Uber has admitted that there is a “problem” with the way autonomous vehicles cross bike lanes, raising serious questions about the safety of cyclists days after the company announced it would openly defy California regulators over self-driving vehicles.

An Uber spokeswoman said on Monday that engineers were working to fix a flaw in the programming that advocates feared could have deadly consequences for cyclists.

Uber began piloting its self-driving vehicles in its home town of San Francisco last week, despite state officials’ declaration that the ride-share company needed special permits to test its technology. On day one, numerous autonomous vehicles – which have a driver in the front seat who can take control – were caught running red lights and committing a range of traffic violations.

Uber as a company is basically scum

Uber as a company is basically scum

Is tbus to do with surge pricing, NYC taxi strike or employment status of drivers?

It saddens me to say it, but we are approaching the end of the automotive era.

The auto industry is on an accelerating change curve. For hundreds of years, the horse was the prime mover of humans and for the past 120 years it has been the automobile.

Now we are approaching the end of the line for the automobile because travel will be in standardized modules.

The end state will be the fully autonomous module with no capability for the driver to exercise command. You will call for it, it will arrive at your location, you'll get in, input your destination and go to the freeway.

...

The vehicles, however, will no longer be driven by humans because in 15 to 20 years — at the latest — human-driven vehicles will be legislated off the highways.

The tipping point will come when 20 to 30 percent of vehicles are fully autonomous. Countries will look at the accident statistics and figure out that human drivers are causing 99.9 percent of the accidents.


...

These transportation companies will be able to order modules of various sizes — short ones, medium ones, long ones, even pickup modules. But the performance will be the same for all because nobody will be passing anybody else on the highway. That is the death knell for companies such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi. That kind of performance is not going to count anymore.

...

think probably everybody sees it coming, but no one wants to talk about it. They know they will be OK for a few years if they keep providing superior technology, superior design and have good software for autonomous driving.

So for a while, the autonomous thing will be captured by the automobile companies. But then it's going to flip, and the value will be captured by the big fleets.

This transition will be largely complete in 20 years.

Yep, and we'll have jetpacks and flying cars and a cure for cancer.

Except none of those things are actually on the horizon; this absolutely is.

There's absolutely no fucking way that human driven cars will be legislated off the road in 15-20 years. I reckon it'll be at least that long before driverless cars are even a significant proportion of new cars. And then you have to effectively replace every existing car. It's going to take twice that long at the earliest.

people have been saying they're just a matter of years off for decades, man.

Waymo’s cars drove more than 635,000 miles just in California [in 2016], and only had to have a human take back control 124 times.

This is a substantial improvement for the company, which drove 424,000 miles in 2015 and had to disengage the system 341 times that year.

For instance: what are all the truck drivers going to do for a living?

The same as everyone else who's job is being automated out from under them: die in poverty after bitterly voting for some right-wing monster who couldn't actually give a fuck about them! Yay!

This is literally America right now.

Freely available driverless cars in 20 years? Absolutely. Banning manual cars? We've not banned smoking, don't forget.

I reckon it'll be at least that long before driverless cars are even a significant proportion of new cars. And then you have to effectively replace every existing car

What exactly are we betting here? That driverless cars that need no manual intervention (so the "passenger" can get pissed or whatever) will be mixed on the road with manually-driven cars? In 20 years?

If so, probably. Might even be ten.

No, they really haven't. They have however been saying it in the last part of this specific decade because they're actually here, now, driving on actual roads. You can't not have noticed that?

The only thing that will see driverless cars overtake 'normal' cars is the cost.

Same as with any technology, like blu-ray players, or home computers, the take up will increase as the cost becomes closer to an acceptable level to the average consumer.

For a while, but the future is likely most people not owning a car and calling on the enormous fleet of Ubers.

Driverlerss cars is definitely one of the things I think we'll see become the norm in our lifetime, but not in the next 20 years.

Lulz

Same as with any technology, like blu-ray players, or home computers, the take up will increase as the cost becomes closer to an acceptable level to the average consumer.

I'd be ok with dying at 62. I want a driverless hearse though.

We can offer a driverless horse.

Mark makes a damn good point about the mobile base for family activities. I can't imagine loading the kids, bikes, wellies and everything else that comes with an autumn day out into a rented pod that would glide away as soon as we got to our destination. There would have to be an 'all-day' option.

Or: Take less shit.