GM Brings IT Dev Back In House; Self-Driving Caddy In the Works 171
dstates writes "Want a good job in IT? Detroit of all places may be the place to be. GM is bringing IT development back in house to speed innovation. Among other initiatives, a self driving Cadillac is planned by mid decade. Ford is also actively developing driver assist technology and is betting big on voice recognition. Ann Arbor has thousands of smart cars wirelessly connected on the road. Think about all those aging baby boomers with houses in the burbs and no desire to move as their vision and reflexes decline. The smart car is a huge market. Seriously, Detroit and SE Michigan have good jobs, great universities, cheap housing and easy access to great sports and outdoors activities."
Fears of Self-Driving Cars (Score:5, Insightful)
I love the idea of self-driving cars. I will talk about it with people and frequently, I will get the response "the idea of computers driving scares me". My response: "the idea of humans driving cars scares me more".
Re:Fears of Self-Driving Cars (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of people said that even if self-driving cars were proven to have a fraction of the accident rate of human drivers, people still wouldn't trust them because of those few times something *could* go wrong.
Many if not most accidents are caused by someone being careless, stupid, tired, distracted, drunk or high. That means most people most of the time think they're driving much safer than average, either because they're not any of the things above or think they're not - that particularly applies to careless and stupid. To gain public acceptance you must beat "idealized" humans, that even if you're cautious, forward thinking, well rested, alert, sober and in every way fit to drive a car an AI has 360 degree vision, millisecond reaction time and all sorts of advantages that you can't beat. You're not competing against the actual accident rate, you're fighting people's perceived - and often imaginary - risk of an accident.
Re:Fears of Self-Driving Cars (Score:4, Insightful)
It must be nice wher you live, 'cause around here the typical driver's response to anything unexpected seems to be to crash. Actually, for a lot of drivers, the response to expected things seems to be to crash as well.
You do realize you're doing acceptance testing of every driver around you all the time, right?
Re:Fears of Self-Driving Cars (Score:4, Insightful)
While oftware bugs will probably cause some catastrophic accidents from self-driving cars, in the grand scheme of things they would probably be safer.
What will really kill them in the US, at least, is lawyers. If I rear-end someone, who's at fault? Me, and my insurance company gets to pay. When a computer-driven Google-car rear-ends someone, who's at fault. Me? Nah, I was half-asleep, listening to music, brushing my teeth, watching videos, etc. _I_ wasn't driving. Hey, Google wrote the software....they have a lot of money....
Case in point: the media coverage and lawsuits of the supposed Prius accelerator malfunction. That was just a single drive-by-wire element. A fully autonomous car will get trampled flat by the thundering herds of lawyers.