A buddy of mine is GM of a local Tesla dealership. He called me this morning and invited me to go to lunch with him. when he came to the house, I asked him “who’s driving?” He replied with a smile, “the car”. We got in the car, which was his personal Tesla Model 3. He tells the car to navigate to the restaurant, and without any further input from him, the car started driving itself to our destination. I then said, I thought the government made Tesla modify the cars so they could not be driven in full autonomous mode. He explained that the Feds ordered that the car constantly check to make sure the driver’s hands were on the wheel and their eyes were on the road. His own car was not programmed to do that. Anyway, I was impressed. The car drove smoothly, obeyed all traffic laws, and provided a very pleasant ride. Acceleration from traffic lights was brisk, but still smooth. I think autonomous cars are just about ready for prime time.
Until it snows, rains or the wind blows hard… Then you’d better take the wheel.
I saw one of those driverless cars interact w/a school-age bicyclist the other day on a neighborhood street. It did a pretty good job, came to a complete stop when the cyclist started acting indecisive what they intended to do next. A couple of other cars with drivers just drove on past at full speed.
They are addressing that now and I’ve seen demo’s of them doing it very nicely…eve with 4-5 inches of snow on the ground it found it’s way.
a great system, until: it drives under a trailer truck or crashes into a firetruck with flashing lights…
Both of those are detectable by the sensors and software.
I guess there have been some pretty big crashes involving the auto-drive mode. In this area one of them (fatal as I recall) I think the car’s software was confused by construction in progress.