People Who Live In Suburbs: Classy, Icky, or Dudes?

some reports are coming out of hackers who are able to do things to cars via USB or 3G or even SMS. be warned!

lol

we need some banaka up in here

http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/04/hackers-break-into-subaru-outback-via-text-message/

I don't know, which is worse: a car that you drive distractedly and run into things, or a car that you drive that hits the brakes for you if you're about to hit things?

remember those Grand Cherokees with the "sudden acceleration" issue that turned out to be "because of pedal placement, ppl were standing on the gas when shifting it into drive"?

Golly, you just have to have equipment to set up your own gsm network and you're good to go!

fwiw this is a way people have done really entertaining phone hacks of all sorts, it's just that it usually doesn't lend to property theft.

x-post

Yeah, the Jeep issue has hit a couple different cars now! There was some other one where people were slipping off the brake pedal and their foot was landing on the gas.

I'm never sure if I think our self-driving car future is a good thing (fewer people killed...in the long-term) or a bad thing (makes awful exurban lifestyles more attractive)

Fuel's still gonna cost a lot

computer-driven cars could react much more quickly than a human driver, it wouldn't need the space in between cars as a buffer for reaction time. conceivably in a freeway situation the cars could be quite close to each other, like a train, allowing for much more drafting and better mileage

Yeah, I live in the upper midwest and that'd be useful for about half the year until ice season

why don't you just put your entire city under a dome

I'm pretty sure google et al. already have pretty impressive tech when it comes to generic freeway driving, but as soon as somebody dies...

but outside of freeway driving, I can't imagine they're anywhere close to having a car that could drive in some chaotic urban situation. I would imagine the biggest problem would be judging whether the obstacles in front of it were temporary or permanent - if someone's in the street but clearly moving out of the street, you'd be able to tell, but a car wouldn't. even if it can judge based on the object's direction and speed, that doesn't seem entirely safe.

also a lot of the magic coordination things can happen when *every* car is computer-driven. but that might not even be the case 30 years after the technology is on the market. limited $$$, resources, etc.

Google's streetview cars do most of their automatic driving in cities!

there are no cities in the south bay tho

I'm reading up on it and apparently they've been in LA and SF, so who knows, maybe they've figured out chaotic places. something will go wrong one day though.

wait those streetview things are driven remotely?

lol i don't think so -- google does work on self-driving cars though

there is a human inside in case of emergencies

ah

the chinese are just gonna build in rootkits into the chips that they supply to us auto manufacturers and then one day they're gonna make every car drive off a bridge

streetview ones have drivers

regardless, even w/ the gains from better mileage, it's hard to imagine that this tech won't more than make up for that by making a sprawly lifestyle more pleasant and more appealing. but by the time this is legal and on the market, we'll be dealing w/ resource limitations, so whatever.

How the hell does one drive 80 in an urban area? I'll do 80 north of Arlington or south of Tumwater, but usually, you can only do about 70 in the fast lane through most of the Seattle area, and that's if the freeway's moving along (which is roughly never). Plus, that's just asking to get pulled over.

self-PARKING cars. think about that. our children will wonder what a valet was.

― goole, Monday, September 12, 2011 3:18 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

trying to kill american jobs smh

How the hell does one drive 80 in an urban area?

no one does this, we're talking about highway/interstates

unless you mean the urban interstate, to which I say "you do it at 3PM before rush hour, or you live in the Twin Cities lol"

I meant an urban interstate. And the freeway here is clogged at 3PM.

self driving cars are my dream

riding the train but all to yourself1

yeah, that's why I can't really get on the "cars are all evil, let's tear down all of our autocentric infrastructure and start over" bandwagon. I dream of a future with self-driving electric cars + solar panels everywhere + lots of people working at home.

i like driving, especially on the highway on the highway w/ music

in the winter

uh, especially on the highway at night w/ music, rather

128 when it's dark outside...

yeah, that's why I can't really get on the "cars are all evil, let's tear down all of our autocentric infrastructure and start over" bandwagon. I dream of a future with self-driving electric cars + solar panels everywhere + lots of people working at home.
--the wheelie king (wk)

this would just be another step toward us turning into 'up'-style obese people

You guys can never be happy.

think you mean wall-e xp

not surprising though that an ilxor would want to go through an entire day without meeting anybody else

ilx sees 'ilxing for all' as a better future than 'college for all#

http://i.imgur.com/5wnEB.png

http://i.imgur.com/PsOwq.jpg

but outside of freeway driving, I can't imagine they're anywhere close to having a car that could drive in some chaotic urban situation. I would imagine the biggest problem would be judging whether the obstacles in front of it were temporary or permanent - if someone's in the street but clearly moving out of the street, you'd be able to tell, but a car wouldn't. even if it can judge based on the object's direction and speed, that doesn't seem entirely safe.

also a lot of the magic coordination things can happen when *every* car is computer-driven. but that might not even be the case 30 years after the technology is on the market. limited $$$, resources, etc.

i wonder if there aren't some half-way measures, though; there's a 'self-drive lane', say, or maybe your daily journey is your short drive to the autozone, piloting autonomously from your house to the turn-off, before you slip into the robo-drive mode & take out your newspaper for the next fifteen minutes.

we could just get like good trains though.

I'm reading up on it and apparently they've been in LA and SF, so who knows, maybe they've figured out chaotic places. something will go wrong one day though.

― iatee, Monday, 12 September 2011 22:59 (Yesterday) Bookmark

this isn't an attempt to correct this, because it's so obviously still a flawed point, but you can imagine that you might be able to get a better safety level than we have right now, considering our pretty bad self-driving stats. what would probably be problematic is that we'll take copious errors that we at least get to make, over the dystopia of limited but computer-made errors that we'd have to sit and idly watch occur (which is totally horrifying to contemplate tbh).

iatee did mean 'Up,' he's just really against flying houses as a form of transport

otm

this would just be another step toward us turning into 'up'-style obese people

no. that's more about what we eat and how much we eat of it. that's the same thing that bugged me about the walkscore site. I feel like the legitimate environmental argument against cars is somewhat undermined when people try to add on all of these unconvincing extra points like exercise.

not surprising though that an ilxor would want to go through an entire day without meeting anybody else

I'm glad I don't live in your guys world where the office is the only way to meet people and walking to work is your only possible chance for exercise.

you really think that car culture has zero correlation w/ poor health? none at all? I'm on my phone so I can't pull any stats, I will later.

of course you can get exercise in the suburbs. but people who live in walkable places get lots of exercise without having to make a conscious decision about it.

and the environmental argument has nothing to do w/ this - can't be 'undermined' by a completely different issue

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/walking/HQ01612

All it takes to reap these benefits is a routine of brisk walking. It doesn't get much simpler than that. And you can forget the "no pain, no gain" talk. Research shows that regular, brisk walking can reduce the risk of heart attack by the same amount as more vigorous exercise, such as jogging.

there are a bunch of demographic studies showing a correlation between obesity rates and rates of people who walk/bike/use public transpo

http://www.thesmythgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/1276.jpg

Living in a walkable city is pretty much its own health reward, outside of the possibility of frostbite