Autonomous Cars Will Save Money and Lives 389
cartechboy writes "Autonomous cars are coming even if tech companies have to produce them. The biggest hurdles are the technology (very expensive and often still surprisingly rudimentary) and how vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communication happens (one car anticipates or sees an accident, it should tell nearby cars). So what are the benefits to self-driving cars? They may save us thousands of lives and not a small amount of cash. A new study from the Eno Center for Transportation (PDF) suggests that if just 10 percent of vehicles on the road were autonomous, the U.S. could see 1,000 fewer highway fatalities annually and save $38 billion in lost productivity (due to congestion and other traffic problems). Right off the bat you can imagine autonomous driving easily topping your average intoxicated drivers' ability behind the wheel. At a 90 percent adoption mark those same numbers in theory would become: 21,700 lives spared, and a whopping $447 billion saved."
I like my A4 2T 6 speed (Score:1, Insightful)
Autonomous driving? No thank you!
Lost revenue to the cops (Score:2, Insightful)
Cops won't like it because they'll see lower revenue from DUI fines, speeding fines, and all that crap they love taking money for.
Re:I like my A4 2T 6 speed (Score:2, Insightful)
I like my horse, cars? no thank you.
So what'll we do with half a trillion dollars? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lost revenue to the cops (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you think cops care about that money? Municipalities may care about that money, but the cops couldn't care less (they don't get a cut, after all). But cops do try to avoid hearing "how come everyone else writes more tickets than you do?" So they make a point of writing tickets. But they really don't care about revenues, per se.
Skeptical (Score:2, Insightful)
You know . The way they're painting this , it seems like there's not going to be any unforeseen problems with it.
I can already predict crashes due to hacking/ buggy softwares and etc.
Don't get me wrong. I agree with the fact that automated cars are a step in the right direction. However, what I dislike is how it is being presented here. It is presented as if it was a holy grail of driving. The solution of all problems. That's very misleading and dangerous. That's what I can't stand. The dishonesty of it all.
We should be very honest here with the end users about what auto cars can accomplish at this point and what they can't.
Re:It already exists! (Score:3, Insightful)
Only if either A. you have access to a park-and-ride facility that is closer to your house than your workplace is, or B. the bus stops very close to both your home and your workplace. I've usually found that unless your commute is at least half an hour by car, you'll spend more time walking to and from the bus than you would spend driving, and even if you don't count the walking time, it still takes 2–3 times as long to get there. As always, YMMV.
Public transit is great for moderately long commutes, particularly if parking sucks at your destination. If I'm going into San Francisco, I take public transit. If I'm going to work, though, there's actually enough parking, so it isn't worth the 20 minutes of walking and 30+ minutes on a bus just to save 15 minutes in my car. It would probably be slightly cheaper, but the inconvenience is pretty severe. And that's without having to change buses at all.
Risk Perception 101: People are Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
People are willing to endure a risk orders of magnitudes higher of crashing by human error than by machine error.
Much as they're okay with the risk of dying from flu every year by not vaccinating, but not the comparatively negligible risk of a terrorist attack.
Assuming no faults in the driving AI. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the problem.
Currently, they're looking at data for autonomous vehicles in a complete vacuum.
I'm quite sure that having such cars on the roads in percentile quantities will yield their own sets of unique fatalities sooner or later.
In the mean time, I'm not an quadriplegic. So I'll choose to drive my own damn car.
Re:I like my A4 2T 6 speed (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, but your boss can't expect you to work on your commute. This is really about adding 10 hours a week to your workweek.
Re:It already exists! (Score:5, Insightful)
Public Transportation: A great way to get from someplace you don't live to someplace you don't work.
Insurance (Score:5, Insightful)
This topic has been discussed here several times now, but one thing I haven't seen brought up is insurance. If my vehicle is driving itself and causes an accident, then what driver is to blame? The person sitting behind the wheel? Why would my insurance company want to pay for an accident caused by a piece of software when they can go after the company that produced the software? Or what if they will only insure Ford cars and not Chrysler because statistics show that one auto-driving system performs better than the other? If my car's autonomous system just flat out runs over a little girl playing in the street and kills her, could I be charged with manslaughter because I was behind the wheel reading the newspaper?
Think back a few years to the Toyota "auto acceleration" issue, and the lawsuits and government testing, etc, etc that was going on over that one issue. And that was possible hiccup in a single system that merely relayed user input to the engine. It wasn't even remotely as complex as a vehicle actually driving itself.
There's going to be a whole lot to figure out in the legal, insurance and liability areas that makes the technical challenge and development look like child's play.
Re:So what'll we do with half a trillion dollars? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's it. There will never be computer driven cars for the masses. It will always be cheaper for them to drive their own.
Not when the insurance companies artificially jack up the rates for human driven cars. They will force the majority into this, guaranteed.
Re:Insurance (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So what'll we do with half a trillion dollars? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not all economic activity benefits society. Perhaps the most well known demonstration is the parable of the broken window [wikipedia.org]:
The parable of the broken window was introduced by Frederic Bastiat in his 1850 essay Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas (That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Unseen) to illustrate why destruction, and the money spent to recover from destruction, is actually not a net-benefit to society. The parable, also known as the broken window fallacy or glazier's fallacy, demonstrates how opportunity costs, as well as the law of unintended consequences, affect economic activity in ways that are "unseen" or ignored.
The productivity gains failing to make it to your level are arguably a problem of inequality of the distribution of wealth, not lack of economic activity.
Re:A breathalizer in the dashboard will do the sam (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that a johnny cab done today would report your travel plans to the local police dept, insurance company, and any other institution that has a vested interest in judging your behavior. No thanks. I'd rather walk.
Re:So what'll we do with half a trillion dollars? (Score:5, Insightful)
Preach on, bro! You'll also never see GPS for the masses, it will always be cheaper for them to open a map. Or power windows. Or automatic transmission. Or...oh, wait.
Re:Insurance (Score:3, Insightful)
Self driving cars do not cause accidents, therefore insurance isn't necessary
That's ridiculous. Things will happen to autonomous vehicles that will result in deaths and destruction of property, even if 100% of vehicles are autonomous. Insurance will not go away because the stakes are too high both with liability and the cost of the hardware involved.
Re:Skeptical (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's a wonderful idea - maybe because I'm older. It would allow my in laws, for example, to continue being mobile in their late 70-s and 80's, whereas now they can't drive. It would allow me more mobility too, since I can't really drive due to health reasons. I can imagine automatic-only roads, where the speed limits are increased and traffic flow is automated - no more traffic jams, traffic lights would result in faster trips and more efficient fuel use.
Of course I like driving as much as the next guy, but I wouldn't mind if it became relegated to a "hobby" as opposed to an unavoidable daily chore.
Re:I like my A4 2T 6 speed (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to drive recreationally, on a closed course, I expect you'll be able to do that indefinitely in more or less whatever format you prefer. But there's no reason you need to endanger others with your manual driving just to scratch your recreational itch or satisfy some nostalgic idea of "freedom" (via dependence on the auto industry, the oil industry, and public roads).
Reality vs Ignorance and inertia (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically the last manually driven cars will be seen to be a homicidal menace and high cost nightmare.
Re:So what'll we do with half a trillion dollars? (Score:5, Insightful)
If humans are the cause of more accidents there's nothing artificial about it.
More realistically, I expect most people a generation from now will find the higher vehicle cost to be easily offset by not having to get a manual driving license, freeing up driving time, lower fuel consumption and using the car even when disabled, too young or otherwise not able to drive manually for whatever reason.
Re:So what'll we do with half a trillion dollars? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think it'll necessarily put cabbies out of work, because unless i'm mistaken the primary reason people would take a taxi other than drinking, is either they lack a car (by choice, or a family with only one car, where the wife or husband needs to get somewhere while the car is out), or there is no parking at the destination. It would seem that autonomous cars wouldn't benefit people in either of these cases.
Re:38 billion in productivity or (Score:5, Insightful)
30 minutes more sleeping?
30 minutes more sleep would also make people more productive -- so either way it's a win.
Re:I like my A4 2T 6 speed (Score:2, Insightful)
It isn't about benefiting people that can't put their phones down. it is about benefiting the people they run into.
Re:So what'll we do with half a trillion dollars? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't imagine a future population truly being happy with this either.
Really? You don't think that people would rather be playing games on a mobile device or texting, than having to pay enough attention to their surroundings to avoid harm to others and themselves?
Re: I like my A4 2T 6 speed (Score:3, Insightful)
If you work 2 h during commute, then you work 6 h in the office. That is all.