From Lincoln west on you could put a laser level on I-80. At least in Nevada you can see hills.
Done many a ski trip to Colorado. Nebraska is the worst. Iowa is bad, Kansas is worse. But Nebraska? It is a special level of boring. Driving that at 5 am when the driver shift changes and you’ve been sleeping in the back? Bring the loud music and caffeine.
I think I remember my parents once talking about driving thru Kansas and how dull it was. One thing with Nevada, I think it was 110 or something when we went thru there.
I have been told the worst drive is Reno to Salt Lake City, but we didn’t go that far.
Just because you understand the danger of one scenario and not the other doesn’t make one safer. At least with my scenario you only risk yourself. In the other, it’s just the risk of others…Probably people who haven’t seen a semi meet an elk at 55 mph.
Under your logic Amazon drones should just deliver cars.
I found this to be an interesting article (and I had never seen the NVIDIA car AI demonstration video before either):
Honestly Nevada strikes me as much like the front range and scrublands of Colorado. There are long stretches of pretty boring, relative, terrain, but even that was a welcome distraction to the utter tedium of corn, corn, corn, corn, oh god all I see is corn, Nebraska.
Granted my own personal preferences and biases weigh heavily. I’d rather drive through the high desert of Nevada, or New Mexico or Arizona then Nebraska. And I’ve done them all. But, that said, to someone from the west who isn’t already surrounded by corn for hundreds of miles, you may not come to the same conclusion ;)
Cool video that’s making the rounds today. A Tesla autopilot reacting to what’s going on two cars ahead of the driver, so it brakes to avoid an accident before it occurs.
After that video I came across the following Tesla self driving demonstration:
It’s interesting for both how good and not good it is. There are quite a few times when it just stops in the middle of the road (sometimes for no reason). It’s hard to tell how long it stops for since the time is sped up but it’s still interesting.
Unfortunately, the video won’t play anymore. I guess someone took it down.
This happened in the Netherlands?
The guy has it really together, insisting on checking behind them to make sure traffic stopped and then calling.
Watch that SUV roll after getting rear ended, and then ask yourself if buying one for your 16 year old really makes them at all safer. I hate when people buy big, unwieldy vehicles for teens because they’re trying to keep them safe. A mid-sized sedan is perfect for that.
If you want something safe, get em a Volvo.
You can’t roll them and if they get hit you’ll probably be okay.
I’ll never understand why parents hand young drivers those SUVs. The SUVs are the ones I see in the most single car accidents, especially in ditches and rolled during the winter.
With the speed in the video, I am not sure a semi could have stopped soon enough to avoid an accident even if the system did recognize it would come. Predicting is… interesting. If I was behind someone stopping and starting like that I would assume the person can’t see.
Look at all the armchair quarterbacking in this thread based on how people with no background in the technology are predicting liability, legal matters and philosophical life and death decisions. Now imagine a nation full of judges and lawyers with even less qualifications to discuss this than us here, making contradictory laws, regulations and rulings. It’s gonna be popcorn time!
I think the PR and legal issues with autonomous cars are going to be way more fun than the tech itself. Tesla is doing a great PR job, I think. They may win or lose this war themselves. Uber, Tesla and Google better get their lobbying ducks in order. Who specializes in autonomous robot liability law, anyway? No one, that’s who. Whole new field.
What an awesome time to be alive!
When I commute in the morning with my self driving car, this is how I’ll do it. This guy is way ahead of the game:
driverless cars certainly aren’t ready for canadian/winter roads.
no background in law, compliance and ethics you mean?
the tech industry is pumping out tech with barely a nod to legal and ethical considerations, or the impact on society of what they have invented.
i.e Donald Trumps Twitter account.
i.e Employment status and protections for Uber drivers
etc etc
Neither of those have anything to do with technology? I know Uber is seen as a tech company, but they are mostly just using old tech to make a new business model - the “tech” bit of their company is as involved as most free apps. Their innovations were about process, which included treating the drivers as part-time contractors. Shady business practices are always around - it has nothing to do with “pumping out tech”. As for Twitter, snark aside, I don’t see how the negative consequences of social media could ever have been avoided prior to the invention. I mean, most people were crediting Twitter with a major role in the Arab Spring, so to say that the rise of fake news and other BS that lead to an unhinged PEOTUS tweet out nuclear threats was caused by not properly considering the legal, ethical, and societal implications of a 10 year old technology is basically just saying nothing should be invented ever. Considering every possible impact of a technology is simply not possible, and even considering or adjusting for the most-obvious known impacts is usually not enough catch the big ones. I’m not sure it’s obvious, even in hindsight, that democratizing information would lead to social ills. The printing press is typically lauded for its positive effects on the advancement of science, literacy and the literary arts, and the overthrow of the old order of bishops and kings, not derided for being the source of tons of religious propaganda, snake oil product sales, and unproven or blatantly false theories of science, politics, or economics.
Ethics is something for politicians to consider and to implement - it’s a collective decision-making about what’s OK for individuals or groups, given the needs of other individuals and groups. It doesn’t need to exist preemptively and it doesn’t need to attempt to head off unforeseen problems. It simply needs to keep up with the ones we do foresee. In this case, I think it’s actually doing a pretty good job getting licensing standards for automated vehicles in place prior to the widespread adoption of those vehicles.
Not exactly road-ready autonomous vehicles, but it’s a step in the right direction. You might see a lot of this sort of thing around airports and such, once the kinks have been worked out.