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Japan Transportation

Japan May Be First Country To Have Self-Driving Cars (theoutline.com) 71

Posted by BeauHD from the time-is-of-the-essence dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Outline: The Olympic Games are an international muscle-flexing competition, where countries show off their technological, architectural, and (oh yeah) athletic prowess to the rest of the world. Now, according to Reuters, Japan is promising a public system of self-driving cars in time for the for the 2020 Olympics, which it's hosting in Tokyo. Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced Monday that the investment company SoftBank Group is investing $2.25 billion in order to develop the Cruise, the self driving car acquired by General Motors back in 2016. The country's goal is to have a fully functioning self-driving car system in time for the 2020 Olympics, and a more developed, privatized commercial self-driving car system by 2022. The Cruise has been tested in the U.S. since 2017, but Abe said that it would also be tested on Japanese roads by the end of this fiscal year.
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Japan May Be First Country To Have Self-Driving Cars More

Japan May Be First Country To Have Self-Driving Cars

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  • Predicted stipulation (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Monday June 04, 2018 @07:38PM (#56728036)

    I think they can do this, but I bet the self-driving cards will be strictly limited to pre-computed routes.

    Also I would expect the routes to be augmented to accommodate self-driving cars. And not on the freeway.

    The thing about driving in Japan is that off the freeways and major roadways space becomes incredibly restricted. Taxis (which are all very good) will take you down neighborhood streets so narrow that you can reach the vending machines on the side of the road from inside the taxi.

    For all of that they know how to follow rules there. If anyone can do this they can.

    • Re: Predicted stipulation (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Job number one for the Olympics, though, should be getting their women to trim that bush

      • Job number one for the Olympics, though, should be getting their women to trim that bush

        The reason Japanese women don't trim their chitsus is that for many years Japanese censors banned the display of pubic hair in pornography. So porn stars (and many prostitutes) shaved, but "nice girls" did not.

        The ban has been repealed, but the cultural expectations are still around.

        • In Japan during the American occupation someone asked what constituted pornography and what didn't. The American responded that if you can see pubic hair then it was porn. So if there was no pubic hair then it must not be porn, QED! Which is why adult anime and manga didn't draw pubic hair, because it wasn't "porn" that way no matter how detailed it was in other aspects.

        • For many years Japanese censors banned the display of pubic hair in pornography.

          They don't allow pubic hair but they allow tentacle rape. Weird country.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          It's more to do with hair removal in that region being a pain in the... Quite literally.

          Shaving requires a lot of maintenance work. Depending on body shape it can be easier or harder to do, particularly for men. Other hair removal methods are more expensive and things like hot wax treatment is quite painful too.

          And since most people don't display their genitals and by the time anyone else gets to see them their shaved/not shaved status is largely irrelevant there just isn't much incentive to do so.

          Also, a b

    • Japanese streets are narrow, but they don't allow on-street parking, so the full street is available for driving.

      Before you can buy a car in Tokyo, you need to provide proof that you own or are leasing an off-street parking space.

      I can see self-driving taxis working well there. There are lots of people who don't own a car, and they are already short on labor so "robots stealing jobs" is not an issue.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by eobanb ( 823187 )

        Japanese streets are narrow, but they don't allow on-street parking, so the full street is available for driving.

        That's very wrong; it's not as universal in Japan as in the US, but parallel parking is still quite common [google.com].

      • The Japanese are really quite remarkable, and maybe they can make vehicle autonomy work on a two year timeline. But it's not going to be easy. My guess is that autonomous vehicles will be confined to streets with sidewalks and that bicycles, pedestrians, etc will be strictly segregated from the cars according to some set of rules somehow comprehensible to humans and to rather dimwitted vehicles. Not that vehicles and other users can't share narrow roads, but two years isn't a lot of time to work out how

    • I think they can do this, but I bet the self-driving cards will be strictly limited to pre-computed routes.

      This should be the way all self-driving vehicle systems start out. Many co's are byting off more than they can chew. Bot-Goes-Wrong stories often grow to big news these days [cnn.com], partly out of automation anxiety.

      Using pre-mapped routes reduces the chance of problems and the nasty news that results. As kinks are worked out and trust (hopefully) grows, expanding to general routes could gradually follow.

      [Exis

    • ,,,streets so narrow that you can reach the vending machines on the side of the road from inside the taxi.

      In case you want, say, a beer, which is available in vending machines in Japan.

    • I think they can do this, but I bet the self-driving cards will be strictly limited to pre-computed routes.

      It's actually a really good use case since the Olympics will have a large number of people travelling only between fixed points, so you could effectively map out the top 10-20 locations with fixed routes and only allows robot cars on those roads. The Japanese are also already polite and robot friendly, so this could work out well.

      • Or better yet, buses or trains. Single passenger cars are an incredibly inefficient way of transporting large number of people between a handful of sites.

        • Or better yet, buses or trains. Single passenger cars are an incredibly inefficient way of transporting large number of people between a handful of sites.

          Yeah your average road can handle something like 2000 vehicles per hour, with and average of 1.2 people per car making roughly 2500 people/hour. The best trains can move 80000/hour. It's a no-brainer but our town planners seem to get recruited directly form kindergarten.

  • Too late; they're already here in the US.

  • They're not as safe as people driving cars, which currently achieve 1.25 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles. They won't be that safe for a long time, and they need to be a lot safer, since we won't find them nearly as forgivable.

  • Singapore to get them first? (Score:3)

    by Strudelkugel ( 594414 ) on Monday June 04, 2018 @07:47PM (#56728074)
    I thought Singapore was supposed to have them first [citylab.com], but I don't know the latest status.

  • It's just how they are, thank heavens.

  • Is anybody else wondering who will get the gold metal in the bumper car event?

  • You know what's easier? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by slashmydots ( 2189826 ) on Monday June 04, 2018 @08:51PM (#56728336)
    You know what's easier, cheaper, more efficient, and doesn't require technology that won't exist until 2050? Monorails. Or basically anything on a rail. A freaking train even. Trollies. ANYTHING. You know how you get it to not hit something? Put it on a rail. Okay, so they can only go where there are rails. Great, build more rails. That's cheaper than building more self-driving cars. Japan has bullet trains and flawless public transportation of every kind.

    • I have long thought that what is needed is a standardized 'pod' form of personal local travel vehicle. One that can travel to the rail line and be hooked onto a distance travel carrier of some sort. A battery powered vehicle with a fifty mile range would work well, so long as most destinations have a rail hub within 15-30 miles.

      People don't want to share their personal space with unknown and potentially smelly strangers. But a rail transport system could be created that allows people to own/lease/rent th

    • You know what's easier, cheaper, more efficient, and doesn't require technology that won't exist until 2050? Monorails.

      Sorry, mom, the mob has spoken [youtube.com].

    • Maybe, but in the USA bullets are responsible for a lot of deaths. So I'm not sure how we're supposed to trust a bullet the size of a train.

    • You know what's easier, cheaper, more efficient, and doesn't require technology that won't exist until 2050? Monorails. Or basically anything on a rail. Japan has bullet trains and flawless public transportation of every kind.

      I'm imagining the Robot car thing will just be for gimmick purposes. As you say Tokyo has a shit-ton of super efficient trains already that easily can move 10-20x more people than any road based solution.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Japan already has a lot of rail. It's so popular that it gets really crowded at peak times. They expand the platforms wherever possible to increase capacity.

      They have trams in some cities. I think there are a few in Tokyo, maybe in the north somewhere near Ikebukuro from memory. But it's hard to add more, with the road layout and traffic density they have. When new rail goes in it's usually elevated or underground. For example the Tsukuba Express line which was built about 15 years ago is a mixture of under

    • and flawless public transportation

      Does the Tokyo subway system still make the New York subway smell good? It's been a little while.

  • Japan doesn't have self-driving commuter trains. They're going to put self driving cars on the road? hmmmm.

    I asked a friend why they still have drivers on trains and he said he thinks it is because they have to have someone to blame if there's an accident.

  • Aren't we in year 7 of the "autonomous cars are five years away" predictions made back in 2012?

    It seems that people are still unaware of where the limits in software are.

    • Autonomous cars were one year ago [arstechnica.com], though I admit it can be hard to remember with quacks like Uber and Tesla constantly making headlines [arstechnica.com]. (Sorry, Japan. You can be second.)

      • Autonomous cars were one year ago [arstechnica.com], I'm not sure what point you are making - your article says theirs a driver in the seat. From your link:

        The taxi service is not totally "self-driving." Waymo notes that "as part of this early trial, there will be a test driver in each vehicle monitoring the rides at all times."

        There isn't yet an autonomous car (as in, self-driving in conditions humans normally drive in). It will be big news when they are available.

        (Sorry, Japan. You can be second.)

        If Japan can figure this out, they'll be first. Although I'm guessing that they can't do it either,

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Self-driving buses (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    FWIW Switzerland already has free self-driving buses going around in the city of Sion in Valais...

  • Nice. Self driving cars in the one nation that doesn't really need them (in the major cities). I can only imagine these will be primarily on main thoroughfares, as the streets within blocks are seriously cramped and have way too much mixed traffic (we're talking crawling 2-3mph through a sea of pedestrians and bicycles in busier areas.

  • For the Winter Olympics, the Japanese government decided to build the "world's best bobsled", paying millions of dollars in consulting fees to a consortium of 120 companies including Toyota, Nissan, etc. with no experience in making bobsleds. The government also paid children's textbook companies, TV shows to portray the heroic craftsmen who built the sled. The actual product was built by no-name subcontractors in snow-free Tokyo, with a shoestring budget and no experience in bobsleds. The resulting bobsled

  • Vandalism is very very rare in Japan. for sure wont happen in major north american cities.

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