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Driverless cars are coming!

Discussion in 'Gen 1 Prius Plug-in 2012-2015' started by Jimbo69ny, Sep 26, 2012.

  1. Jimbo69ny

    Jimbo69ny Active Member

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  2. priuskitty

    priuskitty PIP FAN

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  3. Corwyn

    Corwyn Energy Curmudgeon

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    Exactly! Really, if I were designing them, I wouldn't even put seats in. Small, self-driving, light, cheap, unsafe, carts would be ideal for picking up groceries and other errands, and have the benefit of saving all the time normally spent driving. Send 'the car' out to pick up beer. Send 'the car' to the post office. And the roads become safer as well, since these things would be designed with all crumple zones, no passenger to protect, so protect everything else instead. Meanwhile since it is doing all the cargo hauling, passenger cars could be optimized for moving people efficiently and safely.
     
  4. bedrock8x

    bedrock8x Senior Member

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    Wait till it gets into an accident and someone gets hurt.
     
  5. Jimbo69ny

    Jimbo69ny Active Member

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    The article says they have logged 300,000 miles and not one accident.
     
  6. priuskitty

    priuskitty PIP FAN

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    cntrl/alt/delete should fix it
     
  7. Corwyn

    Corwyn Energy Curmudgeon

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    It is pretty clear where liability lies when a self-driving car is at fault in an accident. Would the insurance on a self-driving car thus be much lower? Since Toyota or Google will be the defendant in the court case.

    Around here, a large number of items on the police report are people driving with a suspended license. These are drivers who are so bad that they have had their license revoked, but still need to get to work, so drive anyways. Imagine if we could just require that they have a self-driving car instead. If the concept works at all, these cars will be better drivers than the absolute worst drivers (sort of, by definition). So we would all be safer by cutting off the tail of the bell curve of drivers.
     
  8. CharlesH

    CharlesH CA HOV Decal #5 on former PiP

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    Just pointing out that Google's test driverless car is a Prius.
     
  9. Jimbo69ny

    Jimbo69ny Active Member

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    Added a link to two videos in the first post. I gotta say, it would be a little nerve racking sitting in that test car as it drove itself.
     
  10. ftl

    ftl Explicator

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    Google has at least eight test cars (other sources say a dozen) and most are Prius.
     
  11. Corwyn

    Corwyn Energy Curmudgeon

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    Starting with a Prius makes a lot of sense. You are starting with a drive-by-wire system and just adding automation. Imagine trying to do the same with a 1970s vintage manual transmission, mechanical linkage car.
     
  12. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    glad it's google. if it was microsoft, there would be a crash every day.:p
     
  13. 13Plug

    13Plug Active Member

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    I'm sure the whole reason Google is doing this, is to track you and where you're going your car to serve you better advertising, possibly on the road and one of their driverless rolling billboards LOL
     
  14. John H

    John H Senior Member

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    Considering that some of them are already operating driverless, it's just another incremental step. :)
     
  15. F8L

    F8L Protecting Habitat & AG Lands

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    This should go in the News section.
     
    John Hatchett likes this.
  16. Jimbo69ny

    Jimbo69ny Active Member

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    Im sure there will be purists like many of us who actually enjoy driving. Yet I for one would love to be able to be in the passenger seat reading the news paper while my car drives me to work. Some day the time may come that this is a possibility. Google is such an amazing company! I cant believe they are going to be the ones to forge the way for this awesome technology!
     
  17. priuskitty

    priuskitty PIP FAN

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    and you won't get cited for having an open bottle in your car:D
     
  18. Jimbo69ny

    Jimbo69ny Active Member

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  19. priuskitty

    priuskitty PIP FAN

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    yez?
     
  20. priuskitty

    priuskitty PIP FAN

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    and don't forget......you can text and ride without being cited too!:coffee: