Oh gosh, I will just be totally excited to see millions of supposedly safe self-driving cars on the road. Only Luddites will get grumpy about a self-parking Volvo plowing into journalists because, supposedly, the owner of the car didn’t pay extra for “pedestrian detection functionality.” Inquiring minds will no doubt wonder why such crucial software isn’t installed by default or if Volvo is simply engaging in plausible deniability, in other words, making shit up to divert attention from this rather epic failure.
Driverless cars cannot sense ice on roads. This makes them useless for winter driving. Sure, this may change but I’ll just go ahead and let someone else test the technology for a few million miles first before using it myself. And hope I won’t be on an icy road anywhere near a driverless car soon. Can a self-driving car handle road construction, where you get diverted onto the other side of the road, snaking your way through twisty narrow lanes marked by cones? I’m guessing not. And won’t be for many years either, if ever. “I’m sorry Bob, but our directive is to stay on the right side of the road and never on the left side.”
There is a reason commercial jets have two pilots and are always watching what is going on during the flight. Yes, jets can mostly fly themselves, except for when they can’t, and that’s when they need intervention by someone who knows what they are doing. This is quite different from the fantasy of millions of driverless cars speeding us to our destination while we noodle with our cell phones or sleep.
However, driverless cars make superb tracking devices because they will always be reporting to the mothership and thus to whatever government wants to listen in. How convenient for them.
The blog that uploaded the video said that the two men “were bruised but are ok”. They said that “sources” had told them that “the drivers forgot to turn on ‘City-Safe’ mode”.
‘City-Safe’ is the mode that stops the cars from crashing into others when they are moving at 30 mph or less. But even if the mode were turned on, it’s unable to spot humans.
Wow, that just sounds totally safe to me.
https://youtu.be/_8nnhUCtcO8