With 55 years and 1million+ miles of virtually accident free driving in all manner of vehicles in all manner of circumstances/weather the tech people have a lot of catching up to do to convince me that I’ll be safer with Number 5 driving.
If that’s the case where you live then be happy you don’t live in my neighborhood.
When these self-driving cars get “perfected” they’ll be offline more than online in my area. The computers will be freaking out, the radar and cameras won’t “see” anything and the “gyros will be tumbling,” as they say. These systems will only be as good as the clowns who make them and program them.
The cars will default and demand the human driver take over during most of our long winters. Black ice, snow fog, blowing snow in blizzard conditions, and some outright severe conditions will either shut them down or they’ll run folks off the road.
CSA
I think it’s far too early to know how self driving cars will evolve and what their target market segment will be. I doubt they’ll be ubiquitous or popular alternatives to people-driven cars, but I do suspect that the technologies that develop out of the quest for self-driving cars will become hidden (or at least not obvious) parts of all cars, much like side-impact door beams and airbags. I also think that once refined they’ll make inroads into city taxicabs and perhaps even cars for the elderly market.
With these things in mind, I think they’ll be a good addition to the field of offerings, welcomed for the market segments they’ll attract.
And they can always add an OFF switch too!
Hey! He was a great driver!
That about sums up your knowledge of computers and technology.
Technology flows downhill from military to commercial applications. The same sensor technology that allowed our military to see through smoke and fog to spot/target people and machines are already being commercialized. They had thermal cameras tied to HUD years ago in cars for detecting animals in your path at night. The technology being used today makes that look like the stone ages…
As a follow on, I saw a television program a couple years ago where a trucker in Alaska or Northern Canada was driving in a severe snow storm. When it became a white out, he switched over to an enhanced GPS system that drove the 18 wheeler for him.
Still need a driver behind the wheel regardless of the automatic assists. That would be handy in white out conditions though. I’ve been in several situations where the only way I could tell if I was on the road was rolling the window down and looking for the weeds on the side of the road. Coming back from Florida once we were ten miles from home but a blinding storm. We were able to stay on the road with the wife spotting the marker posts. Didn’t want to stay over night ten miles from home. Yeah GPS would have helped. Reminds me winter is on its way again. Yuk.
I remember being in a white out one time in Ohio I was behind another truck that was pulling a flat bed trailer jst as we hit a constuction zone the only way I knew I was on the road was his tail lighht’s & the orange cones marking the lane’s funny thing about 5 miles down the road we came out of it. the flat bed I was behind turned int a box trailer.
Bing you can keep your winter weather just don’t send it south we don’t need it in Ga.
The term IFR (Instrument Fight Rules) conditions does not exist although I have heard it many times even from very experienced military aviators. What you described is IMC (Instrument Meteorological Conditions) as opposed to VMC (Visual Meteorological Conditions). Your description of non instrument rated pilots encountering Inadvertent IMC is spot on. It was determined to be the cause of the JFK Jr. tragedy.
Yeah, there are two schools of thought on that. I tend to think they’re both right. IMC is a more precise term for “weather conditions that require operation under IFR,” but on the other hand, VMC/IMC can be open to misinterpretation. If as some articles have pointed out, you’re flying along in flat light over a featureless snow-covered ground or a decent-sized body of water, you might be flying in conditions that legally meet the definition of VMC, but you’d better be flying on instruments or you might find yourself in trouble because visual references just aren’t there.
But I should be more precise (even though that would make me more obnoxiously wordy than I already am 
) when discussing such things.
You made me realize the two schools of thought are mostly civilian verses military terminology. They both seem to work fine. When a pilot said IFR conditions I knew what they were talking about. Good point concerning featureless terrain and over water. Both can cause spatial disorientation. Although not technically terrain I will add VMC conditions above solid cloud cover. I also suffer from Obnoxiously Wordy Disorder. I blame mine on having to write and speak with excessive detail and redundancy to be understood by military officers.
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I guess whatever. When I took my ground school back in 1969 all we talked about was VFR and IFR. Couldn’t afford to actually fly though after that so have forgotten most everything.
I was working at a little airport in 60s and we got 50% off our instruction and airplane rental. I could rent a Piper Cherokee 140 for $12/hour, including gas, insurance, everything, out-the-door.
It’s really sad now. We have our little county airport (where I live now) adjacent to the golf course I’m on much of the summer. On a beautiful day for flying, like it was today when I played golf, there are hardly any general aviation guys there. Few planes in the sky. That industry has nearly died. 
CSA
I live in an Airpark. Plenty of sport plane flying here. Weather permitting. It is a State airport. 3,000 foot runway. No tower. No on site emergency support. Unicom frequency to announce your intentions. I have never been a rated (military) or licensed (FAA) pilot. I was a military Aerial Surveillance Specialist/Navigator in Grumman OV-1 Mohawks. Think Willem Defoe as Bombardier/Navigator in “Flight of The Intruder” without the bombs.
Well, it ain’t cheap. We whine when gas gets to $3/gallon. Avgas is over $7. Forget owning the plane, join a flying club. Oh, wait, that’s around 5 grand buy-in and then $150 a month just for the opportunity to rent a plane at $60/hour dry.
That said, there’s a good amount of activity at my local airport, including this gorgeous Grumman Albatross that I see once every other month or so:
The first time I saw that thing I was under my MR2 fighting with a motor mount. Heard it coming. Radials!? So I shot out from under the car and looked up and promptly forgot all about car work for awhile.
My airport has a J4F Grumman Widgeon. The Hughes H-4 Hercules (Spruce Goose) is only 30 minutes away. I find amphibians and seaplanes fascinating. Had a ride in a friend’s Cessna 172 on floats. Kind of like water skiing without getting wet.
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I live in central TX where it seldom snows, yet there are many days when driving conditions can be described as “IFR”.
Just because it doesn’t get very cold here doesn’t mean winters aren’t miserable.
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