Smart Cars vs. Dumb Cars

[Wes]

Increasingly we're seeing "smart" products spying on their users. Anything that is connected to the internet could be (and probably is) phoning home. Corporations are gathering data on users and selling it. Phones have become tracking devices and now smart cars are too. So I was thinking today, I wonder if someday in the not too far-off future, if "dumb" cars are going to be sought after in the same way people use prepaid "burner" phones to protect their identities or, as time goes by, they'll experience a significant rise in value as less and less of them are available. They'll also be easier to steal since a smart car might know when it's stolen (we already see stuff like this with OnStar shutting off the engines of stolen vehicles). Also, you can't remove-control someone else's dumb car. In the future, self-driving cars will probably have some sort of back door that will let police to tell the car to report to the police station. But perhaps hackers will use this same back door to whisk the cars away from your driveway and into a mobile chop shop?

 

[Fred]

All this smart technology requires knowhow. Eventually, like computer crackers attacking big corporations, you'll see the same with smartcars. As security levels up, so will the means to circumvent it.

 

[Zack]

This would mean that a car thief has to be a lot smarter than your average modern car thief. You're next fast and furious movie could look more like hackers.

Maybe you'll see more instances of people breaking into cars just to install malware by USB? The lower level criminals still need something to do and they'll still go after the easy money.

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[Dumont]

I have personal doubts as to whether smart cars would ever completely overtake self driven vehicles.

For one: In order to be ethically sound, self driving vehicles have to be programmed to cause the least amount of casualties in the event of an accident.
For two: This implies that your smart car will have to be programmed to always choose to put its passengers in danger if there is a potential for; say, your car to plow into a row of pedestrians or swerve into traffic thus potentially multiplying the hazard of an automotive disaster.

As such: Your self driving car has to be ethically programmed to; in the event of accidents, immediately seek to endanger itself over everyone else around them.

For three: People are humans, with all the sticky implications.

It's more likely that in all future cars you'll simply have the option to have the car drive itself, for use on major motorways so that your car can network with all others around them and streamline traffic. At any point in time you'll be able to switch it back to manual control. This will satisfy people who like to drive as recreation, as well as those who wouldn't want their children put in a machine that gives priority to the lives of strangers; but also retains the option for you to get utterly drunk and still take your car home.

The London Metro works this way. Their trains have been self-operating for years, but always have an operator on board. People refused to step foot on the things without someone physically present with a hand on the brakes.

 

[shadowclasper]

Yep, it's why I don't think the google cars that have a flat panel where the steering wheel should be will ever catch on. Nobody will ever want to drive something where they can't override the car in terms of self interest.

 

[Luca]

I'm sticking to this 'dumb' car!

 

[LittleWasp]

All the 'smart' technologies that people keep pushing for and consumers keep eating up for inconceivable reasons all fall under the general category of 'It's neat, but why do I need it?' to me.

Like smart phones. High quality cameras, processing power; essentially a little computer in your pocket.
Ok, that's neat. But why do I need that?

I use my phone to call people and text people: Long range communication on the fly. My computer at home is where I work and play, and being from the mid-late 90s, it easily takes up more than half the time I spend awake in a single day, every day.
Why would I now want my time spent outside; my one egress from computers, to be invaded with a tiny, portable one?

Personally, I don't think I'll ever want to drive a car anyway (if my constant anxiety dreams about skidding all over the high-way in an unwieldy 4x4 are any indication), so I'll be glad to not have another corporate bear-trap snuck into my slippers. >w>

 

[shadowclasper]

Actually smart phones make sense. They enormously condense information sharing technology down to a finite amount and sharing information is about 50% of what civilization is ABOUT. So that's a smart technology that absolutely makes sense.

 

[Wes]

Yeah. I mean, I can look at my phone right now and on the screen it has: where I parked, what the weather is today, how long it would take me to get home, a traffic map, what events I have on my schedule today, and what the news is, plus I have my email, to-do list, and a bunch of apps from credit card reader (Square) to a wifi signal analyzer. I even use it to log onto Star Army. I can watch movies on a bus ride or play commercial-free music in my car. Once you have a smart phone you will use it for so much, it's pretty much unthinkable to go without one.

 

[LittleWasp]

I suppose it depends upon the lifestyle, but I disagree whole-heartedly.

All of those features are useful, but I do not need them, and I do not wish to be tethered to them either. Plus, I've seen too many depressed mums staring forlornly into their coffee mugs at a cafe while their children cluster around them, curled into the foetal position and gazing unerringly into their respective smart phones to regard the technology with anything save reservation.

 

[Ashlinn]

I agree with @LittleWasp a bit.

I'm a 90's kid, My first computer was about as powerful a computer as a potato light tbh, but as computers have gotten smaller (my first laptop was a netbook that I'd take to school and hijack their security system to point out their 'IT guyz' knew nothing.) I've spent more time in and around computers to really separate where I end and the machine begins. That being said?
I enjoy smartphones, they are incredibly handy, but not my go to for planning my daily activities. I've stumbled across my own personal info out in the web a time too many for my own comfort. Mainly from my personal computer. (F U M$! I am -NOT- your free beta tester!) There should be a limit to what companies can do with your information. M$ and all the others easily sell and swap your information, Ever buy anything on google play? - you just transmitted your info, specifically credit card and security tags right to google. Enjoy your 'tailored to you ad experience of a sweet 0% apr credit card....) There's websites to help you remove all of the M$/Google/Etc bs off your phones and computers. Sadly - if you do - you void your warranty and good luck getting tech support.
Self driving cars however likely will be an opt-in instead, I love driving- with all the human element that goes into it. And a program was designed by a human, so it's not infallible. Grain of salt thing, being able to hit the breaks makes a whole world of difference (as does having a hand on the wheel so to speak.)

Hanging out went from having fun with friends to this


I'd be terrified if I jumped in a friends car, they set the autodrive and instantly buried their face in their phone.
Thats exactly what would happen with most of the smartphone generation.
It's too tempting. I check my phone here and there, and when I'm lost google maps is handy.
But. I don't -need- it. We don't -need- a smartcar, tbh.

 

[miss_story]

View attachment 5718

I'm sticking to this 'dumb' car!

Is that a Celica? That's the car I have.

Here's my opinion on self driving or smart cars:

I think there will always be a situation where someone might require an override mode for their vehicle even if it was self driving. There would obviously be saftey issues with say driving your truck onto a frozen lake for ice fishing, or going off a road contained in the map data that the car has.(Long driveways, newly built roads or forest roads come to mind) GPS isn't infallible especially consumer grade products. if there aren't sufficient satellites in your current constellation your current position could vary or be incorrect by + or - several metres. If there is something that blocks the GPS signal like tree canopy or tunnels connectivity might cut out completely. That means that the car might need additional forms of determining its current position. ( waypoint markers built into the road surface, cell phone tower triangulation and visual cues from the car's cameras.) They'd also have to program the cars to react to unfavorable road and weather conditions (Ice and rain and potholes, my province sucks).

I personally loathe driving it stresses me out I don't trust other drivers not to murder me or drunkenly run me off the road, but with our current infrastructure I don't think we are ready for high speed/or high risk area self driving vehicles.

I personally don't care if some company knows where I am we're already bombarded with habit targeting ads and privacy doesn't really exist any more so I feel like having one more device tracking my movements isn't going to break the camel's back.

PS: I would love to have a car that kept away vandals and thieves using a camera/self shutdown system. Ive had my windows smashed more than once, and would have loved to catch the little fiends that did it.

 

[Jimmy]

Okay, the following is a sleep-deprived OPINION of a man whose OPINION isn't going to be backed up right now by sources and may misremember some items of interest.

Cars, even ones not really marketed as "smart" already report back to their manufacturers as to their condition, and the state of their warranties. Others maintain tracking of their position at all times and report to the manufacturer with such information, some as an anti-theft measure, others as a utility, and some will only disengage a built-in engine limiter when the car is detected to be on the location of an unrestricted race track.

As for the eccentricities of smart cars, as far as we have seen they are near perfect drivers. No blind spots, no panic, no negligence. In deed, if anything they could be too perfect as all but one of the crashes the Google self-driving cars have been in have had human drivers at-fault (the exception is a murky case, and mostly due to legalese), as the car expects every other car to act in accordance to road law. It will take a hit to the rear rather than allow itself to get pushed through the lights when stopping at a close red with a negligent or aggressive driver behind.

As for tampering or misusing smart cars, there are very rare and scattered reports and anecdotes of the Engine Control Management (ECM) chip being vulnerable to tampering in such cars. Although this is not unique at all to smart cars, a BMW ECM has been hacked in workshops before and given basic controls of the vehicle to the rather enthusiastic and curious workshop crew. While practical application is much more demanding than a controlled workshop laboratory, there was faint speculation that at least one assassination via ECM tinkering has taken place by controlling engine acceleration and putting it on blast, causing the driver to lose control and crash violently. However this is tenuous and unprovable, but such vulnerabilities will probably be found at some point manifest themselves to the public eye the same as any software.

 

[shadowclasper]

I suppose it depends upon the lifestyle, but I disagree whole-heartedly.

All of those features are useful, but I do not need them, and I do not wish to be tethered to them either. Plus, I've seen too many depressed mums staring forlornly into their coffee mugs at a cafe while their children cluster around them, curled into the foetal position and gazing unerringly into their respective smart phones to regard the technology with anything save reservation.

You can also live without electricity, the printing press, gasoline powered cars, and a whole bunch of other stuff. They are not even strictly necessary to survive in modern society.

As for the whole 'staring into their phones in the fetal position' bullshit. They said the same thing about NOVELS back in the victorian period. Almost word for word.

Smart Technology, in the form of smart phones, effectively externalizes our memory, and as long as we're plugged into a network, gives us conditional omniscience. Knowledge is a massive reason humanity, as a species, rules this mud ball now. Conditional Omniscience is a huge evolutionary advantage over just about every other bit of technology that could possibly be provided to us.

Is it STRICTLY necessary to functioning in society? No. Will you be at a horrendous disadvantage if you don't use it? Absolutely.

9 times out of 10, also, those kids 'staring into their smart phones' are still interacting with people. Maybe not physically, but they are interacting with them. That's not likely to change. Multiplayer communication will always be more fun that solo.

edit:And any parent who can't keep a reign on their kid on those situations, who are unhappy with their kid in that situation, is obviously not putting the effort into actually PARENTING.

I have to look after my nephews and nieces sometimes (more cousins actually but they're so much younger than me I get called uncle), and because I develop games for a living, their parents come to me for advice on how those things interact with their children.

I tell them straight up. "Take the time to research the stuff. Would you bring your children to a movie you hadn't at least watched the trailer for? Of course not. Don't buy them games you haven't at least done the same for! You don't have to trust the ESRB rating system, but it's a good place to start."

I also tell them to take the time and effort to BE with their kids when their kids play games. Don't let them have a personal computer in their room until the child STOPS (full stop) playing with other forms of toys. Don't let them -ever- have a game console in their own room rather than a shared living space. Until they reach the point where they stop playing with physical toys (at least to the degree that you feel it's time for them to move onto other activities), don't let them play their console without you BEING IN THE ROOM. It doesn't have to be you playing the game with them even, just be sitting there reading a book, watching what they consume as a form of media, making the judgement calls on what's appropriate and what's not.

I -despise- people blaming technology rather than how people use it. These are -tools-, they are not mind control devices, they do not make us weaker or stupider or anything like that, if anything, these things are making us SMARTER as time goes on. But you have to THINK about how they're being used.

edit2: In conclusion. A smart phone is like carrying the entire library of congress in your back pocket. That's not necessary, but it's a damn huge advantage.

 

[Wes]

 

[MBSky]

I think all the "dumb" cars will have a place in our society for a number of years still. Knowing a lot of truck guys, I can't imagine too many of them giving up too much control. They are more likely to continue buying trucks on the secondary market and fixing them up rather than buy something that seems "trendy".

 

[Navian]

Once all cars are remote-operated, they can be coordinated to reduce drag and energy costs. Roads can be narrower, junctions tighter and pass cars through more efficiently. There'll be no need for traffic lights and road signs, or even windows and mirrors all over the vehicles, since the data will all be available electronically. That means passenger safety can take a higher priority than driver visibility, although it probably won't need to since the roads will be safer than ever before, maybe even with lower accident rates than we had before cars were invented.

To some people this sounds like a nightmare, but to me it sounds... uh... almost as good as walking or using a bicycle, hah. I think we have to go toward this eventually, though. Road travel has been getting much safer, but it's still one of the most dangerous things in the modern world, the cute statistic being that one person dies from it every 25 seconds. As soon as we have the technology, it would be irresponsible to let people continue driving their own vehicles anywhere that pedestrians might be about... or to keep buying vehicles that weigh two tons or more to use for nothing but their own personal transport, for that matter.

'Hacking' is a scary word, but... I rely on all kinds of things that 'could get hacked', but don't. Being afraid of my car getting 'hacked' seems about as useful as worrying about the airliner I'm on getting hijacked, or my house getting broken into for that matter. It could happen, and there's certainly people in this world who'd do it, but it doesn't, and they don't, for all kinds of reasons. It's not completely impossible, but it's not worth much attention because the world's a big place and these things don't happen to most people. Early adopters might be at more risk, both because the technology will be more raw and susceptible, and there'll be more people trying to 'make a point out of it', at first.

To assuage auto enthusiasts, while I believe self-driving vehicles will become mandatory in city streets, I don't expect that to be true everywhere else. Even aside from potential alternatives, like mag-lev trains or suborbital shuttle flights, most of the world still doesn't have roads, and I sure hope that doesn't change! Self-driving cars for off-road travel would be far more difficult to design, and not nearly as useful. It makes sense to let humans continue driving in rural areas, which is where automobiles have always been most useful, anyway. I think it's going to be centuries until those become obsolete, and by then most of humanity should be living in outer space, where there's no need for any automobiles, self-driving or not! Who'll be driving the orbiters and launch vehicles 300 years from now is an open question, though...