【the accursed share, vols. 2 and 3: the history of eroticism and sovereignty】

If you've never seen or the accursed share, vols. 2 and 3: the history of eroticism and sovereigntybeen near (or inside) a self-driving car, the concept can seem a bit much. Cars driving themselves? What?

But the thing is, autonomous vehicle technology is already all over: in many of our human-controlled cars, on the road in driverless shuttles and vans, and coming from self-driving companies like Alphabet's Waymo, GM-funded Cruise, Amazon-backed Aurora, and Uber. Even if it sounds like a far-off, far-fetched, futuristic proposition, self-driving cars aren't sci-fi.

Engineering simulation software company Ansys surveyed more than 22,000 adults from the U.S., UK, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Japan, China, India, and other regions, about self-driving perceptions. The survey, out last week, found that older adults are less optimistic than younger adults about ever riding in a robocar. Almost 60 percent of respondents said they're most concerned about a technological failure while onboard.

Getting over preconceptions about self-driving cars is a big step for companies to successfully introduce those vehicles onto the road, let alone get people to ride in them. Mashable dug deeper into conversations swirling around about autonomous vehicles to see what's realistic, exaggerated, and just plain fantasy.

At an autonomous vehicle conference in August, Mike Demler, a senior analyst from The Linley Group, a team of analysts in the electronics processor industry that powers autonomous systems, explained some the misconceptions about self-driving, how ubiquitous he thinks it'll be, and what the vehicles can do.

It was a cynical perspective, doubtful that Americans would willingly ditch their personal cars or take a self-driving taxi to the supermarket, and he pumped the brakes on overblown reports of self-driving Tesla taxis taking over the roads as soon as next year.

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Here are some common myths we debunked, or at least tried to clarify.

Self-driving cars will be here tomorrow — or never

Demler said he's finally seeing fewer presentations about full autonomy without a human driver monitoring the car, known as Level 5, coming in five years.

"The technology is not ready," he said in a recent phone call. "This dream of just transforming everything into robotic vehicles that everyone is jumping into is a fantasy." Autonomy doesn't just happen; instead it's a lot of small, incremental milestones as the cars learn and train.

But just because it's a longer timeline doesn't mean it's not happening ever. It just takes a bit more to get to safe, full autonomy.

"It's not like these cars have to drive as well as a human drives, [they have to drive] much, much better," Chris Jacobs, vice president of autonomous transportation and safety at Analog Devices, a semi-conductor company that supplies chips for electronics and autonomous systems, said at a recent meeting. That's not a small feat.

There are factors beyond software and hardware: social acceptance, regulatory and government acceptance, infrastructure changes, and more. "We need to get people more used to it and comfortable," Jacobs added.

Self-driving cars mean the end of car ownership

Last year, Americans bought 17.3 million new vehicles. None of those were fully autonomous. That's not about to change overnight. Instead, Jacobs sees an eventual duality, in which personally owned cars exist alongside autonomous robotaxi fleets.

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Just because autonomous cars are expensive (the autonomous sensor kit alone runs about $100,000) and not set up for personal ownership (the average driver spends about $7,000 a year on a car altogether and can't afford the teched-out, high-cost autonomous vehicle) doesn't mean everyone will ditch their vehicle for access to an autonomous car through a ride-hail service. Since AVs are so pricey and hard to produce in mass quantities, it's expected that the only way to use them will be through ride services, like Waymo in Phoenix. You order a self-driving car on an app much like you do an Uber, except there's no driver.

Demler said that's "too narrow a view of where personal transportation is today. Everyone thinks you’re going to become a millennial." By that he means taking ride-sharing apps, car-shares, e-scooters, and other transportation options to get around without owning a car.

For certain drivers, like those who need to use a pickup truck to haul something, carry a boat, or go surfing, an autonomous car service is more complicated that just ordering a ride through an app since you'll need something that works for your specific situation.

"These just don’t fit with autonomy," he said.

Humans won't ever drive again

Future generations might question why they'd ever want to learn to drive with ride-sharing and robotaxis available. But it's a gradual social shift to fewer drivers. "It will be something that slowly accelerates," Jacobs said.

Like horseback riding went from the roads to the farm, eventually (more) cars will go to the track and similar places, where driving enthusiasts will keep human driving alive in the time of autonomy.

Demler is even more critical of a driving-free future. He sees too many use cases where an autonomous ride service doesn't work. "Sure," he sarcastically remarked, "if you never leave the city, go shopping, go on a road trip, or the beach." Essentially, too many situations require a human at the wheel — and will for the foreseeable future, he believes.

SEE ALSO: Self-driving cars are still learning unwritten road rules, like the Pittsburgh Left

But it's not all or nothing. As self-driving cars move onto public roads, the robocars will be riding alongside human drivers. In this mixed mode, everyone has to work together. Waymo and Cruise autonomous vehicles are good examples in Phoenix and San Francisco, where the cars are learning to drive in public.

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It's not a utopian scenario where all the cars are in sync and can communicate. No, the Cruise vehicle has to figure out what to do about the person double-parked in front of the Whole Foods while also paying attention as someone else makes a quick dash for a nearby parking spot. Waymo cars need to understand that at the mall garage, driving super slowly and cautiously is going to infuriate drivers used to zooming through.

Autonomous vehicles use out-of-reach technology

Jacobs works with the underlying tech used to power self-driving vehicles. While it's not ready for prime time, "most of it is here, all within our grasp," Jacobs said. By 2030, he says we'll continue to see incremental improvements in cars anyone can buy. That means features like automatic emergency steering and braking that use self-driving tech will become as normal as cruise control.

Demler agrees; lower levels of autonomy, usually Level 2, are becoming more common in everyday cars. Audi and Cadillac have traffic assist features, while Nissan and Tesla both introduced semi-autonomous driving systems, ProPilot Assist and Autopilot. Other cars have parking assistance features. Demler calls these "autonomous modes" that gear us up for full autonomy.

To enable these features, the sensors, cameras, and other tech on cars are the same you'll see on self-driving cars. The laser-emitting LiDAR sensors on the Audi A8 show what's around the car, just like on Waymo minivans.

Autonomous cars sacrifice safety for convenience

For making a vehicle safer, "autonomous makes sense," Demler conceded.

With 8,110 fatal car crashes in non-autonomous vehicles in the first three months of this year based on National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data, self-driving cars can practically eliminate countless distracted, bad, and dangerous driving-based incidents. Human error will be much less a factor if humans aren't behind the wheel.

In the same 2019 period, there were no deaths involving a car operating in full self-driving mode. Last year there was one in Tempe, Arizona, after an Uber self-driving car hit a woman. That's not to say there weren't any fatalities because of new tech in cars, but the cars were using semi-autonomous systems, like Tesla's Autopilot.

As Aurora CEO Chris Urmson assured everyone last week at the World Safety Summit, his company is all about flagging safety concerns instead of brushing anything aside. Furthermore, he committed, "We won’t deploy our self-driving vehicles on public roads without human safety drivers until our technology is safer than a human driver."

Even with all these preconceptions slowing acceptance of autonomy, self-driving vehicles are happening, or at least starting to test on public roads in more places. As we're exposed to the new type of driving, we'll start to see what it's really like. Spoiler, it's a lot more boring than you'd expect. One woman who lives near Waymo testing has this to share: "These cars are sloooooowwww and overly cautious."

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As autonomous car tech executive Jacobs said, "Autonomy is going to come." Even if it takes a while, you might as well get ready.

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Topics Self-Driving Cars