On Sun, 8 Oct 2017 06:20:29 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

Jeff, I have no doubt that we will see self-driving cars on
the road. Tesla already has a self driving feature.
But because of the number of older cars on the road they
will not operate via intercommunications but the same way
you and I drive - by sensing everything around us.

The current idea of an autonomous car was borrowed from the DARPA
trials of autonomous military vehicles used to carry supplies,
munitions, and such. Someone thought it might be useful for solving
the drunk driving, distracted driving, tailgating, and general
stupidity behind the wheel, for the average driver. So, it's being
sold on the basis of safety which will allegedly save 30,000 lives per
year. That could have been done cheaper and easier by simply hiring
chauffeurs for all the clueless drivers, but that's not how things
work in our technological society. So, the first generation of
driverless vehicles will be totally autonomous, with no connection to
any other autonomous vehicles or road hazards because the
infrastructure currently doesn't exist to do this. I predict that
there will be a sufficiently large number of undesirable incidents,
which will inspire an ad-hoc wireless network scheme to enhance the
system and take the load off the autonomous computer trying to
identify various objects.

Will the government demand that everyone install a detector
in their car so that self-driving cars can detect ahead of
time that there is an asshole afloat in the sea of traffic?

You're getting ahead of me a little, but yes, it will shove it down
our safety conscious throats, exactly like seat belts, crash resistant
bumpers, dashboard padding, air bags, autie-lock brakes, extra tail
lights, and other expensive safety features. As an added bonus, we'll
probably be blessed with a crude flight recorder, which already exists
in some automobiles, to collect data during last few seconds before
impact. In the name of safety, there's no limit to what can be
justified.

Do you really think that hot-rodders are about to accept that?

Of course not. But I'm not talking about hot rod motorists. I'm
talking about bicyclists, although I could lump the e-bike hot rodders
into a similar class. Will cyclists accept computer control over
their speed and direction in order to check into the roadway of the
future?

And from what I've seen of heavy traffic the worst drivers are
those that appear to have the most money.

Maybe. I've always suspected that the new car buyers were those who
had totaled their previous vehicle.

So it's more likely that a bicyclist will be in far less danger
from self driving cars that work properly that from driven cars.
But note the "work properly" component. I do not think that will
occur.

Less danger is not the goal. It's zero danger. With a bicycle
mounted transponder or full blown directional control, the idea is to
make the bicycle equal to any autonomous car and make it part of some
kind of collision avoidance system. Relying on the pattern
recognition software to do this for bicyclists strikes me as a bit
risky.

More later. One cord of firewood just arrive. Time to get some
exercise stacking it.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558