Do these driverless vehicles have the technology capaable of distinguishing various traffic situations and road signs? Wil they automatically connect with other like vehicles. Doubt it! This means there’s going to be a need for massive ammounts of expensive tech infrastructure everywhere. Who’s going to pay for it? Take the expense of a somewhat localized high speed rail project and multiply that by every city. So unless you ban all standard vehicles and force every person who drives to buy a new driverless car, it’s just not possible much less feasible not to mention just not as much fun.
It’s a pipedream much like the flying car!
The technology already exists and will be slowly introduced.
Initially they will probably designate a few lanes on highways for automated vehicles only. Eventually they will be mandatory...
Yes they can distinguish traffic situations and road signs (or at least will be: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge ). And they probably will communicate with each other, most cars are bluetooth capable already for your cellphone no reason they can’t talk to each other. And they’ll be doing that specifically to accomplish this DECADES any massive infrastructure can be put in place. The control system was the idea people had 10 to 20 years ago, but self parking cars proved that wasn’t necessary, we can make cars see and react to conditions all by themselves right now. Cars are coming out now that will self brake if they detect something in the way, even line you back up in your lane if you drift. We’re almost there, with no supervising network.
“Do these driverless vehicles have the technology capaable of distinguishing various traffic situations and road signs?”
Yes.
“Wil they automatically connect with other like vehicles. Doubt it! This means there’s going to be a need for massive ammounts of expensive tech infrastructure everywhere.”
No it doesn’t. As the article points out, Google already has logged hundreds of thousands of miles of driverless driving on public streets.
“Take the expense of a somewhat localized high speed rail project and multiply that by every city. So unless you ban all standard vehicles and force every person who drives to buy a new driverless car, it’s just not possible much less feasible not to mention just not as much fun.”
No. The driverless cars work similarly to a human driver. They sense their surroundings, and make decisions. They make decisions several times a second, and can “see” in all directions at the same time. They have “senses” humans don’t, like laser radar. Further, they don’t get distracted, tired or drunk.
There won’t be much question what happened in the event of an accident, as the driverless car will contain a detailed record. They’ll be much better at avoiding errant human drivers than are humans.
There are concerns, like cost, how much redundancy the various systems will provide, and failure modes, but there’s little doubt the roads will get safer proportionally to the number of driverless cars out there.