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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?"
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But who will be in the driver's seat?
Whoever's driving the car, duh.
Disconnect and self-destruct, one bullet at a time.
What will they be fueled with?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
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.
my genetically engineered chauffeur-lemur
duh
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.
Imagine having your own car that can drive you on its own, and you can sit in the back doing whatever you want, be it getting another hours rest on the way to work, watching a movie on the way home, fooling around, getting drunk, you name it.
The drinking aspect alone would make this a best seller. Can you say "Designated Driver comes standard with this model!"
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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?
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.
Rex is 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
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?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
. . . by humans at the wheel: acceptable risk. One death caused by a computer at the helm: lawsuit of Biblical proportions.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
The upper-middle-class (both those that have lots of money and those who have lots of education) will be buying hybrids and other smaller cars that get very good fuel economy.
As the price of gasoline continues to go up, people who are currently driving giant SUVs (here I'm talking about Mommy going a mile to the supermarket in a vehicle that is almost as big as a space shuttle) will sell them off to the lower middle class and working class people.
Then as they break and wear out, the working class people won't repair them. Instead they will strip out the non-functioning systems. Here's a scenario from 2008:
Some light on the dash goes on that says "Engine problem". You take it to the dealer who charges you $80 to plug in an OBD cable and find out what the problem is. They say that it's a bad Bi-Nitrogen Catalytic Emission sensor (don't tell me that this doesn't exist, I know it. This is a scenario). It has an 89 cent microcontroller and a $3 relay in a $2 little plastic box. It costs $369.87 and you have to replace all four if one goes out because there 'calibrated' to each other.
So is the working-class guy going to replace the dohickey? No way. He goes to his brother-in-law's cousin who knows this guy who can take care of these little SUV problems. Year after year the car works less and less. Finally it doesn't pass emissions testing and can't get a registration renewal. Joe Six-Pack just say's the hell with it and drives it anyway, maybe even with a fake license plate year sticker.
One day the cops stop him and run the VIN through the DMV computer. They confiscate the vehicle and tow it. It gets sold at a police auction to a wholesaler who sells it again to an illegal immigrant no questions asked, no papers. It's back out on the street.
This is the real future of the car. Millions and millions of loud, junky, polluting, giant stupid and ugly half-broken SUVs. All driven by guys with no money and serious attitude problems.
Thanks a lot, Detroit. It's nice to know that we can count on you for well-balanced long-term positive solutions to our tranportation needs! How's you stock ratings? Still as junky as the SUVs that you sell?
The future of the car is very bleak given that at the current rate of oil consumption we have enough reserves (optimistically) for 40 years. Even that is irrelevant because oil production will peak over the next few years when demand is soaring in Asia.
Forget about Hydrogen, it's only a means of energy storage not a source. There is no way we could biuld the infrastructure let alone produce enough hydrogen or hydrogen powered vehicles.
Forget about LNG, there's no way we can replace even 5 million barrels of oil equivalent given that natural gas will peak in the next 15 years and North America has peaked already.
Forget about biogas/biodiesel, most of it doesn't even have a positive net energy return.
I would hazard a guess that if we maxed out all the alternative liquid fuels that we could use for air/road transportation we might make up less than 5% of global oil demand. That's a guess, I would be interested in some real numbers.
Don't give me any of that "The markets will automatically react, adjust and allow alternatives to become economically viable" BS. The economic system that we live in depends on growing energy supplies to feed the system so that people can pay the interest on their loans. The energy supply is going to stop growing then start declining and the worlds economies will crash to various degrees: The larger they are, the harder they will fall.
Personally I think hardly anyone will be driving cars in 10 years time.
Anyway, I was going 30 and she was going about 5mph. Was she a dangerous driver? Yes! Were either of us speeding? NO!
It seems to be the case that there are two types of dangerous drivers. First, the morons that drive recklessly, drink and drive, cut people up, etc. These people tend to *also* drive fast. The second type is a member of the "oblivious masses" that can only see things that are in front of them. To these people mirrors are odd devices that have limited use. Sometimes their motto seems to be "slow is safe!" regardless of the situation. They don't understand road rules, they make bad decisions (not deliberately - they're not reckless in a deliberate sense) and that causes accidents. The lady I hit falls into this second category. She probably thinks she's a "safe" driver because she never goes over the speed limit. Remember, "slow is safe!".
Likewise, we can split safe drivers into two different categories - ones that stick to the speed limit and ones that don't. 60mph at night in the pouring rain may be an appropriate limit at that point in time, but it bears no similarity with that same stretch of road on a Sunday afternoon in dry sunny conditions. The speed limit is a conservative limit, given that it is not practical to have a variable limit across large sections of freeway. Just because you drive the speed limit doesn't in itself make you a safe driver.
Finally, it will always be true that people that drive slower than me are morons, and people that drive faster than me are idiots. :)