If they’re anything like when we lane switched here in Tucson it’s all weekdays. One of my “hobbies” was to use the suicide lane on Thankgiving, giving people the horn for being in the wrong lane. But again, holiday schedules are easily handled, DOT schedules are generally pretty easy to find.
You’ve got another piece of human error there, not computer error. All the car computer would need is stuff it already has access to thanks to GPS. It knows the time and date, it knows the map, the map data includes the schedule, all it’s gotta do is put them together. Easy peasy, no human input necessary.
Sorry but you’re wrong. The accident avoidance systems have a LOT to do with driverless cars. It’s the vehicle detecting the situation AND controlling the vehicle when the driver screws up. They ALL allow the driver to close his eyes, none of them are looking at him, they’re looking at the world getting ready to override him. Truthfully they’re built under the assumption he’s got his eyes closed.
“Easy peasy, no human input necessary”
I have to say, you have a much more simplified view of the world, and engineering problems, than I do.
That’s important to note, because, well....I am an engineer. Degreed, licensed, work in the field every day.
I’ve got some bad news for you: There will always be human input in a situation as simple as reversible lanes. No database is going to continuously be re-populated with lane switch information, in real time, to account for changes due to weather, the football game went into overtime, or the rock concert was cancelled.
I am reminded of a product I once had, called the ‘Road Wizard’. It pre-dated the commercial internet, and was a handheld device that would tell you where hotels and gas stations were, based on the interstate and mile marker you entered in. Of course gas stations and hotels change, so you were supposed to mail it in every year, to get re-loaded with new information. A driverless car system would have to get re-loaded on a continuous basis, in real time, even in far off places with no cell coverage, and during bad weather when GPS doesn’t work well. Again, just one of many obstacles.
I will repeat - there is a vast difference between technically possible, and repeatable with an extraordinarily high rate of reliability.
And I believe you are over-estimating the capabilities of accident avoidance systems and/or under-estimating what is truly needed to control a driverless car. No, you can’t close your eyes for 10 seconds for any of the automated features out there. Even something as simple as the parking feature - a driver has to look in his mirror, identify the traffic approaching him from behind, and make a judgment call on whether or not there is enough time to safely park. And then the driver has to watch out and make sure nothing happens with the adjacent cars (I.E. if he see’s the brake lights and reverse bulbs come on, he starts hammering the horn). Again, just one small example.
But let’s talk accident avoidance, lane departure warning, etc. All of these systems use fairly fixed situations, and the computer reacts very simply when an input exceeds a certain criteria. This technology, as far as the computer is concerned, is not a lot different than the technology that retards timing based on the knock sensor. If it were described in terms of video gaming, its Pong.
A few of these systems involve rudimentary logic - they will steer you away from an obstacle, unless a sensor knows there is an object also next to you, for example. One step logic. Think about all the logic that you process in your head, when you do a simple driving task. Say there’s a dead skunk in the road. I make a determination as to whether or not it will damage my vehicle to go over it...if it would, I make a determination whether or not I can stop in time...if not I look at the shoulder...I see there is a bunch of broken glass on the shoulder...so I consider crossing into oncoming traffic. It may be a double yellow, and there may be oncoming traffic way too close to even consider a traditional passing maneuver...but I make a judgment call that I can momentarily swerve out into the oncoming lane, to avoid the skunk. And btw, I was keyed to this problem early, because I observed several cars in front of me going around it also. This is multi-step logic. Think Halo 3 vs pong. We’ve got a long way to go, before accident avoidance leaps from Pong to Halo.
And that’s what Google is doing, with $150k worth of LIDAR and computers in the car.
Now we haven’t even talked about weather. If this is ever to be viable in trucking, it must work all the time. Even in a freezing drizzle that covers the sensors. I mentioned I have experience with LIDAR - guess hat we do when it rains or is snows? We have a cover we put over the LIDAR head.
And what happens when the fleet gets older? What happens to a new car, when it gets older? The power locks start to get erratic...some of the window switches don’t always work, and the power seat is stuck in one position until the end of time. All this equipment, in order to justify its up front costs, would have to be robust enough to last a few years. We are constantly sending laser equipment to the manufacturer for calibration and repair. So I’m skeptical.
And frankly, when you start bolting hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment to an unmanned vehicle...you are inviting theft.
The list goes on. I will make you an iron clad guarantee. There will not be a large scale use of driverless cars for at least the next 50 years.