Thought on Autonomous Vehicle Driving in Australia
You may have thought that autonomous driving vehicles are only found in other countries, like the USA (Tesla specifically), but I can assure you they are out there on the M1, and other busy high speed roads, in Australia everyday. This does not get much media coverage. I have endured a pretty stressful trip on the M1, at night, in a high end BMW M5, in which much if the trip was under autonomous control of the vehicles systems. My son--in-law was the monitoring driver (hands off).
I have heard from another family member ( the owner if a high end Mercedes) who also has autonomous driving mode, who claims he feels much safer hauling his kids around on these high speed roads with the cars system in control. His argument hinges on the cars ability to react being faster than his, and it cannot be distracted.
What are your thoughts on the use of these autonomous driving systems, in high speed situations on our roads?
I love the idea...I wonder how they would manage the roads around here?
Probably more money than I will spend on a car..unless it becomes a necessity, which can't be far off...unless I am in the red car I think driving is such a waste of my time...like I have to go to town today so say good bye to at least three hours...
Alex
I thought it was illegal to use an "autonomous" vehicle on our roads.
Well, perhaps it is, but the manufacturers are selling cars in Australia with the capability, and have not disabled the feature. Maybe it falls on the driver to just not use it, but there are plenty of confused people. Maybe dealships are just not mentioning it, or using the "Nudge, nudge, wink, wink" signalling to mask it.
How do these things handle off road, ya know a trip to the cape for instance, and it gets to a river crossing r a bog hole full of mud and the computer decides it is to deep, or slippery how dose that work.
I am with Hans a waste of time in my book I would rather be in control and cross that river to deep or not, that is the fun and skill needed for a real Australian adventure.
There is (allegedly) a legal case going on at the moment where a car hit a pedestrian. The driver is claiming they are not at fault because the car was in autonomous mode at the time, and it should have responded in time.
So who is at fault? The driver? The car dealer for selling the car? The car manufacturer? The company that made the radar/lidar/sonar system? The programmer who wrote the object detection code for the "radar"?
I'd much, much rather see more resources spent on better driver training.
I dont know..you guys are presented with the best thing ever and all you can do is pass judgement without any personal experience...
Here is an idea...before you form an opinion why not actually get some evidence that either supports your knee jerk opinion or shows it to be unfounded.
And seriously commenting on a legal case without knowing all the facts never works.
Further study history and observe how the mob has made these types of judgements only to be looked back upon as rather silly.
Further do you think for one moment any car manufacture will offer a product that is going to bring countless legal suits...
There are plenty of cars on the road with basic, limited autonomous capabilities for highway driving. The systems are generally described as "driver aids" or "safety systems", rather than "self-driving". Some are woeful, and some are very good.
My 2021 Hyundai i30 and 2022 Hyundai Ioniq both have Lane Following Assist, Adaptive Cruise Control, and Autonomous Emergency Braking. In practice, it means I can set my desired cruising speed on the highway, and the car will drive itself, staying in the centre of the lane, and maintaining a safe distance to the car ahead. They will slow down to a standstill if necessary, without any trouble or fuss. I have to keep my hands on the wheel, but I don't have to input any steering effort. If I take my hands off the wheel for 5 seconds or so, the car will beep at me, and after a few more seconds, it will disable the automatic driving aids. (I've only ever tested this when I was alone on an empty multi-lane highway, just to see what happens.) In practice, I always have my hands resting lightly on the wheel, and remain alert and in control. I tend to find that my hands are following the car's self-steering round a bend, as much or more than I'm steering it - it sort of feels like the car is reading my mind as to how to negotiate the curve.
They are far and away the most relaxing highway driving cars I've ever owned. The "self-driving" aids are the best new car technology for many years, and I look forward to the next generation of cars with even more sophisticated systems - I'll use all of the systems available to me as the technology advances. I suspect I will gradually relinquish more and more control to the autonomous vehicles as they improve, until one day I'll discover my car really is driving itself!
I dont know..you guys are presented with the best thing ever and all you can do is pass judgement without any personal experience...
Here is an idea...before you form an opinion why not actually get some evidence that either supports your knee jerk opinion or shows it to be unfounded.
And seriously commenting on a legal case without knowing all the facts never works.
Further study history and observe how the mob has made these types of judgements only to be looked back upon as rather silly.
Further do you think for one moment any car manufacture will offer a product that is going to bring countless legal suits...
Alex
How about you let people have an opinion regardless of whether if it is based on experience or not. For my own reasons I do not welcome fully Autonomous vehicles .. I think in some respects technology makes the human race stupid. My opinion if you dont like it .. too bad.
How about you let people have an opinion regardless of whether if it is based on experience or not. For my own reasons I do not welcome fully Autonomous vehicles .. I think in some respects technology makes the human race stupid. My opinion if you dont like it .. too bad.
Can't wait for it to be rolled out. Too many stupid drivers on the road. Having AI control cars will be better. Mistakes will be made, I'm sure, but I bet not to the extent of what happens now.
I really like the idea of driverless cars that could communicate with each other and eliminate several very expensive factors -
traffic lights , installation runs from 500k to 5million plus... the annual 24/7 call out cost for a set of lights is also very high...
Eliminate the stop/go cycle which adds greatly to the carbon emissions of every journey.
Reduce hospital admissions - while 1,200 people die on the roads, 40,000 people are hospitalised of which 10,000 are rated as "high level of threat to life" injuries. That is a lot of serious long term carnage every year... *
However I think the best use for autonomous cars is to have the cars drive themselves out of the CBD after the daily commute. You could open up a lot of additional business and residential space if you could refurbished carparks into buildings. Biggest waste of a car is the commute to leave them close by for 8 hours a day, no reason why the car couldn't go a short distance out and park for the day and be called back on demand. A small and simple change that still allows people to drive recklessly but could help our cities a lot.
But the fears of horseless carriages seems to be reborn for driverless carriages, its not like we have track records that would be hard to beat in regards to safety.
.....
However I think the best use for autonomous cars is to have the cars drive themselves out of the CBD after the daily commute. You could open up a lot of additional business and residential space if you could refurbished carparks into buildings. Biggest waste of a car is the commute to leave them close by for 8 hours a day, no reason why the car couldn't go a short distance out and park for the day and be called back on demand. A small and simple change that still allows people to drive recklessly but could help our cities a lot....
Trouble is Councils are pushing to remove cars from the CBD's.
I see merit in Autonomous Vehicles for freeway driving.
Question. Would people feel comfortable with Fully Autonomous Aircraft, remove the pilot entirely?
I really don't know why we dont have fully Autonomous Trains.
Given the kind of driving I see on the motorway regularly, I can’t wait until the computers are driving
What are the 3 biggest killers on our roads, so we’re told?
1. Speed
2. Alcohol
3. Fatigue
The computer won’t speed, unless it’s told to, it won’t drink when it shouldn’t and it won’t get tired. And with any luck, it won’t get angry at tailgaters and break check…and cause more accidents
Trouble is Councils are pushing to remove cars from the CBD's.
I see merit in Autonomous Vehicles for freeway driving.
Question. Would people feel comfortable with Fully Autonomous Aircraft, remove the pilot entirely?
I really don't know why we dont have fully Autonomous Trains.
Hans, most of the most modern aircraft are already fully autonomous. Capable of taking off on auto pilot, navigating the route and around weather, and landing using the airport ILS systems. Mostly pilots just monitor the AI. There has been discussion of reducing airline cockpit crews to just a single pilot. On long haul flights over oceans airlines are still required to carry multiple crews, but many of these folks never touch the controls, it's a monitoring function, but staffing is determined by flight time regulations for crew rest periods. AI does not get tired.
I drive a Tesla S and have for about three years. I like the car but its so called Full Self Driving is not any such thing. It is not approved to be used in that way anywhere in the world.
It is not good reasoning to note that human drivers make mistakes, of course they do, and conclude that an automated system will not, that has to be proven not assumed.
It has yet to be proved to the satisfaction of authorities anywhere that any car manufacturer can supply such a system. A fully automated system is Class 5, most today are Class 2, with Germany having approved a Mercedes as Class 3 in restricted circumstances. There is a long way to go despite a great deal of money having been spent by major companies including Google and Apple. It may happen one day but it has not happened yet.
Any Australian driver not monitoring the vehicle and being ready to take over in an instant might be well advised to get a legal opinion about his liability. As it stands the driver is responsible seems tot be the clear view.
No manufacturer is close to being able to demonstrate an automated system for the general driving case. What they have achieved is the car to be able to manage the driving in particular cases such as well behaved freeway traffic.
To get an idea of the state of the art I suggest having a look at
Like me most owners love their Teslas but opinion on self driving is far from universal approval. The same situation appears to exist with other manufacturers but for now there are far more Teslas out there on Australian roads.
I reckon autonomous cars are going to be a legal minefield for the reasons others have given above and the current "Assistive" systems still very much so. When it goes pear shaped (And it still does) who is responsible? The tech needs to be bullet proof and the legal quandaries sorted first. I detest the Tesla habit of beta testing safety critical functions by selling them to anyone who wants to buy it (Knowing that what they can supply here is limited compared to the US market)
I have driven a few cars with semi autonomous "assist" features like radar cruise and lane keeping assist, the only ones I would give you money for are the radar cruise in my wifes Everest (Which works a lot better than others I have used) the cross traffic alert when reversing which is useful as it will throw an audible alarm and flash a direction on the screen for instance when you are reversing out of a parking spot, before you can physically see the car coming.
Autonomous braking is a maybe, anyone can get caught out by glancing in a mirror just when the iced up junkie passes you on the footpath then stops dead in front of you to punish you for not going over the speed limit. That one literally happened to me in a work kia and I was braking hard before it stopped beeping and started braking for itself, but another moment looking in the mirror and it may well have saved my bacon. But then the same Kia reacts horribly to cars travelling slowly or stopped in front of you but turning off the road, any competent human can see that they would be long gone before you arrive but the car would respond with a panic stop, it nearly got me rear ended a number of times. It's radar cruise was mostly OK but responded very badly to a car passing you and pulling in a little close in front (90% of cars passing you on a multi lane freeway in other words) as it would brake hard then speed up again as the gap opened up, for a car that would have had an appropriate gap in a second or so anyway. The Everest would generally never do more than moderate the power a little until the gap opened up. The Kia trained you to jump on the accelerator when a car cut in close in front of you instead of hovering over the brake.
The less said about all the lane keep assist systems I have experienced to date the better. Safe to say that all I have used so far were quickly turned off. Ditto speed sign recognition, I am glad the Everest just flashes a symbol at you on the dash when it reckons you have missed a speed change as every "40 at school times" sign has it waving it's arms around to get your attention while you do 60 in a 60 zone, and every "60 ahead" or similar speed change warning sign has it flashing at you as though the speed limit has already changed. The Everest is the previous gen one so it may be better in the current car. I would hate to have it actually changing the cruise control set speed instead of just flashing a symbol at you.
Until autonomous cars can be a 100% hands off, have a nap while it takes you home type of experience I am not interested at all, and I would still want a weekender that is actually designed to let you enjoy the experience of driving instead of being white goods on wheels.
I know people who are too frightened to brake hard enough to bring on ABS in a panic stop, these are likely to be the people most attracted to the type of "Mostly" autonomous driving that Tesla and others offer overseas, imagine how they are likely to react when the car lets out a couple of beeps and suddenly dumps control back in their lap for something it can't cope with which needs an immediate decision and action!
I have learnt to drive defensively - anticipating the other driver by expecting the worst. The other driver is something an autonomous vehicle must deal with better than a human driver can. But can it. Some of the aggressive, dangerous, stupid stuff you see all the time must be a challenge for the AV. And speed limits change all the time, particularly around roadworks. An AV will somehow have to be aware but that, too, will be a struggle.
I can see a use for AVs on long distance freight haulage - in fact, I believe it will revolutionise the industry in many ways. But the idiots of this world will always find a way to screw it up.
How about you let people have an opinion regardless of whether if it is based on experience or not. For my own reasons I do not welcome fully Autonomous vehicles .. I think in some respects technology makes the human race stupid. My opinion if you dont like it .. too bad.
The Metro has been operating with driverless trains
