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.
I agree with you, but even that isn’t going to be easy. Think of the airline industry. The technology for fully automated flight has existed for several decades, and yet nobody is even thinking of removing the crew from an aircraft.
Never thought I’d come into an article where FR commenters are thinking far too two dimensional. If we went off most comments here we’d still be in punch card technology. The business opportunities are endless.
“this IS happening”
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 can what if until the cows came home or you can say what can. Anyone can be a critic.
No problem. In a few years, because of Global Warming, we will have seen the last of snow.
Oh they will allow them... for a price.
I have seen so called green car pool lanes turn into big moneymakers for the city and state. Pretty rotten because the extra lanes were design to “reduce pollution.”
Happened in the Denver metro area — now instead of two + it is “three +” and you need a special transponder and an online account even though you might comply with the “three +” requirement.
Oh they will allow them... for a price.
I have seen so called green car pool lanes turn into big moneymakers for the city and state. Pretty rotten because the extra lanes were design to “reduce pollution.”
Happened in the Denver metro area — now instead of two + it is “three +” and you need a special transponder and an online account even though you might comply with the “three +” requirement.
I'll tell you right now that a scenario where people never learn to drive a car is decades away, regardless of what you read in articles like this one.
Those “fully autonomous taxi cabs” in Pittsburg have drivers.
Don’t be fooled by hype or poor reporting. The difference between a 99% autonomous car and ‘fully’ autonomous car is huge.
Rush-Red Barchetta
My uncle has a country place
That no one knows about
He says it used to be a farm
Before the Motor Law
And now on Sundays I elude the eyes
And hop the turbine freight
To far outside the wire where my
White-haired uncle waits
Jump to the ground as the turbo slows
To cross the borderline
Run like the wind as excitement shivers
Up and down my spine
But down in his barn
My uncle preserved for me
An old machine
For fifty-odd years
To keep it as new
Has been his dearest dream
I strip away the old debris
That hides a shining car
A brilliant Red Barchetta
From a better vanished time
We’ll fire up the willing engine
Responding with a roar
Tires spitting gravel
I commit my weekly crime
Wind
In my hair
Shifting and drifting
Mechanical music
Adrenaline surge
Well-oiled leather
Hot metal and oil
The scented country air
Sunlight on chrome
The blur of the landscape
Every nerve aware
Suddenly ahead of me
Across the mountainside
A gleaming alloy air-car
Shoots towards me two lanes wide
Oh, I spin around with shrieking tires
To run the deadly race
Go screaming through the valley
As another joins the chase
Ride like the wind
Straining the limits
Of machine and man
Laughing out loud with fear and hope
I’ve got a desperate plan
At the one-lane bridge
I leave the giants stranded
At the riverside
Race back to the farm
To dream with my uncle
At the fireside
Idiot of the day post :)
Cause we are ALL cucks up here.
The Firebird, Camaro and 370Z I owned were never driven.
Just bought them to help the economy /s
You make it sound like flyover country went for Trump 80 20.
Many just eeked out a win.
But live in the past if it makes you happy :)
That’s what’s important
they will simply take over a land at a time on the highway...
they will be allowed to go MUCH faster... so why you are stuck sitting still in traffic, the robot cars will be whisking by at 100. Then another lane and another will disappear until only robocars are allowed on the interstate.
I am also a civil engineer...and I fully concur.
We agree on that point no question. However for every job that goes by the wayside there will be numerous other entrepreneurship opportunities that open. Every new technology advance has opened the door for new business opportunities
Believe me -- I understand that. I didn't know the Pittsburgh cabs had drivers; I simply assumed that they operated on a very limited street network and had no "automated" interaction with other vehicles or pedestrians.
easy.
Interstates were built to not have intersections like Railroads.
What makes trains unsafe is that they have to cross roads. That is not an issue with the interstates.
Jobs have nothing to do with it. I just recognize that there are enormous limitations on this kind of technology that most people who don’t deal with it never see.
Yup, for it work reliably and efficiently the cars would have to be networked together so that some central brain can act like a massive traffic cop. But heck, once that happens, it is possible to get rid of lights and stop signs.
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