Do you really think these will catch on? My son and I were wondering today if you really will be able to summon your car to pick you up from the theatre, and thinking how useful they would be for the disabled. But no more driving jobs? What are we going to do with all our free time, and will there have to be a Universal Basic Income when there are no longer any ordinary jobs to be had because everything is automated? And is the human race headed for disaster or Utopia?

Last Friday night, Prince Charles delivered a speech at Government House, Brisbane at a reception for his visit to the Commonwealth Games.

A extract of it is below:-


"As more and more clever technologies are developed in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence, it seems to me vital to remember that we ourselves are human beings and not machines and that the dignity of human work and interaction is essential to our psychological wellbeing.

I suspect it is therefore essential to consider very, very carefully the ethical issues around these developments before we end up with machines replacing people, with all the disadvantages and dangers that flow from the law of unintended consequences".

I have my doubts when HRH Chuck starts speaking about 'the dignity of human work' - having had everything done for him for the last sixty years, I'm not convinced he knows what work is.

But equally, I'm not convinced that self driving cars fill any need other than the manufacturers, except for those forbidden by circumstance from driving themselves.

Judging by the M4 and M25 this last Saturday morning, we already have driverless cars. There are lumps of meat behind the wheel, granted, but they were engaged in anything other than driving.

As for leisure time and people being out of work, am I alone in having this sense of deja vu? When I started work, PCs were just finding their way into the workplace (my office had 7 PCs for 6 people and I was the only person who knew how to operate them) and robots were finding their way into car assembly. Exactly the same questions were being asked back then. What are we going to do with all this leisure time? Ha - I’m still waiting for this leisure time to arrive. I visited a BMW factory a couple of years ago and was actually struck by how few robots there were - welding and painting being pretty much the main activities. Humans are incredibly flexible and adaptable. There were lots of mechanical aids in the factory but humans operated them.

The other element that people seem to miss is that work is part of the economic puzzle. You won’t need loads of driverless lorries, buses and taxis if there’s high unemployment - so, in that sense, it’s self-regulating.

I think, like the factory, we may well come to a hybrid of the driverless car - at least in the next 10-20 years. Far more assistance automation (self-parking, distance sensing, auto-braking etc) as standard but the more complex work still left to the nut behind the wheel - unfortunately.

Can't argue with that, Rich, but I do think that with the current state of the art (and the immediate future) such efforts as Tesla's have demonstrated their inability to cope.

It may be that much of the problem is down to the majority of the work being done in the states: generally flat straight wide roads, and even then a poor white line marking has confused the lane follower...

Lane following on a motorway is 'easy'; wait until the same software can handle coming off the motorway behind a rolling police roadblock and diverting through a tiny village only just wide enough for one car against oncoming traffic and a white van parked on the pavement...

Expectation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6RkE2RO80k

Reality:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNi17YLnZpg

And as we have seen in more recent, tragic news, the technology is still far from perfect.

Why is everyone so ready to invest in driverless cars. What are the perceived benefits? I can't see any?

I drive for two hours per day on the A1 four days per week commuting to work. It is boring and tedious and I could be doing something else so a driverless car would be brilliant (I can't use a train/bus because of where I live and where my work is and would add about 2 hours to the commute).

Driving to the pub and having several pints of beer before falling into the back of my car and slurring "Take me home".

Just two examples for me personally. It adds to the value, it doesn't take away the need to drive but it is there if I need it.

Taxi companies and delivery companies can get rid of their biggest expense and on top they can be driven 24x7x52. Vans and lorries not longer need to have wasted space in the cab for a human being, that space could be used for goods instead.

Bus companies can operate services 24x7 with just the need to have someone to coordinate multiple buses (in a similar way to how multiple drones can be operated by a single person).

So many things could be made better.

I already have the crash sensor on my VW and adaptive cruise control, the new VW's have the ability to drive themselves in slow traffic and I think they can also stay in lane as well.

I've come to the conclusion that those who say they want driverless cars because they don't like driving should have their licences taken away from them immediately. I understand the points made by sugerbear and can see the benefit for the commute so don't include that scenario in my statement. Just far too many people on the road who have no desire to drive and are generally very poor at it as a result and they shouldn't expect to have the right to drive.

I think the recent accidents involving the current technology show there is a long way to go before it can be a reality. Planes might have autopilot but they still have two people to take over when needed, and apparently it often is. And that includes landing when there is no chance of other traffic, pedestrians, potholes etc, which cars have to cope with.

Possibly in the future, you will not own a car, but share them. Driverless cars will drop you off at work then it will go off to pick somebody else up, then pick you up later and take you home. Which would mean no need for car parks, just drop off points, you will be sitting in a cabin which somebody has just sat/sneezed/farted in, every car will look the same, so no "Look at my car". and because it will pick you up at a certain time, there will be no more overtime

Is that what you would call a bus?

No more after market parts
No more car care products or accessories
and that's a lot of peoples jobs.

I'm hoping I will be to old to drive if and when this happens.

I don't think I could ever trust a machine to do something so complex. But then, when "horseless carriages" came along people probably said "you won't catch me in one of them thar new fangled machines". And it used to be thought that a human being travelling at 70mph would die.

Also, could travelling in a car actually be more dangerous than it already is? A town the size of Guildford is killed or badly injured in car crashes every year.

I have a friend who is a time traveller from the future. This person has told me that the following things will never become a reality:


Time travel

Teleportation

Star Wars holodeck levels of virtual reality

Me winning the lottery

Driverless cars

But can you believe him, given the contradiction in his first statement?

But I suspect Annie's figures: population of Guildford is around 150,000; but according to the government, around 1700 fatalities and 22,000 serious injuries: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/sy...infographic.pdf

Yet smoking related deaths are estimated at 105,000: http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/risk/tobacco#heading-Zero

And alcohol related deaths? 7,300: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationa...egisteredin2016

And before someone says 'won't you think of the children?' it seems that children are much safer than adults in vehicular incidents: only 3% of the RTA deaths were of children, where you might expect 15-20%, which rather implies that most RTAs kill the driver, rather than pedestrians or passengers. Evolution in action?

Now if you could actually kill the population of Guildford (or Swindon or...) I’d be in favour of that.....

Of course I don't believe him!

I mean I won the lottery yesterday......it was only a couple of quid, but still, it's a win.

This is by all means the new hot potato as discussions go.Looking at as it stands now, technology ain't going to see a sudden changeover to this mode of transport in any much numbers anytime soon. Further down the line perhaps you may see driverless vehicles in places where they may fit in!!!! Where only they can go. I certainly will not see major differences in what's left of my life.

Personally, for many reasons, even decades down the line I still think this ain't going to be the norm. Long journeys, up here in the sticks with all the wee winding country roads etc will never see this. I can see leccy cars becoming the norm with more numbers eventually in the distant future when a government may ban combustion engines from public roads. Even then classic cars will still have a place to play, to some degree anyway.

Why don't they do driverless trains first? Would be easier with a vehicle on a track.

I did a speed awareness course on Wednesday. This is the figure:
A total of 136,621 personal-injury road traffic accidents were reported to the police in 2016. Of these accidents, 1,695 resulted in at least one fatality.
There will be more which were not reported to the police.

A difference between 'personal-injury' and 'serious injury', though.

I'm not suggesting that this is an acceptable figure; just (a) that there are other more serious issues with significantly larger numbers of deaths which might be attended, and (b) that it is in my opinion extremely unlikely that in anything like the near future selfdriving cars will be able to reduce the rta deaths significantly - to be honest, I'd expect them to go up before they come down.

Oi, less of the Guildford bashing thank you! I must admit I was confused at first by these (misread) stats - Guildford population 150,000, smoking related deaths 105,000. What, all of them in Guildford? Blimey, you'd need a gas mask to walk down the High St. Sorry for thread hijack

I have only been to Guildford once. It was to a "Hairdressing Extravaganza" at a massive nightclub. My ex husband blagged VIP tickets somehow. He was good at blagging. And not much else. It was really funny because we turned up all poshed up, him in a tux and me in a Laura Ashley ballgown, but we traveled there and back in a beat up old beige mini (the old sort)which we hid in a car park some distance away from the venue.

You should have just gone in a taxi.

Or if a taxi wasn't available, a driverless car.

We lived in Wargrave near Maidenhead, 40 miles away, bit of a jaunt for a taxi.

Automatic Train Operation (ATO) has been around for decades!

Oh! But they still have a driver always. Don't they? Some years ago they tried to train chimps to drive trains.

The DLR is driverless. They have a member of staff on board who look after the doors and are trained to operate the trains should something go wrong. There were plans a few years ago to convert the Tube to driverless trains but the unions opposed it.

Although I appreciate all the skid pan trials etc that are done.... but how good will the coding be in a driverless car when it hits the snow and ice and its resultant chaos trajectory behaves in a way that no amount of automated steering and braking will circumvent ?. Or is it sorted already ???

The ATO system does usually keep a driver, however when combined with ATC and ATP it can become fully autonomous.

I have been working on such a system for almost 20 years and it operates at a 99.9+ efficiency rate.

"Pilot-less" planes are much the norm I believe, maybe it's that adjacent-ness to other traffic/obstacles/sudden weather changes that makes me wary of driverless cars.

I think barnacle sums it up here.

The sorts of systems that can run automatically on trains and planes won't be up to snuff on cars for decades. For that, you're talking full blown AI.