Paving The Way for Driverless Cars

Wall Street Journal ^ | July 18, 2012 | By Clifford Winston

[garjog]

California’s proposed bullet train between Los Angeles and San Francisco—which Gov. Jerry Brown is likely to sign off on soon—has been characterized by the Obama administration and its other supporters as an effective way to reduce highway congestion.

These costs amount to more than $100 billion annually in wasted time and higher fuel expenses. In fact, a much better technological solution is on the horizon, if we pave the way by getting rid of obsolete highway design.

It is already possible to imagine a world in which you could predict exactly how long it would take to drive in your car from one point to another. No worries about rush hour, vacation congestion, bad drivers, speed traps and accidents. You could also text while you drive with no safety implications.

All this may be possible thanks to a “driverless” car that does a human driver’s normal job and much more. The car is operated by a computer that obtains information 10 times per second from short-range transmitters on surrounding road conditions, including where other cars are and what they are doing. That’s exponentially faster than the human mind can process the same information.

By gathering and reacting immediately to real-time information, the technology can drastically reduce highway fatalities by preventing collisions. It also can significantly reduce delays by creating a smoother traffic flow and rerouting drivers who have programmed their destinations.

[garjog]

Unlike the proposal in the article here, driverless cars may not require much government investments in new infrastructure.

All that is needed is new sensors put on existing cars since most of the technology is already here.

Traffic accidents and fatalities would be cut in half (since most accidents are caused by human error and the scanners are 90 times more precise than human operators.)

The positive impact on the economy would spur a burst of productivity.

Think about it: no traffic jams. People would program the car to a specific destination and the trip would be coordinated with all other cars on the road. Travel speed could be greatly increased.

When you go out to eat, the car drops you off and then parks itself.

[garjog]

Instead of sitting at the wheel in traffic, drivers could text or surf or work on their computers.

Efficiency would explode.

While professional drivers would be put out of business, new spin-off jobs would greatly increase the number of employed workers.

To say: driverless cars puts thousands of truck and taxi car drivers out of work!

is like saying that the invention of automobiles or the transcontinental railroad put buggy whip makers out of business.

[garjog]

The economy will expand with new jobs that are more fulfilling.

For example, if the vast majority of workers now have an hour or more of extra time since commute time is reduced, these workers would spend it consuming products and services that need employees.

Drivers freed from driving might go to health club and be trained. Or take part in some kind of entertainment or go shopping. New jobs would emerge.

Google was founded in 1998 and is now a $163.2 billion or more company. YouTube was founded in 2005 and is now a $32 billion dollar company.

Before these companies were founded people couldn't even imagine the thousands of jobs that would be created.

It would be like saying: the internet is a crazy idea. Do you know how many mail carriers and fax machine makers would be put out of business?

[garjog]

Check out my blog:

Transportation Futures for links to pro and cons of driverless cars.

http://dreamtransportation.blogspot.com/

[illiac]

We don’t like blog pimping.....

[Bryanw92]

This is actually a great idea. It is the “light rail” system that would work with our suburban culture. We could drive lighter cars with smaller engines because the need (and ability) to “compete” on the roads would end. You don’t need 300 hp in your sedan because the car is going to accellerate at the same rate as everyone else and deliver you to your destination at a fixed speed.

But, how do we implement? We would need to scrap all the nation’s cars and trucks at once and then introduce the new technology at once. That’s quite a challenge. I do not want to be in my driverless 100 hp car when some guy in a 350 hp Nissan Titan is swerving in and out of the automated traffic flow.

Our nation is just too big with too many cars and too many people with big egos to ever hope that a system like this would work unless we build another highway and street system to accomodate them. Of course, if full Obamunism takes hold, it will be possible to implement anything the government wants—but I doubt they’ll want us driving around in anythng after that.

[wita]

Unfortunately when fully developed, the government is going to “demand” that all folks transporting themselves utilize the “system”.

That would be wrong, and so government needs to stay out of the professional driver business. No one yet knows the unintended consequences of the “system”.

[Bryanw92]

>>We don’t like blog pimping.....

This isn’t blog pimping. He posted a WSJ story, with three posts explaining his own position enough that you don’t even need to visit his blog (which I didn’t do). Blog pimping is posting a one sentence exerpt from your own blog and then expecting people to rush over there to read your words of wisdom.

[bunkerhill7]

One of the first driverless forms of transportation was invented here during the 18th Century. Every midnight the headless horseman races down the road with the the clippity-clop coming and going. It seems his head was blown off by a cannonball. Even the boy scouts camping out here at night on a jamboree see it every year. But it ain`t Sleepy Hollow- it`s another haunted area.

[Wuli]

“Think about it: no traffic jams.”

That’s the arrogance of the technologists talking, not the reality.

The largest cause of traffic jams is not accidents but the sheer congestion of how many drivers want to go in the same direction in the same area at the same time.

Believing that robotized cars can solve this is foolish nonsense.

The idea arrogantly assumes there is always a “better route to take” to avoid the traffic jam.

That is most frequently not the case. Most of the alternatives turn out to be either just as bad, or longer in distance, or “off-highway” - in other words stop signs and traffic lights as opposed to on highway”, or multiple delays involving multiple route changes to make the “alternate route” work, and n the end getting the driver “out of the congestion” but NOT getting the driver to their destination in any significantly greater time frame.

The technology has its greatest possible achievement of putting more people who were “going the same way” onto more routes without actually achieving the greatest desire of the drivers - less time spent getting to their destination.

Once people realize they are only fulfilling a need of the technologists and not their own, they’ll have their robots in their autos “uninstalled” and ask that the technologists be exiled to a land with no roads. Then the technologists will put themselves to work perfecting the individual air car - for their own needs, and they’ll be invited back. Next time they’ll work on what people need and not on what they simply want to prove to themselves but need the gullible people to pay for it.

[Wuli]

“drivers could text or surf or work on their computers....”
Efficiency would explode”

ah, the wonderful “efficient” world of spending the day texting on twitter, it is such important “work” - NOT

what a hoot

the siren call of the technologist is “I can do EVERYTHING for you” but the siren call of his technology is “I will make you a drone”

[Windflier]

No thanks. I have a natural resistance to the concept of giving over my innate right to freely transport myself, to a government-run, automated people mover system.

Concepts like this one, all forward the society’s momentum toward greater and greater control by a massive central authority, and less and less autonomy and freedom for the individual.

It’s anathema to the concepts our country was founded upon.

[bgill]

The first time a speck of dust gets into the system causing an accident will put the company out of business within a week.

[mikrofon]

Based on the way some cars are navigating the roads (or looking at who’s behind the wheel & seeing no one ;), I thought we already had driverless vehicles....

[cripplecreek]

One of the problems today is that cars are too safe and professionalism behind the wheel is becoming rarer all the time.

When I took driver training back in 1980 or so we had a great driver training teacher who understood that most of us rural kids already knew how to drive and adjusted the training accordingly. He wouldn’t allow anyone to drive an automatic till they were capable with a manual shift transmission. We changed tires and checked air pressure. We covered all the basic maintenance.

[Eaker]

Computers crash all the time.

Try having your car reboot at 70mph and then for whatever reason it makes a hard turn and causes a huge wreck.

Pretty efficient.

[newzjunkey]

Great opportunity for cyberterrorism.

[newzjunkey]

Some computers, sure, and your car is full of computers now, as are life saving devices and monitoring systems, aircraft and thousands of other places.

I think it's an idea that's long overdue but I road in a driverless test vehicle from Honda over ten years ago.

It's needed most where traffic congestion is the highest and people get seriously stupid like after an emergency vehicle has caused cars to scatter.

[Windflier]

One of the problems today is that cars are too safe and professionalism behind the wheel is becoming rarer all the time.

So, what - we should now turn over our God-given right to freedom of movement to Big Brother and his automated people mover system?

No thanks. I'll take my chances that others may not be as skilled at piloting moving vehicles as I am.

[garjog]

“We don’t like blog pimping..”

Well, I posted a good and recent article that inspired the blog.

Notice that I have not revenue from the blog, so it is just for education and discussion.

Therefore I am not a pimp since I make no money from the blog.