MTFCA Forum

From current MOTOR:

There are many questions about the advent of autonomous trucks. One of the most obvious has always been who, exactly, will take care of a driverless truck if there are no humans on board?

With EVs and autonomous vehicles now the "Thing", are drivers of vintage motor vehicles any more safer on the roads and at intersections?

I'm not sure ANY vehicles or pedestrians or bicyclists are safer with those vehicles. We read or hear on the news almost daily about the self driving vehicles crashing. However even with drivers, they can be distracted and also cause accidents.
Norm

At least it will not be playing games on its cell phone while it’s driving.
Did you see the story about guy in Texas be headed by his Tesla?
He was reading a book and car did not see a truck turn across the road, went under trailer. Took top off car and driver, kept going down road for a distance before running off road. Ended up in somebody’s front yard.

Depending how good the programming, an autonomous vehicle should abide by the rules of the road much better than even the best human drivers making it safer for other vehicles on the road because it's movement will be much more predictable.
But, the T hasn't changed. We still have to be IN CHARGE OF OUR OWN SAFETY. Do not pass it on to the vehicle at the next intersection by assuming it will stop.

I almost funny story...

My latest modern iron came with all the do-dads. Actually, the make/model/color I wanted came with all that stuff, and if I wanted it all the do-dads had to be in the price...

Driving home from the dealer was one of the scariest rides of my life! Unbeknownst to me, automatic lane maintain was active...

The road home was a 4 lane country road, built up residential area. As I drove along the right hand lane at speed, the car kept doing a steering wheel 'pulse' to the right of a few inches, always caught and returned by my wrist action. About 15 miles in, it dawned on me that somehow this car was 'seeing' every driveway apron cut-in as it only 'pulsed' to the right when passing a driveway. I moved to the left lane for the remainder of the ride, all was good. Got home, read the book, went through it, and learned that this 'lane follow' thing was activated...deactivated all...car never found a driveway hiccup again...lol

On the other side of the coin, my 40 year old borrowed the car while fairly new to go from Tampa to Jacksonville for a business trip...he turned on everything once on the Interstate and sat back and watched the world go by as the car 'did its thing' around curves, during congestion, and performed well the entire trip. We chatted about it...he admits things may need more work, I on the other hand decided that I can peg out from here with everything off.

If anything, autonomous vehicles seem to add to the danger. Recently in trials, Tesla's system was put up against Google's system. For some reason (unclear in the report) the Tesla stopped in the middle of the road and the Google vehicle went around it, obviously unperturbed by whatever caused the Tesla to stall. The whole idea of autonomous vehicles seems to present near insoluble problems - although there's no doubt about the failures caused by human drivers.

As with so many other facets of life in a massive population, statistics may very well bear out that the percentage of accidents and fatalities caused by autonomous vehicles could become so much lower than the present rate of slaughter on the highways as to mandate their universal use - at such time as that happens, our antiques will be outlawed from the roads, I suppose.

Rich B, I'm not as concerned of other autonomous vehicles on the road as I am to RIDING in one!!

My newest car does beep when I stray out of my lane unless the turn signal is on. But I have to steer it to move back into the lane. And one thing I do like is that the cruise control, when set to a certain speed will actually slow down when the car ahead slows down. But if the car in front slams on the brake, I better slam on mine too! Anyway, that is about as automatic as I care to be. I can just imagine what would happen on a detour where the lane has to move over onto the shoulder and the pavement is not striped to indicate the temporary location of the lane!
In a Model T I rarely get too close to the car in front of me unless I am in heavy traffic, but I have to stay in the slow lane and worry about the cars behind me. Left turns are a problem, especially when I need to get into the left lane on a two or more lane road. That is the lane the fastest cars drive in. Some places I can make 3 right turns to go left. That works in the city, but in the country, not so well.
Norm

I wouldn't mind passive alerts for lane wander and getting to close to something,but I do not like the idea of the car taking matters into it's own hands. I am still afraid some of these cars will get hacked into and will be trying to parallel park on I40
Self driving cars could be hacked and used in terror attacks, bank robberys,you name it.
Not good.

I would not have a "self driving " car. Captain Smith thought he had a self-driving ship, and went to bed. Not a good idea, even far out on the open sea.

Not comfortable with it even driving a modern car. Those trucks are mechanical and mechanical parts and components fail, break and wear out. People wear out too, but have the judgement and intelligence to know it and to know when to pull over, unless in the rare event that they have a heart attack rendering their vehicle autonomous. Autonomous vehicles. Not a good idea.

Norm. Often it is safer to make left hand turn by getting in the right lane, turning right, immediately get in the left lane, make a U-turn at the next opportunity, then go straight across the intersection. Jim Patrick

Jim, I do that also sometimes. Even in a modern car.
Norm

We are 120 years into the aviation age and airliners still have not one but two pilots. The technology to allow an unpiloted (by Humans) airplane has been around for decades. Does that tell you something?

Norm,
My Model T squawks when I wander out of my lane....of course the noise is coming from my wife in the back seat........

Think there needs to be some definition about what a driverless car is/isn't and what is defined as an autonomous vehicle. The big issue for any "self driving or autonomous driving vehicle is detailed road maps. Even with Artificial Intelligence it needs to know something about the destination & what roads are available to get there. The software can calculate the optimal route based on known information (see the last paragraph).
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Tesla Autopilot cannot drive a vehicle by itself. Again, it cannot drive by itself. It is not a fully autonomous driving system. Tesla has Enhanced Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (which is in beta and despite its name is not approved as a "no driver attention required" system) that give more assistance feature. Basically it is designed for highway driving not City driving
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GOOGLE's Waymo -is their public, fully autonomous ride-hailing service. Riders can use the Waymo One app to hail one of our autonomously driven vehicles (with no human driver in the front seat!) 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is for City use and currently only available in San Francisco or Phoenix. Los Angeles and Austin coming soon.
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Know too that GOOGLE Maps is being sued by a Family who's Dad died when driving off a bridge that was out from flooding. The report states that it was dark & raining, people were new to the area not familiar with the roads in the area and relied on Google Maps to get them home. There were no barricades or warnings signs to indicate the bridge was out but supposedly it was reported to Google Maps. The Department (Town, City, County, State) responsible for the road is not being sued So the question is in this circumstance would the sensors on the vehicle be able to detect that the bridge was out in enough time to stop