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How Europe Will Lower Emissions — Self Driving Cars
thecarchik writes "Scientists in Europe are working closely with industry and government as part of a new initiative called SARTRE (SAfe Road TRains for the Environment), which hopes to develop self-driving technology that will allow vehicles to drive autonomously in long road trains on the highway. The team behind SARTRE has now conducted its first real world test, using a sole Volvo S60 sedan that followed a lead truck around the automaker's test facility near Gothenburg, Sweden. In the video, the driver is free to take his eyes off the road and his hands off the wheel. In fact, he uses neither his hands nor feet during the test. Subsequent phases of the work will be carried out in 2011, and early 2012 will see the concept demonstrated on a five-vehicle road train with strategies handling interaction with other road users."
I would have had an existential crisis.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Safe Automobile Trains Is Reducing Emissions
If people wanted to be on a train in Europe, they have plenty of opportunities to do so.
Dog is my co-pilot.
When questioned about trouble with their algorithms when encountering other cars, developers replied "Hell is other vehicles"
Ice Cream has no bones.
Stop bolting technology onto a 19th century design. How about designing something from the ground up that solves the issues of our time ? We already have something that allows you to do other things while traveling, it's called a train.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Genius pairing the references. Though I'm not sure how familiar the average slashdotter is with literature;)
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
I cant see how this helps drive down emissions if all the people of Europe - and the world for that matter start driving everywhere, whereas before they were too old, too young, are disqualified, or hadn't passd their test. If the 50% of people who don't drive now take to the roads, dosn't that mean twice as many cars on them? Besides, if the car's on autopilot, why not get in and be driven 1,000 miles instead af a couple of hundred- that's already five times the journey length!
One can only imagine the amount of abuse we'll see once Google and the UN get to decide (Schmidt: "It’s amazing to me that we let humans drive cars.") who gets to go where and when, in what communal car, at what rate of speed.
All the efficiency of a pod system is wonderful, until they expire your glowing orb and make you an unperson.
The open road isn't exactly "free", and we certainly want to look at energy efficiency wherever we can, whether for carbon issues or not, but introducing more central control over our lives will not go over well.
Scientists in Europe are working closely with industry and government as part of a new initiative called SARTRE (SAfe Road TRains for the Environment), which hopes to develop self-driving technology that will allow vehicles to drive autonomously in long road trains on the highway.
SARTRE? Really? Did I just wake up in some post-modernist novel? Or is that begging the question?
Self driving cars, and all they can think of is lower emissions? 1. I don't really see how it could significantly affect emissions. 2. why is it that every project has to have "a better environment" as it's main goal? I don't deny global warming, but what is being done about it is crazy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNi17YLnZpg
I can see this reducing emissions, when I consider the assumption that whoever is leading the train does not drive like a bloody idiot. In a modern car, even with today's technology, most of us tend to drive as fast as we can get away with. 65-70 miles per hour is common in my area, but mileage increases significantly if you forget about trying to get to your destination a whole three minutes faster than it would be (on average) if you just relax and drive 55.
Personally, I dislike setting my cruise at 55 and getting there "when I get there". It's more fun to step on the throttle a tad, turn up the tunes, etc. But it's rough on the fuel tank, so I don't.
If I could tag along with one of these trains for my commute, or better yet.. even for a while on long trips, read a book, enjoy a cup of coffee, enjoy the scenery - anything but focus on driving- I don't believe I'd care if the train were moving 45 or 55 miles per hour. I'm not driving.
That said, my major concern is this- I live in an area where a typical winter day of driving is fraught with icy, snowy, wet roads. I don't believe any car would be safe following a lead vehicle at 10 feet, let alone 10 meters, in those conditions.
-Troll, Flamebait, and Offtopic are NOT equivalent to disagreement.
If people move from trains to self driving cars, and I've checked my math here, that would *increase* emissions.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
The human species seems to be oddly obsessed with automating everything it can think of - and of course, it's always supposed to be in a good cause. Since there was much talk about commuting, why don't we go a step further and finish what we already started long ago: automate every possible kind of work humans can do. Then we won't need to commute anymore and the work environment should be much more efficient too. Thus, lower emissions. Then we can just sit around and maybe push one button or two every once in a while. But then, we might get very fat in the long run, if we just do nothing. And our own production of CO2 and other nasty gases ( ;) ) might eventually be a huge problem.
Then again, maybe at this point, we won't need to exist at all anymore.
Looks like a bright future, if you ask me.
I'll readily admit that I've spent the better half of this decade getting my engineering degree, but who in their right mind would want a system of this nature designed by scientists? I can't fathom why anyone even thought that would be an appropriate word to start that article with.
.. you COULD .. but wouldn't there be a better item to use? (Okay, I'll readily admit, if you tried asking your girlfriend to drive your car you wouldn't get very far).
This is akin to asking your girlfriend to drive your car, using a library of congress to measure the national debt, or using a football field as a measurement for the width of an atom. Sure
I'm just sayin'. (Also, my apologies to the grammar nazi's. I know there are a few errors, but it's late and I couldn't sleep!)
---jstlook ---For that is the way of Elves, for they say both yes AND no, and mean every word of it. --- J.R.R.T.
My only concern is that they are so long.
If there was a passing lane that ended in one kilometer and you tried to pass the road train and ran out of passing lane, you'd be pretty screwed.
While I don't disagree with you I think the point made was that people live far away from their places of work regardless. In terms of planning that's not economically logical or environmentally friendly.
In the past decades we have focused on bringing people to buildings, while we should be looking at this issue from the point of the least possible impact and cost on a macroeconomic scale. Unless you perform a service in person or require expensive machinery there's no reason you should commute.
We should focus more on creating a new culture, and economic conditions where it's profoundly more beneficial for employers and employees to telecommute. Why waste energy and money unless there's an actual need? Society as a whole should increase the cost of transport for non-essential travel during the morning/afternoon commute and create incentives for telecommuting for everyone involved. And possibly make more use of differential pricing [of road use/fuel] based upon "classes" of users?
The manoeuvre to "leave the train" - take control and change lane - would be difficult. Just imagine taking control of a vehicle travelling at speed with a gap of a few feet at most in front and behind, and moving into another lane without a chance to adjust your speed first.
This is seriously cool. If they perfect it, the cars won't even need people to be in them; they could drive themselves, and we could stay home!
"Don't blame the log for the fire." --Andrew Ratshin
nt
It's amazing, I love fantasy movies, and I've always liked smart cars in them, where the driver can do something else, being in it. Posed route and enjoying the scenery around you. Beauty, but we'll see soon is not, unfortunately ...
This leads to the spooky possibility that the driver in the car behind you might die at the wheel, and their car follow you home with their corpse gazing lifelessly over the steering wheel at you...
I think it's pretty obvious that technologies along these lines (self-piloting automobiles) are the way of the future. The big question is how do we make the leap from where we are now to where we want to be? Clearly, the ideal would be to have the autonomous systems able to react and work around existing drivers on the road, but I have a feeling that it won't be too long before systems like these ones are incentivized in some way so that the transition is both easier and safer.
For instance, carpool lanes in some locations already permit motorists driving greener cars to use the lane, even if they're alone. 10, 15, or 20 years from now, whenever this technology finally matures and starts to enter the consumer market, the same sort of thing will likely be applied. We'll simply see the autonomous systems engaged whenever motorists enter a specific lane dedicated to their use. It allows manufacturers to prove that the technology works, instills confidence in it among drivers, gives them obvious benefits for choosing it, and can be used as a transition phase to having roads that are occupied predominately by self-driving vehicles. Over time, what began as a luxury will become a standard feature, just as has happened dozens or hundreds of other times in the industry, and soon enough, all new cars will be equipped with the system. Not long after that, legislation will require it of all street-legal cars.
In the long term, cars driven by actual people will be in the minority, and will likely be barred from driving on regular roads. They'll likely be regulated and restricted to only operating in specific places (e.g. enthusiast race tracks, special lanes in traffic, etc.). I'm not suggesting I like this, mind you, but I have been trying to figure out how a transition from piloted to pilotless automobiles would work and what it would look like once it was completed. The only result I can see is that piloted cars get relegated to a role not at all unlike that of horses today: used by enthusiasts in specific locations and circumstances, but not for general use in travel and transportation.
The manoeuvre to "leave the train" - take control and change lane - would be difficult. Just imagine taking control of a vehicle travelling at speed with a gap of a few feet at most in front and behind, and moving into another lane without a chance to adjust your speed first.
I guess you would have an 'excape' mode which would increase the distance between the rear and front car to a safe one before relinquishing control to the driver...Of course then you are relying on that driver not to mess up the train by doing something silly like crash....
My only concern is that they are so long.
If there was a passing lane that ended in one kilometer and you tried to pass the road train and ran out of passing lane, you'd be pretty screwed.
This was the first thought I had as well. and why this would be unlikely to work in the UK. The road network would have to be substantially altered to make it safe for road trains. In addition, it's easy to frame this round a 'perfect' journey but...
1. what if a car in the middle of the train breaks down? All the cars behind it get stuck?
2. what if a car is stopped in the road train lane, the train has to pass it and intersperse with other non-controlled traffic?
3. what about differences in the quality of brakes on the cars, wear and tear, general engine performance... if the lead car performs an emergency stop how can they be sure the cars behind can respond and brake within the small distance?
... the day I turn into my driveway, stop in front of my house, and there is a train of 60 cars following me...
so waking up one day to find our cars driving themselves through rush hour traffic, I find myself further offset from the realities of transit and now can better focus on the nothingness that lies between my commutes.
My car is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, it is responsible for everything it does.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
It's a good thing they didn't call it Jettison Galactic Ballistic Automatic Leveling Lever Autonomous Rear Drive.
(AKA "JG Ballard.")
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Don't fly an airplane into a building! Apply for the professional driver job and lead a fleet of lemming cars into the fjord.
That's pretty neat and all, but who's liable for damages when a self driving car causes an accident? Obviously the insurance should cover this, but insurance is assigned to persons. Do my rates go up if my self-driving car decides to glitch out and rear end somebody? If so, then I really do have to pay attention to what's going on, and we end up with a glorified cruise control system that's even more likely to put you to sleep, because now there's no interaction at all. If I'm not liable then who is?
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
My mum suggested a similar but in my view better solution the other day, when I mentioned this 'road train' idea to her.
Small, possibly electric cars that you drive onto a train (as with the Eurotunnel) for long journeys. Small enough cars, like a Smart Car, could probably be loaded sideways directly from the platform meaning cars could exit at any station without disrupting the others.
This would combine the benefits of the car (point to point travel) with the benefits of the train (efficiency, range, safety).
I must admit I'm slightly hypocritical because I just quit my present job (IT) and I also work from home... I'm looking forward to working in an office again.
I know all about the problems of communication and the downsides of home offices. Not least the problem that work is always on your mind.
I still think it's better use of our shared resources to have permanent home offices and simply change credentials when we change employers. My employer even pays me for "use" of my home office as it is.
The idea of road trains have been around for years and they will always have the same issues.
1. How does one leave the middle of a train? Not everyone in a 'train' is going to the same destination. Adding to the back of the train is easy but removing from the middle the much more complex and dangerous considering the following distances.
2. What happens if a car in the middle has a mechanical or computer failure? Following so close will cause major accidents. No matter how well a vehicle is maintained something can go wrong and will at the worst possible moment.
3. How do vehicles of differing performance mimic each other? For example, a vehicle in the middle of the train has a brake issue and will take longer to stop than normal. This sets things up for a collision.
4. What about road hazards like animals and debris?
5. If one has a road train in the right lane how does one in the left lane beside the train get to an off ramp? These road trains can be quite long requiring major changes in speed to manoeuvre around.
A vehicle following another vehicle mimicking their movements is a relatively simple problem. The issues above make it much more complex.
A very similar approach was already pursued in 1998 by Volkswagen in their "Convoy-Pilot" project.
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-7907540.html (German)
Maybe practical feasibility has improved in the meantime with advances in computer and sensor technologies, but SARTRE is certainly nowhere as innovative as people seem to think here.
When Volvo demonstrated their S60 colliision detection to 120 Swedish journalists - they actually served to demonstrate why its not such a good idea to rely on all this safety technology:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJ6z3IArINI
Not sure how safe I would feel sitting in one of these car train jams... something tells me this tech is still a few years off yet.
Imagine the petrol and pollution saved if people could pick up other people, like they used to.
Once upon a time, you could stop and give people a lift.
It was a natural to stop and say 'going my way'.
Now between the law, insurance companies and lawyers, you can't pick up sorry commuters,
and less mobile commuters have to suffer less than ideal schedules.
Go back to that model, and save!
Yes, of course, I always take advice from people on Slashdot. Too bad I lost you, and if I did, why would I bother adapting to suit your tastes? Nice waste of your time.
I make an effort, you act like a dick.
Computerising cars to drive themselves will never happen for three reasons.
1) Such a system would cost a LOT of money per car.
2) It allows the government to much more accurately track where you are.
3) No computer is fast enough to be able to compute if a pedestrian is about to jay-walk because they are more interested in their iPod. No computer can see if a dog is on a leash and could run into the road. No computer can decide which pot-hole is "more preferable" to drive through, especially if there's a whole series of them.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Target-Rich Environment.
Looks like a cop car following in photo 3.
Maybe that's where the coffee and newpaper came from...
I'm just saying.
Lately I've been thinking about a system of on-demand buses that could negotiate with passengers to take them directly from one place to another with minimal inconvenience. One of the major disadvantages (needless in my opinion) of bus systems is the fact that they have fixed stops and fixed schedules. Going anywhere requires walking to a nearby stop, waiting around for a bus to show up, waiting while the bus stops every mile or so along the route, and then walking to your final destination. It could take two hours to go across town.
I'm thinking of something like a shuttle service that could be tied into an iPhone app. You could enter in your origin and destination and a timeframe, and then receive a rate and schedule based on a calculated route that includes a bunch of other passengers' similar requirements. The maximum cost would approach that of a taxi. The minimum cost would approach that of more standard public transit. There could be a deposit required to prevent abuse.
This could be a viable form of public transit in less densely populated cities, where buses are currently fairly worthless. It could also be more environmentally friendly than running empty buses in such places.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
I just did a quick search on google and pulled up an Edmunds.com article on efficient driving. That article says that your personal driving habits can cost you up to a 37% reduction in milleage. So take a few million drivers and reduce the fuel usage by 37% and tell me it doesn't matter...
From what I can see (this is /. of course I've not watched it all) this just puts a line of vehicles all under "control" of a single driver. So what happens if the lead driver loses concentration or has a blowout? Do they all slam into the back of each other? Even if they can "disconnect" from each other the individual drivers may not be not get enough notice they are about to regain control of their vehicle and thus the pile-up could still happen.
Or have I missed something here?
1. You announce your intention to leave the train and the cars around you give you plenty of room before releasing control to you.
2. In modern cars, catastrophic mechanical failures are very rare. If one happens at highway speed in a train you will get the same result as you do now...a major accident. However mechanical failures are a very small fraction of the cause of accidents (mainly blown out tires) human error/inattention/drinking are the vast majority of accidents. Mechanical failure is an issue but not an issue that is significantly higher than the current standards... so don't worry about it.
3. Performance is dictated by the weakest link. I assume there will be minimum requirements to join a train and if your vehicle can't do 80 mph and stop fast enough, it won't be allowed to join a train in the middle... maybe at the end though
4. What about road hazards now?
5. trains will only be in the left lane...problem solved. This actually follows since many areas already reserve the left lane for long distance travelers.
You are operating under the assumption that for a train system to work it must be flawless. This is not the case.
It must be significantly better than the current system and thats it. Removing humans from the controls for the long, boring sections will greatly reduce the accident rate and improve fuel efficiency. Of course you will still have mechanical failures...just like you do now, but that does not invalidate the system.
Lowering emissions? Yet another case of the automotive industry investing heavily in potentially useful, but ultimately irrelevant technologies, to 'solve' the issue by attacking everything but the root cause.
Hopefully the KNIGHTS won't crash this system as well.
one way it can work is to have auto drive road ways that have grade separation road that are the auto ones but even then there is alot that can go wrong.
This is an absurd scheme to bolster the automobile and oil industries. Building a decent state-owned railway infrastructure makes much more sense.
Except railways are insanely expensive and suck at anything other than getting large numbers of people in and out of big cities at approximately the same time. They're a 19th century solution trying to solve 21st century problems.
Hmmm. Is that anything like Göteborg?
So I wasn't the only one that read it as SATIRE.
"Everything has been figured out, except how to live."
--Jean-Paul Sartre
Have gnu, will travel.
As if we needed this discussion to show that most posters on Slashdot are actually jingoistic Luddites.
This will fail because nobody wants to be sued. If the driver causes a crash he will claim it was the autopilot. If the autopilot causes a crash the corp will claim driver error. And the only evidence to counter that would be a log file in the autopilot. (and you know the evil corp will alter it, right?) Considering the huge number of auto crashes per year it's safe to assume these things would need expensive insurance, so only the rich will get one. But rich people can afford a professional driver (who gets sued in a crash, not the owner) so that won't work either. It's like a satellite phone, too expensive for anything but a small niche market. On the other hand, having road trains of transport trucks would be rather useful and could certainly save the big corporations buckets of money. One driver and thirty trucks!
Just sayin'.
I was thinking sort of the same thing. What if the left most lane on roads with more than 2 lanes (each direction) was reserved for trained cars? To enter the train, you get into the lane next to it and the car notifies the train that it wants to join. When ready to leave the train, you go through a disengage process and move over a lane. Basically just keep the one lane reserved as an expressway train lane.
I would say that a leading cause of traffic congestion is the changing distance between cars as conditions (cars entering, changing lanes, curves, hills...) change. As the distance between cars changes from two car lengths to four car lengths the effective traffic load per mile doubles. And this occurs without any addition cars entering the road.
This can be seen on almost any road during periods of moderate to heavy traffic as traffic "clumps up" and then opens.
I enjoy driving. I have a performance car with a stick shift. I'd gladly jump on an autonomous car "train" during commutes for a faster, safer trip. I'd also feel less concerned about drivers who text, gesture with both hands, eat or apply makeup as they "drive".
I'm all for it.
Studies show that self driving cars could greatly increase the traffic capacity on existing roads due to better coordination of control between individual cars. It would also likely be massively safer. (For Chicagoans, think the Ike expressway with no backups or wrecks during rush hour.)
Another angle that would be interesting would be to have the self driving cars be hybrids. With that, you could use fuel for the less major roads, but put in electrical pickups for major roadways and use electricity rather than onboard fuel for the longer runs.
That could make a major dent in oil use and help with one of the problems of wind/solar/nuclear. The lack of applicability to heavy long distance road traffic. (Batteries just aren't that good yet.)
The problem isn't the tech or the reliability. For here in the US at least, it's the liability.
Doesn't matter how many fewer people we kill on the roadway or how much more capacity our roads would have with self driving cars. If someone gets hurt or killed, expect lawsuits.
The variant I remember used rare earth magnets buried in the center of the lane to give the cars an idea of where they should be on the roadway, and sensors and inter-vehicle communications were used so that each car knew where the others in its platoon were. There was an assumption that something like a cellular communication network and traffic management computer would tell entire platoons what a safe speed for this block of road was. Because the auto drive system had reaction times in the very low millisecond range, it was quite practical and safe to space cars a meter apart at 130 km/h, which offered big fuel economy benefits. Remove the cellular block command and control system and you have what the Europeans are proposing.
http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/bishopahs.htm
http://www.williamson-labs.com/ivhs.htm
http://pubs.its.ucdavis.edu/publication_detail.php?id=859
This is yet another thing that evaporated after 9/11 so that the US could afford to create the TSA and replace a dictator in Iraq with a power vacuum...
I DARE YOU to try this in a place like saskatchewan. There is no way in hell you would be able to get away with this. Way to much trouble in the winter, this would just be asking for danger.
Trucks are big, slow and smelly. The diagrams show that cars follow a lead truck close by. I really doubt this will be a success.
That can anticipate a deer jumping into the road, or handle a patch of black ice.
Hell, I don't even trust cruise control if there is limited visibility or bad weather.
Trains suck, even on the dense and efficient Dutch railway system. Trains take you from a place where you aren't, to a place where you do not want to go; you still need to get to the train station first. Most train stations are positively hostile to cars; park&rides are rare, and car drop-off places are well hidden or very hard to reach. During rush hour, many train routes are unbearably busy unless you travel 1st class. Getting to and from the station and changing trains easily add 30 minutes to any journey, which suddenly make travel times on the congested highways look good. Plus, you're in your own car, with your own music, in a comfy seat... I'd love to have auto-drive so I could read a bit in traffic. The only things I'll miss out on when travelling by car are the body odours, germs, noise and jostling of fellow train passengers.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Can someone please post a car analogy so I can better understand this concept?
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Not to bring up a tin foil hat type thought.... but if all cars become robots and drive us around.... In a hundred years when we can't drive anymore and the robots attack... how do we escape?
I was telling a friend this the other day. Want to make a semi-public transit system completely different from roads - say, a tracked system where you get to buy your own personal "pod" to ride around in? Sell it to women:
"Hey guess what! We have this neat little pod. It can only go where the track goes, but it goes to work, the grocery store, and the Mall! ALL AT THE TOUCH OF A SINGLE BUTTON. You don't get to go everywhere, but no more pumping smelly gas, and you get to at least buy your own personalized pod, which comes in all these fabulous colors."
Bury the tracks in the current road so people with cars can still drive, but as the margins for gas cars fade and gas becomes $10/gallon due to lack of demand, and change over will only take a few years just from market forces.
While I appreciate all the advances we're making when it comes to ease of living (remote controls, climate controls, shrink-wrapped pound cake), I think we should consider city and town design over self-driving cars. Before I moved to my current neighborhood, there was a vote by the residents to decide what to do with the gigantic empty lot that was catty corner to the houses. People voted for more houses, rather than something that would have likely been a strip mall (stores with a big parking lot). So now when I'm out of eggs, I need to drive 4 miles round trip to the supermarket, rather than walking around the block to a convenience store.
What I'm saying is, for foodstuffs especially, have smaller delivery trucks and more groceries. That will allow less car traffic and more foot traffic. Have "neighborhood" stores. I do not care if it's less efficient for Safeway to have multiple small locations. I'll pay a couple cents more for everything to avoid the hassle of getting in the car.
We place too much emphasis on getting places in society. What is the actual benefit of so many people travelling to work every day? A better fix is to give tax incentives for home working and focus on technologies like better broadband, telepresence and so on. Sure, face-to-face contact will never go away and some segments of society will always have to travel to work, but I bet half the commuters on the roads in the mornings could be equally as productive at home.
Now there's one hoopy frood who really knows where his towel is!
So in this suggestion, all the cars follow the one on front - which was a truck in this case.
Instead, how about, i know its crazy, but making the truck larger - and then putting the people who were in the car... in the truck instead.
Then when you need to get off, you... walk out of the truck. We could call it a 'bus' or something/
In Greek mythology, a satyr is a horse/goat-like creature that f***s everything in sight.
Yeah, probably shouldn't feed the trolls, but:
Regarding history - just as a quick example, we had this little thing called the Civil War. It went on all over the continent for a period of years and killed millions of people. In the process, a large number of very colorful and interesting figures appeared on the scene, and a number of innovations in warfare were developed. The war settled a number of lingering political issues left over from the American Revolution, abolished the evil of slavery, and arguably set the stage for later American domination of the international scene.
History: just because ours doesn't appeal to you doesn't mean we don't have any.
Your statement with respect to wildlife, if possible, is even more ludicrous. A huge proportion of North American birds is made up of species not found in Europe. There are numerous mammal, reptile, and amphibian species found here that exist nowhere else. To claim there's no unique wildlife is just plain dumb.
Hey, don't get me wrong - if you'd rather visit Reykjavik, knock yourself out. But let's not pretend that there's nothing worth seeing in the US.
Because it's not necessarily so easy to move to where your job is. When I moved to my current home, I carefully selected one that was convenient to mass transit. And life was good - until our company started developing contract problems with the customer I was supporting. So I needed to find a new job, and did - in a rural area about 30 miles away. There's no way to get there except to drive, and the supply of housing there is not really that good, so moving is probably not happening. And if I did move I'd still have to drive, just not quite as far.
Bottom line: in the US lots of people, for lots of reasons, can't live close to their jobs, or need to live/work in areas not well served by mass transit. A system like this would be a boon for many.
Nice acronym.
You can overcome the liability problem by providing some kind of blanket immunity - something like this was done for vaccine manufacturers. The risks of a lawsuit were considered too high by the manufacturers, so a special no-fault legal process was set up that protected manufacturers from excessive liability claims. If the benefits were considered great enough, something like this could be done for manufacturers of car autopilot systems such as this.
Not trying to be contentious here, but what about that message appeals uniquely to women? Wouldn't men also want to be able to conveniently get to work, run errands, avoid having to stop by the gas pump, etc, in a vehicle they could customize?
I'm not trying to suggest that you're a bad person or anything - just genuinely baffled about how this feature list appeals primarily to women. I honestly think both sexes would be interested in this.
What happens when the lead car drives off the road?
http://www.andrehuard.net/?tag=volvo-crash
Their they're doing there hair.
And all it takes is for the lead driver to goof up and you have a massive pile up.
The Beyond 2000 television program (circa 1980's/1990's) demonstrated a train of cars automatically driving themselves down a high-speed lane on the Autobahn. I think they used sensors embedded in the road for guidance. Can't find a video link.
For a bit more excitement, you can watch the BMW 330i self-driving around the Top Gear test track (starts at about 1m20s).
We had to when we included petrol electric engines. The new name is:
Safe Hybrid Autonomous Road Trains for the Environment or SHARTE.
The final phase is phase D and this will result in the deployment of the SHARTED vehicles and European commuters can SHARTE themselves to the office.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Free public transportation will reduce carbon emissions and will create new jobs.
Govt must constitute a panel to rewrite US Constitution and Quran
Except railways are insanely expensive and suck at anything other than getting large numbers of people in and out of big cities at approximately the same time. They're a 19th century solution trying to solve 21st century problems.
And second to shipping they are the most efficient form of freight transport available.
Just to give you an idea of relative construction costs I've seen bandied about during the last year (above real estate procurement):
Tunnels costs heaps being up to USD1 billion/km regardless of whether its for rail or road, the cost factors being tunnel diameter, rock density (too hard makes it slow going, too soft drives up reinforcement costs).
Some of the cheapest transport can be built in the form of overhead rail networks, with heavy rail (>7.5ton per vehicle) starting at USD25 million/km and falling to USD10 million/km when your network length approaches 60km, or USD5 million/km around 1,000km. Overhead rail also avoids problems with snow drifts, sand drifts, floods, etc.