The car that parks itself

"Tokyo - Does the mere thought of having to parallel-park your car make you break out in a sweat?"

No. And if it does, turn your driver's license in. It was on the test to get one!!

What does this have to do with Pontiac, Yousuf? GW

Yousuf Khan wrote:

Do we really want to make it even easier for people too stupid to drive a car to get behind the wheel where they can kill the rest of us?

If anything, that learning curve isn't steep ENOUGH.

-DanD

'If you make everything foolproof, you will soon have a world full of only fools'.

Carl

Dan Duncan wrote:

Yeah - I heard something on the radio about that the other day - was that Paul Harvey? Can't remember.

Man - can you imagine what a repair bill on that system will be when it breaks down, or when you go to sell the vehicle how much the value of the vehicle will be dragged down if it broke and you didn't fix it?

Technology's wonderful and all that (I am an engineer), but I think we are beyond the point of diminishing returns on some of this stuff.

Bill Putney (to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with "x")

That car is so freak'n small that if you cant park that yourself, not only should you have your license taken away. You should also be shot so we know you will never be able to get behind the wheel of a car.

I suppose the good side of this increased 'intelligence' in cars is that , in the near future, I can just upload a list of beer, pretzels,chocolate,etc. and send it to the store by itself!

Then in a couple years after that it can go to work for me!

Carl

Yousuf Khan wrote:

Yeah, no kidding. "Throttle by wire" (electronic w/ no cable) scares the crap outta me. GW

Bill Putney wrote:

Then you won't get paid, it will. No mo beer munee :-(

lol GW

I can see the lawyers and insurance companies lining up already. Let's say the car that parks itself hits another vehicle or even a person. Who's to blame?? Wasn't me....I wasn't driving....the car did it..I was merely a passenger. Oh boy.

I have to agree that if you cannot park your own car, you shouldn't drive your own car. Jay S

self-driving

I'm sure people used to say, "if you can't shift your own gears, you shouldn't drive". Well, actually they still say that.

And prior to that, "if you can't adjust the choke to the ambient temperature conditions, you shouldn't drive". And perhaps before that, they must've been saying, "if you can't handcrank your own engine up, you shouldn't drive". And so on. :-)

Yousuf Khan

All the more reason to avoid putting anything with the word Microsoft, anywhere near a car. :-)

Yousuf Khan

Yes, but those examples relate to engine and transmission. STEERING should be operator controlled as steering is really what driving is.

Starting is not driving. Tuning is not driving. Shifting is not driving.

Steering is driving, unless of course it's a "big wheel" or a "green machine" or a bicycle......then all of it is driving.

;-)

GW

Yousuf Khan wrote:

In case you haven't noticed, there are LAREADY people too stupid to drive out ont he roads today, with licenses in hands. And my beloved Pontiac's been dented way too many times by morons who don't know how to parallel park (and naturally, none have left notes fessing up).

Personally, I'd love to see these idiots not drive. But since that's not going to happen, I'd rather there be a car that can do a better job of parking itself than the owner can. At least maybe then I won't find new dings on my car every damn week.

That's what they said about computers about 30 years ago, but I'm still going to work everyday!

Um, not only did I notice but I even said so.

You stripped this line out of my original message: "If anything, that learning curve isn't steep ENOUGH."

It only parallel parks. It doesn't slot park. Do you get dings from people parallel parking near you or from parking next to you and hitting you with the doors? Mine are mostly the latter, although I do have one big scratch on my front bumper, probably from a rear-mounted spare tire or hitch or bike rack or something.

Parking is a fairly small worry to me beause when people do it badly it doesn't result in nearly as many deaths as collisions at higher speeds. The part that scares me is that killing someone with a car is rarely a very serious offense if the person wasn't drinking. It's a misdemeanor in many places! If these people can't maneuver a car at low speed surrounded by stationary objects, I shudder to think how they manage on the road.

-DanD

Awww now c'mon, don't take that attitude - at least if its just software to control parking its not running all the time, and it won't have third party software riddled with memory holes either... so chances are just like my Win98 install it'd be brick outhouse solid.

Nick.

My dad fitted his '99 VT Commodore with reversing sonar - I guess the Toyota system uses a similar sensing system - if so it's gonna cause just as many parking accidents as retarded drivers do!

That sonar even though the best one available was a total waste of time - why did it think you were going to hit something when there's nothing but vacant area behind you?

Nick.

(literally),

Yeah, well, if I had a car that was as reliable as Win98, I'd dig a hole in the ground and bury it :) Tonyrama

Why does everyone else have reliability issues with 98? Mine has always been good to me!

Nick.