Hands-off driving legal (limited) in UK

[CXRAndy]

It's only in my lifetime that we have become addicted to personal transport. It's time to wean ourselves off it.

Having autonomous vehicles will lead to society in general dispensing with ownership. Collosal reduction in vehicles on the road. A readily available pool of vehicles ready to collect you at a moment's notice.

Currently a car owned privately spends 99% of its life parked.

Pool cars would be utilized 99% of the time, being autonomous removes human drivers being called out at unsociable hours.

 

[CXRAndy]

Why have a dysfunctional intermediate point that is WORSE than both alternatives

Because that's how technology evolution progresses.

Wouldn't it be fabulous, an engineer created something perfect from the lightbulb moment to full working design.

Never happens, ok rarely to be fair

 

[Deleted member 26715]

Having autonomous vehicles will lead to society in general dispensing with ownership. Collosal reduction in vehicles on the road. A readily available pool of vehicles ready to collect you at a moment's notice.

Currently a car owned privately spends 99% of its life parked.

Pool cars would be utilized 99% of the time, being autonomous removes human drivers being called out at unsociable hours.

Never going to happen, it might work for 'townies' but not going to work outside of the 2 mile radius of the city centre.

 

[ClichéGuevara]

And what's the point of that?
Why have a dysfunctional intermediate point that is WORSE than both alternatives.

Indeed, is the end point of fully autonomous personal (as opposed to commercial) an achievable or desirable end? Is it purely a flashy techy toy that people want to buy because it's cool, and that will generate an income stream for the manufacturers? Or would it be in any way better than what came before? The answer to that is fairly obviously the former.

It's only in my lifetime that we have become addicted to personal transport. It's time to wean ourselves off it.

My dad passed his test late in life, when he needed a car for mobility so as a family we always saw them as a luxury rather than a necessity. A quick think about it, and the bulk of the family and most of my friends either don't have a car at all, or only use it when there is no credible alternative from a logistical or economic point of view. There are a couple of exceptions that are proper petrol heads, although they both do a lot of walking and cycling too.

I've just seen a comment above, and we all live well beyond that 2 mile limit mentioned. Some are over 20 miles out.

I think all being boozers helps, so maybe that's the green solution.

 

[Alex321]

And what's the point of that?
Why have a dysfunctional intermediate point that is WORSE than both alternatives.

I don't believe it is worse than the current "system".

Indeed, is the end point of fully autonomous personal (as opposed to commercial) an achievable or desirable end? Is it purely a flashy techy toy that people want to buy because it's cool, and that will generate an income stream for the manufacturers? Or would it be in any way better than what came before? The answer to that is fairly obviously the former.

To me, while the former is of course involved, the latter is utterly obviously more important.

It's only in my lifetime that we have become addicted to personal transport. It's time to wean ourselves off it.

You must be a fair bit older than I am then. Most households had a car when I was a kid.

I must admit, one thing which does annoy me about this forum though, is the preachyness against personal transport.

 

[Jenkins]

Will this system follow the Highway Code rule of 'keep to the left lane unless overtaking' or will if follow the current style of driving which is just sit in lane 2 or 3 at 65mph without moving over?

 

[Dogtrousers]

Because that's how technology evolution progresses.

Wouldn't it be fabulous, an engineer created something perfect from the lightbulb moment to full working design.

Never happens, ok rarely to be fair

Well no, it isn't. Typically we will have something that's OK, then a bit better, then a bit better.

The progression that's offered here is: OK, then a lot worse (with the promise of better to come), then a bit better.

So we have progressive improvement. But what we have here is a solution that's not autonomous, but introduces a whole load of additional risks, and then has to patch these risks with cobbled-on attention monitors, and is a total dog's dinner. Instead of going from A to B to C we go from A to D, which is a dead end but has the vague promise that it might help us get to C some day. Pointless.

Having autonomous vehicles will lead to society in general dispensing with ownership. Collosal reduction in vehicles on the road. A readily available pool of vehicles ready to collect you at a moment's notice.

It would be great if that were true, but I can't see it as a motivator for shared ownership.

What will drive reduction in private ownership is cost. If we move toward electric there isn't sufficient raw material to make all the batteries and whatnot, so costs will skyrocket and private ownership of an under-used asset will become an expensive luxury that most can't afford.

But what about these people who have deliberately cut themselves off from convenient local services by living in out of the way locations? Well, the market will have to come to the rescue by re-opening services that have been killed off by car culture. For example some friends of mine live the bucolic idyll in the middle of nowehere. We sometimes stay there dog-sitting, and the nearest shop is a crappy petrol station that is about two miles walk away. There are no buses. It's awful. But there is what used to be a thriving village just next door. Now there are no shops there. But commercial pressures could lead to local services returning.

 

[Dogtrousers]

You must be a fair bit older than I am then. Most households had a car when I was a kid.

I probably am. My parents both grew up in the 30s/40s when private car ownership was pretty rare. They got married in the 50s, and I think my dad got his first car (a Morris Minor convertible) just before I was born in the early 60s. I know there was no car when my older sisters were small. I don't remember (obviously) but I think this was roughly the first wave of "ordinary" people owning cars in the UK.

Then came motorway building and the spate building of bizarre ring-roads round small towns (Stourbridge, Coventry - I'm looking at you. London got a lucky escape from the "Ringways"). Then in the 70s came the big out of town supermarkets. When I was a student in the early 80s I think I only knew of one other student who owned a car (an incredibly posh girl with rich parents). I don't know but I imagine that car ownership among students is a lot higher these days, many people bought their first car when they got a proper job.

It was quite a quick process, just a few decades and in that brief time society has transformed massively. But's that not to say that future pressures (climate change, raw material costs, internet-shopping, home working etc) won't force some other massive and equally rapid change.

 

[Deleted member 26715]

You must be a fair bit older than I am then. Most households had a car when I was a kid.

I don't think so I'm 63 (this year) I can remember a lot of households in the 60's & 70's who didn't have a car, (or a phone for that matter) & they certainly didn't have 4 cars one for each adult member of the household

I must admit, one thing which does annoy me about this forum though, is the preachyness against personal transport.

Oh the irony

 

[Fastpedaller]

I don't think so I'm 63 (this year) I can remember a lot of households in the 60's & 70's who didn't have a car, (or a phone for that matter) & they certainly didn't have 4 cars one for each adult member of the household

Oh the irony

We had a car but no phone. When we made a call to my Uncle in Australia we were (all 4 of us) squeezed into the 'phone box with a pile of silver sixpencies which were being consumed at a rate of about 1 every 30 seconds!

 

[Deleted member 26715]

We had a car but no phone. When we made a call to my Uncle in Australia we were (all 4 of us) squeezed into the 'phone box with a pile of silver sixpencies which were being consumed at a rate of about 1 every 30 seconds!

Yep remember it well, the phone box was outside my girlfriends house, they answered it for all the neighbours then put the phone down & they'd ring back in 5-10 minutes whatever the arrangement was, or they'd be waiting for the call at a prearranged time. We were lucky my dad worked for the GPO as it was back then, he had one fitted as part of his job, all the neighbours would come round with their money yo use it rather than walking to the end of the road.

 

[Alex321]

I don't think so I'm 63 (this year) I can remember a lot of households in the 60's & 70's who didn't have a car, (or a phone for that matter) & they certainly didn't have 4 cars one for each adult member of the household

I don't remember many of the people we knew not having a car, in the 70's.

I don't honestly remember that sort of detail from the 60's all that well, although I turned 64 in January. I know we had a car throughout that time. But it is possible we were unusual in the 60's.

Most of us didn't have phones, agreed, and also agreed it was very rarely more than one car per household.

We did get a phone during the 70's, because I remember that when we had been away and needed picking up, we had a system where we would ring home from a public phone box, let it ring three times then put the phone down, and my dad would know to come and get us from the pre-arranged spot.

 

[Fastpedaller]

Maybe we need a separate 'memories from the sixties' thread?
I also recall staring at the 'wow-that's cool' indicator stalks on the steering column of a neighbour's Morris Minor - they were the first stalks I'd seen! Going forward after we'd had a phone a few years, we then got a 'trimphone' which was the most useless phone ever invented.It needed 3 hands to operate - as soon as the number selecting dial was turned the thing leapt off the (of-the-period) telephone table in the hall.

 

[presta]

And what's the point of that?
Why have a dysfunctional intermediate point that is WORSE than both alternatives.

Developing fully autonomous cars is a lot quicker and cheaper if you can get people to buy thousands of prototypes and test them for free. It gets you millions of hours/miles of AI training data that you wouldn't get any other way.

 

[Dogtrousers]

Developing fully autonomous cars is a lot quicker and cheaper if you can get people to buy thousands of prototypes and test them for free. It gets you millions of hours/miles of AI training data that you wouldn't get any other way.

Ah, that's a recognisable model. Release dysfunctional software and let the great unwashed do the testing for you, we've all seen that. I get it now.