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.
No kidding. Or a computer virus.
have you been to Walmart?
...
the average American can barely drive a shopping cart!
Robocars are the future.
Uh, no. What makes trains unsafe is that they are trains ... which means that -- like everything else in life -- they never have a 0% failure rate.
It's really that simple.
Here's a perfect case in point ...
Don't take the exact numbers here at face value, but I read somewhere that the average person in the U.S. who gets a driver's license at the age of 17 and drives for 60 years will depress a brake pedal three million times while driving forward, and will get in three motor vehicle crashes that would have been prevented if the brakes were applied correctly. That's a "failure rate" of one in a million, or 0.0001%. Can you think of any automated product that operates this efficiently?
>>You make it sound like flyover country went for Trump 80 20.
No. Did I even mention Trump? In flyover country, even most Democrats are still normal people.
>>Cause we are ALL cucks up here.
Probably.
>>But live in the past if it makes you happy :)
I am so grateful to have your permission. Oh wait...I’m not a coastal cuck, so I don’t need it!
Your assumption is understandable...because dozens of moronic reporters have declared that there are driverless cars driving around in Pittsburg.
In reality, these ‘driverless’ cars have two people in the front seat, helping it navigate.
A ‘driverless’ car is like the ‘affordable’ care act, or ‘unbreakable’ plastic combs.
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.
______________________________
WHO is wanting this besides the elites who want to control and put people in easily managed cities.
I don’t know ONE person who wants a self-driving car. Not one.
This is not market driven it is elite what we want for you driven.
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.
____________________-
lies.
This is the silicon valley princes wanting to divide up more of the economy among themselves.
I’ve been to Korea, and as bad as they are at it, people there still drive.
So I think we’ll still be driving for a long time in this country.
Colorado for one:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3870790/Beer-run-Self-driving-truck-goes-120-plus-miles-delivery.html
Wouldn’t doubt it. I’ll certainly be avoiding it as long as I can.
If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.
You obviously distrust technology, while I on the other hand distrust the average American.
I envision the technology being used almost exclusively on the interstates, and executed so well that it wont have to be “pushed” on anyone.
Thousands or heck MILLIONS of cars linked via computer and programmed properly could make rush hour interstate traffic a distant nightmare relic of the past. Robocars could travel safely at extreme speeds and merge and unmerge flawlessly if all the other cars are also linked and the actions of all are coordinated.
Now.. off the interstates... or especially on small rural roads... maned driving will be the norm for many decades to come.
you know one now.
this is about control by the big silicon valley types. Google does the maps and satellites. There are no opportunities for regular people.
"A human drove the truck onto the highway..."
Driving on the interstate is the EASIEST part of this engineering problem.
Let me repeat the question:
Example please. No...not some test where there is a driver in the front seat who takes over when the car is confused...an honest to goodness bona fide example of a vehicle that can traverse city streets with no input from a driver. Where IS this happening?
You’re not bothering to understand what’s happening. Discard your curmudgeon for 5 minutes and actually PAY ATTENTION to what that story says, and how utterly impossible that was 3 years. It IS happening, right now, before our very eyes, the whole concept of vehicle travel is changing. You can deny until you’re blue in the face, and it doesn’t matter. The future is now, the science fiction staple IS ON THE ROAD.
well you’re it. LOL
It’s been a sci-fi concept for so long it’s hard to believe it’s actually happening. And of course nobody thinks about revolutions. In 1990 who wanted to carry a phone with them at all times? In 2000 who wanted to cram a full fledged computer into that phone they were carrying at all times? And now in 2017 who wants to give up driving and let the car do everything?
Ever since I was a boy... every trip I took to West Texas... I have dreamed of having a self driving car :)
This isn't an issue of technology. The technology to do everything this article describes has existed for years.
This isn't an issue of technology. The technology to do everything this article describes has existed for years.
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