Vehicles with no human driver

[WTFH]

Out of curiosity, would people feel differently if driverless cars were restricted to specific lanes rather than mixed in with everyone else?

They could sit in the middle lane with the zoned out zombie drivers who are unaware of anything around them, or in the outside lane with the BMW drivers -would just need to program the car to drive one metre from the car in front.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

Regarding planes - a human tends to control the take off and landing and then it's the computer that takes over for the cruise phase which, as woody says, is in relatively clear airspace (barring any Russian/Iranian missiles out for a Sunday stroll).

They only do that so the pilots keep their skills up to date - even then stuff like the throttle settings on takeoff are automated. Planes could very easily manage the takeoff and landing (and they do the landings at times) - in some cases like full cat III landings in dense fog there's no way for a human to do it.

[ladymuck]

They only do that so the pilots keep their skills up to date - even then stuff like the throttle settings on takeoff are automated. Planes could very easily manage the takeoff and landing (and they do the landings at times) - in some cases like full cat III landings in dense fog there's no way for a human to do it.

That's why I said "tends to", not "always do". Call me old fashioned but I think keeping human flying skills up to date is quite useful. I'd love to see if an automated system would have picked the Hudson river as a landing spot.

[Protagoras]

That's why I said "tends to", not "always do". Call me old fashioned but I think keeping human flying skills up to date is quite useful. I'd love to see if an automated system would have picked the Hudson river as a landing spot.

An aviation forum I hang out on has been debating for decades the perceived de-skilling arising from automation. There have been accidents and near misses where pilots have failed properly to handle situations of automation failure. Then there's the issue of keeping up with what automation is actually doing in real time, leading to "what's it doing now?" type commentary.

Automation doesn't always fail gracefully; sensor failures commonly seriously compromise automation. A challenge for vehicles would be how reversion from automation to manual operation is handled. It can't be assumed that the driver of an automated vehicle can maintain the situational awareness to be able to take control instantly.