Self-driving cars will transform mobility, says Sebastian Thrun, the engineer who led the development of the Volkswagen and Google self-driving cars. The fact that Thrun’s article is featured in the New York Times constitutes a major endorsement from America’s “newspaper of record.”
This is the only major endorsement for driverless cars as represented by Thrun. The Huffington Post counts them as one of “18 great ideas of 2011.” Fast Company magazine declared Thrun number 5 on its list of the 100 most creative people in business in 2011 (and Thrun isn’t even a businessman).
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Maybe now we’ll be able to talk about real mobility instead of the artificial mobility provided by such obsolete technologies as streetcars and high-speed rail. “I envision a future in which our technology is available to everyone, in every car,” says Thrun. “I envision a future without traffic accidents or congestion. A future where everyone can use a car.” Sounds great to the Antiplanner.
My ideal version of this would be a car that could, say, be used normally on surface streets, then get on a freeway, switch on autopilot, and safely drive at high speeds to your next exit. Not sure I would want the car making every decision on a surface street.
Technology available to all has been the driving force behind modern equality. It doesn’t have to be advanced simply effective. I may not be able to afford a Bentley but I can afford a Chevy and they both do the same thing.
I’m going to need more information to understand how we get from driverless car technology to “a future without traffic accidents or congestion. A future where everyone can use a car.”
But hyperbolic utopian visions aside, this technology is really cool and has the potential to change transportation in many positive ways.
bennett wrote:
But hyperbolic utopian visions aside, this technology is really cool and has the potential to change transportation in many positive ways.
I am not so sure that any of this is hype. The technology is there now. I would not go so far as to say it’s perfected, but it’s pretty darned close to that.
CP,
The technology is not the hype. The hype is the expectation that the technology will solve ALL congestion and auto accidents and that because of the technology ALL will be able to use (and have access to) a car. The system will never be perfected, because no system ever is. Again, if it works I’m all for it as it will probably result in many positive outcomes. I know I’d like to use autopilot for my car. But the idea that it will eliminate congestion and accidents is a pipe dream.
So would there no longer be any DUI’s?
Would a car running on ethanol get a DUI?
Driverless cars will work well on motorways/freeways where the environment in controlled. Sooner or later, though, someone will try putting a car like that on roads shared with horses, pedestrians, cyclists, and just about anything else that’s out there. That would be a mistake.
@Sandy, thanks for the good laugh. 🙂
@FrancisKing, why would those things be a problem? Sure, they’re different problems than dealing with some jerk-off going 60MPH and popping right in front of you in your lane when you’re going 70MPH. But they like other cars they are moving objects. I’m not saying there aren’t going to be accidents. If anything the slower speeds by all involved should make them even easier to react too than things that happen on freeway.
As a cyclist I have a lot more faith in a self-driving car giving me 3 feet of room and, even better, not purposely swerving at me. Maybe we’ll even luck out and the car will detect the cyclist and prevent windows from being opening so someone inside can yell something profound like “Get off the road, Lance!”
I still find it ironic that you guys want big brother driving your car.
I like the idea alot actually, but this is one reason why I don’t think its realistic:
So the roads are icy, the sensors are overwhelmed by sticky blowing snow, and the computer is programmed to abide by an increased following distance because the system isn’t guaranteed to identify black ice even in good conditions, and due to low and heavy cloud cover the many to many communication system cannot communicate adequately with vehicles at the head of the column in order to ensure a safe and unanimous stopping operation. Because the column is sustained for many miles, it must be broken into segmented convoys to increase inter-vehicle communication, which includes a primary following distance between convoys greater than the vehicle to vehicle following distances. Due to both of the increased following distance requirements, and the large number of vehicles in the active system, the speed must be reduced in order to allow additional vehicles to enter the system freely. This backs up traffic, which compounds the reduction in speed, resulting in a traffic jam, which further affects the conditions / legal speed / current speed / possible speed / communications capability / system operability formula explained above, until unit forward movement is only possible when traffic speed is slow enough to permit a following distance low enough to allow vehicles at the head of the forward convoy to increase speed, or vehicles within the road system to exit the system at a pace greater than vehicles are entering the system. The computers will not break the formula even as speed increases, so as vehicles speed up, the formula actually applies a greater following distance, and therefore the traffic jam is sustained irrationally but legally. If sufficient vehicles are placed on the roadway, a system wide shutdown may be required so that human drivers can manually negotiate the scenario.
In other words: computers can’t think yet, so don’t give them responsibility