I rode in Google’s self-driving car. This is what impressed me the most.

[BoFox]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-...-the-most/

Sorry, not that new, but I'm somewhat catching up..

When do you guys think driving will be mostly automated across the USA?  20 years?  Or less?

What would the traffic accident rate look like then?  80% less accidents?  Or better, hopefully?

I'd LOVE to NOT have to drive all the damn time, finally!!!  I can just use my phablet or laptop, play around in the car, take a brief nap, and all that!!!!!!!

[BoFox]

Interesting:

And none of the data it was using had been drawn from Google Maps or Google Street View. Google Maps isn't helpful because the car has to physically drive the preplanned route a couple of times before it's ready to perform the task on its own. And Street View images don't provide enough depth — they offer only a 2-D image whereas the car needs a constant 3-D picture.
Jennifer Haroon, head of business for Google's self-driving cars, explained Sunday that there's another reason the cars don't talk to Google Maps or the rest of the Internet.
"That was a security decision," Haroon said. The less insulated a car's driving systems are, the more exposed it is to potential hackers. And with these cars making life-or-death calls on behalf of human beings, that's a dangerous thing.

Nvidia's Tegra better not crash, either!

[ocre]

It's pretty interesting. But geez....not using maps? Using hackers as the reason? Surely it's a limitation of their program, having to drive the route multiple times before the car can be put in auto. This is interesting because the mention the car has abilities to take alternative routes, if there is an issue going the shortest route.....
Well, that means one would have to drive the alternative routes, multiple times! If you have 3 or 4 multiple routes, then the normal route. This can add up to a large task to program your routes to the car.

Perhaps this is Google's plan to enter the market.
It would be nice to have my car drive me to work and there are plenty of routes I could eventually teach such a car (if I owned one) but this is still a pretty substantial limitation.

See, you would essentially require the owner of the car program the routes. However simple they make this feature, having a learning curve is unavoidable. Owners would have to learn how to have the car learn the routes. They would have set it up and literally program the car by druving multiple times per route and then multiple alternative routes for each destination, not only to the destination but back to the starting place (home). So say you have the car set up and ready for automatic driving, home to work and work to home, the main route and alternative routes. Then one day you want to go to work but then when you get off you decide to go to target. Even if you programed home to target and back, you would not be able to go from work to target. You see, it's a little more complicated and if you didn't see the problems with this limitation perhaps this might start peeping thru now. There will be a lot of programing on the owners part. And it sounds simple but gets really complex when you break it down. Not only would the car have a lot to keep up with, so would the car owner.

So, say you have been drinking and jump in your self driving automobile. You already have bar to home pre programmed and several alternative routes. Say its in the city and you live outside of town. All the routes from bar to home start off on a specific road and down to the interstate.
The day you get in intoxicated, the one road that all routes start off on was blocked off. The car has no alternative programed route for an issue on the main road leaving the bar. So what does the car do, it can't complete the task and the driver must drive and figure it out.

See, once you start having auto mode and use it. People will start depending on it. You can't program in every possible route for every possibility. Perhaps on a short "around the block" stretch. Perhaps even longer trips in rural areas with fewer roads and less activities.

I could go on and on.
I can't wait for self driving cars, but when I was young I dreamed of flying cars. Even flying cars that self drove.
It seems drone technology has a lot of potential, and perhaps the flying automobile should be rethought. Automatic flying drone vehicles, now that is a future I can smile thinking about

[BoFox]

Roger that, Ocre!!  

I'm thinking that it might only be the case with first-generation self-driving cars, or maybe the 2nd generation as well?  Then cars after that will have a more advanced and more secure network to rely upon..  

I gotta show you guys how fast the new Tesla model cars are selling!  And Toyota's promising hydrogen-powered car!!!