very interesting article...
this bit caught my eye:
Natasha Merat, of the University of Leeds, in England, added that Google Cars, for the sake of safety, will stop when they detect any obstacle, whether it’s a jaywalker, a crookedly parked car at the curb, even a cardboard box on the road. And it will wait. Merat said, “After a while, it gets a little annoying to drivers behind, when the Google Car just won’t move.”
it sums up a lot about how these cars while autonomous, have a huge lack in intelligence...
it also raises some other questions:
- is the speed of pushing this technology towards live being controlled by the right parties? There are some very powerful and wealthy companies and individuals pushing to be first and soon - and they would, they hope to make a lot of money out of it - but where is government involvement, where is the caution in this to balance the PR spin of optimism?
- why is there a rush? where is the compelling reason to have the cars on the road sooner rather than later?
- is the drive to have no road casualties at times a false and non-scientific 'feel-good' ambition or goal? The reality is that whatever we design, there will be a human somewhere who manages to find a way of having an accident, I don't believe that you can manage risk out of life totally - and to do that would be to remove living in full from life... so perhaps we shouldn't be so focused on that to the exclusion of all else - and in particular the possibility that a simplistic answer may have hidden complexities and unintended consequences...
Alasdair