Family Tech: Self-driving cars sound scary but could actually be safer

Family Tech: Self-driving cars sound scary but could actually be safer - April 1, 2016

New to this blog: you can now subscribe to the blog by email. Just fill in your address to the left.

It has been five years since Google stunned the world by showing how far along it was with its self-driving cars. Suddenly another invention, first seen in science fiction, seemed poised to become real.

During the intervening years we may have settled into the idea that true self-driving cars were still a someday thing.

Fully self-driving cars are not so much going to appear suddenly in dealerships, as gradually enter our lives. In reality, there are cars on the road now with self-driving capabilities.

Readers with some newer, high-priced vehicles already have some self-driving features.

Some cars have auto parallel parking, often called park assist. Ford, Lincoln, BMW, Range Rover, Nissan and Mercedes Benz have this feature. I’d have killed for this when I lived in San Francisco. I wonder if they can parallel park on the other side of the street on a 24-degree downhill. I can.

Autonomous self-driving cars have an extensive sensor array in the cars. These sensor systems are appearing now and are used in some cars not to control the car but warn the driver of conditions. Lane assist warns the driver if they are drifting out of their lane.

The sensors can also warn you if there is something in your blind spot as you are about to move over. Others will slow or stop the car if you approach too closely to the vehicle in front of you.

Active cruise control can slow your vehicle as it approaches cars in front and speed back up as traffic begins moving faster. Think how nice that would be on Interstate 95 creeping north in the morning. You still have to keep your hands on the wheel and actively drive, but it delegates one irritating portion of the effort of the commute to technology.

Read the rest at www.FamilyTechOnline.com

Comments

Notes Folder : My new note taking system

I'm in the process of moving to a new way to keep my notes. It would be best to make a separate post on my long time notetaking app, Evernote, and how it now disappoints me. Bottom line, I no longer trust the company behind Evernote since it was acquired. My first inclination was to finally look at alternatives. like Notion, Joplin, Obsidian, etc. I was not enamored with any of them, so I gritted my teeth and stayed with Evernote. The situation made me think about how I use Evernote. To keep up additional posts on this topic, search on the tag Notes Folder Updates : January 24, 2024 and in updates noted here. Most of the things I store are quick notes, lists, online receipts for online bills, that sort of thing; kind of an online file cabinet if you will. If I were a doctoral student though I could see storing PDFs of papers and research materials. If were working on a large project, then plans, communications etc. would all be there. Back when I began using Evernote way b...

Recording your own notes with Google Voice

Note : April 2016: Frankly I don't know if this works anymore. It is 7 years old. I stopped using this when Google Now became useful on my phone, and I could dictate reminders using it. I found a way a while ago to use Google Voice to record a personal note, transcribe it, and email it to me. A recent Lifehacker post "Five Things We'd Like to See in Google Voice" lists that need as their #5 request, so I realized what I'd figured out is not common knowledge. In GV's Contacts, create a Group "Special Transcription" To avoid listening to my standard voice mail when I call, I recorded a short voice mail greeting for this group simply saying "Record note now" I added a contact with my own cell phone number as the only number, and made it the sole member of this group. In GV's phone settings, I edited the settings for my cell phone. In the section "Direct access to voicemail when calling your Google number from th...

Your First Day with Evernote

I've written many times before about Evernote . I love this program. It is my brain's memory on steroids. I have over 6000 notes in it now. And I keep finding ever more uses for it. While originally written in 2009, this post has been frequently updated. New January 2012: If you like what I write about Evernote, check out my 136 page e-book, " Get Productive Fast with Evernote ". Just $10. Sunday October 11, 2009 I wrote about Evernote in my print column, Family Tech. If you are wondering what is Evernote, and why would I want to use it, start with the column . I promised in that column this post to help new users get efficient fast with Evernote. I thought I'd write a quick plan for someone's first day with Evernote. This is really meant for after you've installed the client to your computer, so this picks up after you've gone to Evernote's Get Started Page and created an account and downloaded and installed a clien...

Ideas from Mark Stout

Search This Blog