Self Driving Cars - Just what can they do?
 

Self driving vehicles are getting a lot of newstime right now but, just what can they do and how do/will they react in differing circumstances?

Can they overtake another car ahead of them? e.g. can they, on a clear open road, when coming up behind a tractor overtake it or do they just form an orderly queue behind it? What happens on more busy roads where overtaking is a more complex task requiring assessment of lots of issues - oncoming traffic, vehicles joining from side roads?
What about when you (driving a driver operated car) wish to overtake a queue of self driving cars. Will they allow you in in the middle of the queue and how will the SD cars KNOW at which point you need to get in to avoid the traffic coming in the opposite direction? I know that vehicles should keep a suitable distance apart to allow a car to move in but many don't now and I understand that SD cars - like the trucks currently under test - may well keep closer to the cars in front. (At least you may not get the irate gestures for undertaking a perfectly safe manoeuvre only made hazardous by some drivers annoyance at being overtaken!)

If they require a driver's assistance in dealing with issues such as the two above, then they are not really driverless.
What are other's thoughts?

Logically, these are just logic rules (see what I did there ;) ), supported to an extent by comms standards between vehicles. In terms of current autonomous driving standards, this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autono...ing_automation

gives the basics - but only that.

Personally, I'm not really that interested in fully autonomous driving ('cos I like driving :D ), but I do see massive benefits (already!) in removing the tedious, non value-added routines involved in driving (such as monitoring distances between cars, holding the steering wheel on straight roads, indicating to change lanes, etc...)

My 2p.

The subtle difference is in which definition of driving is being used as the measure.

A possible primary definition would be something along the lines of .....using a vehicle to get from point A to point C via B in the safest, economic, law abiding way possible.

Anything additional or beyond that arguably adds emotion/feeling and becomes what I call driving.

I am sure I could represent this better but am also watching David Gilmore on the TV and am distracted!

That's right. SD vehicles will be communicating with each other, and 'logically' they will be aware of your overtake manoeuvre and say to each other " see that human b'strd trying to get past" and then they'll all close up and wait for you to head on into the SD truck that they know is coming round the next bend.

I believe that they are perfectly capable of overtaking, but for SD to really work, all vehicles (SD & DD) need to be broadcasting to every other vehicle around them. Once they have this they can start making manoeuvres, some of which might look dangerous to a driver from our time, where we don't know the whereabouts, velocity and intent of every piece of nearby traffic.

Most driving decisions that you take are binary, yes/no. That's how the roads are designed so as to minimise driver error. And machines do not have emotions to cloud their decision making.

Can they do off-roading? How about ralley?