JD Power's latest report (here) makes for an interesting read. Seems like most new car owners aren't using most of the tech that manufacturers are trying to jam into new cars. From the pointless things like voice control (which never works) to apps (why?) to genuinely useful things like heads-up displays.
I have to say I'm firmly in that category. I love tech - I'm an early adopter for most things - but the crap 'tech' that manufacturers put in cars is showing how desperate they are to try to distinguish themselves from their competitors. Between speed cameras, gas mileage wars and emissions regulations, there's really no point in having a more powerful, faster car now - you can't use it anywhere. And from a distance, most 4-door saloons look like either a Honda Prelude or a Toyota Camry because all imagination has evaporated from the 'design' departments.
So instead, the manufacturers have turned to tech gimmicks to try to sell cars. This was definitely true last time I was looking to buy a car. I ended up with the Range Rover Evoque because it genuinely looks different and is a fun car to drive at any speed. But when I was looking at the Audi, during the test drive, the dealer really didn't know much about traction control, center of gravity, torque or anything I wanted to know about, but he was bang up to date on how I could play videos directly from my phone on to the center console while driving. Same happened at the Mercedes dealership. According to their salesman, the concierge system (the remote connectivity system that allows you to call someone to do menial tasks for you, like remotely programming your GPS) was the best thing ever in the history of the universe. Again, he knew little about fundamentals like power steering and cruise control. Same was true at every dealer except Land Rover who gave me the keys and said "bring it back when you've had enough". They were the only ones who didn't put a sales drone in the car with me to explain to me how amazing the hifi was or what an awesome feature it was that the car would read my twitter feed to me.
So yeah - do you have a 'tech'-laden car full of things you don't use? And if so, why are we paying for all this crap?
Monday, September 21, 2015
Monday, September 14, 2015
For $60, millions of dollars of self-driving-car tech can be defeated.
From the "d'uh!" newsdesk, more information this week on how drone cars are not as infallible as Google and everyone else would like you to believe.
Specific to Google, turns out their cars can be paralysed by real drivers. The problem is that Google cars drive by the book, which nobody else does. Everyone has their own little quirks, shortcuts and grey areas of the law that they interpret in their own way. For example, Google's car can have real problems at a four-way stop. By-the-book, all vehicles should come to a complete stop, then the first vehicle to arrive should proceed (or the vehicle to the right if there's only two of you arriving at the same time). But in the real world, people inch, roll, drive slowly and generally don't really come to a full 100% stop unless there's a police office watching. This is a problem for Google's cars because they will not proceed into a four-way stop unless the other three cars are 100% stationary. Google reports that one of their cars was stranded at one intersection because of this particular issue.
Similarly, Google's cars are causing accidents because they drive by the book. When they see a pedestrian waiting to cross a pedestrian crossing, they stop, like everyone is supposed to. Problem is that in America, pedestrians are second-class citizens and almost nobody stops until the pedestrian is actually in the road. Meaning that when Google's cars stop as they're supposed to, people rear-end them. Repeatedly. Google's cars are too law-abiding and are causing accidents.
The supporters of drone cars will naturally point out that this wouldn't be a problem if everyone had them, but back here in the real world, 100% coverage for drone cars is decades away, so for the time being, they will be on the road with the rest of us and the manufacturers had better figure out some fuzzy logic pretty quickly.
Not specific to google, but applicable to any drone car that uses LIDAR to see the world (read: all of them), you can now spoof LIDAR returns for the sake of a $60 Raspberry Pi kit. Jonathan Petit, Principal Scientist at Security Innovation, has been able to spoof LIDAR returns for everything from pedestrians to solid walls to other vehicles, meaning he can effectively perform a denial-of-service attack on any self-driving car and render it unable to navigate.
Researcher hacks self driving car sensors.
This is not dissimilar to the tactics used in the military to spoof radar returns on everything from aircraft to warships. Only they do it using a combination of slab-sided design and countermeasure electronics. But the principle is the same. Make the source LIDAR or RADAR system see something that isn't really there.
You might think this isn't a risk in the real world, but we live in an age where shining laser pointers at commercial airline pilots is a thing, so it seems logical to assume that $60 LIDAR spoofing kits will become a must-have in the toolbox of the same people.
Specific to Google, turns out their cars can be paralysed by real drivers. The problem is that Google cars drive by the book, which nobody else does. Everyone has their own little quirks, shortcuts and grey areas of the law that they interpret in their own way. For example, Google's car can have real problems at a four-way stop. By-the-book, all vehicles should come to a complete stop, then the first vehicle to arrive should proceed (or the vehicle to the right if there's only two of you arriving at the same time). But in the real world, people inch, roll, drive slowly and generally don't really come to a full 100% stop unless there's a police office watching. This is a problem for Google's cars because they will not proceed into a four-way stop unless the other three cars are 100% stationary. Google reports that one of their cars was stranded at one intersection because of this particular issue.
Similarly, Google's cars are causing accidents because they drive by the book. When they see a pedestrian waiting to cross a pedestrian crossing, they stop, like everyone is supposed to. Problem is that in America, pedestrians are second-class citizens and almost nobody stops until the pedestrian is actually in the road. Meaning that when Google's cars stop as they're supposed to, people rear-end them. Repeatedly. Google's cars are too law-abiding and are causing accidents.
The supporters of drone cars will naturally point out that this wouldn't be a problem if everyone had them, but back here in the real world, 100% coverage for drone cars is decades away, so for the time being, they will be on the road with the rest of us and the manufacturers had better figure out some fuzzy logic pretty quickly.
Not specific to google, but applicable to any drone car that uses LIDAR to see the world (read: all of them), you can now spoof LIDAR returns for the sake of a $60 Raspberry Pi kit. Jonathan Petit, Principal Scientist at Security Innovation, has been able to spoof LIDAR returns for everything from pedestrians to solid walls to other vehicles, meaning he can effectively perform a denial-of-service attack on any self-driving car and render it unable to navigate.
Researcher hacks self driving car sensors.
This is not dissimilar to the tactics used in the military to spoof radar returns on everything from aircraft to warships. Only they do it using a combination of slab-sided design and countermeasure electronics. But the principle is the same. Make the source LIDAR or RADAR system see something that isn't really there.
You might think this isn't a risk in the real world, but we live in an age where shining laser pointers at commercial airline pilots is a thing, so it seems logical to assume that $60 LIDAR spoofing kits will become a must-have in the toolbox of the same people.
Monday, September 7, 2015
Stop me if you've heard this one : safer cars make more dangerous roads.
This is like a scratched record for me, but go back through my blog and you'll see frequent mentions of how modern cars make drivers more dangerous. Study after study has proven this - isolating people more and more, and adding more and more airbags and "driver assists" is actually making the roads more dangerous. Now we have more than studies - now we have numbers to back it up. The National Safety Council has just released their latest stats for 2015 and it shows a marked and continued increase in the number of fatalities on the road. Despite there being more cars on the road this year with "driver assists" than any year to date (duh), the number of casualties per day is up to 90 now. Compare that to a few years ago when it was in the 55-60 range. There are a number of factors of course and safer cars is only one of them. More texting and more distractions in the form of in-car tech are also being blamed, as manufacturers and more and more gimmicks to distract drivers from the actual task of - you know - DRIVING.
This trend is only going to increase and adding drone cars isn't going to cure the problem. Why? Think of this - you're being driven to work by your drone car. Your busy reading texts, or Facebook, or working on a document or something else. You have no real situational awareness of what's going on outside the car. Suddenly, the car defaults to driver mode because of an error with a sensor (or any other fault) and you're now asked to take the controls. With no situational awareness, you now not only have to control a car with zero notice, you also have to take in everything around you almost instantaneously and act accordingly.
The only constant in traffic accidents is humans - tech isn't going to solve that problem. The more tech you throw at it, the worse the problem is going to become. The answer is - and always has been - simple. Driver training. But that's dull, boring, expensive and doesn't make for good headlines, so sure - drone cars for everyone.
This trend is only going to increase and adding drone cars isn't going to cure the problem. Why? Think of this - you're being driven to work by your drone car. Your busy reading texts, or Facebook, or working on a document or something else. You have no real situational awareness of what's going on outside the car. Suddenly, the car defaults to driver mode because of an error with a sensor (or any other fault) and you're now asked to take the controls. With no situational awareness, you now not only have to control a car with zero notice, you also have to take in everything around you almost instantaneously and act accordingly.
The only constant in traffic accidents is humans - tech isn't going to solve that problem. The more tech you throw at it, the worse the problem is going to become. The answer is - and always has been - simple. Driver training. But that's dull, boring, expensive and doesn't make for good headlines, so sure - drone cars for everyone.
Monday, August 31, 2015
Texting and driving
A short little promo post this week - if you think you're pretty good at texting and driving, give this little game a go : Stay alive.
Monday, August 24, 2015
Car loans are becoming dangerous to the economy
Remember the mini recession brought on by the subprime mortgage lending collapse? According to financial blog Zero Hedge, we might be doomed to repeat the same mistakes only this time with car loans. (Zero Hedge is a pretty good, anonymously written financial blog).
All the signs are there - from record-high loans to dealers taking shotguns as down payments (seriously). For example, when I say 'record high loans', the average loan term for a new vehicle is now 67 months, and for used vehicles it's 62 months. More frightening still is the number of loans that are 84 months - up to 30% now.
Other indicators are way up too - the average monthly payment is $488 and the average new vehicle price is $28,711. Sure - car prices never go down so you'd expect those numbers to rise - it would be odd if they didn't. But it's the length and size of the loans that is the real issue here - and Zero Hedge points out that many of these loans are going to - guess where? Yes - subprime borrowers. ie. people at greater risk of defaulting on the loans.
It's exactly what happened in the housing market, and greedy banks and financial institutions are about to make it happen all over again but this time in the vehicle market.
If you're looking to finance a vehicle - don't lie to yourself. Figure out how much you can afford and don't, under any circumstances, let the dealer talk you up to a more expensive vehicle or more expensive loan.
The Zero Hedge article can be found here: Don't look now, but the subprime auto bubble may be bursting.
All the signs are there - from record-high loans to dealers taking shotguns as down payments (seriously). For example, when I say 'record high loans', the average loan term for a new vehicle is now 67 months, and for used vehicles it's 62 months. More frightening still is the number of loans that are 84 months - up to 30% now.
Other indicators are way up too - the average monthly payment is $488 and the average new vehicle price is $28,711. Sure - car prices never go down so you'd expect those numbers to rise - it would be odd if they didn't. But it's the length and size of the loans that is the real issue here - and Zero Hedge points out that many of these loans are going to - guess where? Yes - subprime borrowers. ie. people at greater risk of defaulting on the loans.
It's exactly what happened in the housing market, and greedy banks and financial institutions are about to make it happen all over again but this time in the vehicle market.
If you're looking to finance a vehicle - don't lie to yourself. Figure out how much you can afford and don't, under any circumstances, let the dealer talk you up to a more expensive vehicle or more expensive loan.
The Zero Hedge article can be found here: Don't look now, but the subprime auto bubble may be bursting.
Monday, August 17, 2015
California Dreaming
Last week I spent the week in and around Los Angeles, on a business trip. It was driving heaven, compared to here in Utah. For a start, LA pedestrians are blessed with a sense of self-preservation we can only ever dream of here in Utah. They don't wander out in traffic, they don't idly amble through parking lots. This wasn't just downtown LA either - it was Van Nuys, Griffith Park, Inglewood, Venice Beach, Long Beach - everywhere I visited it was the same. (actually that's not quite true - in Malibu the tourists kept wandering into traffic with cameras). The same goes for the drivers. They go when the lights go green, they don't brake and stop in the middle of the road for no good reason, they use their blinkers (for the most part), they cross dashed lines and don't cross solid lines. The commuter lane had actual commuters in it. Even the 405 at rush hour - 6 clogged lanes going north to Van Nuys - was better than the random crapshoot we have on I-15 around Salt Lake City at any time of day or night. What was odd was that the rampant lack of lane discipline I saw south of Las Vegas this spring was all but gone, around LA. People used the left lane, then pulled in. Traffic flowed. Nobody sat there doing 50mph with their brake lights permanently on.
Then of course I came home and on the 8 minute drive from the airport to my house - people crossing the white / yellow lines on on-ramps. 50mph in the outside lane. Stopping in the middle lane. Not going when the lights go green, not stopping when the lights go red, pedestrians wandering around the roads like they were sidewalks and everyone and their dog changing lanes in intersections (because apparently corners don't count, and neither do the painted lines on the road).
I've come to the conclusion it's because in Utah, God is their co-pilot (or at least Joseph is - look it up). I properly believe they drive and behave like they do when it comes to roads because they live in some bizarro-world where they think that if they get killed because they did something stupid, it was "meant to be".
TL/DR: California - at least around LA - much MUCH better drivers and pedestrians and just about anywhere in Utah.
Then of course I came home and on the 8 minute drive from the airport to my house - people crossing the white / yellow lines on on-ramps. 50mph in the outside lane. Stopping in the middle lane. Not going when the lights go green, not stopping when the lights go red, pedestrians wandering around the roads like they were sidewalks and everyone and their dog changing lanes in intersections (because apparently corners don't count, and neither do the painted lines on the road).
I've come to the conclusion it's because in Utah, God is their co-pilot (or at least Joseph is - look it up). I properly believe they drive and behave like they do when it comes to roads because they live in some bizarro-world where they think that if they get killed because they did something stupid, it was "meant to be".
TL/DR: California - at least around LA - much MUCH better drivers and pedestrians and just about anywhere in Utah.
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