Posted on 03/16/2017 1:12:53 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
New research suggests that children born today will never drive a car. The auto industry's embrace of self-driving technology has been accelerating fast and those technological advances mean that by the time today's toddlers come of age, they'll likely never even have to get behind the wheel of a car, according to Henrik Christensen, the director of the University of San Diego’s Contextual Robotics Institute.
“My own prediction is that kids born today will never get to drive a car,” Christensen told the San Diego Union-Tribune in mid-December. “Autonomous, driverless cars are not 10, 15 years out. All the automotive companies—Daimler, GM, Ford—are saying that within five years they will have autonomous, driverless cars on the road.”
So what does that mean for our roads? Upgrades. And sooner rather than later.
“This transition is happening a lot quicker than we anticipated,” says Ronique Day, a government transportation analyst in Virginia, one of several states studying ways for roads and cars to communicate.
Other states across the country are following suit, installing digital signage above lanes that will aid in communication when self-driving cars become an everyday reality.
The signs are a first step toward what highway planners say is a future in which self-driving cars will travel on technology-aided roads lined with fiber optics, cameras and connected signaling devices that will help vehicles move as quickly as possible—and more safely.
Transit planners also say self-driving cars will unlock bigger benefits, including fewer accidents, faster trips and fuel savings.
While concrete and asphalt have long been the simplest solutions to easing congestion or meeting the need for extra road capacity, these technological advances have created new opportunities for addressing challenges. What that means is that we are going to have to figure out how to begin developing a smarter highway.
So far, the infrastructure behind these autonomous vehicles is lacking, having been built into just a few miles of highway in a handful of states.
How Will it be Done?
So how are states handling this? The first step will be deciding how to communicate with cars as an array of auto makers and tech companies independently have developed autonomous-driving technology. No common standard has been established for how a new generation of smartcars will receive information from smart roads—or how they will handle alerts once they get them.
Policymakers looking for blueprints on designing smart highways should look to the states that are currently piloting studies on their roadways like Virginia, California and Utah.
Utah is undertaking a test of the technology on a stretch of Salt Lake City’s Redwood Rd, a major north-south commuter route. Sensors on traffic lights connect to public buses and can adjust red and green signals to help buses stay on schedule.
But highway researchers say their biggest hurdle is ensuring they have technology that can work. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION
Road connections to cars have mostly used dedicated short-range communications, or DSRC, a wireless link commonly used in transportation systems to manage stoplights and tolling. But researchers say the industry may settle on cellular-data systems used for smartphones or WiFi if the technology can handle information more rapidly and reliably.
Virginia has strapped one-foot-square DSRC devices on light poles and bridges on various roads, including Interstate 66 outside Washington, D.C. The gadgets watch the highway and allow workers at a central-control site to change recommended speeds lane-by-lane depending on traffic and communicate that to drivers with the signs mounted over the highway. They also send messages to state government road-maintenance vehicles about traffic flows and road conditions.
Those emergency messages will be communicated on electronic boards on many highways and would arrive through a smartphone-like app that displays alerts on drivers’ dashboards. The sensors can then monitor traffic flows and see that wheels are losing touch with the road as a rainstorm builds. The signs can lower the speed limit for the current situation and the road devices could alert cars miles away to slow down or even give them new routes to their destinations.
Planners say billions of federal dollars will likely be needed to wire the nation’s more than 4 million miles of paved roads and 250,000 intersections and with many states struggling to cover basic highway maintenance, this infrastructure seems far fetched.
Right now, it seems car manufacturers have put the cart before the horse in developing autonomous vehicles before the infrastructure to support it is ready. Still, we hope this means funding for this type of work and plenty of jobs for contractors in 2017 and beyond.
This will go the way of the Flying Cars idea—Just not going to happen. No Money in it.
I the robot cars can pay the taxes of the unemployed truckers, bus drivers, delivery people etc.
How do these things work when the road is covered with snow?
Can’t see lines. Can’t see curbs. Traffic signs plastered with snow. Sensors covered with ice.
There’s money in control, for a bureaucrat in government or the insurance industry.
One EMP attack away from Lord of the Flies
Oh no, this not only WILL happen, this IS happening. Because there’s TONS of money in it. Ask anybody whose business revolves around drivers how much the secondary cost of drivers is. Keeping them insured, having to replace them if they get any ticket any time (transit licenses are delicate things), and of course you need more of them than you use so they can get sick and go on vacation. The commercial application of self driving vehicles alone is staggering. Then in non-commercial space the fact is not everybody actually likes to drive, and as traffic gets worse they like it less. Especially those people with big commutes that are (dangerously) finishing breakfast during the drive. Yeah there’s money in it, money enough to lure dozens of companies, many not even remotely tied to the car business, to it.
Because you aren’t the masses. And frankly Americans suck at driving and need to either be retrained or replaced en mas.
Will they ban “classic” cars from the roads?
I say they will not.
Not everybody can afford a new car. Or, a new “old” car.
In 50 years? Iffy, but probably not.
But insurance could make them cost prohibitive. Robot cars will be FAR safer than regular cars...and so very boring. I’m glad I won’t live to see it.
It’s because vintage stuff of some types is fairly easy to support is why I am revamping a couple of old Jeeps and a K5 blazer.
The only electronics are in the ignition modules. I despise points.
“Something like eight million jobs”
Robot trucks are CERTAIN and likely will be required in 10 years.
They can operate 24hrs per day excepting fuel stops. They can also pack up in convoys of dozens and travel at a perfect 55mph.
It will substantially reduce the cost of freight and provide a safer transit.
I wonder how much the ambulance chasers and the body shop lobby will fight the autonomous (more or less) car?
How can the Federal Highway Administration possibly think a "driverless car" is a safe mode of transportation when the Federal Railroad Administration is studying improved safety standards for railroads that will require locomotives to have TWO engineers in the cab instead of one?
A train has much less variation in its mobility than a car. Who really believes that requiring two operators in a train and ZERO operators in a car makes any sense?
I do, however, want almost everyone else to have one.
LOL.
Actually, autonomous car operation is more likely to be found in congested cities where safety is less of a concern because travel speeds are low. I think Pittsburgh just rolled out a pilot program with fully autonomous taxi cabs in the center of the city.
Just center city or up into the surrounding hills? I’ve often thought those hills would be a very scary prospect in an ice or snow storm. Steep, San Francisco level steep.
Cabs/Uber and long-haul trucks will be first.
If the road has to be made into a ‘smart road’, it isn’t really a ‘self driving car’ at all.
I guarantee that kids born today...and kids born 20 years from now...will still drive cars.
then you will be driving on the back roads, because it wont be long until ONLY self driving cars are allowed on the interstate.
They work best when all the other cars are also self driving around them.
Instead of gridlock it will be computer deadlock.
And what about viruses that cause the cars stuck in traffic to turn into a demolition derby. The cars probably all have to be connected to a network which makes them vulnerable.
Probably some prankster kid would do something like that.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.