How Much Will Autonomous Cars Really Help? (theconversation.com) 211
An anonymous reader writes: An opinion piece at The Conversation questions the common belief that autonomous vehicles will easily solve a host of problems with road-based travel, including safety and traffic. "Assuming autonomous vehicles were one meter apart and traveling at 100 kilometers per hour (an aim that has been stated as the ultimate hope) this would mean around 25,000 people per hour could be taken down a freeway lane. While impressive, this movement capacity is only half that of a train. But getting to this capacity means 100% of vehicles are under control of a guidance system, with none under independent control. As soon as one car does this, the whole system would slow down considerably, as is seen on freeways now." The writer argues that a better role for autonomous cars might be to take passengers to and from hubs for public transportation.
Too much hype about driverless cars (Score:2, Insightful)
Safety standards will slip, there will be more of a drive to improve fuel efficiency and more risks taken. Redundant systems will eventually be scrapped to save cos
Re:Too much hype about driverless cars (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it eliminates whole classes of cases for accidents. All those people who drive while they are drunk, or drive too fast because they are too late, or drive too fast because they like driving fast, or drive too fast because they don't know better, or etc. There are tons of accidents caused by older people who are too senile to drive a car. This can be helped by taking away their license, but staying at home surely isn't a good therapy for old people to stay healthy.
Also, if all cars are driverless, they always know when faster cars can get before slower cars on a one lane per direction road.
This won't solve all accidents, but it will certainly improve the situation.
Re:Too much hype about driverless cars (Score:5, Informative)
This won't solve all accidents, but it will certainly improve the situation.
Indeed. The naysayers seem to forget that self-driving cars already have millions of miles of testing. If they were accident-prone, the data would show that, and it does not. Driving in close formation, or "platooning" is well tested. I remember seeing test car platoons on I-5, north of San Diego, in the 1990s. TFA is mostly nonsense and conjecture. It says that a single non-autonomous car will "slow the system down considerably". I see no reason that would be true. A human driven car would just mean one car would have a normal gap, but that wouldn't slow down other cars. I have heard the opposite: That even a few autonomous cars can make a big difference in preventing congestion, since they have more information about traffic conditions ahead, and can react quicker, so they smooth out the "accordion effect" for themselves as wells as all the cars behind them.
Comparing self-driving cars to trains is idiotic. I can't take the train to the grocery store. A stream of self-driving cars may have half the bandwidth of a passing train, but not if you consider the gaps between trains, which are usually far more than the length of the train. A mile of passenger rail costs about $100M. A lane of asphalt costs about $1M per mile.
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The article suggests a new mode of driving only possible by driverless cars, but 1 meter apart is kinda ridiculous. A tire failure in any one of those cars could cause a pileup of unimaginable purportions. I'd settle for autonomous cars driving at human following distances because we know humans can do it. Even at human following distances autonomous cars can improve things because even the simplest actions on the road have huge unseen consequences from the drivers perspective. You can avoid the problem whe
Re:Too much hype about driverless cars (Score:5, Insightful)
it will cause a disastrous accident.
Unlikely. It will almost certainly be less severe than if humans were driving. Humans typically take 1 second to 3.5 seconds [uidaho.edu] to realize something is wrong, and transfer their foot from the accelerator to the brake. During that time, a car going 70mph will travel 100 feet or more ... before it even starts to brake. A self-driving car can begin braking in 10 milliseconds. With humans, the cars will begin braking in sequence, one after another. This can result in a chain reaction pileup, with the most severe accidents happening far back in the pack. SDCs will all brake simultaneously, with those further back having plenty of time to stop.
Believe it or not, the engineers designing these things have actually thought about these issues, and done extensive testing. If 1 meter spacing wasn't safe, they wouldn't be doing it.
Re: Too much hype about driverless cars (Score:2)
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Well, let's establish that there is no AI at the moment. There is software developed by humans that can take in data, analyze that data, and react to that data in a predetermined way. But they cannot act beyond the bounds of their original programming. If there was some relevant data that the developers did not take into account, then the software cannot react to that. Yes, there is progress in this area. But most of the time it is usually just very clever programming. I'm thinking of research like t
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If 1 meter spacing wasn't safe, they wouldn't be doing it.
Well - maybe. For my own way of thinking the anonymous car driving part is the simple part of the equation.
Foremost is navigation. Let's take a local trip to the grocery store that has you on an interstate for a few miles.
Perhaps a minor inconvenience is that you will no longer just hop in and drive. You'll have to program the car to go to the grocery store, perhaps to stop and get fuel, or any side trips. Impetuosity isn't going to be rewarded here.
So you program the car to run your errands. Now y
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Which stops faster, the drone car or the the drone tractor? But if the drone car occupant isn't noticing the drone tractor in front, then so what. Why can't the drone car occupant enter a command to pass the Tractor? Simple enough to input, and to implement.
Because in a high traffic situation, with thousands of autos driving 3 meters from each other, all of the other cars will need to move to accomodate your desire to pass the Tractor. MOr of the needed communications.
But you do bring up a good point about stopping distance. Who determines the stopping distance of thousands of cars when some non compliant deer who doesn't know that this autonomous stuff is seriously simple walks out on the road? If a panic stop is needed - and they will be needed. Do we ju
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Believe it or not, the engineers designing these things have actually thought about these issues, and done extensive testing. If 1 meter spacing wasn't safe, they wouldn't be doing it.
If only engineers were able to set price points and profit margins. Engineers also wanted to add a $1 shied to the fuel tank of Ford Pintos, but management deemed it too costly. In the end, it isn't the engineers that make safety decisions. They are tasked with estimate how safe it can be at a certain price point. Today's cars could be significantly safer than they are now, but they would be priced out of the reach of most consumers.
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And what of the dumb ass engineers at VW who can't figure out how to handle smog emissions while the car is moving? Does one really believe that VW is the place where fools go to work on cars?
Actually, your point is well taken. It is a general assumption that engineers will always do the right thing as if they are more noble than the rest of us. The reality is they have the same weaknesses as the rest of us and succumb to them just as readily.
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Believe it or not, the engineers designing these things have actually thought about these issues, and done extensive testing. If 1 meter spacing wasn't safe, they wouldn't be doing it.
What about if the thing you throw on the road is a piece of polysterene. A human driver drives through it and carries on as usual, while the robot has to stop and causes gridlock.
I've never seen an example of AI working well in an uncontrolled environment. If you have one please post, otherwise it all sounds like you're selling a dream.
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Well the idea is it wouldn't since they would all hit the breaks at the same time, there should be almost no latency between the 4th car and the 10th
Almost no latency? 4th and 10th !! Multiply that up - what about a thousand cars, or ten thousand, all in line in the rush-hour between say London and Reading (on the M4 motorway in the UK). One minor incident anywhere in those 40 miles (even a routine one like a car in the outer lane needing to get across the inner lanes to turn off) and every car in the entire line must slow or stop in exactly the same way. That's assuming nothing goes wrong (what could poss
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One minor incident anywhere in those 40 miles and every car in the entire line must slow or stop
Cars spaced 1 meter apart rather than 30 meters apart, may have less cushioning, but the capacity of the road will be 5 times higher. It is silly to say that self-driving cars are bad because if N human driven cars cause congestion, then 5*N SDCs will cause congestion. For the same number of cars on the road, SDCs will cause far less congestion than HDCs.
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Cars spaced 1 meter apart rather than 30 meters apart, may have less cushioning, but the capacity of the road will be 5 times higher.
Only in some mythical universe where EVERY SINGLE VEHICLE is a robot.
And as mentioned in the TFA, even in that dreamworld scenario it still doesn't match the same capacity as rail.
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[Regarding cars travelling packed together]
Almost no latency? 4th and 10th !! Multiply that up - what about a thousand cars, or ten thousand, all in line in the rush-hour between say London and Reading (on the M4 motorway in the UK).
Siomehow I get the impression that these folk are in Jetson's mode, where you can draw a cartoon, and that's all it takes.Those thousands of cars will all have to know what each other are doing. Easy peasy, and no doubt!
Now mind you, I'm not saying it cannot be done. But simple it is not, and the consequenses of small mistakes in the communications or other electronics cna ruin a lot of people's day.
Now at the moment, I am all about lane assist, tailgating braking radar, and parking assistance and col
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Comparing self-driving cars to trains is idiotic. I can't take the train to the grocery store. A stream of self-driving cars may have half the bandwidth of a passing train, but not if you consider the gaps between trains, which are usually far more than the length of the train. A mile of passenger rail costs about $100M. A lane of asphalt costs about $1M per mile.
Actually, construction cost for a mile of high speed railroad track is $1M-$2M. For interstate highway, it is $1M -$5M. Neither of those figures includes land acquisition costs.
In reading the article, they aren't comparing cars to trains for going to the grocery store, but instead for commuting to the workplace, which is the majority of congestion/accident problems they are trying to solve.
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Comparing self-driving cars to trains is idiotic. I can't take the train to the grocery store.
I can, as can millions of others. If something seems idiotic, usually it's because you haven't grapsed the full scope of the issue.
A stream of self-driving cars may have half the bandwidth of a passing train, but not if you consider the gaps between trains, which are usually far more than the length of the train. A mile of passenger rail costs about $100M. A lane of asphalt costs about $1M per mile.
And what does a mile of cars cost?
The most efficient rail system can transport 75000 people per hour per line, and it returns a net profit to its owners. Please show me an example of a road that comes even close to that?
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They tend to drive slowly ... They don't handle heavy traffic well/p>
My wife has a Tesla with Autopilot. It does 70mph. The documentation specifically says that it does better in heavy traffic. She commutes during rush hour on Hwy 101, and Autopilot doesn't seem to have any problem with that.
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>>What are you talking about? Please cite your sources. Millions of miles testing? Data would show accidents?
https://static.googleuserconte... [googleusercontent.com]
Only an idiot would think that a public accident involving a driverless car could be kept hidden. Hell, it would make global headlines.
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Self-driving cars have no test record in conventional commuter traffic (AFAIK).
In Silicon Valley, it's not uncommon to see a Google self-driving car, including in commute traffic. They're still in a prototype phase so there's a safety driver inside. There are currently over 50 of them in Silicon Valley and Austin, TX; 30 custom prototype "neighborhood electric vehicles" that are speed-limited to 25 mph, and 23 Lexus SUVs that are capable of freeway driving. They've done about 1.3 million miles in autonomous mode, and get about 10-15,000 miles more each week. They reason that the 25 mp
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"Self-driving cars have no test record in conventional commuter traffic"
Incorrect. Google and Delphi have been (and are) specifically testing their cars in heavy commuter traffic.
The infamous 17mph google car rearending earlier this year happened in that kind of situation (GooCar stopped, driver behind didn't)
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And TFA comparing car and train capacity is silly because it excludes time spent stopping to load/unload passengers. The whole reason people drive cars
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the most frequent cause of sudden speed changes I see is people driving too slowly as they try to merge onto the freeway. That causes people already on the freeway to have to slow down or change lanes to avoid them, which increases the risk of an accident.
It is even worse if you are joining the freeway immediately behind that person because you are the one that the truck behind will crash into.
And TFA comparing car and train capacity is silly because it excludes time spent stopping to load/unload passengers. The whole reason people drive cars instead of take public transportation is because (1) they're sick of waiting for the bus/train to show up, and (2) they're sick of the trip taking 2x-3x longer than if they drive because the bus/train has to stop at a bunch of places they're not interested in going.
That is obviously an American view; I understand trains there are rather slow, and if people are that slow getting on and off them it is probably because they are not used to them enough. I try to make workaday journeys by train in the UK because I am sick of sitting in my car in traffic jams taking 2x-3x longer than the train. The last time I drove from Bristol to
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A London Underground railway line, in its 12ft diameter tunnel, even with its stops, can shift more people per hour than a three-lane highway, both at max capacity.
This seems to be the crux of the issue. Robot cars are an American thing, becasue for some reason American can't see past the car as a mode of transport.
Real world numbers (not from TFA) are a peak of 2000 vehicles per hour per lane of freeway compared to 75000 per hour for rail. It's a no brainer.
Any sufficiently large and dense city would be far better of with a metro rail system like London, Paris, Hong Kong, Singapore or Tokyo.
Re:Too much hype about driverless cars (Score:5, Informative)
Something north of 90% of accidents are preventable; take a look at table 8 here: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/P... [dot.gov]
That table shows the 'critical event' in an accident, which is what made it unavoidable. Just 1.4% of accidents are from an object or animal in the road. Likewise, only 1.2% are due to a vehicle problem, although a large percentage of those are improper maintenance, which would be solved by some autonomous vehicle business models where they are owned and maintained by a fleet company (such as Uber).
So we can prevent 90% of accidents, but you think it's not worthwhile because the other 10% still happen?
Furthermore, if the fleet model is adopted, it actually becomes more likely that safety improvements will make more financial sense; far fewer cars are needed in the fleet, so the costs are amortized over more people. But in either case, safety standards are set by the government, and we can choose to raise or lower them as we see fit, completely orthogonally from whether cars are autonomous or not.
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People make mistakes. A huge percentage of accidents occur to drivers aged 25-65 (60%) on a clear day (74%). Driverless cars will make an impact by going after the dominant sources of accidents.
Personally, I suspect that partially interactive and/or assistive technologies will be deployed first. That way the care doesn't have to handle every case properly, particularly winter and icy conditions.
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I suspect that partially interactive and/or assistive technologies will be deployed first.
This has ALREADY HAPPENED. Tesla Autopilot is available to consumers, and does 80% of what you would expect a self-driving car to do.
Here is a video [youtube.com] of some idiot who climbed in the backseat while his Tesla was driving on a busy freeway.
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"Something north of 90% of accidents are preventable;"
Which is why they shouldn't be called accidents. They're crashes. Call them that.
There's no need for a 100% solution (Score:2)
You can speculate all you like about "a worse, more catastrophic breed of accidents", on average the amount of damage and loss of life and limb can only be expected to decrease sharply.
But yes, there will probably be accidents. It would be a bloody miracle if there weren't any. Actuator malfunctions, programming errors, hardware
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There will still be accidents, including fatal ones and I would think a worse, more catastrophic breed of accident will appear once they start having cars drive in very close formation.
I'd assume catastrophic accidents would be less likely as car AIs could detect the rare conditions that could lead to one (as opposed to human drivers who might lack the knowledge) and react to stop it from propogating.
Safety standards will slip, there will be more of a drive to improve fuel efficiency and more risks taken. Redundant systems will eventually be scrapped to save costs and we'll be back to (or worse) than we are now.
There's certainly going to be some back and forth between safety, speed, and cost. But long term it should be safer since driverless cars make safety cheaper.
Above all the fact remains that we live in an imperfect world where sh1t doesn't always go according to plan. Moose will still jump infront of robo cars and get killed, as will children - you just can't stop a lump of metal traveling at 100kph in 0 time using software alone (and even if you could, doing so would kill the occupants)
No but you can vastly improve upon the reaction time and quick decisions of a human. You could get something like for every two childre
Re:Too much hype about driverless cars (Score:4, Informative)
Looks like you are arguing from a bias. First, your demand that there should be zero accidents is an idiotic one. Statistics and tests have already proven that there are less number of accidents with automated cars.
Secondly, your pulled-out-of-your-ass argument about dropping safety standards seems to never happened to say flights, or industrial machinery. You put people's lives at risk, your product doesn't sells and you get sued too. Hell of a dis-incentive.
All the argument about being unable to stop a lump of metal travelling at 100kph in 0 time is the most moronic thing I have heard. Do you have some special telekinetic powers to be able to do this, if you had manual control?
The key thing you are missing is that the software is not getting distracted while texting, is not going to be drunken driving and is not going to get into a drag race with others on the road. Its 100% focus is on avoiding collisions while getting you where you want to go.
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"Statistics and tests have already proven that there are less number of accidents with automated cars."
So far _every single crash_ involving an automated car had a human in control of the other vehicle and it was determined to be the human's fault.
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Statistics and tests have already proven that there are less number of accidents with automated cars.
Statisitcs and tests from controlled tests which are completely unrelated to an uncontrolled environemnt that is a public road.
The key thing you are missing is that the software is not getting distracted while texting, is not going to be drunken driving and is not going to get into a drag race with others on the road. Its 100% focus is on avoiding collisions while getting you where you want to go.
The key thing you seem to be missing is that I have an interest in getting places quickly, and can do that now without the need to purchase the product you are selling.
Really, the robot car crowd is starting to sound an awful lot like the TSA. Perception of safety, at any cost!
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more catastrophic breed of accident will appear
Yes, in the current condition autonomous cars will make it safer to drive and be more efficient... short term after the hype is over and the real autonomous cars come out. But the players in the industry will sell new hype and the system will get push to its limits. That's when accidents will occur... much like moving to drive-by-wire tech (e.g. unintended acceleration).
Having worked with the technology--I see the new breed of accident will not be car-car, but
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I believe Heinlein had a story were social misfits (people who wanted to think or drive for themselves, did drugs, didn't listen to their doctor, didn't bath on a regular basis and other social malformations) were herded onto reservations where they could keep their disgusting habits away from Right Thinking Folk.
It would probably have lots of dirt roads for you to play on...
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Aurthur C Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama did not have that, but the following three books he co-authored with Gentry Lee did. I think in particular it was Garden of Rama and Rama Revealed when they dive hard core in to what an idealist social society was like, how bioengineering would fix the rest of humanity's problems, and how people who didn't want to play nice with polite society were given the option of living "in the reservation" where they could make their art and sell it to those living in polite soc
Re:Too much hype about driverless cars (Score:5, Insightful)
I also choose my own level of risk tolerance.
False. You're presuming to make that choice for anyone sharing the road with you.
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I said nothing either in favour of or opposing the notion of driverless cars. I was addressing rtkluttz' assertion that it's ok to drive illegally/unsafely because his choice to do so has no effect on others, because it most certainly does.
As for my own preference: I'd like to see most private cars go away, and more mass transit instead.
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"As for my own preference: I'd like to see most private cars go away, and more mass transit instead."
Your wish is likely to be granted.
Most people drive because they have to and they have to because they can't afford a cab or can't hail one because there aren't enough. both are artifacts of the (expensive) human behind the wheel and protectionist policies which have some value in keeping utterly incompetent drivers from controlling cabs.
Automated vehicles mean that professional drivers will end up on the sa
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Autonomous vehicles are a long ways in coming. Partial autonomy will be a thing, absolutely. There will need to be a human in the loop for a long time. One might wonder if this is a step which we want to take. Right now, there's still some reasonable anonymity, especially where I live, and I'm not sure that's something we want to give up.
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It's a safe assumption that you're willing to give up liberty (and to deny others the chance or make it prohibitively difficult) for safety if I'm to take your comments at face value. Even if you did not mean what your initial comment indicated by inference then, well, I'm still not sure that I agree.
Caveat: I'm very passionate about the automobile and own a small, 32 car, collection. Tesla claims to have a 500 mile range vehicle on the way in 2016. I will buy one of those. I'd also add that there's no chan
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The most likely immediate consequence of practical vehicle autonomy is this:
Getting a driving license will get a _lot_ harder and a _lot_ more expensive.
Even now there are parts of the world where all you need to get a license is to pay a fee (no testing) or there are no license requirements at all.
In many parts of the world the only test is "drive around the block" or its equivalent and any theory test might be 5 verbal questions. No eyesight checks (or if there are, only cursory ones) - and if you're an o
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I can almost agree that licenses should be more difficult to acquire though I don't think they should be prohibitively expensive. I drove as it was my MOS while I was enlisted for quite some time. I've taken many driver's training courses (on-road, off-road, on-track, defensive, etc). I would suggest more education is a good thing. I've had no at-fault accidents in my entire life and this includes years where I drove drunk (I don't drink any more). I've even driven while tripping sack. I've shot up H while
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I also choose my own level of risk tolerance.
People have to learn to recognize different degrees of risk before they can choose a level of tolerance. There's probably a fair amount of the Dunning-Kruger effect involved in that process, though motorcyclists unable to recognize different degrees of risk probably get weeded out fairly quickly.
Price of doing business ? (Score:2)
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The real purpose... (Score:3, Insightful)
... is getting back from the pub after I've had a skinful.
Re:The real purpose... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, this (loosely) has been what I see as the most beneficial use of the technology - giving mobility back to people who can't / shouldn't drive.
My mom still drives, and has her faculties. But, at 78, it's not a given that will continue for too many more years. I dread when we'll have to say "mom, you can't drive anymore... we're worried you're going to hurt someone or yourself". An autonomous car would go a long way in helping her maintain some independence, when she reaches that point.
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A 30 minute commute 5 days a week has convinced me human beings are too prone to mistakes to drive a car safely. I see close calls almost daily.
Autonomous cars *enable* the train. (Score:3)
With autonomous cars, the train actually has a chance of achieving it's 2x 1-lane capacity (noting that heavily traveled freeways are currently 2-4-lanes per direction of travel, though...) because people can take an autonomous car from their home to the train station, and then from the train station to their destination - the high cost of taxis rides isn't to support to the cost of the vehicle and its support, it's mostly supporting the cost to support the control system (a.k.a. the driver)
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Yeah really autonomous cars imo should be viewed as circulators. Take mass transit to a nearby hub and then hop on a private circulator to do the last mile jaunt to your house.
Urban or die! (Score:2)
While true enough autonomous cars to public transport makes a degree of sense, the author suffers from thinking most people are urbanites like them.
Unless you want the cost and upkeep of laying rail to the sticks, public transportation only works with a high enough degree of population density or in-between routes from major cities. Everyone else is left behemoth vehicles to carry supplies twice a month where public transport falls short. Not to mention you haven't solved congestion issues like the author s
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Pretty much this.
If I were to drive to the nearest train station from where I live, I pass at least three supermarkets on the way. That train station furthermore doesn't have direct links to the places I usually go.
What is the benefit of taking the train for me?
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I have light rail almost in my back yard (3 houses away as the bird flies, but a 6 minute walk in reality). My work also has a light rail station only a 10 minute walk away. Great right? Even though it is 25 minute drive, and a 40 minute bike ride, the train is about 50 minutes door-door. I can easily swing by a grocery store on the way home using my bike or car, but not with the light rail. So the light rail is my worst option even though I have a nearly ideal situation.
To be honest I would rather see
There is more than transportation time (Score:5, Insightful)
I do not really believe that self driving cars will significantly reduce my transportation time. But I expect them to reduce the number of traffic accident. In a traffic jam, drivers can frustrated and bump in each other. I highly doubt self driving car would do that. Also, I do not care as much being in a traffic jam if I am not the one driving the car. Finally, if the car drive itself, then I can take more long distance trips easily: push the buttons, go to sleep, wake up in a different state.
This is the real reason I loved riding public transportation so much when I was living in France. It might not be the fastest way of moving around. But it was definitely the way that was consuming the less of my attention time. Made me arrived at work after 30 minutes of playing the nintendo DS. Much better than after 20 minutes of dealing with traffic congestion.
Re:There is more than transportation time (Score:5, Interesting)
I do.
And that is why I believe that they will improve the commute time. Fewer accidents to avoid. Fewer accidents that the idiots have to slow down and look at. And if the idiots really have to look at the remaining accidents, the car can still do the driving.
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Oh this times 1000. The majority of freeways are not suffering because they can't get cars 1m apart, the majority are suffering because people don't know how to navigate, they try to cut to the front, cross 3 lanes of traffic within 100m of an exit, or (my personal favourite here) two trucks speed limited to a lower max speed than the motorway try to race each other in a contest to see who's speed limiter is calibrated slightly higher while traffic queues up behind them.
And that's before an accident which c
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This is the real reason I loved riding public transportation so much when I was living in France.
Jeez! Your post was pretty believable until that one sentence, since French public transportation is probably one of the things that concentrate most of the world hatred.
At least it's good to know that the French government is spending money on lobbyists at Slashdot. Either that, or you are a pervert mind on revenge that want to make other people suffer the way you suffered, by having them believe they can take French trains without getting stuck until the end of time due to labor strikes, overaged failing
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Yeah, for 3 weeks a year transportation is terrible in Paris.
In the rest of the country, there are far fewer issues. But you know it in advance so you plan for it. In regular operation, the network transports you reasonably fast and for relatively cheap.
There a bunch of things that sucks in France (administration opening hours and slugishness, the country being at a standstill on sundays and from July 15 to August 15); Public transportation is not one of them.
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Of the dozen or so cities I have used the metro/subway system Paris is by far the worst [croweded and rude people] and least reliable (multiple breakdowns). Mexico City has a better run metro system and that's just sad.
Considering that Barcelona, Madrid, Rome, and Milan are all relatively close comparables and infinitely better in pretty much all aspects in my experience.
If you think the Paris subway is acceptable much less 'good' then I just have to assume you are a gallophile that has no comparable experi
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I see you haven't seen French people driving, have you?
Well, considering that I am French and that I drive everyday, I don't see any problem at all. :-)
road rage (Score:2)
True. In a bad traffic jam, how would frustrated people who have nothing to do at all but look out the windows react? Let's hoe we don't find out, because 88% of those people have guns.
Cars beat trains (Score:2)
25,000 people per hour could be taken down a freeway lane. While impressive, this movement capacity is only half that of a train
The train comparison is completely fatuous since no train can carry 25,000 and the smaller ones don't run frequently enough to sustain that level of movement. Plus, last time I checked, I can't get a train from right outside my doorstep.
Trains have some uses, but they lack the versatility of cars, and far more expensive to build and operate and they are only comparably efficient when full or nearly so.
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The article is from Australia and I'm not terribly familiar with the attitude toward public transportation there, but at least in the US, apart from a few pockets in big cities, you will not pry cars from their owners without at least a generational change. Also, the author seems to have no clue just how advanced these prototype vehicles have become; they are very able to navigate among unpredictable obstacles on city streets without being slowed to a crawl. The premise is decent - that autonomous vehicles
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" Plus, last time I checked, I can't get a train from right outside my doorstep."
The funny thing is: London expanded to where the train stations were built.
Not the other way around - and apart from the USA or other countries with appalling public transport structures, this is the normal way things happen.
So, you may not be able to get a train right from your doorstep, but if you live in a metropolis like London or Paris, you almost certainly CAN find one within 5-10 minutes walk (10-15 in my case but I'm in
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The figures stated in the article can theoretically be accurate, if you assume a truly massive and very modern rail line. For example, the Crossrail project (in London) will have trains that can carry 1,500 people and could theoretically be pushed up to 32-33 trains per hour. That gets you to the 50,000 passengers per hour figure the summary appears to be using.
But still, the story is a lot more complex than the "trains have 2x throughput of roads" claim. For one, it seems that a train every 90 seconds is a
Not flow theory compliant (Score:2)
Trains are dead. Long live the auto chain (Score:2)
Just to put that in perspective, that's almost 35 times what is currently possible (~700 cars per freeway l
Noise pollution (Score:2)
There are drawbacks of increased speed even if accidents can be cut to zero, such as increased gas usage. This can be solved by moving to electric vehicles, possibly running off power rails on the highways etc.
However, in urban areas speed is major factor for noise generation.
I personally live next to a major road where vehicles go past at 70+ km/h and the noise is very bothersome. It hovers around 60-65 dBA, peaks at at 75 when someone with a case of lead foot powers by. The majority of the noise is simply
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The increase in energy usage won't entirely go away by moving to electric, because the wind resistance will still increase as your speed does. With that said, the wind noise will be greatly improved by reducing the space between vehicles, as will the increased energy usage caused by drag.
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25,000 people. Not 25,000 cars. They seem to be assuming 5 people per car, so that's 7 times current capacity.
I don't know where they get their 50,000 people per hour on heavy rail though.
Multimodal Transport (Score:2)
In densly populated areas mass transit is the right technology to transport people and goods. In future we will augment that with other short and mid range transport technologies, like bikes, e-bikes, low speed autonomous cabs etc.
"movement capacity is only half that of a train" (Score:2)
"movement capacity is only half that of a train"
Call me when the train can take the next left. Until then, trains can kind of go screw themselves for everything by dense urban people movement, in areas where you don't have to buy up insanely expensive real estate to lay down new tracks. This is not a socialist utopia, as in Sim City, where you can tear down a stadium because Skywatch One is reporting heavy traffic, in order to improve traffic flow.
Saving time is the key - not safety or efficiency (Score:3, Interesting)
They won't be here for efficiency, safety or speed.
They will free up the time for the driver.
Instead of keeping my hands on the wheel, I can work, shave or have sex.
THIS will be the benefit.
It also means that the decision to drive or not to drive will be much cheaper. Today, a 30 minute drive will take 30 minutes off from my life. Tomorrow, it won't. I can still do what I want while being driven - which means that I will "drive" much more. The ones who can allow to own / rent robot cars will suddenly start moving around a lot more. This will create more traffic, maybe exponentially so. The green, eco-friendly vision of reduced traffic via autonomous vehicles is all wrong.
It will also affect urban planning in ways that nobody can yet comprehend nor predict.
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Instead of keeping my hands on the wheel, I can work, shave or have sex.
This is Slashdot.
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Relying on a normal human as backup for the computer is a complete non-starter. Read up on what happened when google started letting employees use the Beta cars instead of the pro drivers. Even though they were informed they may need to take over, and even though they knew this was an experimental car the employees took names, whipped out laptops, etc. They were in no shape to takeover.
Normal mouth breathers will be even worse.
Now consider a car owner who has not driven a mile in the last couple years pl
Time shifting (Score:2)
The other thing that self driving vehicles will do is allow us to timeshift some of the traffic to when freeways aren't busy. E.g. freight can be moved to 10pm - 5am in urban areas, since we won't need to worry about the driver's exhaustion level. Fright would also be more efficient as driverless trucks don't need to take rest stops, and can be lighter because they don't require human amenities.
Also, if I had a driverless car, and a comfy seat, I'd not mind sleeping while my car drives me somewhere overni
Time (Score:2)
Traveling at 100 km/hr 1 m apart is fine until one (Score:2)
of the cars blows a tire, hits a deer or piece of trash that fell off a pickup, or has some other problem. Then you get a 50 car pileup, even with all of the cars operating under control of a single system. Traveling that close assumes that the cars all have similar braking characteristics, tires, engines, and suspension in good condition, etc. Look at cars going down the road today. Every 3rd or 4th car spews smoke, is rusty, and probably has other problems due to little to no maintenance.
The cars will
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Exactly this, the cars will only be able to slow down as quickly as the car in the car-train with the slowest brakes, if the slowest car can't slow down fast enough to avoid the accident then it hits all of the cars in front of it*.
If the accident involves a car forcefully being stopped at quicker than the braking speed of the cars in the car train then a lot of autonomous cars (30+ or even 90+ for more lanes) will end up in a pile-up*.... Instead of 1 to 2 cars if they are leaving a 2-second gap.
*if the ve
Drastically lower the hidden costs of owning a car (Score:2)
For instance in many cities there is little competition among grocery stores because a few early movers grabbed up crap land where they could then afford to put up a huge store with a massive parking lot. Then the city either grew to surround their store, or the value in that section of the city went way up. Thus the barrier to entry is impossibly high. The only grocery store competition t
The author misses the point (Score:2)
Driverless cars aren't about traveling at high speeds, packed together like sardines. Commercial aircraft fly themselves these days, but traffic controllers still keep them 3 miles apart. Such close formations of driverless cars would still result in massive pileups when one of the cars malfunctions and crashes.
The point of driverless cars is to let me do something else while I'm traveling. I won't care so much about my one-hour commute if I can read the news or get started on my work day while I'm on th
Sooner than you think... (Score:2)
Actually, Insurance probably stands to benefit. (Score:2)
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"What about lost GDP per lack of accident?"
This is lower than lost GDP per crash - and in most of the civilised world things like healthcare are paid by taxation so its in everyone's interest to reduce spending on vehicular-related deaths/injuries.
Insurance companies won't care. They'll just adapt and continue. Auto-repair shop numbers and employment are already less than half of what they were 40 years ago and still falling.
The biggest resistors would be car companies - they make more from selling parts th
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most of them won't understand that asphalt is cheaper and is used more effectively than rails.
It is not cheaper, it is just funded in a different way. Rails have to be funded by the railway company. In the UK at least roads are funded by public money and it is lost in the noise of it. Effectively private motorists subsidise things like buses and trucks, massively. I pay the equivalent of about $1 per 5 miles in my car tax, and more in the fuel tax.
What is expensive about rail is the insane set of rules and regulations about safety and finance - which, unlike on the road, are strictly observed
Re:"asphalt cheaper/more effective than rails" (Score:5, Insightful)
By benefiting (mostly) rich white people instead of (mostly) poor minorities, it helps rake in campaign contributions from the Right People
Your entire post was hilarious; but I especially loved this bit. You've obviously never ridden on an urban mass transit system of any kind.
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Reread the list, none of those things involve riding mass transit but rather building it.
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By benefiting (mostly) rich white people instead of (mostly) poor minorities, it helps rake in campaign contributions from the Right People
Your entire post was hilarious; but I especially loved this bit. You've obviously never ridden on an urban mass transit system of any kind.
Nice way to except a quotation from GP without context and earn yourself some karma.
But while GP's post was over-the-top, his general point that buses are more important to the urban poor and subways tend to be built without the poor in mind is largely accurate. If you don't believe me, you might start with some articles like this [theatlantic.com] and this [citylab.com], or maybe this recent survey [tstc.org] of public transport riders in NYC, which showed the median income was significantly lower for those who used the bus as well as the subway
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Ride on one built in the last 20 years. Hint: it wasn't built for poor people.
I ride transit to work most days. It's pretty obvious you don't.
Seattle's light rail was built much more recently than that, and I've ridden it a fair bit. It runs through some of the poorest neighborhoods in the city, and the ridership is very diverse - especially towards the middle of the day.
With any mode of mass transit, the diversity of its ridership obviously depends on the diversity of the areas it serves. I'm on a bus to the University of Washington most days - and those busses are crammed with coll
Re:"asphalt cheaper/more effective than rails" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Where do you live that politicians like rail? My politicians love cars, and have been actively removing rail at every chance.
Same where I am (in the UK). Mrs Thatcher set the tone - only known to have travelled on a train once in her adult life and that was for a ceremony.
Conservatives hate railways because they think they are nests of trade unionism.
Liberals hate railways because they are essentially run in authoritarian ways.
Socialists hate railways because they think they are transport for rich people (This is the UK remember).
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Precisely. We haven't figured out yet how to create 100% secure programs, and we already start using software in all places of life, including where people can get killed by malicious software. The damage hackers can cause increases with adoption of networked computers.
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Precisely. We haven't figured out yet how to create 100% secure programs, and we already start using software in all places of life, including where people can get killed by malicious software. The damage hackers can cause increases with adoption of networked computers.
Yet you don't get anywhere with the zealots. They have this vision where thousands of cars are happily zipping a long a few feet form each other all in perfect harmony. It's like those old early 20th century future prediction artworks.
Because there is so much more than just 1 car and it's autonomous control - and vulnerability. This is the Grand Big Kahuna of the internet of things.
So if you take a car that needs to switch lanes to exit in the world of full lanes bumper to bumper autonomous driving wo