Would it make you feel better if you knew that the programmers don't know how the AI works?
I'm willing to be that soon cars will be able to tell if you're drunk and not let you drive (it's weird writing that since I remember reading a SF book called Homeworld by Harry Harrison when I was young where that exact thing happened) and once self driving cars are perfected insurance will become so prohibitively expensive no one will be able to drive anymore (this also happens in a SF book by Larry Niven). All the "science fiction" i read when I was a kid is coming true.
There are 6 levels of autonomy in driving, L0-L5. L0 is my 1974 Plymouth Duster, L5 is the car from Minority Report. Currently, it's a very gray area of legality to have the AI making decisions, so L2 is all you can get in a car now. A bus on the Vegas strip that doesn't go much faster than a person jogging is one thing (L4), a vehicle capable of going 100 MPH is something else. Regular cars are limited to L2, which means that you still have your hand on the wheel, and the vehicle handles certain tasks (braking, steering, adaptive speed) in certain situations (sunny day with light traffic on the freeway). L3 is possible now, but there are gaps in the situations that the AI and sensors can handle. There's not much difference between L2-L4, outside of how involved is the driver in making decisions. So you can opt to operate your car like it's L4 (like OPs friend) even if it's only built for L2.
the only time I could see using a self drive feature is in bumper to bumper traffic going 10km.
But we can already save countless of lives by driving slower. We choose not to.
Care to explain? Because I think you're going to say "They can just drive around."
How are you posting from the aferlife? Hope you're resting in peace.
they can drive to a parking area 15m away, and when they park they don't have to leave room for doors to open. That alone almost doubles the parking density.
That's ridiculous.
Not really. You might (I emphasize might) be able to shave a foot off of space width, but that's nowhere near double. You would however be able to double (and beyond) park cars front to back, so there's a potential increase there but most parking lots here already do that.
As I said earlier, that's not doubling the amount of parking.
Tag him, it’s a useful tool
Acceleration was pretty unreal. It was totally silent and the power was instant. Braking was braking; the car stopped.
