Why does the United States have such bad public transportation? (Baltimore, architect)

[darkeconomist]

Originally Posted by KaaBoom

No, absolutely not.

Google car is no match for snow and ice
Driverless vehicle can’t yet detect winter road conditions, say experts who believe Google is decades away from a solution.

The article talks about visual sensors and things like them, which, it should be noted, is different than talking about a system's ability to cope with adverse road conditions. Even in the case of ice, it only talks about visually detecting black ice.

[hurricaneMan1992]

Originally Posted by Those Who Squirm

I think a component factor of the driverless car idea is that the automated driving technology would be able to react to hazards and avoid them far faster than a human driver can, which would in turn would allow vehicles to maintain high speeds even in crowded conditions--hence, less congestion.

But aren't you assuming that there is enough space for the vehicles to get up to these higher speeds? On the expressway, maybe, but not during peak commuting hours in town. Driverless cars still won't be able to fly. Although you could imagine optimizing the traffic signals (or eliminating them entirely) to minimize stopping time. A lot of time is wasted sitting at red lights where there isn't any cross traffic.

[KaaBoom]

Originally Posted by darkeconomist

The article talks about visual sensors and things like them, which, it should be noted, is different than talking about a system's ability to cope with adverse road conditions. Even in the case of ice, it only talks about visually detecting black ice.

The Google car relies entirely on pavement markings to navigate. Which means that if the road surface is covered with snow, the car is not going to be able to navigate. That pretty much eliminates the car from use in any place that gets more then a trace of snow. Which is most of North America.

Testing the car on the streets of Mountain View, California, which gets zero snow and not even much rain, is a piece of cake, compared to testing the car in winter driving conditions.

[nybbler]

Originally Posted by Malloric

They go as fast as a prop plane. Nobody flies on prop planes.

Well, there's still the turboprop Dash 8 400, but it has a 400+mph cruise.

[darkeconomist]

Originally Posted by KaaBoom

The Google car relies entirely on pavement markings to navigate. Which means that if the road surface is covered with snow, the car is not going to be able to navigate. That pretty much eliminates the car from use in any place that gets more then a trace of snow. Which is most of North America.

Testing the car on the streets of Mountain View, California, which gets zero snow and not even much rain, is a piece of cake, compared to testing the car in winter driving conditions.

All I did was note that it is different to navigate in the winter--the subject of the article--than the ability to drive on winter roads. The former, according to the article, is beyond our reach at the moment; the latter is several years behind us.

[Logicist027]

Ever since the ICC (Interstate Commerce Commission) came about it has been difficult to get public transportation done. The ICC killed the great railroads of the 1800s and we have not been a global leader since. Ever since trains became part of the public domain, opposition towards building them has been met with skepticism. This is not without merit since most countries in the world do subsidize their public transportation and the idea of them being profitable is almost out of the question for most of them. (Look at the debacle of the CA HSR)

Ever since Eisenhower put the highway system into place, it has only exacerbated the public transportation problem.

[hurricaneMan1992]

Originally Posted by darkeconomist

The article talks about visual sensors and things like them, which, it should be noted, is different than talking about a system's ability to cope with adverse road conditions. Even in the case of ice, it only talks about visually detecting black ice.

Ideally, a "smart road" should be able to detect that it has black ice and notify all cars in the vicinity to slow down, increase following distance, go in to "adverse weather condition mode," ect... Then when ice is encountered, the vehicle could react and adjust faster than a human could, and it could also notify other vehicles in the vicinity to help avoid multiple vehicle pileups.

Next question: would we be willing to put the tax money in to "smart roads," especially in some parts of the country where potholes and poor maintenance are the norm (looking at you, Michigan...)?

[darkeconomist]

Originally Posted by hurricaneMan1992

Ideally, a "smart road" should be able to detect that it has black ice and notify all cars in the vicinity to slow down, increase following distance, go in to "adverse weather condition mode," ect... Then when ice is encountered, the vehicle could react and adjust faster than a human could, and it could also notify other vehicles in the vicinity to help avoid multiple vehicle pileups.

Next question: would we be willing to put the tax money in to "smart roads," especially in some parts of the country where potholes and poor maintenance are the norm (looking at you, Michigan...)?

Well, my point was more broad than black ice because the concern is bad weather of many types.

In the era of IoT, a smart road is the slowly- and spottily-implemented bureaucratic answer, whereas networked smartcars offer much quicker implementation. I'm saying, so long as someone has driven a road recently, significant information could hypothetically be shared by any smartcar that comes after. Like Waze, but with way more data points, as many as the car measures. In urban and suburban locations, when combined with NOAA weather data this could create a rich map of driving conditions to which individual smartcars could react separately and accordingly. Additionally, a smartcar could use and react to data it doesn't itself have the sensors to measure, somewhat future-proofing the system; if another car has better/newer sensors, that information could be taken in to account by cars with older/worse sensors so long as the software has been updated to use that data and the data is shared.

[btownboss4]

Originally Posted by darkeconomist

All I did was note that it is different to navigate in the winter--the subject of the article--than the ability to drive on winter roads. The former, according to the article, is beyond our reach at the moment; the latter is several years behind us.

also in some places there is no lines on non-major roads, and very faded lines on major roads.
Then there are some roads that is 1 marked lane its wide enough that people travel side by side etc.
Its not very applicable in the real world

[2nd trick op]

Originally Posted by btownboss4

Also in some places there is no lines on non-major roads, and very faded lines on major roads. Then there are some roads that is 1 marked lane its wide enough that people travel side by side etc. Its not very applicable in the real world

If lane painting becomes more important, I'm sure the highway budget can be adjusted to accommodate it -- it's a minor item.

But the point I see missed, repeatedly, in all the bubbly, over-optimistic chirping about "self-driving vehicles" is that a complete anywhere-to-anywhere system can't be developed and perfected in the short time horizons constantly predicted for the benefit of a gullible public.

Google's self-drivers work quite well, so long as the conditions under which they're tested are relatively uniform. If the claim that they will be able to re-program their software for a limited number of situations specific to their owner pans out -- that will be a huge "shot in the arm" for the program.

And at the other end of the spectrum of highway use patterns, the savings realized via the automated operation of highway tractor-semitrailer rigs would be enormous. It would likely mean "end of track" for all but a handful of high-volume, bulk-commodity rail operations. And no public financing would be necessary because those savings would pass directly to the private sector -- and indirectly, to all of us.

But any change this large, and this fundamental seems certain to encounter its share of unplanned obstacles along the way; which is while I'll maintain a "wait-and-see" attitude until I'm either too old and decrepit to wait, or just no longer around.

Because as the late Glenn Frye put it: "We're all likely to run out of time before we run out of dreams."