifi. No reason I'd want the Taco driverless or a sports car driverless for that matter.

 

Some accidents are completely unavoidable. I don't care how amazing the programming is. Accidents will ALWAYS happen.

 

An autonomous Taco? No way.

But, am I looking forward to the day of having a truly autonomous, boring EV for long highway cruises? You betcha. My big hope here is that autonomous EVs can hook up in trains while in heavy traffic to improve congestion and trip speeds.

Once the truly autonomous days happen, I hope to still have my Taco and some motorcycles to take out on the good roads. Even now, I will take the back roads versus the interstate if I have the time.

 

Slippery slope. If we take away all things humans are bad at, what are we going to do with ourselves?

 

So far autonomous cars are significantly better than human drivers on average. Of course some will say that they are the best driver in the world, and that's fine, maybe they are better than a driverless car at the moment.

But everyday we all come across a large amount of drivers who should not be behind a wheel, if not the majority of drivers. I would love to see those people in driverless cars.

 

Do things we are good at

 

Also, I want an autonomous taco to drive me to Utah and the Sierras. I wouldn't mind sitting back and getting some work done while my truck takes me to my favorites spots. I will drive when I get there

If Toyota doesn't do it, I'll be getting a Rivian to do it.

 

Is this prius chat? I think I might be on the wrong forum.

 

I'm all for pointless arguing. As this post proves. But.

These threads always descend rapidly into a d*ck-wagging contests. Thread about automatic transmissions? There's always someone who wants to take it as an opportunity to stand on their soapbox and talk about how *they* only drive manual. Wanna talk about cruise control, or worse yet, lane assist? Don't even bother, 200 guys will badger you about that until you regret ever creating an account here. Ask about which RTT to get? Oh shit boy, you done blew it big. You will never hear the end of it. Dozens of blowhards will pontificate endlessly on how stupid the whole idea is, and they grew up with ground tents, and if that's good enough for Jesus it should be good enough for you.

Don't even get me started on jerks like me.

 

Certainly. NHTSA says 94-96% of accidents were caused by human error in 2016-17. I'm all for reducing the human element and making the roads safer.

I also bought a Tacoma because I enjoy how it drives and love taking road trips. That doesn't mean I wouldn't want it to navigate my shitty bay area commute for me.

 

Seems like the responses are what anyone would expect.

If you have a shitty metropolitan commute, driverless is good. I'd agree. Wasting your life in stop and go traffic that could be more energy spent on something else. Maybe read a book or research something new.

Use driverless to handle the boring roadtrip part of travel. I'd also agree. Although I do enjoy the experience at times.

Basically eliminating the most mundane aspects of driving.

Nothing shocking really.

 

How did they arrive at 94-96%? They don't investigate even 2% of all the accidents. The only thing they have to go off of is someone's insurance statement..."That old guy pulled out in front of me and I hit him." Other than that they have no way of knowing what really caused the accident.

Until the whole country is 100% autonomous, human drivers mixed with machines driving will most definitely be crashing. Maybe even more so because a machine is likely to do something a human won't. Like brake at a green light because it thinks something is in front of it.

 

I enjoy the connectivity to a machine and control of a vehicle too much to sit and wait to arrive to where i'm going. If you like your vehicle then driving is an experience. Although, it would be very productive to not have to pay attention to the road ...

 

I think the other factor is our trucks are expensive as is... add even more cool or uncool tech, along with baby in the back seat reminders, and all sorts of other gizmos and no matter how cool the truck is... I'll still be driving my old girl because I can't and don't want to pay 50k+ for a pickup.

 

I love to drive and would hate to give it up, but I can think of a few scenarios where a self-driving car would be rad. I do a lot of long road trips to chase fish and driving 10 hours in one go is pretty frequent, sometimes by myself. After 500 miles of looking at the same sage brush and corn fields and I'm ready to let the truck take over. I'd guess that a lot of folks who have to commute in gridlock feel the same way.

 

Coworker and I thought if you ever have to fly somewhere within say 600-800 miles. It'd be great to hop in the car, set your destination and go to sleep. You can wake up and be at your destination without TSA prodding your starfish.