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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"!
When questioned about trouble with their algorithms when encountering other cars, developers replied "Hell is other vehicles"
Ice Cream has no bones.
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!
That is completely beside the point.
Driving is fun when you're out driving for fun. But the daily commute is annoying and tedious. Especially with high traffic and traffic jams, such a system could free a lot of time for the occupant of the car.
On top of that, the risk of collision through inattention would be lowered. All around a good idea and not comparable to actual trains, because the moment you leave the highway, I'd assume, you'd be in control again and free to travel everywhere and not just where the buses and trains go.
Basically, this takes the pros from trains and replaces the cons of personal travel with them.
And nobody said you couldn't keep driving yourself on a leisure cruise.
Excuse me for being blunt, but you're an idiot.
Switzerland has one of the best public transportation systems I am aware of. And still, a 45 minute commute by car can often turn into 1.5h or more on public transportation, including standing around in the cold in winter for any amounts of time.
If you live in a city and work there, too, then yes, public transportation is a great thing. I wouldn't use my car to get to work there either. But believe it or not, even with all the congestion around Zurich, it was still much faster to drive when I had to back in the days.
Frankly, everyone else can go fuck themselves if they believe I'd sacrifice between one and three hours every day because they can't fix the society so they expect me to fix their problems for them.
Because, make no mistake, using public transportation is very stressful for me and don't even get me started on doing something productive with that time. Because you can't. If you have to change transportation every 10 to thirty minutes, you just CAN'T concentrate on something of consequence. Especially with all the noise that goes on around you. I know, I've tried for four long years.
Now that might be different if you're travelling first class. But, keeping the lack of flexibility in mind (because owning a car AND using public transportation is economic bullshit), public transportation becomes very, very expensive all of a sudden.
So I'd like to ask you to shut up and stop applying your situation to everybody else. Just because YOU can be happy and content with public transportation does not mean everybody else can.
Did you ever notice how car ads always take place on small roads in beautiful mountainous territory?
Driving cars on the highway through flat country is pretty boring; driving cars on a highway in traffic through the same flat country twice a day for a couple years on end is downright tedious.
I think driving is incredibly fun --- through european cities and over small roads in the countryside. I would love to be able to drive to the highway, read the newspaper for half an hour, and take control again at the exit.
That's why the lead driver is a professional in a special vehicle.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
See? Fix the society first. This is exactly what I meant.
Switzerland does not have a real estate market as flexible as America. Once you've bought a home, you're likely going to stay there for a few decades if not your whole life.
Do you expect BOTH me and my wife to find jobs near our home (or vice versa) and keep them for the rest of our lives? Do you truly think that's a realistic outlook on life?
It doesn't matter whether you think I'm just bitching around. Fact is, a lot of people have to deal with these questions. If you don't, great for you. We do. So you'll have to excuse us for making different decisions than you do.
I am of the opinion that bending over backwards for some concept like environmentalism is pretty stupid. If we, as a society, want to reach certain goals (clean environment) then we need to implement global changes that will make it easier for us to achieve those. Not just demand everyone buckle down and 'do their part'. Because then someone has to define what this 'part' is and you can bet your sweet ass it's going to be defined by people who aren't inconvenienced by what they define.
Impressively polite rejoinder :-)
However, I disagree with your premise - road trains ARE an example of innovative thinking.
Coming up with a likely-to-be-practical transportation system of the future isn't that difficult. There are several personal-rapid-transport proposals around that would probably work well if you were building a new city from scratch.
The hard part is the TRANSITION, and building a new system while we're still using the old. Road trains are an excellent transition technology.
I guess that the large US cities are much the same? We've not driven there, yet. Actually, we've hardly even visited the country yet (no history and no unique wildlife, and that's what we travel for).
That's not true -- the US obviously joined modern civilisation a lot later, but there are prehistoric settlements to see (I liked this place), and on the east coast there's a little stuff from the 17th century.
I don't know so much about wildlife, but I'd not see chipmunks, raccoons or skunks before. I didn't see any bears.
Some of the national parks are excellent, for instance Yellowstone, Yosemite, Death Valley, Sequoia, ... and all the rest, probably; I've been to seven or eight, and all were worth visiting.
Glasgow is the closest to an American city for driving that I know of in Europe -- the motorways cut straight through the middle. The difference is in the US the motorway might be 5+ lanes on each side going through the city and everyone's more relaxed -- there's less overtaking and less difference in speed between any two vehicles. The metropolitan area of Glasgow has 2.5M people, the motorways are 3+3 lanes. Albuquerque has a population of less than 1M, the interstate road is 6+6. I doubt there's anywhere cheap to park in the middle of Glasgow, but there's good public transport and a park+ride service. A car is unlikely to be a necessity in any European town (though it may save time, you could manage without it). That's not possible in much of the US, they've built stuff too far apart.
Not all that energy efficient
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/images/2008/08/04/transenergy.png
My first conclusion is that we would get more efficient by pushing
small, fuel efficient vehicles instead of pushing transit, and at
a lower cost.
A full bus or trainload of people is more efficient than private cars,
sometimes quite a bit more so. But transit systems never consist
of nothing but full vehicles. They run most of their day with light
loads. The above calculations came from figures citing the
average city bus holding 9 passengers, and the average train (light
or heavy) holds 22. If that seems low, remember that every packed
train at rush hour tends to mean a near empty train returning down
the track.
Transit vehicles also tend to stop and start a lot, which eats
a lot of energy, even with regenerative braking. And most
transit vehicles are just plain heavy, and not very aerodynamic.
Indeed, you'll see tables in the DoE reports that show that over the past 30 years,
private cars have gotten 30% more efficient, while buses have
gotten 60% less efficient and trains about 25% worse. The
market and government regulations have driven efforts to make cars
more efficient, while transit vehicles have actually worsened.
In order to get people to ride transit, you must offer frequent
service, all day long. They want to know they have the freedom to leave at
different times. But that means emptier vehicles outside of
rush hour. You've all seen those huge empty vehicles go by, you just
haven't thought of how anti-green they were. It would be better
if off-hours transit was done by much smaller vehicles, but that
implies too much capital cost -- no transit agency will buy enough
equipment for peak times and then buy a second set of equipment for
light demand periods.
Only certain vehicles can be lead vehicles.
At least until the system is cracked. There must be all kinds of fun things you can do if you spoof it.
Yeah, you can also throw a washing machine from your pickup on the highway. No need to spoof anything.
Fandroids hate facts.
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.