Yeah. I'm reminded of a story out of Reagan National Airport 10-15 years ago, when the single controller in the tower fell asleep overnight. Sounds bad, right? Except that they cannot take a book or music or anything else. They're alone at night because traffic is so light. Basically, they're supposed to sit there all night, alone, on alert, doing nothing other than waiting for an occasional plane to arrive. It's insane to think anyone could be able to do that without falling asleep sooner or later.

For cars, yeah - when I'm driving, my attention is fully on the car and my environment. If the car is driving, my attention is going to wander, and if it needs me to pop back into driving mode, that switch is going to take a moment or two. This is just human nature.

Oh and you know what's even better? Because we're all relying on our cars to do the driving most of the time, we'll all get worse at actually driving, so when we are called upon in that emergency...it might not go very well, even if we do mode switch successfully instantly.

Driving a modern car has opened my eyes to how far off truly autonomous cars really are.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Autonomous cars are probably closer than you think. It's a hard problem, and half-assery won't cut it, but others' failures aren't necessarily indicative of an inability to succeed.

[–] limelight79@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe. But I just think about the myriad of driving situations I regularly encounter, and the sheer amount of logic required to deal with it. Construction. Debris in the road. Cyclists. Deer. Snow. Rain. Road closures.

Malfunctioning traffic lights - just yesterday we got caught by a traffic light that wasn't giving the left-turn arrow, backing up traffic quite a bit. We were able to change course and work around it and still make our appointment on time, but how long would an autonomous vehicle sit and wait that situation out? Will an autonomous vehicle be able to safely make a left turn against traffic with only a standard green signal (no arrow)? Or would it be stuck waiting for an arrow that never comes? In theory, it could do it, but the reality seems a very long way off.

I can see it possibly working on highways, and certainly that is the primary focus now, but even then there are weird things that happen, like crashes, construction, and debris on the road.

If the roads were rebuilt with some sort of "track" (an electronic track, I mean, not a railroad track) that the cars could use, then the problem becomes much easier for the car (though you still have random variables). Of course, the problem with that is rebuilding the roads to have that track. That alone would take decades of work.

I suspect human driving is going to be around for a very long time, even if, say, highways can be handled autonomously.

I could be wrong, and if it does happen, then I'll be wrong. But I also recall being told when I was 8 or 10 that by the time I turned 16, I'd just tell the car where to go and it would do it. Now I'm closing in on 50 and it's STILL a long way off.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Well, the good news is that there are a lot of clever people already thinking about the same things you are, the necessary prerequisite technology actually now exists, and there are several companies actively working on it and seeing success.