h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

With regards to the supposed problems of battery charging, why not have a service station that acts like a racing track pit stop, where you drive in and have a small crane like they have in garages for taking out car engines, take out your flat battery and drop in a replacement, fully charged? This would save all the hassle of charging times, even with the new booster points which I understand still take forty minutes.

When it comes to range anxiety, pick up trucks with cranes on the back could again be used to replace flat or damaged batteries, where cars have had an accident or the battery has unexpectedly failed as another service alternative.

Self drive cars could be fitted with heart monitors, so that should the driver have a heart attack, stroke or otherwise fall ill, the vehicle would automatically be programmed to drive to the nearest Accident and Emergency centre in the area.

I also think these cars should also have manual overrides for when the software doesn’t recognize a dangerous situation that a human might realize is putting their lives at risk (human beings develop faults over time, so why not allow for this in vehicles as well, not to mention the teething problems that killed a driver in America).

Saw BMWs riderless motorcycle yesterday, no way on god's green earth!

I wanted to see this, but instead I found this.

http://youtu.be/ZwzKn6XRH70

https://www.theengineer.co.uk/riderless-motorcycle/

It's a C1, don't get excited! Lol

Cadillac is offering a self driving car even now.




Myself, I'm pessimistc.

Its only a matter of time if one goes to automated driving until a catastrophic failure comes, whether as a consequence of careless or inadequate software design or a consequence of willful sabotage.

Particularly one is being a fool if one doesn't see the opportunity to create havoc the terrorists will see in the prospect.

Only a matter of time until "the great crash" comes, with potentially a higher death toll than that of all the wars in history taken together.

Appeals to 'computer infallibility' are something no one who's weathered an internet crisis, or a few internet crises, should be able to accept.

I'm still ing over that riderless bike video.

ITIWBS, I fully see your point. Instead of losing personnel in suicide bombings, why not send cars full of explosives to distant lands and watch the end result on television - after all why should the Americans get away with drone bombings, when Islamic terrorists can retaliate in the same distant manner?

computers, and computer processors, have glitches, crash, and perform non-designed, random glitch-induced weirdness, rather more often than most of us like.... its quite bad enough when it results in you loosing a word processed document, due in work/college, the next day, and even more annoying, I'd imagine, when the glitch results in the car you're in, increasing its speed, and driving straight into a brick wall at high speed... I jut don't see how a computer system in a car, can be made less prone to errors and malfunction, than a home PC, etc...

Electric cars are dangerous... - at least I assume it was an electric car that nearly took out W and me, a few weeks back... it was just so quiet, it appeared from no where, and we couldn't even hear it, as it flew past us, almost hitting us in the process...

Electric cars are shocking, just shocking! Wasn't there something else that was silent, near enough,that they created a sound for, to stop it being dangerous too?

I, for one, welcome our driverless overlords.

Yeah, there will be accidents. There already have been with Tesla vehicles hitting stopped vehicles. As a biker I'm worried motorcycles are being overlooked while they're designing these systems. But eventually, I do believe when the technology matures, driverless vehicles will be seen as an absolute improvement to human drivers, with our drinking, texting, falling asleep behind the wheel, road rage, eating, fiddling with radios, doing our hair and make-up, &c.

And, hopefully, these future driverless electric vehicles won't need to make noise as they will detect all pedestrians much better than humans.

I hope they will be programmed to make noise so the *humans* hear them in time to not run into them.

I've been fighting my fellow bikers who believe "Loud Pipes Save Lives" for too long. I'm going to sit this one out.

The thing is noticing and responding - in other words consciousness. The Uber driver wasn't driving with due care and attention. The driverless car that crashed into the lorry wasn't either. Without fail safe devices in the car it is foolhardy to put your life into the hands of a machine or a drunken driver. Why not get a blind man to drive you home and have done with it, I ask myself?

Electric cars may be shocking, but so are electric eels

"Electric eels, I might add, do it, though it shocks them, I know"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FXDrgbGuzM

no soul, no noise...loud pipes yey!...another step into making us hive creatures. ( cue for a bee joke paul!)

Don't mention bee jokes, hive heard them all before - bee-t you to it!

I'n trying to bee-hive myself with the puns.