Your Ideal Quiet Space?

[Seth]

When I get there I want to drive MY car, not some rental. The logistics of having hundreds of cars (or thousands of them) available at the rail station so passengers can rent them seems a bit complex. What happens when all the cars are rented and you get there and have no transportation to that important business meeting?

When you have driverless hire cars, you won't need them to hang around the station. The nearest one makes it's way to you, when you go online and order it for a specific time and place. It drops you off like a taxi and then picks the next hire up. etc. Just like Uber but without the cost of a driver.

So you don't have to park it, or insure it, or fill it up, or wash it, or buy tyres, or take it for it's annual test, or maintain it. You just pay when you use one.
Your question is daft. What happens when all the taxis are taken, and you have no transportation to that important business meeting? Same thing.

But you can afford to have many more driverless taxis waiting around. Because you don't need to pay drivers for sitting around doing nothing.

You ever ridden in a taxi?

The only positive thing about a self-driving vehicle is you don't have to put up with some nitwit from Somalia or Pakistan who doesn't speak english and takes you for the grand tour around town.

[JimC]

Bugger these self-drive vehicles! I want cheap, safe, efficient teleportation!

[mistermack]

Believe me, it's definitely the future. They are doing it now. I've seen them on the tv, going down an ordinary public road, sat in the back. It can only get better and better. I don't think it will take long to catch on at all.
Just think, no women drivers. No seveteen-year-olds driving like a loony. No doddering old gits stopping dead in the middle of a road, instead of merging. No driving test.
And you can drink and drive to your heart's content.

What's not to like?

I don't think I'd have the nerve to get on the back of a riderless motorbike though.
I shit myself on the pillion of a human.

This is from wikipedia about the google driverless car project :

In August 2012, the team announced that they have completed over 300,000 autonomous-driving miles (500,000 km) accident-free, typically have about a dozen cars on the road at any given time, and are starting to test them with single drivers instead of in pairs.[22] Four U.S. states have passed laws permitting autonomous cars as of December 2013: Nevada, Florida, California, and Michigan.[23] A law proposed in Texas would establish criteria for allowing "autonomous motor vehicles".[24][25]
In April 2014, the team announced that their vehicles have now logged nearly 700,000 autonomous miles (1.1 million km).[26] In late May, Google revealed a new prototype of its driverless car, which had no steering wheel, gas pedal, or brake pedal, being 100% autonomous.[27]

That's accident-free miles.
One had a bump while being driven manually, and one was shunted from behind by a human driver at a traffic light. Otherwise, all good.

[Hermit]

The viable driverless car is a few years in the future yet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_dri ... imitations
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/53 ... ving-cars/

[mistermack]

I think it will come in gradually. But it's only a matter of time. It will start with low-speed public transport around well-mapped city centres, and just gradually improve and spread.
A lot of the problems are only a problem because they haven't been addressed yet.
Police could carry a digital signal emitter, to enable the computer to recognise them.
And pot holes could be mapped, just like anything else, and avoided till fixed.

The weather might be a problem, but it will improve with time. And weather can be a problem for humans too. It might be a good thing, if the car stops till it clears. The software doesn't have to be perfect. Just better than most humans.

[Brian Peacock]

QuietSpace. The far superior alternative to MySpace - much the same but without autoplay music tracks!

And no "bing-bong" every time someone updates or you get a message.

[laklak]

We have the technology, we can build them. I think it's mostly software issues at this point, I spent too many years programming to trust my life to a bunch of lowest bidding software contractors.

[Sean Hayden]

...and what about security? It wouldn't be fun to leave a coffee shop only to discover that some asshole there has thrown you into the dreaded infinite left turn. -bastid

[Seth]

I think it will come in gradually. But it's only a matter of time. It will start with low-speed public transport around well-mapped city centres, and just gradually improve and spread.
A lot of the problems are only a problem because they haven't been addressed yet.
Police could carry a digital signal emitter, to enable the computer to recognise them.
And pot holes could be mapped, just like anything else, and avoided till fixed.

The weather might be a problem, but it will improve with time. And weather can be a problem for humans too. It might be a good thing, if the car stops till it clears. The software doesn't have to be perfect. Just better than most humans.

Since you mention the police, contemplate the inevitable implementation of police control of autonomous vehicles, allowing the police to divert you or stop you whenever they want to. They could simply direct your car to lock the doors and drive you to the police station, or the ovens, and you'd be helpless to resist.

Not interested.

[Ra]

I live 93 million miles away from the rest of you. It's always nice and quiet here. No traffic. No chatter. Just me. Burning for you all.

[JimC]

Does the steadily increasing amount of helium in your tummy give you indigestion?

[mistermack]

I live 93 million miles away from the rest of you. It's always nice and quiet here. No traffic. No chatter. Just me. Burning for you all.

I'm sure we're all duly grateful.
But I believe Venus has a complaint.

[Seth]

Does the steadily increasing amount of helium in your tummy give you indigestion?

Nah, he's got an iron disposition...eventually.