The next Tadej Pogačar? 15-year-old boy smashes 340km at 27km/h; Should you use WD-40 on your chain?; Aero bars; You can't park there, Sir; Mur de Huy hell; Commute checklist; "A cycling city" + more on the live blog

*Snickers*

But this could turn in to a Marathon joke session.

I'll Breakaway from it now

Taking a Time Out would be a good idea.

I'm struggling to think of a confection based pun...

Oh well, I'll Fudge one in somehow.

I'll get my coat...

Gah. That pun drove me curly wurly 

I did need the afternoon Boost tho...

And I thought it was only Smarties that had the answer...

Let's hope nobody has a Crunchie with a Double Decker on the road to Yorkie because they were trying to get too Aero. 

Just as well SRAM don't make reverse gears.

Mungecrundle wrote:

Just as well SRAM don't make reverse gears.

👏👏👏👏

Mungecrundle wrote:

Just as well SRAM don't make reverse gears.

.

I read that.

So, the idea is that the vehicle does all the driving in slower steady traffic on motorways, and the human gets to play games or watch a film (but not to use their phone, which seems weird).

BUT the human has to be ready to take control if circumstances change or traffic speeds up or they want to leave the motorway.

Yeah, no possible problems there...

ABI:  "... and who pays when the collisions happen?  Haha... F**k. That!"

So is the insurance tied to the car and its manufacturer, or is it tied to the owner (like at present).  If the latter, I wonder how many uninsured self-drive cars will be driving around because the owner thought (or says they thought) that it was the former...?

Well - I guess it depends on how / what they actually categorise as self-driving.  I'm not sure anything counts in the UK ATM?  Not my specialist subject though.

It sounds to me like "we've decided to let this happen regardless - because we think it will anyway.  Furthermore we want this ASAP as we get cash from these manufacturers and also 'I want one now' from the public".  So I think this is "better have something in the guide to cover complaints".

Just like Cars 1.0 a generation will have to cope with the fallout while kinks are sorted out.  Again - wait for the full detail but this certainly appears to offer a fee of loopholes.  "Can you prove that the system alerted my client that he should pay attention before the crash?  No?  The defense rests."

Currently nothing in the uk is "self driving" , not for the public - manufacturers are testing g level 3.5-4 autonomy right now tho. 
 

The issue is the insurers aren't wanting to take the risk, they're saying the manu should be as they're the ones proving the systems. 

I get that it's to try to jolly on the insurers.  I'd be doubtful as an insurer given a) the complexity of what is mostly a software solution and b) the fact that we're less towards "software as a service" and more "software as fast fashion".

Not my fight - in fact rather the opposite.  Aside from saving people from rather boring jobs (but also making them unemployed) self-driving motor vehicles are my definition of "just because you can doesn't mean you should".

Basically, self-driving car premiums will be so high that they will be uninsurable, I think that's the point - it's not the Luddite Government banning these things, oh noes, it is the evil insurers. As for watching TV, what they are saying is that self-driving cars really have to be capable of operating with zero intervention so by suggesting watching TV (as if that was a good use of time) they are clarifying that the driver is allowed to pay zero attention to the road, not be in a supervisory role - setting a very high bar for the software to achieve.

My suspicion is that although theoretically self-driving cars should be less error-prone, that only works in an environment where the overwhelming majority of vehicles are self-driven. WIll early adopter self-driving cars notice the subtle movements we pick up on that lets us know that a car is about to do something stupid? Does a self-driving car know to just ease off a little in the expectation that the car following the lorry is about to pull out, or alternatively will it just nudge the speed up to avoid tracking a car travelling at a similar speed, sitting in its blind spot, or trapping it in lane, do they cope with cars merging in from a slip road - change lane, slow down, speed up, hold station depending on what the other car is trying to do? There is a lot of subtlety to driving incident-free on motorways even when you are dealing with sensible drivers. Most of the big accidents reported on Teslas and the like have been because of odd things that happen (which makes it alright to crash, right?).

I suspect the software and sensors - like most - are already better than the average human in most environments.  Computers don't get bored and normally have much faster reactions.

I'm not sure the actual "correctness" of the system is the issue though - for the law.  I think it's the "level of proof" / "reasonable doubt".  Tech companies would need (or ought to if our leaders weren't so keen to give them a pass...) to convince a court that their system got it right and a human got it wrong.  And their system will be complex to explain.  Most people seem to be pretty motivated to assume that such systems are inherently stupid / inflexible.  At small scale this is indeed true but it turns out that billions of tiny stupid robots can sum to something very "smart".

Mind you that was no problem for the Post Office with their defective Horizon system from Fujitsu so it probably just means some lawyers getting richer.