"Tessy" only the beginning

[A.K. Boomer]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXls4cdEv7c

Computers will not take stupid out of the car.

People will have to take the stupid out of the autopilot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrwxEX8qOxA

Great perspective DP thanks for jarring everyone back into reality ---- the guy sleeping is just plain sad, the other guy just got a wake up call.

what are the odds of that happening on my car with a direct rack & pinon unit and good well checked out tie-rod ends? absolutely ZERO, How would I feel about letting go of a steering wheel and letting the car drive itself with oncoming traffic just three feet to the other side? I'll tell you how I feel - not gonna happen - ever,,,
wait till "tin whiskers" start growing into those electronic components --- what a joke people have become... choke on it world, you really have both earned and deserve this...

[dp]

Great perspective DP thanks for jarring everyone back into reality ---- the guy sleeping is just plain sad, the other guy just got a wake up call.

what are the odds of that happening on my car with a direct rack & pinon unit and good well checked out tie-rod ends? absolutely ZERO, How would I feel about letting go of a steering wheel and letting the car drive itself with oncoming traffic just three feet to the other side? I'll tell you how I feel - not gonna happen - ever,,,
wait till "tin whiskers" start growing into those electronic components --- what a joke people have become... choke on it world, you really have both earned and deserve this...

One of the things you notice when watching videos of self-driving cars is the hand position of the drivers. They all look like someone is holding a gun on them. It is a major flaw in the self-driving cars that this is a universal reaction to being driven by an insane bi-polar computer.

[RB211]

One of the things you notice when watching videos of self-driving cars is the hand position of the drivers. They all look like someone is holding a gun on them. It is a major flaw in the self-driving cars that this is a universal reaction to being driven by an insane bi-polar computer.

People need to be trained for it. Just imagine the first time a pilot experiences an autoland with zero visibility outside?

[dp]

People need to be trained for it. Just imagine the first time a pilot experiences an autoland with zero visibility outside?

That is an absurd comparison. You don't have a mix of cross-traffic, texters veering into your lane, drink-driving, bicycle clusters ignoring every law on the books at every intersection, and stupefied pot smokers cogging up the works. We also don't know how these machines will behave around similar machines. Will they crash like Wall Street stock software because their very presence in numbers can affect the trading patterns in the moment?

And can anyone ever forget this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPHTdY2mc-k

[danlb]

People need to be trained for it. Just imagine the first time a pilot experiences an autoland with zero visibility outside?

That is an absurd comparison. You don't have a mix of cross-traffic, texters veering into your lane, drink-driving, bicycle clusters ignoring every law on the books at every intersection, and stupefied pot smokers cogging up the works. We also don't know how these machines will behave around similar machines. Will they crash like Wall Street stock software because their very presence in numbers can affect the trading patterns in the moment?

And can anyone ever forget this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPHTdY2mc-k

I thought it was a perfect comparison. People who are used to autonomous systems become quite comfortable with them. The first few times you experience auto-pilot or even using a GPS you find yourself hyper vigilant. A year later it has become trusted and comfortable.

BTW; That URL is to a video that's "made up" by the National Geograpic Channel which has had similarly realistic video of Moses building his arc. The accompanying text asserts that the black boxes were swapped out in a conspiracy to protect airbus.

Dan

[A.K. Boomer]

The big question is how much govt and federal funding will Tesla be able to get to defend the lawsuits ?

Gubberment Motors is also one of the all time "leaders" in this kind of technology ---- another big red flag,,,

im thinking what's most likely going to happen is when a certain percentage of the masses are all dependent on it that one day everyone will get in their cars to drive to work and then hear the doors lock - no big whoop most of them do that anyways now right ? - trouble being is the car will then start driving itself to a preset destination and you won't be able to override or jump out, destination is single file line up where you will be assimilated and then turned into little green wafers...

all the while I will be in my glory - in full control driving to and fro in my little 93 honda just to get a look at all the countless priceless expressions on peoples faces - most of them clawing at their windows yelling to the top of there lungs "how could this be happening?!!!!!!!!!!!!!" whaaaaaahhaaahaa whhhhhhhhhhhaaahaahaha

[dp]

I thought it was a perfect comparison. People who are used to autonomous systems become quite comfortable with them. The first few times you experience auto-pilot or even using a GPS you find yourself hyper vigilant. A year later it has become trusted and comfortable.

BTW; That URL is to a video that's "made up" by the National Geograpic Channel which has had similarly realistic video of Moses building his arc. The accompanying text asserts that the black boxes were swapped out in a conspiracy to protect airbus.

Dan

It is an absurd comparison because the pilot that flew that plane into the ground was very well trained, a trainer himself, and was flying the most advanced aircraft in its class. The crash of flight 296 cannot be undone by shooting the messenger. The event revealed that software engineers could not anticipate every flight mode possible and that still remains an impossibility. Commercial flight is a very constrained universe unlike driving in traffic which is completely chaotic. Just as with flight 296 we haven't seen the computers in cars respond to a deadly context it wasn't prepared for, but other videos I've linked demonstrate the driver more than once has saved the computer's ass.

[danlb]

It is an absurd comparison because the pilot that flew that plane into the ground was very well trained, a trainer himself, and was flying the most advanced aircraft in its class. The crash of flight 296 cannot be undone by shooting the messenger. The event revealed that software engineers could not anticipate every flight mode possible and that still remains an impossibility. Commercial flight is a very constrained universe unlike driving in traffic which is completely chaotic. Just as with flight 296 we haven't seen the computers in cars respond to a deadly context it wasn't prepared for, but other videos I've linked demonstrate the driver more than once has saved the computer's ass.

DP, I think you replied to the wrong thread or wrong post.

In post #77 , DP said:

One of the things you notice when watching videos of self-driving cars is the hand position of the drivers. They all look like someone is holding a gun on them. It is a major flaw in the self-driving cars that this is a universal reaction to being driven by an insane bi-polar computer.

And in response to that, RB211 said in post #78:

People need to be trained for it. Just imagine the first time a pilot experiences an autoland with zero visibility outside?

RB211's response was obviously referring to white knuckle syndrome.

That's when DP posted in #79

That is an absurd comparison. You don't have a mix of cross-traffic

That response has nothing to do with RB211's post. As a side thought, Personally, I'd be much more terrified the first time I landed a jumbo jet in zero visibility than I would while driving in any car.

[PStechPaul]

I had not seen the Airbus video before now. It does raise quite a few questions. There is plenty of blame to go around, including the rush to perform the maneuver at the air show (much like what caused the Challenger disaster). But ultimately I believe the pilot was at fault in this case, particularly for flying much lower and slower than originally planned. I would think visual cues would have told him that he was at 30 feet rather than 100 feet; and an experienced pilot would have been able to compensate for the nose high attitude where possibly the pilot would be at 100 feet while the tail might be at 30 feet. Relying on an air pressure altimeter seems unreasonable at such low altitude, and there was the alternative radar ground detection system which should have taken over and sounded unmistakable alarms.

I don't really buy the premise of the conspiracy to alter the black box data, evidenced only by the apparent different appearance of the boxes between the time they were recovered and when they were analyzed. It seems reasonable that the engines might take 4-6 seconds to reach full power as requested by the pilot, and the computer control might have adjusted the aircraft attitude to avoid a stall, which might have been even more devastating.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296

A sophisticated aircraft like this may very well be impossible to fly by means of 100% manual control, but there should be a way for both pilot and copilot to enable manual override to the extent possible. Perhaps a lesson learned would be that there is more need for safety and low speed maneuverability than barely subsonic speeds and a design that cannot fly below 100 knots. There are some designs that provide such functionality, although perhaps only with maximum airspeed of 300 knots rather than 500+ for jets:

http://www.geversaircraft.com/ac/telescopicwing.htm

http://home.iwichita.com/rh1/eddy/Safe_Airplane_NOT.htm (mostly applies to small aircraft)

https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-mini...ed_qid=1663119 (shows a slow flyby of an A380, but seems to be much higher than the 100 feet attempted in the 1988 crash)

http://www.brighthub.com/science/avi...les/96368.aspx (Normal cruising speed)

Ideally, I think commercial aircraft should be designed for cruising speed of perhaps 400 knots, and stall speed of well under 100 knots, so that it might actually be possible to maneuver and land in "glider mode" in case of engine failure. There may also be some fuel economy advantages of turboprop versus jet aircraft, with the disadvantage of normal top speed of 450 knots versus 600. Thus a coat-to-coast flight of 3000 miles might take 7 hours instead of 5.

Of course, ideally we might be better off to revert to trains and/or buses and EVs for most transportation. Commercial aircraft get about 100 MPG per passenger, while a Volvo Bus averages about 570 MPG per passenger, and trains get about 470 MPG per passenger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transportation

[PStechPaul]

A recent video discussing the crash:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-5JkSVHhq4

Driver anxiety:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC757hZ2urA

And a dangerous "glitch":

[A.K. Boomer]

I think allot of people just don't live in reality anymore, as I stated before - try having 300 million of these POS trying to "anticipate" each others moves ---- now lets assume this goes on for awhile and many of said POS are 10 to 20 years old with sensors and connections that are subject to things like the reality of road salts/debris impacts/and just plain carrying around 10 lbs of ice on them sometimes,,, couple this to internal components that are subjected to thousands of circuit board heating and cooling cycles all heaped on top of each other with more and more co-dependency than the earlier models --- another words, most of this stuff has to work or your dead - or worse yet someone else is...

Lets please get the freakin air plane scenario out of your head as a fair comparison - (unless it is to bash them that no matter what they can still fail) ---- have any kind of an idea what stringent testing and maintenance goes on with these million dollar systems that are responsible for all the millions of dollars of plane and life attached?

have any idea of the reality of what will happen with these low dollar systems in cars? I do - they will get pumped out of the factory (many with inherent flaws) never to be checked out again till failure occurs - Good luck with that....

That's reality folks --- so please spare me the "we got it all figured out" attitude --- no you don't - you simply do not have a clue as to what you are up against...

[danlb]

I think allot of people just don't live in reality anymore, as I stated before - try having 300 million of these POS trying to "anticipate" each others moves -

I guess that if you start with the assumption that they are pieces of ****, then they are doomed to fail. No logical statement of facts can get past that, can it?

Since I have had cars and computers that run well for more than 15 years, I don't assume that they have to be inherently defective. If the powers that be are smart, they will declare a natural monopoly for the autonomous car software. Make it available at cost like they used to do when phone service was a monopoly and was only $2.50 a month. The advantage of this approach is that you can actually get all 300 million cars reacting in a predictable manner. Further, those 300 million cars can use short range radio waves to pass information between nearby cars so that your car can announce (via radio) that there are road hazards.

Dan

[dp]

DP, I think you replied to the wrong thread or wrong post.

I badly conflated two posts

[RB211]

The GermanWings "event" is a very rare anomaly in the pilot world. I can think of one other event involving Fed Ex, where the crew survived but were injured so badly by the jumpseater that they all lost their medical and to this day can't fly. I've jumpseated on Fed Ex and they have their own version of the TSA, with metal detectors and all. As pilots, we are trained to recognize when flight instruments fail. Also it helps that everything is double if not triple redundant. Air accidents are very rare because of that, but also because of our CRM training. Everything we do is written in blood, based upon prior accidents, and the series of events that lead up to that point. To say that we live in a culture of safety would be an understatement. The GermanWings "event" would be very difficult to pull off in the USA. In flight, at all times, two people must be in the cockpit. The flight attendants are not just there to serve you drinks.
So what does any of this have to do with the topic on hand? People buying self driving cars aren't being trained, they are probably not triple redundant, and there is no culture of safety completely enveloping the industry WITH THE DRIVER AT THE CENTER. In my line of work, I am constantly judged, random drug tests, random line checks, random FAA flight checks, recurrent training, medical exams every year, every 6 months when I turn 40, constantly studying new safety directives, etc. However, the single biggest safety factor is that theres two of us checking each other, following standardized procedures, call outs, and flows. Doesn't matter who my FO is, we can work like a well oiled machine.
Perhaps I have drifted off course on the topic at hand, but you can see why driving by car will always remain the most dangerous form of transportation.

[A.K. Boomer]

I guess that if you start with the assumption that they are pieces of ****, then they are doomed to fail. No logical statement of facts can get past that, can it?

Since I have had cars and computers that run well for more than 15 years, I don't assume that they have to be inherently defective. If the powers that be are smart, they will declare a natural monopoly for the autonomous car software. Make it available at cost like they used to do when phone service was a monopoly and was only $2.50 a month. The advantage of this approach is that you can actually get all 300 million cars reacting in a predictable manner. Further, those 300 million cars can use short range radio waves to pass information between nearby cars so that your car can announce (via radio) that there are road hazards.

Dan

Your just one medically induced coma away from your wildest dreams --- your already half way there in the removal of responsibility process - why not - might as well go for it...