The Future of the Car

Gandul writes "Radar, lasers, wireless radio networks and other embedded tech will enable our cars to sense faraway traffic and stop accidents before they happen. But who will be in the driver's seat?"

Comments

Hopefully not people

[bigtrike]

The vast majority of accidents are caused because human beings are either incapable or unwilling to drive a vehicle safely. Because of this, we have lost many civil liberties. Due to safety concerns, the police can pull you over and search your vehicle at almost any time without real justification.

I'd rather have robots drive.

The changes that should be made

[Mishra100]

I really do think they need to start focusing on a rail type system that does all the driving for us. If we finally would convert roads to a electromagnetic railway system (like the bullet train) and just program cars to drive and stop when they need, then we would have a much much better system than we have now. This completly gets rid of Car insurance, gas, 95% of death related accidents(I would have the 5% is left for cars that malfunction), drunk drivers, pollution, and many other negative aspects.
I definitely think it would takes a lot of time to complete and would cost a ton of money. But we as citizens and as a country would save a whole lot more money having this implemented as a final solution to all of the stable and rising issues that circles around transportation.

Re:The changes that should be made

[egarland]

Rail can't replace roads. It's much less flexible than pavement, more expensive to maintain and not compatible with the existing transportation.

People aren't going to be running rails into their garages, to their front doors.. across the lawn to where you need to back up to hook up the trailer.. etc. When there's an accident a rail vehicle can't just drive on the dirt to go around which may not seem important until you think of the fire truck that's coming to pry someone out of the wreckage in that accident. Rail isn't flexible enough for a general purpose transportation system. That lack of flexibility is one of the two advantages you have with rail. It lets you predict exactly where things will travel and run things like power lines to them. That advantage is it's downfall when it comes to general purpose transportation though.

The other advantage is lower rolling resistance. As speeds go up air friction accounts for a larger percent of the energy used to keep the vehicle moving so as speeds increase this is actually less important.

Also, car insurance wouldn't go away it would just get cheaper. Gas may go away but you have to power the vehicles somehow and since we aren't building any more clean environmentally friendly nuclear power plants we'll probably be burning oil or more likely coal which dumps tons and tons of mercury into our food chain every year (anyone know what the half life of mercury is?)

The benefits you describe could be here soon, but the only realistic way to get them is if computers drive our cars. That's the right answer.

Flamebait? wtf?

[coshx]

The vast majority of accidents are caused because human beings are either incapable or unwilling to drive a vehicle safely

This is plain truth. Most accidents are caused either because the drivers chose to drive wrecklessly and/or under the influence, or were caused simply because human reaction time is not as good as computers' reaction time.


Because of this, we have lost many civil liberties.

This is also true, and quite an insight. Think about random road blocks where you're tested for being under the influence even if you're NOT driving wrecklessly or even swerving. The equation is simple: am I willing to give up a little bit of my privacy to prevent myself from being killed? Generally, yes! Of course! But, if drunk driving didn't cause accidents because people weren't driving, there would be no need to pull this person over.


Mods, please please please stop modding based on your own beliefs, and rather based on the intelligence of people's responses -- I'm going to get modded down for that, eh?

"Virus kills hundreds on I-95"

[sexyrexy]

It has generally been the trend that the more complex a system becomes, similarities it will have to the foundations of the modern operating system. ATMs are a prime example of machines that started as moderately sophisticated PCBs and now routinely run Windows Embedded.

If a vehicle is "smart" enough to handle driving, it will have the computational power and flexibility to run reasonably sophisticated software. Consider that increasing wireless bandwidth (WiMax, anyone?) will lead to offloading the heavy-duty positional and map processing to a remote service over the Internet, with the software to display becoming a thin client for a remote database. A clever programmer will find a stack overflow in MapQuestClientForYourCar and BAM! Suddenly cars are automatically veering for each other instead of away.

The level of scrutiny and security applied to such systems will have to be on par, or higher than, such applications as air traffic controlling before it can be considered safe.

Re:"Virus kills hundreds on I-95"

[vandoravp]

I don't think virii will become a fatal problem simply because of the way the cars are likely to be controlled. I can't imagine any sane engineer linking the OS to the intercar communication system in a way that would allow direct control of the car from an outside source. The external communication/gps positioning is purely for additional road sensing and navigating-not for the actual driving and avoiding of obstacles-and will probably happen in a separate system. The core driving operation will likely be kept isolated from outside control. Also, remember that, in the early years of these systems, humans will still be driving. The extra sensing will only notify the driver of conditions and attempt to prevent (or at least alleviate somewhat) an accident should one begin to occur.

It certainly would be possible to suddenly make all cars lost but that wouldn't be so much of a safety issue. The real danger in this sense will be possible backdoors or dangerous easter eggs that could be inserted during the OS development process.

Re:Automatic speed control

[Qzukk]

My last fender bender cost less than $1000 in all to repair both cars. Guess how much the insurance company raised my rates for the next 4 years or so?

Re:More to the point...

[L.Bob.Rife]

Are you aware that the #1 cause of accidents in my state is people that drive too slow?