Self-driving cars
I have one. Only not the kind you’re thinking of. Got the wife a new Earthfucker and it’s replete with all manner of features to assist the driver. Some of these features are pretty cool. Most of them are annoying. On the cool side is the back up camera graphic that can project where the vehicle will end up if you keep the steering wheel where it’s at. This has proven handy for parking the large thing in tight spots. It also has a light on the mirror that lights up if someone is to your left or right. This is also handy, since the large thing has tiny mirrors.
As to the annoying features, it has a mode it goes into for descending steep inclines. This will cause the vehicle to use a lower gear and brake on its own. It will also brake on its own if it senses you’re approaching something too quickly. And, the worst of all, it will beep and the seat will vibrate alerting you to all this. So, when you pull into your garage, all these damn things go off at once. Quite the nuisance. Fortunately, I was able to disable the vibrating and the beeping.
Not to be a fuddy duddy, but it’s the driver’s job to drive the car. Not the computer’s. I like all the features that provide me with information, such as the camera and lights when someone might be in the blind spot. But the actual driving of the vehicle is not something I want a computer to do.
November 17th, 2016 at 7:44 pm
And as a computer network on wheels, it is hackable, and subject to other glitches for which computers are designed.
Eventually, someone, thinking “outside the box”, will come up with an all-analog vehicle, carburetor-fed, naturally aspirated, which will sell for half the price, do all the same work, and have no problems that can’t be fixed by the somewhat savvy teenager. This concept will be patented, and start a long-overdue revolution in manufacturing. When that happens, computer technicians will form an international union and will lobby for restrictions, licensing and sanctions against all things not having computer chips in them. It will eventually exceed the numbers and influence of the teamster�s union and boiler-makers� and pipe-fitters� unions combined, and will ultimately fail in its objectives anyway. That is, if non-computerized vehicles aren’t outlawed altogether, which is also likely.
November 17th, 2016 at 8:16 pm
These things need a TWR, and the ability to fire chaff and flares…
November 17th, 2016 at 10:15 pm
We are 10 years from legislation that will outlaw human driving on public roads.
November 17th, 2016 at 10:50 pm
They’re already dangerous. I’m familiar with the auto breaking when there’s another car in front, and it doesn’t take into account when the road curves in front. Cars turning in front of me but keeping to the same lanes (road curves), the car thinks someone just pulled in front and OMG I’m going 65 so it breaks… with no one in my lane.
So yeah. Fucks with your driving.
November 17th, 2016 at 11:47 pm
Either you miss typed, or your truck uses a lower guy at times.
November 18th, 2016 at 7:35 am
@Dead Jim – If your car is constantly “breaking” are the repairs covered by the manufacturer’s warranty?
November 18th, 2016 at 10:10 am
Those features that would seem useful only if a complete and total idiot were driving the car, a person unable to even notice things like stopped cars in front of your vehicle? Those features are there for a reason, and that reason may not be you, but it is very likely someone (lotsa someones) with whom you share the road daily.
Rather than mandating competence, the engineers and regulators are designing for incompetence. Of which we shall get more and more, in all aspects of life, as such regulation and design proliferates.
I, for one, miss my old hot air popcorn maker, for example. Hard to find one that isn’t safety regulated into uselessness these days.
November 18th, 2016 at 11:53 am
Agreed. The wife and I just bought a 2016 Mazda CX-5 Grand Touring. When I test drove the one with the “tech package”, I though I was somehow transported to Las Vegas and was sitting at a slot machine that was paying out. I started looking for cocktail waitresses.
The back up cam is great. Blind spot assist is ok. Autonomous breaking and the other “Tech Package” do-dad bells and whistles and lights and gadgets? Not so much. Very distracting. Went with the one without the “tech package”. Saved $1700 and still have the pleasurable experience of, you know, driving my own vehicle.
November 18th, 2016 at 1:50 pm
“We are 10 years from legislation that will outlaw human driving on public roads.”
It’s for the children ™
November 18th, 2016 at 2:25 pm
I don’t even like cruise control.
November 18th, 2016 at 3:00 pm
Hmmmmm…..I wonder if that ‘vibrating safety seat’ ain’t what you think it’s for…….
November 18th, 2016 at 3:19 pm
I just bought a Mazda 3 Grand Touring with… wait for it… a MANUAL Transmission! Try driving that AI scum!
I love actually driving it.
November 18th, 2016 at 5:08 pm
Of course, anytime we hop in a car and drive, we’re participating in a gigantic, century-old+ government program. That government gets involved is, well, the whole point of the program.
November 18th, 2016 at 5:14 pm
The pre-collision system on my 3 year old vehicle works very well, I have no complaints. However in certain conditions going downhill, it COULD interpret a steel road joint or plate in the road surface as an obstacle or vehicle in the path of travel. Thus tightening up and locking your seat belts, activating your brakes, lighting up your display with pcs warnings and audible buzzing indications.
Just received notice that a fix is available and I’m to take it back to the dealer for the install.
November 18th, 2016 at 7:25 pm
Lyle, all that analog wouldn’t meet cafe standards – so it’s effectively illegal already.
November 18th, 2016 at 7:27 pm
You know; the Progressives have wanted us all on light rail for a century. They’re perennially fascinated with getting people on trains, en masse. The self-driving car is their backdoor way of achieving essentially the same thing, progressively.
November 18th, 2016 at 7:30 pm
Just waiting for the lazy/bug ridden programming to reveal itself.
November 18th, 2016 at 8:57 pm
Lyle,
we HAD light rail a century ago. Not long after, Standard Oil, among other automotive centered businesses, worked hard to drive them out of existence. Very few survived their attention. Unfortunately, it is not feasible to retrofit them where they used to run, and incredibly expensive to attempt.
Mostly they put them where they aren’t needed, but have space to fit. Progressives aren’t noted for logic. “If you build it, the riders will come!” Yeah, no they won’t. Money losers, all.
November 19th, 2016 at 9:30 am
I wonder how long it will take for carjackers to recognize those car models with auto-braking and use it to their advantage. Step off the curb and immobilize the car. AFAIK, there’s no driver-enabled override.
November 19th, 2016 at 3:25 pm
There is, however, the ninnyhammer in the next car who is busy texting. Nothing is going to stop that person from being a ninny. But it’d be nice if their car stopped them drifting left into my car, or ramming me from behind.
November 19th, 2016 at 9:46 pm
That EMP/CME just cannot come too soon … and given that our magnetic field is weakening with expected polar shift, it won’t take a very big one to turn all those ones and zeros into soft ‘n brown.
November 20th, 2016 at 9:27 pm
Hillary Clinton will NEVER be president of the United States.
You’re welcome.
November 20th, 2016 at 10:44 pm
Last year a older lady got stuck on the hill in front of my house. neighbor and I were trying to get her moving, “Ma’am, just keep the wheels straight one you start moving and you should be ok.” And every time she started moving started steering into the lane and stuck again.
Except realized she wasn’t turning the wheel: the damned autosteer she didn’t even know was there(son had just bought her the car), every time a wheel slipped, went into ‘skid control’ and tried to steer into it, and got her stuck again.
Finally had to have her back down a bit and make a u-turn so she could drive down the slope.
November 23rd, 2016 at 9:23 am
Basic tenent: follow the money. Lawyers, politicians and squeaky wheels that are nevertheless well-greased. Otherwise we wouldn’t even have horns or seatbelts.