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It seems a lot of these people pushing for and dreaming http://www.emdesignandstyle.com/san-diego-spanishhttp://www.emdesignandstyle.com/san-diego-spanishhttp://www.emdesignandstyle.com/san-diego-spanishabout self driving cars live within an urban bubble and never venture outside. Their sole purpose of driving is to go to and from work, in which they'd rather share with others, and going to the grocery store on their allotted weekly grocery day. They have no clue about the real world outside of their little bubble and would surely get lost if there wasn't a high rise anywhere within site. I don't think they realize that the majority of our own country, as well as the rest of the world is not like that!
Speaking of bubbles, this is pretty funny. Ascribing a very real technological revolution that absolutely is happening, albeit slowly at first and in limited areas but which will affect the lives of 10s of millions of people in a few short years as if it actually has something to do with clueless urban souls afraid of driving or being out in nature.
Just because you don't live in an dense urban area where technology is developed and embraced quickly doesn't mean the rest of the world has to follow in your horse and buggy footsteps. Yes, most of the world and rural areas will have to wait for the real societal movement of this technology to start making an impact in their lives but for a lot of us in big cities or states -especially those that are steeped in technological development and research (none more so than California), it will be making a huge impact in our lives for the better in a few short years. Not to even mention those who for whatever reason are physically incapable of driving.
Cars will in a very short while -especially for many people living in dense urban areas- be nothing more than a commodity, not a thing but a resource. A device like a smartphone, utilized for a short time to get someplace, find something or someone, and then it will be be gone until you call one up again to go somewhere else. It's going to be beautiful. We won't have to think about driving and parking, just getting to the next place we want to be, with the people we want to be with.
The other aspect of this is a company like Uber- and I've just talked with someone who just visited them last week as part as his MBA program, is very much not a ride share company, instead, they will be involved with the transportation of people, goods and services like you can't imagine which is very much directly connected with the development of autonomous vehicles. It will be like we all live in Manhattan, (well, not for you guys in the burbs for a awhile) with a convenient smartphone accessed delivery service for just about anything, quickly and inexpensively.
The 1/3 of the area of cities now designed exclusively for the movement and storage of cars will shrink down to maybe 1/6 or 1/10. The amount of area suddenly available for redevelopment no longer needed for cars will transform the redesign of cities just as monumentally as the requirements of the personal car that drove the design of most modern cities a century ago.
It will take much longer for this transformation to take place in the great majority of the vast millions of square miles of rural and surban land in this country and others, but the cities where most of us live will be seeing the benefits of this technology sooner than later.
I am a car guy with a manual (of course) Subaru WRX and love to drive on windy rural roads, go on road trips across the country and love to have the freedom to choose and go where I want, but that still isn't my life for most of the time day to day. When I'm in the city, any city, much of the time I just need to be someplace and/or meet somebody, and to have a self-driving minivan (Chrysler + Waymo for one) or some goofy looking bubble car picking me up to go to work or me and my friends to go out for a night on the town and then to efficiently pick me up to take us home later is going to be awesome.
Self driving cars use algorithms that are designed for maximum safety. That is great and I would not expect anything less. But the fact is, many drivers push the envelope a little - roll through stop signs, speed through yellow lights, drive 5-10 MPH over the speed limit on the freeway, etc. Drivers who consider driving to be a form of competitive sport will not like self-driving cars for these reasons. And my estimate is that 25% of drivers are in that category.
So, if your goal is to get from point A to point B in your own car, without having to look at the road, and you don't care how long it takes, self-driving will be perfect for you. But if you are a type-A personality, a control freak, or perpetually leave at the last possible minute for appointments, it will never work for you. Otherwise you would take a bus.
I predict that the success of self-driving cars will come down to this human factor, not to legal issues or technology.
I predict the next step will be an "autopilot" feature for freeway/interstate driving. Give it a destination (like city and state for example), enter the freeway, engage autopilot. When you wish to exit for a rest or meal, take control and disengage the autopilot. When you're nearing your destination it gives you an audio, visual, and vibrating alert. Problems to overcome include temporary speed limit signs for construction, lighted speed limit signs that alter the speed limit due to weather or traffic conditions ahead, and recognizing when to pull aside for emergency vehicles or pull over for a traffic stop by the police. One thing I'd worry about is the GPS not being up to date, especially when it comes to new construction. Some people have driven into lakes or off cliffs because their GPS told them to turn there. Will the sensors detect a flooded road, a road with damage from an earthquake, a buckled road from heat, a missing manhole cover, a large sharp pothole that could damage the vehicle, a hail storm, an approaching tornado, or any of a number of things that happens out on the road? I've been in a very light hail and a hail storm that can shatter your windows if you don't get shelter quick.
Lighting will fry it and put it out of commission real quick, as it will the other systems as well. Yes, planes have redundant systems as they must because there is absolutely no backup when in the air. But I'd imagine the cost of a typical airliner is a tad more then most of us can cover.
The cars are already using redundant systems; LIDAR, video recognition, GPS etc. Let's keep in mind here bringing a car to safe stop if all these main systems were to fail simultaneously is a whole lot different than bringing a plane to a safe landing.
At the end of the day these cars are going to reduce accidents even with these problems.
I agree with them being at least better traffic jam reducers.
If they were networked you no longer need stop signs, red lights or even direction of travel on roads.
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And no I am against for criminalizing human driving. Honestly, why criminalize it when you can do restricting on human driving instead at least rather than just criminalizing right away, you know?
As I suggested previously it will be many decades before that occurs and that is only for practical reasons. This may be potential timeline:
2025: Government sets 2030 as deadline for any car manufactured to be self driving but can still be human operated.
2030: Government sets deadline for 2050 for all cars manufactured to be 100% self driving and outlaws the use of human driven cars.
2040: Government sets deadline for 2060 for all cars to be networked.
It's not that it cannot be done in shorter timeline but it's just impractical to not have transition period to get the majority of self driven cars off the road after their useful lifespan.
It seems a lot of these people pushing for and dreaming about self driving cars live within an urban bubble and never venture outside. Their sole purpose of driving is to go to and from work, in which they'd rather share with others, and going to the grocery store on their allotted weekly grocery day. They have no clue about the real world outside of their little bubble and would surely get lost if there wasn't a high rise anywhere within site. I don't think they realize that the majority of our own country, as well as the rest of the world is not like that!
I predict the next step will be an "autopilot" feature for freeway/interstate driving. Give it a destination (like city and state for example), enter the freeway, engage autopilot. When you wish to exit for a rest or meal, take control and disengage the autopilot. When you're nearing your destination it gives you an audio, visual, and vibrating alert. Problems to overcome include temporary speed limit signs for construction, lighted speed limit signs that alter the speed limit due to weather or traffic conditions ahead, and recognizing when to pull aside for emergency vehicles or pull over for a traffic stop by the police. One thing I'd worry about is the GPS not being up to date, especially when it comes to new construction. Some people have driven into lakes or off cliffs because their GPS told them to turn there. Will the sensors detect a flooded road, a road with damage from an earthquake, a buckled road from heat, a missing manhole cover, a large sharp pothole that could damage the vehicle, a hail storm, an approaching tornado, or any of a number of things that happens out on the road? I've been in a very light hail and a hail storm that can shatter your windows if you don't get shelter quick.
This is what I've been wondering about too.
Where I live, none of the live updating road conditions apps are very relevant. The weather can be volatile.
I am right at, or on, the foothills of Pikes Peak, maybe just a 1 hr drive from the Continental Divide. The elevation, just within city limits, ranges from 5,500ft to 8,100ft. It's not uncommon to drive from roads that are a sheet of ice, in white out blizzard conditions, to wet & gloomy, to dry & sunny; all within the same zip code.
We had a massive forest fire in 2012 that stormed down a mountainside of National Forest, into city limits & eventually destroyed almost 400 houses. There are still large populations of displaced wildlife on city roadways on a daily basis. I can't even tell you how many times I've had seconds to avoid whole herds of startled deer bolting down sidewalks & across roads. Last month at dawn, a huge 5 point buck stampeded down a hillside & across a 6 lane street right in front of me. I've had a big black bear take his sweet time crossing a parking lot while I waited ( I swear he glared at me as if to say "don't rush me").
On Tuesday we had a freakish wind storm that lasted over 12 hours with hurricane force winds. Signs, fences & debris were airborne, almost 200,000 residents without power, massive evergreen trees uprooted, thick limbs from older trees, some 60-80ft tall were crashing down on roadways, trash cans flying through 12 lane intersections...
Some of our largest intersections were without power. One intersection with 2 left turn lanes all directions & 3 thru lanes, all directions was a disaster because humans have apparently lost the ability to manage a emergency 4-way stop pattern. What would a car be programed to do? It's not like I could account for which intersections were down because it was very random with some going off & on throughout the day.
When the State Patrol ordered all high-profile vehicles off the roadways it left thousands of schoolchildren in 4 school districts stranded without bus transportation, including handicapped transportation. This in turn meant thousands of parents being notified in the middle of the day to leave work & flood the streets during already almost apocolyptic conditions.
There are just so many variables. Given that there has already been a fatal crash that occured due to a light colored semi-trailer blending into an overcast sky; I'm thinking this might take a while.
And I don't like the Big Brother aspect either. Yeah; I know all financed cars are lo-jacked anyway. And between traffic cams & police ALR's, privacy is an illusion. But I don't like the thought that anyone could access my entire days data of ETA's & ETD's, including planned routes; it just has an "eeww" factor for me.
It seems a lot of these people pushing for and dreaming about self driving cars live within an urban bubble and never venture outside. Their sole purpose of driving is to go to and from work, in which they'd rather share with others, and going to the grocery store on their allotted weekly grocery day. They have no clue about the real world outside of their little bubble and would surely get lost if there wasn't a high rise anywhere within site. I don't think they realize that the majority of our own country, as well as the rest of the world is not like that!
Exactly! and the disturbing fact is that it's a short step (for THEM) to attempt to legislate their sanitized, over-protective lifestyle into the law of the land.
I don't want to go looking for a scapegoat here -- or to lay all the blame at the feet of those on one side of the polarization which continues to emerge in North America; but the fact remains that it's much easier for the media and the advertising and public relations crowd to sell the "soft life".
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 01-13-2017 at 11:48 AM..
In the longer term once vehicles are autonomous with networking and roads become smart roads relaying essential data to the vehicles, a human operating a vehicle will serve no purpose. There will be more local road courses where enthusiasts can enjoy driving.
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