Road Train Completes First Trials In Sweden

Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports technology that links vehicles into 'road trains' that can travel as a semi-autonomous convoy has undergone its first real world tests with trials held on Volvo's test track in Sweden. Researchers believe platoons of cars could be traveling on Europe's roads within a decade cutting fuel use, boosting safety and may even reducing congestion. SARTRE researchers say that around 80% of accidents on the road are due to human error so using professional lead drivers to take the strain on long journeys could, they say, see road accidents fall. They also predict fuel efficiency could improve by as much as 20% if 'vehicle platooning' takes off, with obvious benefits for the environment. 'An automated system is likely to make it safer as it takes away driver error but it would have to be 100% reliable,' says John Franklin 'This kind of system would also require a complete change in motoring culture for drivers to hand over control.'"

Comments

First dupe?

[fotoguzzi]

Dupe.

80% due to human error?

[somersault]

That figure seems a bit low. Unless an animal runs across the road or similar, other problems are all IMO human error.

If something falls off a truck, that's human error for not securing the load properly. If high winds knock over your truck, that's human error for driving in dangerous conditions. If you skid on an ice patch, that's your error for driving too fast for the conditions, etc.

Re:80% due to human error?

[Anonymous Coward]

20% down to toyota brakes?

Re:80% due to human error?

[orphiuchus]

Tire blowouts, serpentine belt breaks, break cylinders exploding. Sometimes its a maintenance issue, but a lot of the time things just fail. I had the rear cylinder explode on a vehicle I was driving at highway speeds like 10 years ago, I just barely managed to stop myself with the hand-break on the shoulder without running into the stopped traffic ahead of me, but if I had hit then 100% of my accidents ever would have been caused by mechanical failure with no forewarning.

Re:80% due to human error?

[somersault]

Okay this is true, but do you really think that failures on well maintained cars is the cause of 1 in 5 accidents, or even 1 in 10? I'd think it was more like 1 in 1000.

Re:80% due to human error?

[fridaynightsmoke]

So, what probability of a gust of wind strong enough to topple a truck would you consider it acceptable for truckers to drive in? 10%? 0.01%? If there is a freak gust on a calm day, is that driver error too? Below what temperature would you consider that all drivers should drive as though the road is 100% icy? -1c? 2c?

Re:80% due to human error?

[orphiuchus]

I cant say for sure, but for me its 100%. (or it would be, if I'd had the accident.). For fatal accidents I imagine about 80% are either falling asleep at the wheel, alcohol related, or typical young male dumb shit, the remaining 20% could easily be caused by high speed blowouts and things of that nature.

For overall accidents I'm inclined to agree with you, the vast majority of what I see is caused by young women talking on cell phones, but those are usually very minor. Talking about lives lost I think the 80-20 figure is pretty realistic.

Re:80% due to human error?

[somersault]

Freak gusts no, but I've never experienced such things here in the UK. Maybe in other climates that's more likely, but it's still not going to account for a lot of accidents.

My car used to give an ice warning when temperatures reached 4 degrees C (yes, above zero). Presumably that was to account for microclimates in dips in the road, etc. It doesn't make too much difference on straights, but you obviously have to be careful at corners, and if there are cars in front of you. You should at least be driving as if it were raining.

Re:80% due to human error?

[somersault]

For high speed accidents then unexpected failures would probably count for more (though I still think that 1 in 5 is giving people too much credit). Even at lower speeds though, there's still serious danger of maiming or killing pedestrians, so even those women on their cell phones are a danger.

I was taught that basically all accidents are human error. This page claims it's at least 95%. Too many people try to blame external factors when in fact the accident was avoidable. I really don't like to hear that someone crashed "because it was raining/icy/snowy". They crashed because they were driving too fast for the conditions.

Re:80% due to human error?

[teh kurisu]

If I remember correctly, 4C is the point where water is at its densest. Below that temperature, water starts to expand again as the molecules begin to arrange themselves in an ice-like formation. It's due to the fact that the temperature of a substance is never absolutely uniform, with some parts being hotter and others cooler. It's the same reason that you get steam coming off a hot cup of water that is nevertheless below 100C.

The other factor is that most people in the UK use summer tyres all year round, which don't provide the same level of grip at 4C that they do at higher temperatures.

The only crash I've ever had was due to an oil spill, which I hit at night and couldn't see. I've also driven on roads where the road surface suddenly deteriorated and grip reduced drastically, causing me to skid. I'm not sure if these count as 'human error' or not. If I drove in anticipation of these conditions all the time, I'd never get anywhere.

Re:80% due to human error?

[somersault]

True. I don't think those count as driver error, but you could still say it's human error for not keeping the roads clean and in good condition! Also it helps to keep a cool head if the conditions go downhill. Sudden control inputs are much more likely to make you skid than smooth ones. That's much easier said than done when you're not expecting it though obviously. I'm gradually improving, so if the car ever skids when I brake these days, I'm getting the confidence to lift off and re-apply since it often allows you to regain directional control (even if your car has ABS this can still be useful..). When I was 19 I was driving down a dirt track and went straight off by panic braking before a corner :P

Re:80% due to human error?

[Tom]

It happens, but it is the exception, not the rule. In 20 years of driving experience, I have not once experienced a mechanical failure that would've resulted in an accident. I have seen a lot, and I mean several orders of magnitude, more driver errors than car failures. So while switching the human driver for an automated system only exchanges one source of errors for the other, yes, it does exchange one source with a fairly high rate of errors against one with a fairly low rate of errors.

Re:80% due to human error?

[Tom]

I cant say for sure, but for me its 100%.

Calculating a percentage value for a single data point is slightly bonkers.

Re:80% due to human error?

[The_Noid]

I've had a back tyre run on of the flange in a sharp turn. The valve was leaking and the low pressure in the tyre combined with the sideways forces due to the sharp turn caused the tyre to run off. This caused me to lose control over the vehicle and swerve over the other lane. I didn't hit anything fortunately, and due to the relatively low speeds involved it probably would not have resulted in a fatal accident if I had hit oncoming traffic.

It was definitely caused by mechanical failure. but at the same time I probably should have spotted the low pressure in the tyre (though I don't know how fast the valve was leaking).
At the same time, a computer might have been better at controlling the vehicle than me.

All in all I would love to be able to drive to the nearest highway and give control over from that point on.

Re:80% due to human error?

[Mr_Plattz]

Although valid points, you're still inserting invalid and virtual road blocks that don't need to exist.

Let's assume the future cars are electric -- no cylinders.
Let's install run-flats with censors that allows it to cleanly exit a train.
Let's enforce a minimum satefy standard to allow the car to participate in the train (last service passed OK and was less than x KM's)

In other words, the Internet probably wouldn't exist in the state it is in today if people like you were present in the design meetings.

Re:80% due to human error?

[confused one]

Lucky you. I've had a throttle stick (due to shaft wear on a carburetor) and on a different car I've had a brake master cylinder seal fail. Neither event resulted in an accident because I reacted appropriately, but they certainly could have. I do tend to agree with you though -- the vast majority of accidents are due to human error.

Re:80% due to human error?

[ZankerH]

I don't know, comparing IT security measures to "the minimal required safety so people don't die horribly in their cars due to mechanical failures" seems kind of a stretch of me.

Re:80% due to human error?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be bonkers to extrapolate from a single data point, but it's not bonkers to say what the percentage value is at this point in time, for him personally.

Re:80% due to human error?

[thethibs]

I cant say for sure, but for me its 100%.

This being slashdot, it's astounding that you think that's relevant. I'd have thought that, even at a low-ranked school, basic stats would be part of CS.

If anything, you've demonstrated that not all moving mechanical failures result in accidents, which weakens your case.

Re:80% due to human error?

[Kjella]

I was taught that basically all accidents are human error. This page claims it's at least 95%. Too many people try to blame external factors when in fact the accident was avoidable. I really don't like to hear that someone crashed "because it was raining/icy/snowy". They crashed because they were driving too fast for the conditions.

Every accident would be avoidable if you drive at 5 km/hr, no matter what the conditions are. The question is what is reasonable and unreasonable to expect, if you hide behind a tree near a high speed road and jump out in front of a trailer you will with 99% probability get splattered even if it's a perfect day and the driver goes no faster than the posted limit. But in retrospect you can always claim it's human error and too fast, even though that's how fast we actually expect people to go. In fact under good conditions they will fine you for being way below the limit.

Even if you're driving at speeds that seem reasonable given that it's snowy and icy you can get caught by surprise. I've been off the road once because I got tricked by a bus pocket. It was heavy snowfall, I was already going something like 50 km/h instead of the limit of 80 km/h and for the briefest of moments I followed the curve into the pocket. The road was quite well trafficked and worn clear, but in the pocket there was nothing but polished ice with light snow on top so nothing could get a grip. I couldn't steer, couldn't brake fast enough and went off the road at the end of the pocket. I checked now in a calculator and I couldn't have stopped on 15 meters of ice with with 30 km/h (20 mph) and one second reaction time.

I suppose you could call it human error. But either you assume I would have avoided the situation - which is unlikely - or it would really taken a massive speed reduction to avoid it. Like way, way below what people normally drive, even under those conditions. Either that makes 95% of us reckless or it's jusr acknowledging that driving that car at those speeds under those circumstances is an acceptable but non-zero risk for all the benefits and liberty it gives drivers and their passengers. Not that we shouldn't make roads and cars safer, but until something will literally block me from driving over a pedestrian or off the road we will have accidents.

Re:80% due to human error?

[orphiuchus]

Wow, I wasn't making a fucking argument based on it, I was just relating a story that happened to me. Go fuck yourself by the way.

Re:80% due to human error?

[bhtooefr]

The person you're replying to is talking about a wheel cylinder - part of the hydraulic braking system.

And, you're still going to have a hydraulic braking system even on an electric car.

Re:80% due to human error?

[bhtooefr]

First off, serpentine belt failures are usually such that you can still get the car pulled over, albeit requiring more steering force.

Second, how long before that failure did you have the brake fluid flushed. Should be done every 2 years. ;)

Re:80% due to human error?

[jareth-0205]

I don't think statistics work the way you think they work...

Re:80% due to human error?

[GooberToo]

so even those women on their cell phones are a danger.

A fact which always surprises people is that some stereotypes are actually true. Women are far, far worse drivers then men. BUT, while women have far more frequent wrecks, they are typically less severe than those created by male drivers. Whereas male drivers have far less frequent accidents but when they do wreck its typically far more serious. This is why young males are more expensive to insure.

So if you say women are bad drivers, its not only a stereotype but statistically accurate. Just the same, a male driver is far more likely to kill or seriously injure you.

Re:80% due to human error?

[TheLink]

If everyone drove at 5kph, we'd lose a lot of our lives just to the high commute time alone.

Re:80% due to human error?

[Eil]

By "human error," they likely meant "human driving error," wherein a driver in control of a vehicle takes (or fails to take) an action based on insufficient information or poor judgement that results in an otherwise preventable accident. Accidents resulting from objects falling off trucks, high winds, or ice patches are not always preventable even when the driver is fully alert, following all of the pertinent traffic laws and rules, and is maintaining situational awareness.

But I do agree that 80% seems like a rather low number.

Re:80% due to human error?

[mcgrew]

I had a head-on collision in 1976 when the left front tire blew out and threw me into oncoming traffic, and they were new tires. Of course, I guess you could say that the faulty tire was human error on the manufacturer's part.

Re:80% due to human error?

[BlackCreek]

So if you say women are bad drivers, its not only a stereotype but statistically accurate. Just the same, a male driver is far more likely to kill or seriously injure you.

Your "statistical truth" relies on your (poor IMO) definition of "bad driver".

You seem to have defined bad driver as a function of the amount of traffic incidents. I think a better definition should take into account each incident's graveness. Which as you reckon yourself would give you a very different picture.

Seems to me like you, even being aware of the data that contradicts you, is reasoning your way around it in order to keep your stereotypes intact.

Re:80% due to human error?

[pixelpusher220]

Every accident would be avoidable if you drive at 5 km/hr, no matter what the conditions are.

Never dealt with ice have you? ;-)

Re:80% due to human error?

[GooberToo]

Seems to me, you've universally redefined what a bad driver is so as to have an irrational rant, which adds absolutely nothing to the thread at hand. I don't believe you'll find any reasonable person (which seemingly excludes you) who will argue that a bad driver is not someone who has lots of wrecks. Inversely, you're not going to find a reasonable person (again, excluding you) who will argue the definition of a good driver is one who has frequent wrecks.

Made even worse is the fact that your completely irrational and unique definition means all of the world's top drivers are, according to you, "bad drivers."

I'm sorry, but your post is ignorant to say the least.

Re:80% due to human error?

[operagost]

If high winds knock over your truck, that's human error for driving in dangerous conditions.

Because weather is totally predictable.

Re:80% due to human error?

[operagost]

Indeed. I was on route 80 in Pennsylvania one winter (fortunately, not driving myself) in conditions that were so icy that vehicles going about 5-10 MPH were sliding off the road.

Re:80% due to human error?

[shadowrat]

I imagine the percentage of accidents due to faulty car train software is pretty low right now. I expect it to rise sharply once there are actually car trains.

Re:80% due to human error?

[operagost]

Tires SUCKED that year. The tires on my family's new 1976 Ford all prematurely failed. I can't verify if this was the case, but my dad hypothesized that the manufacturers shipped marginal tires to meet demand during the 1976 strike.

Re:80% due to human error?

[BlackCreek]

Gear up your reading comprehension and re-read my post.

Where did I say that accident frequency should not be taken into account? Nowhere.

I did say, that a "better definition should take into account each incident's graveness". (Please do note that to take an incident's seriousness / graveness into account you have to be accounting for the incident somehow.) Which is exactly what the law in most countries do.

Driver A backs his car into another car while parking 6 times a year. 6 incidents per year.

Driver B runs over pedestrians (say in the side-walk) twice a year. 2 incidents per year.

Which driver will have its driving license taken away? Did you get now the point of saying "taking the incident's graveness" into account?

Re:80% due to human error?

[TeknoHog]

That figure seems a bit low. Unless an animal runs across the road or similar, other problems are all IMO human error.

IMHO, building a road in animal territory and not installing safety fences etc. is a human error.

Re:80% due to human error?

[somersault]

Any driver that has accidents that they could have avoided is a bad driver. People can learn, of course. I had a couple of accidents in my first year of driving, but have improved plenty since then.

The fact is that both of those groups are bad drivers. It just so happens that there are a lot more bad women drivers.

Re:80% due to human error?

[shadowrat]

The only crash I've ever had was due to an oil spill

were you driving behind Spy Hunter?

Re:80% due to human error?

[somersault]

Of course it is up to you to decide what level of risk you want to take. I am happy to drive at 50mph on snow and ice as long as I am on a wide open road with no pedestrians and a lot of visibility.

checked now in a calculator and I couldn't have stopped on 15 meters of ice with with 30 km/h (20 mph) and one second reaction time.

It does sound like an avoidable mistake if you could see the tracks clearly. If the road was that difficult to make out, and there was ice under the snow, then I do think you should have been going slower, but maybe that's just me.

As for the bus thing, then of course, if someone is suicidal then you can't avoid it, but that's a pretty stupid example. And there is still a human at fault there, even if it's not the driver.

Re:80% due to human error?

[lilomar]

Probably should be read as "human driving error" as in, the stuff the computer is automating, unless the train is going to strap down your load and maintain your vehicle.

Re:80% due to human error?

[somersault]

The point is that it's not predictable, so if there is fairly strong wind, then you should probably just stop the truck somewhere sheltered and wait until the stormy weather passes, rather than risk there being sudden gusts when driving through open areas, across bridges, etc. I'm sure lorry drivers are taught such things, but I also expect that due to human nature, a lot of them ignore such things.

In this country at least, the chance of the weather going from calm to insane stormy weather is pretty much non existent. In some places it might happen (New Zealand for example has weather that can change incredibly quick due to a warm and cold front that meet each other right over the island), but even so I still think in most places, drivers would have a chance to stop before any damage is done.

Re:80% due to human error?

[Belial6]

If wind is human error, then hitting an animal running across the road would be too. Your definition of human error seems to be, "If you hadn't been driving it wouldn't have happened, so you made the human error when you decided to drive". Except for animal running across the road. You haven't happened to hit an animal or two have you?

Re:80% due to human error?

[JonySuede]

Which driver will have its driving license taken away?

In a sane world, both.

Re:80% due to human error?

[pixelpusher220]

you know I had the exact same experience in PA. Just crawling along and the car in front, very slowly, would start to spin off its track with no apparently cause.

Maybe it's just PA ;-)

Re:80% due to human error?

[milkmage]

since cars and roads are human intventions (they don't occur naturally).. i guess you could say 100%.

mechanical failure, blow outs, etc... are are all the results of human "failure" if you go back far enough.. a human made the tire, human dropped the nail that caused the blowout blah blah blah

maybe it's more appropriate to say 80% DRIVER error.

Re:80% due to human error?

[somersault]

There is still a human driving the train too, and you'd have to know when the trains are coming along, or race to catch up to them, etc. I think it's pretty dumb idea overall. Technically it would probably reduce the number of accidents, though when an accident does happen, it is likely to be a big one, for example if the lead driver has a heart attack and ploughs off the road+.

+ obiously I don't know what other safety systems they have in place to avoid this kind of thing, but I'm not sure there could be any. If the cars behind are trained to also pay attention to road markings, yet the road markings appear altered via debris/snow/whatever on the road, that might mean that they could ignore the lead car in certain conditions and have an accident anyway.

Re:80% due to human error?

[JonySuede]

just a precision : posting on slashdot does not implies CS

Re:80% due to human error?

[holmstar]

You seem to be from the UK, (tyre vs tire) so I'm not sure if a similar law exists for you, but in the US there's a law requiring all new passenger cars to be equipped with a tire pressure monitoring system. Any car that would be involved in one of these trains would likely be one that hasn't been built yet. So short of a sudden blow-out, tire pressure is likely not an issue.

Re:80% due to human error?

[somersault]

True, I was being a bit pedantic, but there is still a human driver leading the whole bunch anyway!

Driving behind a vehicle carrying stuff is probably human error too. I get fidgety behind large vehicles with loads. Especially if it's gravel/sand falling sporadically onto the road, or it's a bunch of piping or wood that's only been secured over the top. It only takes one piece working itself loose for the rest to be free too..

Re:80% due to human error?

[somersault]

Driving a high sided vehicle in high wind is a human choice. Even my little sports car is noticeably affected by strong winds. If I were driving a flat sided vehicle I'd be going very carefully, or just stop somewhere sheltered, especially if it was a vehicle large enough to flatten other people's cars or cause a blockage on the road.

The animal running across the road isn't human choice of course, though there is often a choice to either hit the animal or swerve off the road. The safest choice is just to hit the animal.

Of course not driving would reduce the error down to nil, but there are ways to reduce your likelihood of crashing down to almost nil just by using 1) common sense (mixed with a truckload of observation), 2) learning from experienced drivers via reading or taking an advanced driving course.

Re:80% due to human error?

[somersault]

Even if you change it to driver error, 80% is far too low still, I just was kind of making fun of the language they used ;)

In the case of stuff falling off a truck, I prefer just to stay well back from the truck, or overtake it to minimise risk. If you drive so close to a truck that you can't see and react safely to stuff falling off of it, it's your own fault!

Re:80% due to human error?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you had hit the cars ahead of you, it still could be considered human error.. namely, error of our regulatory system to ensure that drivers are properly educated. The engine and transmission can provide a very effective braking force at those speeds. That would have gotten you down to a speed where the handbrake can easily overcome the forward motion of the vehicle. And since cars have had separate F/R cylinders for many years, I have to wonder what was wrong with your front brakes (which provide most of the braking power). And, there was stopped traffic on the shoulder?

Re:80% due to human error?

[holmstar]

Ha! Good luck with that. Have you seen how high a deer can jump? And raccoons/opossums etc. would have no problem climbing over any sort of wire fence. You would have to put 15 foot tall smooth solid walls along every highway and gates at every on/off ramp. Totally ugly and impractical.

Re:80% due to human error?

[noidentity]

SARTRE researchers say that around 80% of accidents on the road are due to human error so using professional lead drivers to take the strain on long journeys could, they say, see road accidents fall.

I don't follow the logic here: Most crashes are due to human error, therefore using human drivers will reduce crashes? Sounds like a non-sequitur.

Re:80% due to human error?

[somersault]

It's true that it doesn't reduce the error, but statistically one well trained driver is going to have less accidents than 20 average drivers, so I do believe it would reduce the incidence of accidents. Trained Police drivers for example have a very low accident rate. One Police driving instructor told me that the majority of their accidents were actually small bumps in their own car park, yet they still had to report them as accidents :P

If an accident did occur of course, I don't have much faith in the AI of the following cars to be able to do anything other than slam on their brakes and hope for the best.. but seeing as this is what most humans would do anyway, and the computer is likely to do it much faster than the humans, you could possibly argue that it's almost as safe as if all these guys were well trained drivers.

Re:80% due to human error?

[noidentity]

My comment was entirely about their logic, that professional drivers would be safer because human error is responsible for 80% of crashes. I suppose if human error were responsible for 0% of crashes, a professional driver couldn't make any improvement, so the fact that it's >0 is necessary, but it's still mostly a non-sequitur.

Re:80% due to human error?

[slickepott]

I'm more into cars "standing still" - just sliding. (I guess sliding is not standing still so)

Re:80% due to human error?

[turbidostato]

"it does exchange one source with a fairly high rate of errors against one with a fairly low rate of errors."

It's not only its human or non-human base that you should take into account, but its past track record.

Given that this kind of a control system should be software based, I'll ask you: what do you think that has a lower error rate? Your standard driver or your standard Windows install? Hard to say, isn't it?

Re:80% due to human error?

[tragedy]

somersault wrote:

I really don't like to hear that someone crashed "because it was raining/icy/snowy". They crashed because they were driving too fast for the conditions.

That's probably technically correct, but sometimes any speed at all is too fast for the conditions. In other words, you should just stay home. The problem is, it's hard to tell. You can sometimes tell because of weather reports and so forth, but those aren't 100% reliable and they don't cover the entire road.

I can provide a counter-example from when I was a teenage driver. I was out driving in winter, but there had been no recent snowfall or precipitation whatsoever. It was very cold, but the roads were dry and not icy anywhere. I came off the highway in a downward sloping offramp which hit a road at the bottom (it wasn't really a T-junction, more of a *-junction, actually, it sort of had 5 irregular branches). There was a puddle at the bottom of the ramp. I don't know where it came from. It was thin, but just thick enough that it was pure ice with no grip. It looked black and mirrorlike and was obviously super-slick, and there was no way to go around it. I was on a one-way ramp, so the only option was to cross it. It was perfectly clear that I wouldn't be able to brake properly on it. In retrospect, the safer thing to do would have been to time things right so that I didn't hit any traffic, ignore the stop sign at the bottom, and just shoot across the ice at normal speed until I reached traction on the other side, but that would have been illegal. Instead, I simply slowed way, way down until I was barely moving forward and pulled up to the stop sign and tried to stop. My car slowly and gracefully executed a spin of slightly over 180 degrees while sliding forward over the ice. There was absolutely no control whatsoever. The driver of a passing car (whose path I fortunately was not in) looked at me as if I were insane as he drove by. I regained control, and drove out with a few seconds to spare before the next car behind me on the off-ramp went through the exact same thing.

So, sometimes there are unavoidable safety hazards that you simply can't predict or avoid. In that incident, I ended up being completely out of control, drifting into a traffic lane and couldn't have avoided it (without breaking the law, but I didn't even think of that until after the fact. Fortunately, traffic was light and no-one hit me, but if I had been unlucky, there would have been nothing I could do.

So, I could have crashed because it was icy. I was lucky not to, but if I had, there would have been nothing I could have done to stop it. There were things I could have done to reduce the risk, of course, but that would have been a gamble, not a certainty. You can be unsympathetic all you want, sometimes things just happen.

Re:80% due to human error?

[caluml]

I had a head-on collision in 1976 when the left front tire blew out and threw me into oncoming traffic

And that's why we in the UK are correct in driving on the left. See, you would have just gone off the road, and probably into a field. Much nicer than hitting a car.



Now of course, if your right tyre blows, well, that's a whole other problem.

Re:80% due to human error?

[SnarfQuest]

What do you expect for something spelled "break cylinder"? It's not like it has anything to do with something important like the brakes.

Re:80% due to human error?

[tragedy]

On hitting animals vs. swerving off the road, I don't think you've considered how big moose and even deer can get. It's very situation dependent. You also have very little time to make the choice, and you're forgetting that the animal makes choices too.

You seem to be a very strong believer in the dominance of human free will. All very well and good, but the simple truth is that we can't really control our environment nearly as well as you seem to think. You make the best choices you can within the bounds of reason and with the information you have and try to deal with what life throws at you.

I remember one time driving in Florida on a bright sunny day without any apparent clouds when suddenly the skies opened and, for about two minutes the world was gone. Visibility wasn't good enough to see the road anymore. I managed to pull over to the side of the road and wait after a little while trying to even find the side of the road and dreading hitting a stopped car. After pulling over, I sat there dreading being hit by a still moving car. There was no good decision. Obviously speeding up was a stupid option that no-one would choose, but otherwise it was very hard to decide whether to slow down or not since drivers who didn't slow down could then hit you. There was just no way to predict what the best choice was and you had to gamble. The safest thing would have been for everyone in the downpour to stop dead where they were, obviously, but without any sort of communication, if .01% of drivers didn't, it would have probably been the most dangerous thing to do instead. Sometimes there are just no good answers.

I posted elsewhere in this discussion about an unpredictable and unavoidable (unless I'd just stayed at home) patch of ice I hit on a day where every other bit of road everywhere else was perfectly clear. Sometimes there just isn't anyone to blame. Sometimes people get sick and it isn't because a witchdoctor has cursed them or because the UN has deliberately infected the water supply. Sometimes machines have mechanical failures and it isn't because someone maintained them improperly or made a mistake making the parts, etc. Sometimes people get struck by lightning out of the clear blue sky. Sometimes people die because they put on their seatbelts (this is, of course, ridiculously rare compared to people being saved by their seatbelts) because no-one can predict the future except in generalities and by statistics and odds.

Re:80% due to human error?

[cayenne8]

Nah...bad drivers are everywhere. Here in New Orleans, not much of a problem with anything frozen (once in a blue moon), but hell, down here...one good rain storm, and people start sliding all over and wrecking.

That being said, would I trade some safety for this automated 'train' driving system.

NO

I like to drive. I buy cars that are FUN to drive. Every time I get in a car I've owned, and fire up the engine, even if just to do to the corner store, it is a small adventure for me. I've only owned ONE car in my life that had more that 2 seats (and that one was an '86 911 Turbo)...never owned an automatic transmission....I like performance cars. I like motorcycles too.

If someone wants an auto-car, fine...but stay out of MY way. I don't think these automated things will come about as long as manual drivers are allowed, and I hope I never seen manual driving go away in my lifetime.

After I'm gone, I don't give a fsck about what happens in the world, but long as I'm here, I'm all about having fun.

Re:80% due to human error?

[Kjella]

It does sound like an avoidable mistake if you could see the tracks clearly. If the road was that difficult to make out, and there was ice under the snow, then I do think you should have been going slower, but maybe that's just me.

Visibility was poor but grip on the road was good as it was asphalt with light snow cover - essentially just the snow that was falling right then. The road was all white but it was quite easy to see the heaped up snow on the sides which is why I followed it a bit into the bus pocket. And I don't mean far, but by then I had two wheels on ice and slid like a damn curling stone. It was used maybe twice a day unlike the road which was driven by hundreds of cars, which is why there was ice only there. If the road had been icy, I would have gone slower.

As for the bus thing, then of course, if someone is suicidal then you can't avoid it, but that's a pretty stupid example. And there is still a human at fault there, even if it's not the driver.

Ok so I pulled that to the extreme, but every year there's some accidents where a kid came running out of nowhere or something like that. Practically you don't pass every car, every tree, every bush, every street corner and every doorway like someone is going to come running out full speed into the middle of the road. If you did the only places you'd drive the limit would be wide open fields.

Re:80% due to human error?

[somersault]

If you did the only places you'd drive the limit would be wide open fields.

Yep. You obviously don't need to slow down for every tree etc you see, but if you know that kids play regularly in some woods or whatever near the road, then of course you should be careful. In America the city roads are wider so it's probably not so bad, but here in the UK there are often parked cars right next to the road with only just enough space for 2 cars to squeeze by each other in between the parked cars, so you don't always get to put space between yourself and the parked cars. In that kind of situation it isn't a bad idea to slow down, or at least be more attentive of people possibly walking between the cars. In our advanced driving course we were taught to always be on the lookout for things like shadows or other giveaways that there might be people behind cars about to walk out etc. When you're paying that much attention you can't help but slow down a bit anyway, and sometimes 20mph is a more sensible speed to be doing even in a 30 zone.

Don't get me wrong, I hate when people drive under the limit for no reason, and on any road with good visibility then even in wet conditions I'm still often doing the speed limit, but if you're unsure about some situation, it is always better to slow down of course. Even if you're driving around country roads with wide open fields, you should be watching for houses, which could have hidden entrances on a bend that aren't signposted, so it would be prudent to slow down in such a situation, etc. When you do try to consider every possible thing that could go wrong, and regularly check your mirrors so that you are always pretty aware of even what's going on behind you then yes indeed, you do slow down more often, and a lot of the time you'll be slowing down or checking your mirrors with basically no benefit. But doing such things means that whenever someone does do something stupid, you're ready for it and can hopefully react to avoid a bad accident.

Sorry if any of that is patronising, but I just like to throw some of the stuff I've learned out there to make people think more about their driving (not necessarily you, in that case I think you were being pretty sensible, and if there were people walking around on the sidewalk you hopefully would have slowed down a bit anyway). I know I used to hardly check my mirrors and often went over the speed limit in built up areas, and I'm pretty ashamed of it. It's too easy to fall into bad habits, and if nothing goes wrong then it reinforces those habits as "okay". Given time something might go wrong though, and if someone runs out while you are driving too fast for the conditions or simply not paying attention, you're screwed legally as well as emotionally. At least if you know you were doing your best to drive safely, then if something does go wrong, you know you couldn't realistically have done anything better, and hopefully if there is an accident the worst that will happen is a few broken bones.

Re:80% due to human error?

[somersault]

It's true, there are genuine cases where the driver isn't to blame - but it is very rare, and the more people that take responsibility for their driving rather than making excuses or just hoping for the best, the safer the roads will be.

Re:80% due to human error?

[somersault]

In that case I'd definitely have taken the safe but illegal route ;) The same thing did happen to me once before in a Landrover, which was much, much heavier than I realised (it had the lightest steering of any car I've ever driven and the body shell was paper thin, but there was still a lot of weight in the chassis, pretty deceptive). I tried braking down a cobbled hill and just ended up sliding ever so slowly into the road, thankfully there was nobody else around. I'd still say it was my own fault though, I should have been going slower because I did know it was going to be a downhill section. I did the same thing again braking on a downhill corner the same winter I think. After that I learned to be much more careful with that thing, and these days in general I try never to brake on corners, always before as much as possible. The best thing to be doing on a corner is applying slight acceleration to counteract the slowing force of tyre friction and air resistance on the vehicle, to keep the car balanced and distribute grip evenly over the tyres. If you drive smoothly and aware of the car's balance you can retain good control even in slippy conditions.

I'm am slightly sympathetic as a lot of people simply aren't aware of many of the probable dangers out there, but the way you started the story made it very clear that there was a lot of potential for ice. Even after the weather warms up a bit, there can still be areas with microclimates which have not melted yet, especially after dips or slopes in the road where water can accumulate, mostly where the road is in shadow so the ice never quite gets a chance to melt. My car park is like a damn ice rink for days after snow disappears around the rest of the city, and my parking spot is on a slope at the upper end of the car park. I hate it! But anyway, you said that the weather hadn't even warmed up yet so you should definitely be expecting some areas to still be icy. You don't quite have to crawl around as if you're already driving on ice, but you have to be aware that it could happen and think ahead to which parts of the road may still be icy (as long as you know the road of course, and if you don't know the road then driving as if there is ice around every blind corner or dip in the road isn't actually a dumb idea). If it's first snowfall then there's not likely to be any ice, but for a while after snow and for a few days (maybe even weeks in some cases where the area is constantly in shadow) even if the weather is warming up, you still have to be careful.

Sorry if I'm seeming too patronising and unsympathetic. I know we're all just human and we can't know everything. I'm just hoping that I can help to make people more aware of the problems they could be facing on the road, and who knows, maybe it'll stop someone having a bad accident.

Re:80% due to human error?

[scottv67]

Every accident would be avoidable if you drive at 5 km/hr, no matter what the conditions are.

O RLY? So this accident could have been avoided if the doctor was driving at 5km/hr?
Semi Loses Tire, Causes Fatal Crash
http://www.wisn.com/news/14548863/detail.html

Re:80% due to human error?

[somersault]

I agree that the concept is funny , but logically this will reduce the risk of accidents, and that's all they claimed. They didn't say it would eliminate accidents, they just said that accident rates would fall, which is logically true.

I just reread my previous comment and it says "it is true that it doesn't reduce the error", I should have said "doesn't eliminate the human error".

Re:80% due to human error?

[Belial6]

Claiming that you can avoid crashing due to wind by not driving, but that you cannot get the exact same effect by making the exact same decision about driving where there are animals, is silly.

Animals running across the road isn't a human choice. Neither is the wind blowing. Driving when either of them could cause you to crash IS a human choice. You are applying a different set of standards to the wind hazard than you are to the animal hazard.

Re:80% due to human error?

[somersault]

Of course I am, because they're different hazards.

High winds generally stop after a while, whereas most animals don't just stop living after a couple of hours.

The animal is also much more avoidable, and simply by reducing your speed you can reduce the damage that a crash will cause (assuming you know there are animals around, which will not always be the case).

With wind, your vehicle could be toppled even when stationary depending on the shape of your vehicle and the strength and direction of the wind in relation to your vehicle. If the wind is getting enough to make the vehicle wobble dangerously and you're in an exposed area, it seems to me that would be time to seek shelter, or park the vehicle perpendicular to the wind..

Re:80% due to human error?

[Kjella]

Never dealt with ice have you? ;-)

My home town is further north than Anchorage, Alaska so I think I know what I'm talking about. Get studded winter tires, not just snow tires. They're not nearly as nice to use on bare asphalt and about even on snow but on ice - solid ice, black ice, wet ice doesn't matter - it's a world of difference. Just about the only they don't grip on is a thin snow layer on top of ice, they have plenty grip on the snow but everything slides on the ice just like with snow tires. And while it won't help you stop, 4WD makes it much easier to get up icy slopes - one sane use for all the SUVs. Nothing wrong with driving on ice, you just need the right tools.

Re:80% due to human error?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they are better drivers in Sweden...

Re:80% due to human error?

[TBBle]

I would assume they mean "incorrect judgements made during the process of driving in reaction to other drivers and changing road conditions", rather than "any error made in the process of transitioning from zygote to road kill".

Especially since they're addressing the former, not the latter.

Re:80% due to human error?

[Belial6]

So, your dangerous activity is better than someone else's dangerous activity. Check.

Re:80% due to human error?

[somersault]

What the hell are you talking about? Why are you assuming that only one applies to me? Where did I indicate which one was "my activity", and why would you try to claim that all activities are equally dangerous? It's not black and white.

I also understand there are very, very rare freak occurrences sometimes in life, so I'm not trying to be black and white about blame for accidents either, but consider this: greater than 95% of accidents are driver error, but only 5% of drivers admit to an accident being exclusively their fault ( http://www.smartmotorist.com/traffic-and-safety-guideline/what-causes-car-accidents.html ). People are far too quick to blame external factors for their own mistakes, and the roads would be a safer place if people were being more responsible. External factors do play a part in risk levels, and that's why you need to moderate your driving according to what you know.

Re:80% due to human error?

[The_Noid]

I'm not from the UK nor the USA, but I do prefer English spelling over American ;)

As far as I know there is no such law here, but I'm not an expert.

The point was not tyre pressure of course, but that even if mechanical failure happens, it might still be caused by human error. And that a computer is more likely to respond correctly than a human.

And even a pressure monitoring system can malfunction... After the incident a friend of mine told me his car had a pressure monitoring system. I looked at his car and though that tyre was a bit soft, so I checked it with my hand gauge... And indeed it was quite a bit below what it should be.

Re:80% due to human error?

[Phoghat]

"There are facts, damn facts and statistics." Mark Twain

Re:80% due to human error?

[Phoghat]

Fact is that most of the cars on the road aren't well maintained. A lot of drivers think that their cars need maintenance or just don't care

Re:80% due to human error?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a stretch in Indiana on the Indiana toll road where they have animal sensors. Deer mostly, I think. It is an optical sensor that detects a break in its path and lights up a sign earlier up the road that says "animal detected" or something like that. Technology!

Re:80% due to human error?

[Tom]

"percentage" is a term commonly used to describe a share of something, as per the direct translation "out of one hundred" (per cent). I'm not so anal that I'd require you to have a sample size of at least one hundred before you're allowed to speak of percentages, but expressing "one of one" in percentage terms is at the very least unusual, and at worst dishonest because using percentage terms commonly implies that a fairly large sample size exists.

Re:80% due to human error?

[GooberToo]

Thankfully, in the above case, all three perfectly align.

Re:80% due to human error?

[pixelpusher220]

and I grew up in Buffalo/Rochester, NY. Snowy places don't generally deal with ice much. It's usually just too cold for freezing rain/sleet.

I now live outside DC where we are right on the border between the rain/snow almost every time so a lot of icing weather. I will agree that studded tires will likely help *some* on ice.

But most people aren't going to swap tires for a single storm coming through, and the damage studded tires do to paved roads coupled with the rattling of driving them on clear paved roads means it's a rare thing that people have them.

Re:80% due to human error?

[mcgrew]

I never could understand why we spell "tyre" with an I over here, considering that tires were invented in Scotland. Also why nobody gave you a +1 funny!

I spent a year in Thailand in the Air Force, they drive on the left too. It was really wierd for a while, and when I got home I found myself not in the right lane, but in the wrong lane. I was lucky that never resulted in a collision.

Re:80% due to human error?

[Belial6]

That figure seems a bit low. Unless an animal runs across the road or similar, other problems are all IMO human error.

You made a black and white statement. Then when called on it, you claim:

why would you try to claim that all activities are equally dangerous? It's not black and white.

Re:80% due to human error?

[somersault]

Yes, I said "unless an animal runs across the road or similar", ie any other very occasional "act of god" type freak occurrences, like a strong gust of wind on a calm day (which I've never experienced, though I admit it could happen in extreme climates as I've stated elsewhere). Why are you so desperate to argue about it?

I still stand by the claim that not all moments of driving are equally dangerous, nor are all dangers equal. It's not a black and white issue, and I don't know why you were trying to say that the animal and wind risks are exactly the same level of danger and probability.

Hmm I just reread your first comment and noticed the "you haven't hit an animal or two have you?" (I didn't notice before because I reacted to your "better not to drive at all" talk). Now your "your activity is more dangerous" comment makes more sense. No, I haven't hit an animal. Run over a couple of rabbits, but that's it. The animal one is just one of the occurrences that are almost impossible to foresee in every situation (ie if there are no signs to warn of animals and someone doesn't know the area) and avoid, and therefore it's hard to say it's driver error. My uncle did hit a deer recently but that's about it, and I don't judge his driving any differently than I'd judge yours or anyone elses just because he's my uncle.

Re:80% due to human error?

[tragedy]

I was aware that there could be ice around if there were any water flows. I had no way of predicting where, of course. I was driving carefully, and I did manage to see the ice ahead of me. True, I could have just stayed at home the entire winter, but that's ridiculous. I had no legal options to avoid the ice at that point and I went about as slow as it was possible to go while still moving forward. There was simply no opportunity to maintain control. I mentioned that the exact same thing happened to the next car down. I imagine the same thing kept happening to pretty much every car coming down that ramp. In retrospect, I feel bad that I didn't go and buy a bag of ice-melt and toss it on the slick.

Of course, the danger wasn't that great. Traffic wasn't heavy and not very fast, and most oncoming cars with alert drivers were able to see the ice and hopefully anticipate what was going to happen. Still, I recall that one of the roads coming up to the intersection went under the highway and there was poor visibility until you were right on top of the intersection. Still, it's one of those situations where, unless the error was not staying huddled under the covers at home, pretty much all drivers were entering a situation where they lost all control for a few seconds.

Re:80% due to human error?

[Belial6]

There is no desperation here. You just made an incorrect statement, and used very poor examples. YOU are the one that made a black and white statement. I never said all risks are identical. In the context of varying degrees of danger, your original comment is totally nonsensical.

Your claim that I called things black and white, and that I said every danger is exactly the same is a strawman.

Re:80% due to human error?

[somersault]

So, your dangerous activity is better than someone else's dangerous activity. Check.

What was this meant to mean then? That's where the "context of varying degrees of danger" came into it, and I was pointing out that my comments were saying no such thing.

My original comment, that almost all accidents are human error to the extent that people need to accept it and learn ways to improve their road sense, is true, and I still think my examples made sense. You haven't actually said anything to make me think otherwise, because your reductio ad absurdum of "all accidents could be avoided if you stay at home" is obvious and is failing to recognise that in fact almost all accidents would disappear if drivers took it upon themselves to pay more attention, learn safer driving habits, and then drive within the limits of their own driving ability, and the conditions.

Even if you're a theoretically perfect driver, then yes you could still have accidents if other things crash into you rather than you crashing into them, but that would have to happen without adequate warning for the theoretically perfect driver to not be able to avoid the accident. For example a driver coming the opposite direction has a heart attack and swerves into the opposing traffic when they're both going 60mph.

I said the wind was different, because (in my country at least) it takes time for the weather to change dramatically, and you'd know beforehand if the winds were starting to get dangerous.

If that's not clear enough, I'm just going to assume you're trolling and stop responding btw.

Re:80% due to human error?

[Belial6]

You are obsessed with straw man. You made a nonsense comment. Either ALL accidents are 'human error', or there are lots of other factors. Your argument boils down to "My shade of gray is better than everyone else's shade of gray." Claiming that an accident is caused by human error when it has the % of human involvement that fit YOUR definition, but slightly less becomes an "act of god" because you've drawn an arbitrary line in the sand is ridiculous. Obviously, your rational is that because YOU have hit animals, then hitting animals must be unavoidable. Very poor logic.

Re:80% due to human error?

[somersault]

What is your deal? I've already said that I'm not applying one standard to myself and another to other people. If I ever do that, it will only be to judge myself more harshly than I would others, not to make things easier on myself. You can think of me as a liar or an idiot if you want, but really you are being so nonsensical sometimes that I'm having a hard time telling whether you're trolling, or just stupid (ie I already think you're a liar or an idiot, so don't feel bad about doing the same thing to me).

I've skidded uncontrollably on ice before, and I know it was my fault. I've hit other cars in the past, and I know it was my own fault. Just because something has happened to me doesn't mean I automatically blame external factors.

This is nothing to do with me trying to convince myself I'm a perfect driver, this is me trying to get people to think responsibly and improve their own driving, as I have done with my own driving. I'm a much, much, much safer driver now than 10 years ago when I first started learning to drive.

You are trying to lump in collisions with sentient objects outside of your own control in with unthinking factors like the weather, and I don't think that is right. It's like trying to compare a dog biting you to you putting your hand in a lit fireplace. The first is outwith your control, the second is your own fault. You can reduce the risk of colliding with another sentient being, but you can't eliminate it entirely. A fireplace is a potentially very dangerous thing, and yet the distance you are from it is entirely under your own control. If you get too close, you'll get hurt. This is the same as any of the driving factors that are not controlled by sentient beings.

Factors that are outwith your control but that should never be the cause of an accident are things like rain and snow. I'd like to hear your opinion on these, because you seem to be one of those people that likes to blame their accidents on things like "it was raining".

Re:80% due to human error?

[Belial6]

Dogs biting are almost always due to human error. Not necessarily the victim's but due to the asshole irresponsible owners. People get burned by fires that are outside of their control all of the time.

coming around a corner and sliding on a small ice patch on an otherwise dry road is no more predictable than driving through woods with deer and hitting one in the road.

You drew an aribrary line in the a wide shade of responsibility gray, and declared it the correct line. You were wrong. You then acuse me of being a liar, when you said

I'm just going to assume you're trolling and stop responding btw.

I think it is clear who the liar is.

You keep posting examples that refute your statement, and then call me stupid. Hmmmm....

Re:80% due to human error?

[somersault]

I'm just going to assume you're trolling and stop responding btw.

I think it is clear who the liar is.

You've taken that quote out of context, it had a conditional before it. You also don't understand analogies.

Your other posts don't seem like trolls so I'm going to have to go with you just being an irresponsible and stupid person who would rather blame external factors for things that you could have avoided. I hope you don't end up killing anybody when you drive around in cold weather as if there is no chance of ice around the corner.

Re:80% due to human error?

[Anonymous Coward]

> if you hide behind a tree near a high speed road and jump out in front of a trailer you will with 99% probability get splattered

This is your example for an accident *not* caused by human error???

> until something will literally block me from driving over a pedestrian or off the road we will have accidents

Seems like you'll still be in an accident with this "block"

Re:80% due to human error?

[Anonymous Coward]

My sister's car was hit by a piece of wood from an unsecured load, and I have nightmares about the same thing happening to me. She managed to get off the road safely luckily, but it could have been very different. If the wood had hit the driver's side of the windshield instead of the passenger's side for instance ...

Sounds familiar...

[Anonymous Coward]

Road trains? Like the one in Inception?

On a more serious note, how would Platooning work? Is it like a bus stop? If so, cars need to be able to enter and exit in any order. I call fail.

Re:Sounds familiar...

[s0litaire]

More like City to city.
Probably would be scheduled stops (humans still need toilet / food breaks) in major cities to let cars leave and to pick up new ones...
in future they might have options to join and leave at will.

This is so 1970s

[Kupfernigk]

An engineering lecturer at Cambridge was proposing something like this in the early 1970s, but with vehicles having a mechanical connection - inherently safer because sudden braking would merely load up a damper, not cause an impact.

The problem where the UK is concerned is that motorways are actually our safest roads - it's people like the idiot woman this morning in the Range Rover who think that size overrides the Highway Code that present the problem, and this doesn't address it.

Re:This is so 1970s

[slim]

it's people like the idiot woman this morning in the Range Rover who think that size overrides the Highway Code that present the problem, and this doesn't address it.

On motorways it might -- because the idiot woman would join a road train for selfish reasons (reduction in fuel costs; ability to relax rather than drive), and hence would do a couple of hundred miles without the opportunity to drive badly.

Re:This is so 1970s

[ledow]

She drives a Range Rover. Fuel costs won't be on her mind. In fact, judging by the average driver, anything to get someone to their destination quicker will be welcomed, not deliberately running in the most fuel-efficient way - I get much more efficiency at 50mph, how many people do that speed on a major motorway?

Re:This is so 1970s

[houghi]

I am sure it will be even better if you drive 40mph and even better with 30, 20, ... all the way to zero. So why not drive 30mph? I am sure 2 wheels will be more fuel efficient as well. So take a moped and drive 10mph if fuel efficiency is what is important to you.

Re:This is so 1970s

[Chrisq]

I am sure it will be even better if you drive 40mph and even better with 30, 20, ... all the way to zero. So why not drive 30mph? I am sure 2 wheels will be more fuel efficient as well. So take a moped and drive 10mph if fuel efficiency is what is important to you.

No, nearly all cars drop in fuel efficiency below 20mph. I can't find more recent information but it looks like many cars are most fuel efficient at somewhere between 30 and 55 mph, have a quite flat consumption in that range, and drop off below this fairly quickly and above this rather more slowly.

Re:This is so 1970s

[Zironic]

Actually fuel efficiency is worse at lower speeds, but don't let facts get in your way or anything.

Re:This is so 1970s

[AmiMoJo]

Use your horn. Make sure these people know their driving is crap. If it happens regularly enough eventually they might stop.

Re:This is so 1970s

[ledow]

Apart from the fact that most cars *are* more fuel efficient at about 50mph (some new ones lower, but generally most cars capable of 70mph are more fuel efficient at 50mph than most other speeds) - basically 5th gear, lowest revs - there are millions more ways to make thing fuel efficient which don't affect driving (e.g. use aircon instead of opening a window, remove roof-top boxes, etc.) and most people don't do ANY of them.

My point is - fuel efficiency is NOT a big seller for this idea. Nobody *really* cares that much, even if they do whinge about fuel costs being high (and if you think fuel costs are high, come to the UK - if you're not already there). The most fuel efficient cars tend to be the smallest ones and even when people only ever have one passenger they rarely drive a 2-seater. Most people want a car that gets them to their destination fast and reasonably comfortably. The people who buy for other reasons are generally lying or kidding themselves (e.g. fast car is entirely image, convertibles are entirely image, big people-carriers are NOT safer for your kids, electric cars are nowhere near "green", etc. etc. etc.).

If someone actually *wanted* fuel efficiency, it would be to save money or be green. If someone has an LPG car, they can probably claim to be more fuel efficient (though I doubt it's any greener, probably worse), and it's cheap enough that it wouldn't cost much to convert even an old banger. I very, very much doubt that someone who wanted to be fuel efficient would be paying tens of thousands for a brand new car with the "road train" computer onboard and hoping everyone else follows suits with a standardised system from other manufacturers. (That's even *if* it was actually legal in any country for this to work without the human taking 100% responsibility should they kill someone in it). They certainly wouldn't be driving a Land Rover.

I drive past thousands of people every day. Most of their cars are the least fuel efficient and most expensive-to-run cars available. (I remind them of it when we drive the same roads and they think pushing their way through against the highway code will make me stop my car for fear of scratches/dents - my car is worth less than most of their wing-mirrors).

Disclaimer: My car cost me £300. It has a different coloured bonnet (hood), no AC, and just barely scrapes into having electric windows. It costs me 3 times as much to insure it as it would do to buy the thing again. It's 1.8 litre which is quite large by European standards. Fuel efficiency is the *last* thing I care about but actually I get 500 miles on 60 litres and much more if I drive at the bottom end of my gears. I don't really care. The fact is the car was cheap and maintenance is cheap (i.e. never more than £300 because I'd just get another car) - but fuel efficiency? The only people who *really* care won't be driving this car for decades.

Re:This is so 1970s

[holmstar]

I agree with most of your points, but "fast car is entirely image" is wrong. Fast cars are FUN if you have somewhere that you can really drive them. Definitely some, maybe quite a few, people buy a fast car only to drive it like a grandma, but I'd wager that most actually enjoy the act of driving it.

Re:This is so 1970s

[Zebedeu]

Everybody's discussing the safety aspect, but for me the most interesing part is that where I can join the train and then do some other activity more interesting than operating the vehicle.

We humans have this huge brain and flexible limbs. We're capable of so much, but some of us spend way too much time each day doing a job that could almost be done by a monkey.

Re:This is so 1970s

[ArsenneLupin]

I am sure it will be even better if you drive 40mph and even better with 30, 20, ... all the way to zero. So why not drive 30mph? I am sure 2 wheels will be more fuel efficient as well. So take a moped and drive 10mph if fuel efficiency is what is important to you.

... and you would get an even better efficiency if you just walked!

Re:This is so 1970s

[somersault]

Use your horn. [...] If it happens regularly enough eventually they might stop.

Ever been to India..? ;p

I dream of a day

[fridaynightsmoke]

Perhaps one day we could have automated platoons of Slashdot submissions about the same damn thing, too?

Re:I dream of a day

[Eudial]

Perhaps one day we could have automated platoons of Slashdot submissions about the same damn thing, too?

The last submission was about SARTRE before the tests started. This is the results.

Re:I dream of a day

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Perhaps one day we could have automated platoons of Slashdot submissions about the same damn thing, too?

The last submission was about SARTRE before the tests started. This is the results.

Ohh? http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/01/18/0411235/How-Europe-Will-Lower-Emissions-mdash-Self-Driving-Cars (2 days old)

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.

And yes, it's the same fucking video. DUPE.

Re:I dream of a day

[Lumpy]

Invalid test if they did not have another car T-bone or sideswipe a car in the "train" to see what happens.

Re:I dream of a day

[Anonymous Coward]

They arent going to test every single scenario in a first trial. This is about getting the "follow-me" stuff to work before anything else.

Never going to work in a litigious society

[orphiuchus]

One of my engineering professors worked on something like this in the 90s, when I asked him why we never saw anything like this come into use he said that they knew that the first time anyone was killed in an accident involving one of the automated vehicles the entire project would be dead. Regardless of if it was from something like a blowout causing a computer driven car to swerve into the other lane, or some drunk ramming headlong into a "platoon" of cars.

Even if it is much safer, the lawyers will be salivating while they wait for the first death.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[Anonymous Coward]

One of my engineering professors worked on something like this in the 90s, when I asked him why we never saw anything like this come into use he said that they knew that the first time anyone was killed in an accident involving one of the automated vehicles the entire project would be dead. Regardless of if it was from something like a blowout causing a computer driven car to swerve into the other lane, or some drunk ramming headlong into a "platoon" of cars.

Even if it is much safer, the lawyers will be salivating while they wait for the first death.

Dunning-Kruger at work?

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[orphiuchus]

I don't think so, the project worked fairly well as I understand it (remember that video from the 90s in California or Nevada where they were testing the things? It must have been on a nova or something, but I cant find it on youtube), but they knew all along that there was just no way to take it to market because of the liability.

If the thing hadn't worked then maybe, but the fear of lawsuits(and I should reiterate, it was the early 90s so the chances of a system failure killing someone wasn't insignificant) preempted any attempt to put the system into use.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[teh kurisu]

The protocol for leaving the platoon and returning manual control to the driver is going to be the most difficult thing to solve I think, particularly where it occurs in a emergency situation. A blowout on the motorway is dangerous enough, but a blowout on the motorway where control of a car is suddenly returned to a driver in the middle of drinking a coffee and reading a newspaper could be disastrous.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[Anonymous Coward]

"80% Human error" are usually the same humans that won't want this system. Someone who drives while tired or drunk or willingly goes over the speed limit or takes stupid chances aren't really concerned about their safety or of anyone else on the road.

Want to make roads safer? Take away their licence, throw them in jail. It's cheaper, faster and safer that way. After a decade, you'll have a fresh crop of drivers far more careful about their driving.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[orphiuchus]

"80% Human error" are usually the same humans that won't want this system. Someone who drives while tired or drunk or willingly goes over the speed limit or takes stupid chances aren't really concerned about their safety or of anyone else on the road.

Want to make roads safer? Take away their licence, throw them in jail. It's cheaper, faster and safer that way. After a decade, you'll have a fresh crop of drivers far more careful about their driving.

Isn't that a little extreme? Plus, throwing 80% of the drivers involved in accidents in jail for life probably isn't cheaper than, say, just fining them and making them go to bad driver's school like we do now.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[timholman]

Even if it is much safer, the lawyers will be salivating while they wait for the first death.

I think the fear of lawsuits preventing autonomous vehicles is way overblown.

Historically, the auto industry has had several design flaws that have led to huge lawsuits, e.g. exploding gas tanks on the Ford Pinto. Ford's gas tank design led to numerous deaths and injuries, and corporate memos later showed that the company was even aware of the problem, yet Ford was not sued out of business. Even today, with all the fuss and lawsuits concerning Toyota's computer systems, Toyota is doing just fine. Lawsuits are part of the cost of doing business in the auto industry.

The technology being used in autonomous vehicle research was, by modern standards, painfully primitive 20 or 30 years ago. I could see how people would fear legal liability, because those older systems weren't smart enough to deal with every contingency in a roadway environment. Today's research vehicles are much better, and in ten years they'll be even better still.

The question to ask is this: can autonomous vehicles do better than 35,000+ fatalities, 2 million+ injuries, and $200B+ in liability / medical costs per year? That's what the U.S. alone is paying right now with humans behind the wheel. 20 years ago, engineers knew their vehicles weren't robust enough for the roadway. As Google's own experiments have recently shown, things are much different now.

There's no doubt that autonomous vehicles will fail from time to time, and occasionally someone will be injured. But fatalities from a well-engineered system will be rare, and the roadways will be orders of magnitude safer. The fear of autonomous vehicles is basically a classic example of flawed risk perception by human beings - they are uncomfortable with a few hundred possible auto accidents with a computer in control, yet think nothing of millions of accidents with the current system because they all think "I'm in control of the situation".

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[Max Romantschuk]

Even if it is much safer, the lawyers will be salivating while they wait for the first death.

There is a good reason why this project is sponsored by the EU and not the US.

While not perfect, the legal systems in most of Europe aren't not quite as broken as in the US.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a reason US innovation has begun a slow march backward. You'd have to be out of your gourd to bring anything new to market in the States, these days.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[Tom]

Which is probably why this system is being developed in Europe, where the term "ambulance-chasing lawyer" is strongly associated with american lawyers, because we don't have the same kind of liability craze over here.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[Chrisq]

The question to ask is this: can autonomous vehicles do better than 35,000+ fatalities, 2 million+ injuries, and $200B+ in liability / medical costs per year? That's what the U.S. alone is paying right now with humans behind the wheel

That is the sensible question, but in reality it would have to be much safer to be accepted. We see this when there are train crashes. A train is already hundreds of times safer than a car but there are public inquiries, people brought to book and calls for improvement when they happen.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[scdeimos]

They were doing automated road trains on the autobahn in the late 1980s/early 1990s. Was covered in a program called Beyond 2000. Like yourself, though, I haven't been able to find a video on it.

I'm going to agree with GP, though... in a society where people think it's ok to sue the pants off of somebody because they ran out of chicken mcnuggets, no sane manufacturer is going to start mass producing self-driving vehicles of any form.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[hypertex]

Even if it is much safer, the lawyers will be salivating while they wait for the first death.

There is a good reason why this project is sponsored by the EU and not the US.

While not perfect, the legal systems in most of Europe aren't not quite as broken as in the US.

There were tests of this in California in the 1991 timeframe but I don't know if it was the State or the Feds. A train of 5 white cars would assemble at speed on interstate 15 between Palm Springs and San Diego. With only inches in between, the train would travel back and forth on the freeway . Perhaps another can find a record of this as my Google-fu is not adequate.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[hypertex]

blindness must be setting in, this is mentioned several posts above. At least I wasn't dreaming this memory up.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the airline industry is a better example. There's a constant stream of low level suspicion against automation in the media, and if an accident ends up involving the automation systems, they love it. If automation helps in a bad situation, it's never reported.

Meanwhile, if a mechanical system fails, the press only sensationalizes the accident in general, with no thought going to stupid suggestions about having fewer mechanical parts.

No one cares that the software has saved more people from pilot error than bugs have killed (if any), or that most bugs have been fairly benign compared to mechanical failures. No, automation is an evil black box of magic that no honest hard working person like yourself could understand, and the righteous pilot should micromanage everything.

Now imagine this situation in an industry where most buyers have a choice in which car to buy, rather than being mostly ignorant about the exact aircraft their airline is using.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[AmiMoJo]

Strange how accidents didn't kill autopilots in aircraft, electronic lift control, electronically controlled boilers, fly-by-wire, drive-by-wire in cars etc. Toyota's electronics have caused fatal accidents but no-one is suggesting that they should go back to the old mechanically linked accelerator pedals.

You might as well argue that once people discovered that metal can fatigue or that pitons can freeze over it will kill air travel. People are intelligent enough to understand that a small number of accidents does change the fact that flying is very safe.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I think the problem is that, no matter how hard you try, this cannot be done with a fully manually controlled (other than the road train feature) vehicle. They'll need to have a high degree of automatic driving capability to deal with these emergency situations. That said, it's not an insurmountable problem. As was posted here a while back, google has already done extensive tests of automatically driven vehicles that required almost no human input.

So the trick is, you have the vehicle acting under the control of the train. When an emergency pops up, control transfers to the automatic driving system until the human driver is ready to take control. I think the goal of the automatic driving system would be to try and bring all vehicles in the chain to a stop (or at least a very low speed) as quickly as is safely possible. The nice thing is that this can be done automatically and communicated instantly. When any given vehicle in the chain detects something wrong (an unintended veering off course, an unexpected object in the road, etc) it can instantly notify every car in the chain, and they can all begin to instantly respond accordingly (vs the human controlled system, where every car or 2 in the chain introduces a human-reaction-time delay).

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[adamchou]

Lets take that blowout idea one step further and imagine the driver in the lead truck somehow losing control, going over the side of a cliff, and a pack full of lemmings following suit. I'm sure that'll be awesome.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[martijnd]

> Even if it is much safer, the lawyers will be salivating while they wait for the first death.

Sound like this will work fine in Europe, and will never make it to the US

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[Anonymous Coward]

A blowout on the motorway is dangerous enough, but a blowout on the motorway where control of a car is suddenly returned to a driver in the middle of drinking a coffee and reading a newspaper could be disastrous.

While I agree that a blowout on the motorway in a "road train" would indeed be very dangerous, what on Earth makes you think that any sane system would react by returning control to the driver who's drinking coffee and reading a newspaper in that situation?

It should be quite obvious that the lack of fully autonomous cars nonwithstanding, there'd be a safety system that brings the car to a controlled halt while attempting to minimize the danger on others. Indeed, in a "road train" where cars would communicate with one another, you could actually coordinate the whole train and make the whole thing end much more gracefully than it would if human drivers were at the helm.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[teh kurisu]

Thinking about it, with our current level of technology, this kind of system would be an ideal way to introduce automation into regular road cars. You probably wouldn't trust the system to do all of your driving for you, so you'd have platoons headed by a human driver, but it's probably sufficient to stop you safely at the side of the road in an emergency such as this.

Then, once greater automation becomes practical, the software in existing cars can be updated to take advantage of it.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[Anonymous Coward]

The protocol for leaving the platoon and returning manual control to the driver is going to be the most difficult thing to solve I think, particularly where it occurs in a emergency situation. A blowout on the motorway is dangerous enough, but a blowout on the motorway where control of a car is suddenly returned to a driver in the middle of drinking a coffee and reading a newspaper could be disastrous.

I get what you mean, but tire blowouts is not a good example of something that suddenly and unexpectedly go wrong, in most modern cars, tires are monitored automatically and almost all blowouts are detected days before they happen. Most blowouts of yesterday (and in poor countries today) was caused by long time wear and in the rare case of an impact damage (rusty nails, sharp objects, hitting the sidewalk et.c.), tires of today are constructed so that they are unlikely to explode suddenly. Of course, this is not true in poor, low income, countries, where the cost of the car and tires is more important then safety, or in countries with a low level of technology in their own car production and with import barriers (cultural and/or regulatory) for foreign technology.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[teh kurisu]

I said it would be difficult to solve, not that I was proposing a solution.

My point is that as far as I can tell from the article, there's no intelligence built into the system that's been demoed, aside from the human driver of the lead vehicle. Once you get into a situation where the commands received from the vehicle in front are no longer appropriate for the following vehicle, there's nothing to fall back on other than the coffee-sipping driver.

What's being demoed here is essentially the easy part of the system. The difficult part will be building the automation required to safely stop a car in an emergency situation.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[guruevi]

And that should be normal, a system that gives control over a lot of lives at one time should be scrutinized but it's not like train operators go out of business because trains crash once in a while. Same goes for planes. However if you get in an accident with a car, nobody is calling out for improvement.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[DrXym]

One of my engineering professors worked on something like this in the 90s, when I asked him why we never saw anything like this come into use he said that they knew that the first time anyone was killed in an accident involving one of the automated vehicles the entire project would be dead.

A better way to look at it is - it would never work properly. There are too many variables to control to ever create a safe system. Cars coming and going from the convoy, potholes, radio interference, blackice, snow, fog, hail, heat, cold, light, dark, roadspray, road camber, road works, floods, diversions, animals & people walking over the road, mechanical / electrical failure, tyre blowouts, malfunctioning lights, traffic cops, junctions & cross roads, vehicles running out of fuel, spilled loads, emergency vehicle priority, oil slicks, debris, multiple implementations of the same "convoy" software & hardware with their own malfunctions, quirks & bugs.

It just can't work the ways roads are designed now. Accidents would be commonplace and possibly fatal. Perhaps if there were a special lane with a guiding wire underneath you might be able to control some parameters but even there you are looking at an engineering nightmare. So yes litigation probably is a fear, with good reason.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[Quiet_Desperation]

I did a couple reports in my undergrad years on automated highways in the early 1990s. CalTrans was actually experimenting with platooning back then. Yeah, the #1 hindrance on the horizon was always "lawyers".

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[Anonymous Coward]

Ford's gas tank design led to numerous deaths and injuries, and corporate memos later showed that the company was even aware of the problem, yet Ford was not sued out of business.

Not to champion the Pinto, the but there were less than 30 deaths than could be blamed on the gas tank design in over 2 million Pintos.

http://www.pointoflaw.com/articles/The_Myth_of_the_Ford_Pinto_Case.pdf

I'm more astonished they sold 2 million of those things. Yeesh!

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[lymond01]

Agreed. When I read the summary I expected a car carrier (like those trucks that carry new cars to their sales lots). People would pull on for a trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles for example and let someone else drive them down I-5. This seems like a neat idea but in practice I'm not sure it's worth a whole lot.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[eric02138]

This was my initial reaction, too. Of course, I also think that if cars were invented yesterday, they'd never get approved for use. Too dangerous. And motorcycles? Forget about it.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[holmstar]

This might just be a rumor, but I've heard that some newer planes have autopilots that are more trusted than human pilots when landing in harsh weather. To the point that airlines require the human pilots to hand over control to the computer under certain landing conditions.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[justin.kueser]

I think the legal problem is not so much about any technological defects with this system, but with the liability of the lead driver. If the lead driver makes some sort of error that causes the following motorists injury, is he liable? What if that error would have caused no injury were there no vehicles copying his movements?
Or, say an oncoming (non-networked) vehicle veers into the lead driver's lane, resulting in the lead driver swerving off of the road. Conceivably (i.e., without this road train system), this accident could involve only this lead driver, but in the road train case, it involves several other motorists[1]. Is the oncoming vehicle liable for just the lead driver's injuries or for the entire caravan's injuries?; have the following motorists in some sense relinquished their right to seek damages by relinquishing their control as drivers?

[1] Even if the system has some sort of control that prevents the following cars from copying highly anomalous movements like swerving off the road, the following cars are due to proximity alone likely to be involved.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[coofercat]

I see what you're saying, but the actual logic goes like this:

35,000 accidents, with (say) 32,000 causes versus 10000 accidents with one cause.

Whilst you and I would say "yeah, but we can concentrate on the one cause, and fix it, and besides, we've had a net-gain", the world says "I want no part of that one thing". No one said it was logical, but it's how things will go.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[nschubach]

I'd actually expect the first viable solution would be single car "docks" that run on regular train rail. You'd eliminate all but the acceleration/deceleration issues of each "pod." When the car gets to a predetermined cut-off it could alert the other pods behind it to slow down. The driver would then only have to drive to the local station to dock and from the destination station to work.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[kheldan]

It's stated in the summary that the system would have to be 100% reliable. I propose that the system would have to be much more than 100% reliable: there would have to be, at the very least, redundancies built into the system in order for it to be considered safe. On top of that, how will such a system handle unexpected circumstances, such as obstacles in the road (both the static variety like an object, as well as more "dynamic" obstacles like animals and people), or bad roads, or detours? I don't see this as working out well in the end. As your professor said, the first time someone dies because of an inadequacy or error of such a system will be the end of it.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[timholman]

I see what you're saying, but the actual logic goes like this:

35,000 accidents, with (say) 32,000 causes versus 10000 accidents with one cause.

Whilst you and I would say "yeah, but we can concentrate on the one cause, and fix it, and besides, we've had a net-gain", the world says "I want no part of that one thing". No one said it was logical, but it's how things will go.

But I don't think it will be "one cause". Autonomous auto design will not be a monoculture, any more than current auto design is. Specific models made in specific model years may have specific types of failures, e.g. the recent Toyota Prius situation, but those failures will be addressed as in years past, i.e. recalls, government regulations, and legal action.

Granted, if everyone was forced to use some sort of centralized control, that would be begging for trouble. But the current trend in autonomous design is for each vehicle to act and react independently.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it will result in trains going the minimum (45mph).

Think about it!

Designers will want the system to go as slow and safe as possible.

In the future you will be more concerned with Minimum speed, not Maximum..

jim pruett, founder
wikiSPEEDia.org>

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[zmollusc]

I think a lot of people suggest that they go back to the old mechanically linked accelerator pedals when they hear about the failures in the 'fly-by-wire' systems. Pretty much all the people who understand the issue.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[VJ42]

no sane manufacturer is going to start mass producing self-driving vehicles of any form.

leaving a gap in the market for the insane ones? ;p

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[Anonymous Coward]

You are thinking of the demonstration in 1997 on I-15 outside of San Diego, in what are now the reversible center lanes of traffic. That was a project sponsored mostly by the feds, though it was through a partnership known as the NAHSC (National Automated Highway Consortium). The funding was pulled and the consortium was disbanded shortly after that demonstration due to a lack of interest at the federal level and the state of California being, well, technically bankrupt since the dotcom implosion. You can find out more information at the link below.

http://www.path.berkeley.edu/nahsc/

Work has continued on this concept in the US over the past decade. There was a demonstration in 2003 on I-15 of platooning busses to create a road train, and although there has been less media fare over it, research continues at California PATH on the topic of platooning trucks. With the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge in the US, most of the media attention, funding, and research moved away from creating road trains, and towards creating a fully autonomous automated vehicle.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[AmiMoJo]

Well breaks and steering must be mechanically linked. ABS and power steering only assist and if they fail the controls still work.

The accelerator was considered not to be a problem but it looks like that assumption was wrong. Part of it is because you don't start the car with a key any more so you can't stop the engine if the computer crashes.

Fly by wire in aircraft is very safe though. Mechanical links would make the controls too heavy on large aircraft. First they used hydraulics and then moved to electrical systems. Even if they completely fail though the aircraft is usually controllable.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[zmollusc]

How much redundancy is designed into aircraft fly by wire compared to automobile throttle applications? How many components are designed to fail safe? :-)

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[Jarik_Tentsu]

I don't think crashes occur while going straight on a 'motorway'. So I don't think this system will make a difference at all.

Most crashes occur at intersections, changing lanes, while turning, etc.

All this would help is the occasional drunk driver who can't stay in his own lane, or a sleepy driver on a long journey.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[AmiMoJo]

Redundancy wise there is none, but that is true in most aircraft too. While the computer system will usually have redundancy the actual wiring does not. That has caused problems in the past where a small fire caused by an overheating in-flight entertainment system damaged control wires.

Fail-safe wise again there isn't much even in aircraft. The control surfaces generally don't reset, they remain in position when failed. That is usually what you want, e.g. flaps down if an accident during take-off or landing damages the control system. On the other hand if the plane is banking at the time it will make control via the engines alone very difficult.

Sensors also have a history of failing badly, e.g. frozen pitons giving bad data and not having any kind of failure detection.

Where there is some fail-safe consideration is in things like doors which open inwards so are held shut by internal air pressure. In the past they opened outwards and sometimes the locks failed in mid-air. Even then there tends not to be redundancy, e.g. there was a military flight a few years ago where the cargo door locks failed because one of 10 bolts was damaged. So not even 10% redundancy, all 10 bolts are required not to fail.

The reason there are not more accidents is that maintenance and checking is very through. Unfortunately cars don't get the same level of car.

Re:Never going to work in a litigious society

[gronofer]

One of my engineering professors worked on something like this in the 90s, when I asked him why we never saw anything like this come into use he said that they knew that the first time anyone was killed in an accident involving one of the automated vehicles the entire project would be dead. Regardless of if it was from something like a blowout causing a computer driven car to swerve into the other lane, or some drunk ramming headlong into a "platoon" of cars.

Even if it is much safer, the lawyers will be salivating while they wait for the first death.

Couldn't the same argument could be used to prove that nobody would ever drive a car manually? They'd be opening themselves up to lawsuits if they crashed. Occasional crashes are apparently the price we are willing to pay to travel faster, and if the automated cars have fewer crashes there's still a price to pay, but it's lower.

WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE ??

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus H. Rodriguez !! Is this some sort of sick joke ?? The Dark Side that enticing ??

Less driver attention == lower safety?

[pmontra]

You can trust the system, but the system doesn't know what's happening to your car. It knows what's happening to the leading truck. Suppose that a car in the convoy has a failure, a blown tire, anything that makes it slow down or change trajectory (maybe some bump or hole in the road). How do following cars avoid it if their drivers are sleeping, reading a book, having lunch? I know that people start car accidents while they are driving (texting, playing with music controls, having lunch) but I wonder if road trains are really safer than an equivalent number of cars each with its own driver. I think that this is the only safe road train.

Re:Less driver attention == lower safety?

[Anonymusing]

You can trust the system, but the system doesn't know what's happening to your car. It knows what's happening to the leading truck. Suppose that a car in the convoy has a failure, a blown tire, anything that makes it slow down or change trajectory (maybe some bump or hole in the road). How do following cars avoid it if their drivers are sleeping, reading a book, having lunch?

Exactly. Or maybe it's not a failure, per se, but something as simple as running out of gas? Is the system going to communicate all this information to the lead driver? Is that driver going to be responsible for alerting individual drivers that they need to jump out of the train to fuel up? Will the train just automatically pull into rest areas/gas stations and have *everyone* fuel up?

These are not insurmountable questions, but they do suggest a slower adoption rate (or smaller market) for the technology.

Re:Less driver attention == lower safety?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why can't each vehicle communicate these data with its convoy peers? Sounds both technically trivial and highly useful, no?

If the lead car dies, the cars behind could actually *coordinate* their evasion, even if it's something as simple as "car A breaks right, car B breaks left, car C breaks right, car D breaks left" to give a pretty and evasive fishbone that humans would never do.

And fuel is just a special case of leaving the convoy, which the system must handle ad-hoc to even get past alpha testing.

Re:Less driver attention == lower safety?

[Tom]

Suppose that a car in the convoy has a failure, a blown tire, anything that makes it slow down or change trajectory (maybe some bump or hole in the road). How do following cars avoid it if their drivers are sleeping, reading a book, having lunch?

RTFA. It's even embedded. They do say that they have a system in place monitoring the road, the distance to the car in front, etc. They are not just blindly sending instructions from the lead car and executing them.

but I wonder if road trains are really safer than an equivalent number of cars each with its own driver.

Statistically speaking, if the average chance of a driver having an accident is 1% (it isn't, but it's easier to calculate with simple numbers), then 10 individual cars will have a total probability of 9.562% of at least one car having an accident. The road train will have a probability of 1%. The risks associated with driving in a road train (failure of the system, etc.) would have to raise the accident probability by a full order of magnitude to make it more risky.

Re:Less driver attention == lower safety?

[Tom]

You are being ridiculous. There is no reason for the probability of someone driving in a road train running out of gas being any higher than the same for someone driving normally. With the system in place as described in the video, this would result in one car slowing down, those behind if following suit (distance sensors!) until the link to the lead car gets lost. At which point you are in the common situation of dissolving/leaving the road train, which there will have to be a solution for anyways.

Re:Less driver attention == lower safety?

[PseudonymousBraveguy]

Systems that match your speed to the car in front of you, including breaking to a full stop, are commercially available for over 10 years. I've personally driven in such a car, and the driving experience is (IMHO) fantastic.

However, those systems don't take over steering, so you still have to operate the wheel and thus keep attention on the road. They return full control to the driver in case the surroundings get "dangerous", i.e. outside of the parameters, e.g. if you get cut by somebody. In that case, you get a pretty loud warning, and the break force booster gets prepared for an emergency break.

Re:Less driver attention == lower safety?

[PseudonymousBraveguy]

I'd bet all those cars have to be equipped with active ACC (adaptive cruise control) systems. Those use radar or lidar, and sometimes other optical systems, to determine speed of and distance to other cars, and can actively control the speed of your car accordingly. Those are commercially available since over 10 years, so sudden deceleration of idividal members of such a train would not have any serious consequences.

I'd guess if somebody has to fuel up, the driver has to manually pull his car out of the train, while the rest of the trains continues the travel.

Re:Less driver attention == lower safety?

[FatLittleMonkey]

I know the system's still in early trials, but I can't see anything about safety testing in their own site (or any article about them). They've tested in snow, so I assume they've seen a bit of ice, but there's nothing about them deliberately trying to find the system's fail points.

And that seems a little too common in these automated systems. Remember Volvo's infamous lolfail video? An anti-collision system that happily drove into a truck. Or Top Gear's experience with a production auto-park system, which happily backed into a fence. These systems work brilliantly until you throw something at them that wasn't in their test.

How will they cope with faulty data? What happens when I buy one that's 20 years old? I have enough trouble with faulty sensors on my decidedly non-automated car.

I can imagine people reporting their cars suddenly swerving off the road for no apparent reason. Manufacturer stonewalls, claims driver error, publishes data from in-car data recorder showing that a manual "release" was triggered. Except it is recorded from the same sensor that triggers the release, so can't differentiate between a driver action and a faulty sensor. Then someone dies. And the manufacturer issues a world-wide "fix", a slightly higher surround around the Release button.

Re:Less driver attention == lower safety?

[Anonymusing]

You are being ridiculous. There is no reason for the probability of someone driving in a road train running out of gas being any higher than the same for someone driving normally.

Except that if the driver is reading the paper or watching TV instead of paying attention to the car, they are less likely to notice their level of gas.

Do you disagree that letting drivers become more passive could introduce more situations like this?

Re:Less driver attention == lower safety?

[s0litaire]

Think it will be more like a Swam (or flying "V" of geese)

The Lead sends out speed & direction signals to cars behind it.

The cars behind send the lead vehicle info on their location in the swam.

As most cars have been filled with all sorts of sensors it would not be hard to send that as telemetry to a lead vehicle to give it an exact picture of the state of each vehicle.

If one reports a problem (blow out, fuel, engine problems accident) the lead then can either tell other cars to slow down, change lane or whatever is required to minimise Human loss of lives.

It might be possible to use "Hard shoulders" / outside lanes for these vehicles rather than the normal lanes.

Re:Less driver attention == lower safety?

[Anonymous Coward]

Systems that match your speed to the car in front of you, including breaking to a full stop, are commercially available for over 10 years. I've personally driven in such a car, and the driving experience is (IMHO) fantastic.

However, those systems don't take over steering, so you still have to operate the wheel and thus keep attention on the road. They return full control to the driver in case the surroundings get "dangerous", i.e. outside of the parameters, e.g. if you get cut by somebody. In that case, you get a pretty loud warning, and the break force booster gets prepared for an emergency break.

Psst. Something in your post is broken.

Re:Less driver attention == lower safety?

[guruevi]

Those are very easy questions to solve.

1) There are already cars (concept) that can take themselves out of traffic when they notice the driver falling asleep. They just go automatically into the emergency lane and slow down. I believe Mercedes or Volkswagen/Audi did it.

2) There are a LOT of sensors in modern cars. Cars these days can detect a blowout or dangerous tire conditions that would lead to a blowout. Low fuel, mechanical failure and other conditions are easily communicated over a wireless link and would just result in an early disconnect from the 'train'. Cars also detect bumps in the road and continue going straight (ESC).

Re:Less driver attention == lower safety?

[Tom]

Except that if the driver is reading the paper or watching TV instead of paying attention to the car, they are less likely to notice their level of gas.

And ways to alert the driver to some situation even though he is reading the paper and watching TV at the same time while getting a blowjob from his girlfriend is absolutely not a problem that they will have to solve anyways during the development of this system?

Be honest, you're a control freak and it makes you nervous to hand over control of your vehicle. That's the real reason, and all the arguments are a screen for that. I'm not saying it's not an understandable reason, I'd certainly feel uncomfortable the first few times.

Do you disagree that letting drivers become more passive could introduce more situations like this?

On the contrary. When a situation does come up, I'd rather have a rested and relaxed driver than a tired and exhausted one because he's been concentrating on traffic for hours already. Humans are really horrible at keeping concentration on the same thing for extended periods of time. People regularily "phase out" during driving.

There's no such thing as 100%

[Kjella]

Professional human drivers do make errors too. Not to mention what really makes a driver "professional", a fresh taxi driver has less experience than many "amateurs". Computers may not be distracted or sleepy or drunk but sensors certainly can by rain and snow and low sun. They too can miss that there's an oil spill on the road and go flying off it, or an elk about to cross the road. And while the theory says you're never supposed to go faster than that you can stop on what road is visible to you, that rule is often violated in practice. But then, most of us do hand over that trust when we're passengers ourselves. They just need to make it safer to trust the auto than trust the driver, not perfection...

Re:There's no such thing as 100%

[vidnet]

They just need to make it safer to trust the auto than trust the driver, not perfection...

Ideally, yes. But try telling someone that the computer they're entrusting their lives to is almost 100% perfect, killing only 7 people per 1B miles driven*.

Also, people can only relate to human mistakes. If you hit an elk because it jumped into the road and you didn't react fast enough, people understand - even if a computer would have handled it easily.
If the elk was quite obviously standing in the road under a tree, but a computer vision based system interpretted it as a shadow and ran into it, the lawsuits would pile up. Even if the computer is a much better driver on average.

* Down from 11 with humans

Re:There's no such thing as 100%

[sunking2]

So you are 100% certain of this?

Fun to overtake...

[snugge]

How the hell are you supposed to overtake one of these things...?

Especially on sweden's moronic 2+1 divided highways?

Re:Fun to overtake...

[MaXMC]

Why would you want to overtake one of these things?

They will follow the speed limit so you won't have any reason what so ever to overtake them, besides not following the speedlimit yourself.

What's moronic about 2+1 roads?

Re:Fun to overtake...

[trigpoint]

They will follow the speed limit so you won't have any reason what so ever to overtake them, besides not following the speedlimit yourself.

If the lead vehicle is a truck, its speed limit is lower usually lower than that of a car. In the EU trucks have speed limiter fitted that are set to 100kmh, and in the UK many are (legally) restricted to 40mph. Cars can travel at 60mph on these roads.

Re:Fun to overtake...

[MaXMC]

In Sweden the maximum speed limit on a road is 110km/h

Cars/Trucks that weigh over 3.5 Metric tons are limited to 90Km/h.

If you are going 200km the gain from driving 100km/h versus 90km/h is 13 minutes. That's nothing considering you are driving for nearly two hours.

Re:Fun to overtake...

[zmollusc]

Nothing? 12% is nothing?
Also, if you managed 110km/h you would save 24 minutes, almost a quarter of the journey time.

100% reliable?

[digitig]

There's no such thing in technology as "100% reliable". It needs to be as safe as the current system (because it offers potential benefits in time and fuel efficiency) -- probably rather safer to overcome resistance to handing over responsibility for safety (most people will accept more risk if they perceive that they control the risk ourself than they will accept if they perceive somebody else to be controlling the risk). But not "100%" reliable.

Dupe from a couple of days ago

[philj]

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=11/01/18/0411235

Re:Dupe from a couple of days ago

[orphiuchus]

But I want to talk about it now!

Not scaremonger all of us

[SpaghettiPattern]

I have no intention to scaremonger all of us. But I just thought of the way to go with a loud BANG when one of the low moods hits me, again. I will enlist to become a road train conductor. I fancy I should be vividly remembered.

Re:Not scaremonger all of us

[Anonymous Coward]

Drive off a cliff?
Drive into a concrete barrier?

Re:Not scaremonger all of us

[Tom]

For about a week, yes.

If you want to take 10-20 others with you, there are easier ways to do that, today. Becoming a road train conductor, which will probably be accompanied by some training and a test or two, would certainly be a very long-winded way. Like joining the NRA and becoming an experienced game hunter just so you can shoot yourself.

Re:Not scaremonger all of us

[PseudonymousBraveguy]

I'd bet that every car will be equipped with safety systems of its own, so if the leading car runs amok, the rest will simply initiate an emergency break.

Re:Not scaremonger all of us

[SpaghettiPattern]

Becoming a road train conductor, which will probably be accompanied by some training and a test or two, would certainly be a very long-winded way.

Keep in mind we're geeks and that we try and solve our luxury problems through knowledge and by employing technologically interesting methods. It is a mere coincidence -a very luck coincidence in this hypothetical example- that we generally get bored shortly before having mastered the skill and that we simply move on and forget about our original purpose.

In any case, you're always better of with knowledge -however useless it may be- than without in two identical situations.
Right now, for instance, I'm studying for the ICC certificate. Not particularly in a country with no sea borders. But the I skills learn through this are mine. And consequently I feel more at ease should I ever need to determine a position or plan a course.

Causes vs circumstances

[mangu]

Usually, too much importance is given to the immediate cause of an accident. Most accidents don't happen due to a single cause, there's a number of circumstances that must exist together for an accident to happen.

In modern highways, the usual circumstance for most accidents is crowded lanes. The usual cause for crowded lanes is a few dumbasses of the i-hate-tailgaters-and-i-have-the-right-to-drive-at-any-speed-below-the-limit species.

Make it a severe offense, same penalties as drunken driving, to drive on the left lane with someone behind you and those "80% accidents" will go away.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[orphiuchus]

Usually, too much importance is given to the immediate cause of an accident. Most accidents don't happen due to a single cause, there's a number of circumstances that must exist together for an accident to happen.

In modern highways, the usual circumstance for most accidents is crowded lanes. The usual cause for crowded lanes is a few dumbasses of the i-hate-tailgaters-and-i-have-the-right-to-drive-at-any-speed-below-the-limit species.

Make it a severe offense, same penalties as drunken driving, to drive on the left lane with someone behind you and those "80% accidents" will go away.

Make it a severe offense to tailgate and you get the same solution, plus its the assholes instead of the timid that you would be punishing.

I get it when someone is going 55 in the left lane, that's insanity, but the vast majority of people whom I know that think like this are usually going 15 over the speed limit and riding the ass of the guy going 5 over. The tailgaters and aggressive drivers are the ones who cause fatalities.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[somersault]

This is true, but it's still frustrating for those of us that are attentive and efficient in our driving, to be stuck behind some guy that is being far, far too cautious. There are times when you need to be cautious, and there are times when it's basically completely safe to be doing 100mph (outside of an "act of God" like an unforeseeable mechanical failure), and so for someone not to even be doing the posted limit is just needlessly frustrating those behind. The driver behind may have too short a temper, and these days I try hard to just chill if there is no opportunity to pass - but the fact remains that slow drivers do agitate people, and this results in accidents. We need a higher standard of driving from everybody.

I especially dislike when people break the speed limit on a straight road, but then take 5 times longer than I would on a junction. This is often because they approach it too fast, so don't have time to accurately judge which gaps they can enter, either that or they don't even check for gaps until their car has come to a complete stop. Even when I'm obeying the speed limit, I often overtake these speeders just because I'm more attentive at roundabouts, crawling up to them at 5-10mph and taking gaps as soon as I see them, while the other guys are stuck at a standstill and so would take too long to get moving to be able to take the gap. Then of course the speeders blast past me on the next straight, and the cycle repeats.

Another one that really makes me facepalm is people who say do 50 in a 60 limit, and then when they enter a 30 limit they're doing 40. If they're worried about doing 60, how in hell do they think they are going to be able to react to a pedestrian stepping out in front of them at 40?

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[mangu]

Make it a severe offense to tailgate and you get the same solution

It would not be the same solution because the road would me more crowded overall.

Assume one person doing 55 starts passing another doing 54. In order to avoid tailgating altogether, everybody in a long stretch would have to slow down. If someone is driving slowly in front of you, you have to drive even slower until the space between your cars increase to a safe distance. The driver behind you would be forced to drive slower than you to get the same safe distance between you and him. And so on, the rest follows by induction.

Do the math and find how many drivers who are "safe" by the "tailgaters are evil" principle it takes for the traffic to stop completely.

The tailgaters and aggressive drivers are the ones who cause fatalities.

It takes two to tailgate, a tailgater and a tailgatee. As I said, accidents usually aren't caused by one single cause, in most cases if just one of a set of circumstances didn't happen there would be no accident.

The driver who starts a tailgating incident is the one who drives slowly on the left lane. If you want to blame only *one* person, blame the one who started it all.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[Zironic]

You fail at both driving and physics. To get a safe distance to the car infront of you you only need to slow down for 5 seconds at most then you can match speed with car infront of you, there is no recursive slow down for the entire road.

"It takes two to tailgate, a tailgater and a tailgatee. As I said, accidents usually aren't caused by one single cause, in most cases if just one of a set of circumstances didn't happen there would be no accident."

That's like saying it takes two to punch someone, the puncher and the punchee. It's retarded. There exists none, zero, zip, nada excuse to tailgate. There exists no situation where you're better off tailgating the person infront of you, you don't even get to your destination faster.

And for the record it is already illegal in most of the world to drive slow in the left lane (Usually under some law conserning disrupting traffic ) however that only applies if he's driving slower then the limit, if you think that's to slow then that's your problem. However there's never really any reason to go faster, suppose you drive at 110 on a 100 mph road, now your 30 minute trip takes 27 minutes, who cares? Those 3 minutes are a rounding error of your day.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[Anonymous Coward]

Stay right except to pass is just as much of a law as following too closely. If you see someone behind you approaching it is your legal responsibility to move right.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[orphiuchus]

...It takes two to tailgate, a tailgater and a tailgatee

...That's like saying it takes two to punch someone, the puncher and the punchee. It's retarded....

Damn, you beat me to it.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[Anonymous Coward]

"to drive on the left lane with someone behind you and those "80% accidents" will go away."

Honestly when I am overtaking a truck to pass and idiots like you are up on my bumper because I dare to only go 10mph over the speed limit, YOU are the cause of the accident. Stop being a idiot, You are not important, nobody cares about you. slow your ass down until I get out of the way.

I INTENTIONALLY slow down when someone is tailgating me. I let off the accelerator and when the truck I was passing get's ahead and I can merge over I do, but I slow your butt down and make you lose ground. Hopefully you get the point, yet most speeders typically have too low of an IQ though....

Yes I called you stupid. IF you tailgate you are in fact VERY STUPID.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[Lumpy]

So by your logic it's safer for me to install push-bars and shove the slower drivers off the road into a tailspin.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[FooAtWFU]

From a practical perspective, it's not a good idea to drive only the speed limit in the left lane when people are trying to go faster. There are probably safer ways to drive .

From a legal and moral perspective, though, I really do find it hard to see the outrage. "This vehicle in front of me has the nerve to obey the law and obey posted speed limits! Does he not realize that this lane of the road is, by ancient right, the proper and fitting domain of criminals such as myself? How dare they intrude!!! Curses! Foiled again!" Cry me a river.

I'm won't even get into the people who flash their high-beams aggressively when you're already going significantly faster than the speed limit and it's just not enough. (Not just a little "'scuse me plz" flash either, I mean the extended periods of blinkity-"I HATE YOU!!!" flashing.)

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[FooAtWFU]

"Keep right except to pass", eh? Let's see what they have to say about that in the California Driver Handbook:

Choosing A Lane

Traffic lanes are often referred to by number. The left or "fast" lane is called the "Number 1 Lane." The lane to the right of the "Number 1 Lane" is called the "Number 2 Lane," then the "Number 3 Lane."

Drive in the lane with the smoothest flow of traffic.If you can choose among three lanes, pick the middle lane for the smoothest driving. To drive faster, pass, or turn left, use the left lane. When you choose to drive slowly or enter or turn off the road, use the right lane.

If there are only two lanes in your direction, pick the right lane for the smoothest driving.

Do not weave in and out of traffic. Stay in one lane as much as possible. Once you start through an intersection, keep going. If you start to make a turn, follow through. Last minute changes may cause collisions. If you miss a turn, continue until you can safely and legally turn around.

Changing Lanes

Changing lanes includes:
* Moving from one lane to another.
* Entering the freeway from an on-ramp.
* Entering the road from a curb or the shoulder.

Before changing lanes, signal, look in all your mirrors, and:
* Check traffic behind and beside you.
* Glance over your left or right shoulder to make sure the lane you want is clear.
* Look for all vehicles, motorcyclists, and bicycle traffic in your blind spot.
* Be sure there is enough room for your vehicle in the next lane.

Passing Lanes

Before you pass, look ahead for road conditions and traffic that may cause other vehicles to move into your lane.

Never drive off the paved or maintraveled portion of the road or on the shoulder to pass. The edge of the main-traveled portion of the road may have a painted white line on the road's surface. Passing other vehicles at crossroads, railroad crossings, and shopping center entrances is dangerous.

Pass traffic on the left. You may pass on the right only when:
* An open highway is clearly marked for two or more lanes of travel in your direction.
* The driver ahead of you is turning left and you do not drive off the roadway to pass. Never pass on the left, if the driver is signaling a left turn.

I also Googled "keep right site:dmv.ca.gov" and came up with precious little.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[Myopic]

Do the math and find how many drivers who are "safe" by the "tailgaters are evil" principle it takes for the traffic to stop completely.

You're the one making a claim that goes against conventional wisdom. If you want us to believe you, then you do the math and show us.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see you apply that same rule to your retirement fund by putting your money in a savings acct instead of 401k. Sure, after one day the difference is negligible. But maybe my trip is more than 30 min, maybe it's 6 hrs.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[drinkypoo]

From a legal and moral perspective, though, I really do find it hard to see the outrage.

In the state of California it is illegal to drive in the passing lane when someone else is going faster than you. It is NOT illegal to pass on the right; it IS illegal to be passed on the right. You are also legally obligated to PULL OVER AND LET CARS BEHIND YOU PASS when there are five or more of them behind you. All of this is COMPLETELY REGARDLESS OF SPEED LIMIT.

I'm won't even get into the people who flash their high-beams aggressively when you're already going significantly faster than the speed limit and it's just not enough.

Why don't you just get the fuck out of the way? The passing lane is for passing. If you are not passing, get out of the passing lane.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[drinkypoo]

Maybe you should read the California Vehicle Code instead of the Driver's Handbook. The Handbook is just a guide. It is not illegal to pass on the right in California. It IS illegal to force another driver to pass on your right because you're in the passing lane.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[Anonymous Coward]

At a guess, your the i-hate-tailgaters-and-i-have-the-right-to-drive-at-any-speed-below-the-limit type

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[mcgrew]

There exists no situation where you're better off tailgating the person infront of you, you don't even get to your destination faster.

If he tailgates ME he'll get to his destination more slowly, because I'll slow down to minimize any damage he causes if he rear ends me. I have sixteen inch wheels and huge disk brakes, if one of those stupid endorphin addicts runs out in fron of my car from behind a dumpster like those idiots always do and I have to slam the brakes on, I'm liable to be at a dead stop before a tailgater can even touch his pedal. I agree with you, tailgating is retarded, period.

The GP sounds like a road-rager who thinks he can influence how someone else drives. He can, but not the way he thinks. He's probably going to wind up in the hospital the way he must drive.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[Anonymous Coward]

But if I drive 67mph on a 60mph road, my 10 hour trip now only takes 9 hours! That is definitely worth saving. I am considerably less tired making me less prone to having an accident.

BTW, the "left lane" is not the fast lane in all parts of the world.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[Anonymous Coward]

There are good reasons to tailgate in slow moving traffic. The cars behind you get to where they are going faster, there is a recusive speedup.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like a cite for all your ridiculous assertions please.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[FooAtWFU]

You're legally obligated to pull over and pass if you're driving along a single-lane road and you come to a turn-out. If you run into this problem regularly on California State Route 198 out by Coalinga or something like that. For an eight-lane stretch of Interstate 280 on your morning commute when there's 3000 cars behind everyone, it doesn't exactly equate. In any event, my California DMV driver's handbook tells me to stay in the lane with the smoothest traffic flow and change lanes as infrequently as possible.

As for the "why don't you just get the fuck out of the way" attitude, I hope all you maniacs get in car crashes. Nothing overly serious, mind you, but I want your insurance rates to go up. Because you're a bunch of flippin' maniacs.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like a cite for your ridiculous assertion please.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[Anonymous Coward]

110 vs. 100 might not matter on a 30 minute trip, but 80mph vs. 60mph will cut almost 2 hours off a trip from Minneapolis to Kansas City. This can be the difference between still being alert at the end of your drive and being punch drunk.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[Anonymous Coward]

However there's never really any reason to go faster, suppose you drive at 110 on a 100 mph road, now your 30 minute trip takes 27 minutes, who cares? Those 3 minutes are a rounding error of your day.

Yeah - 10% of a small number is a smaller number.

Try doing it with real world numbers. Driving at 95 instead 70mph for 200 hundred miles when I visit my parents means I'm there in 2 hours 6 minutes instead of 2 hours 51 minutes.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

That has nothing to do with tailgating. If there is in fact a law somewhere that says you must move right to let cars behind you pass, it doesn't say you have to break the speed limit, or that they can break the speed limit, or that you must merge too close to traffic in the right lane, or that the people behind you are allowed to tailgate or turn on their high beams.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[FooAtWFU]

Sorry, it's too early to think. That is, you're expected to pull over if you're driving along a two-lane road (single lane in each direction) and you come to a marked turn-out.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[Politburo]

"Keep right except to pass" does not magically turn into "yield to faster traffic". It is very common for me to be passing someone, with another driver up my ass (and another car 1-2 car lengths ahead). There's nowhere to go if they pass me, and there's nowhere for me to move over. They can fuck off.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[ShakaUVM]

>>There exists none, zero, zip, nada excuse to tailgate

If you want the guy ahead of you to move over, you can indicate that you're going to tailgate him by moving slightly faster than the car ahead of you, while leaving enough space to be safe.

Reasonable drivers like myself will move over if it looks like you want to go faster than me. However, if you match my speed, then I'm going to stay in my lane. So you do need to move faster than the guy ahead of you.

>>if you think that's to slow then that's your problem. However there's never really any reason to go faster

For the record, I hate drivers like you. If you're doing 65 in the fast lane on an 8-lane freeway, you're a much bigger risk to the safety of people on the road than anyone else. Every time someone has to suddenly brake or you force a merge, you're creating a chance for an accident. Much better to merge right until you find a lane going your speed. If the slow lane is going faster than 65 (it averages 75MPH near my house off the I-15 at night, even in the slow lane), then sure, you can say "if you think that's too slow, it's your problem". Nobody is going to get pissed at someone driving the speed limit in the slow lane.

But it's your responsibility to drive safely, and on most interstates, the safe speed is higher than the speed limit. On all roads but interstates here in CA, safe speed limits are set by survey. On interstates, they set them instead by legislation. So it's usually set artificially low, to what some nanny state bastard in Sacramento thinks is a good idea.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[nschubach]

Damn, you beat me to it.

In which case, you would be the punchee?

Joking aside... I don't think you can fully blame the person who punched. If someone was constantly getting in your way and not letting you get to the restroom (and you punch them) it's not entirely your fault. That person was doing something "anti-social" which in turn encouraged an "anti-social" act on your part. Severity aside, you still encouraged it by not giving way. Now, if someone were driving in the left lane going 5mph under the limit they could be construed as getting in the way.

Either way, it's probably best if they follow the "pass, then move right" rule instead of hanging out in the lane. Let the person go by, let the police enforce the law and don't take it into your own hands.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[drinkypoo]

That's right, it doesn't say any of that shit, it only says that if people are behind you, you have to let them pass. As a result, it's true regardless of whether you're doing 20 under the speed limit, the limit itself, or 20 over the speed limit.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[Zironic]

You don't need to tailgate to signal that you want him to move over, either he's going to notice that you're faster and let you through, in which case you don't need to tailgate, or he's not, in which case all the tailgating is doing is endangering both of your lives.

And you are getting me wrong, I'm not saying I like driving slow in the fast lane, I'm saying that if you're tailgating you're a fucking retard that deserves to die, however since I don't want to die with you, I want you to stop tailgating because it's moronic.

If I can drive 80 MPH on a 70 mph road without tailgating, then so can you. It's not hard, keeping a safe distance to the car in-front of you isn't rocket science and doesn't even necessarily require you to slow down.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are driving highway-only, yes, the difference in time is not much. However, enter traffic lights with significant wait times and the numbers can change quite a bit. Miss that light by 2 seconds, and your commute just lengthened by up to 4 minutes or more. Not to mention traffic patterns like rush hour, where if you catch the beginning it's not too bad, but gets progressively worse.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[HTH NE1]

One of the "advantages" of these systems is that they allow for the vehicles to follow more closely. The usual depictions have the road-train cars closer than one car length to each other.

It's gonna be hard to pass a train.

If you do happen to start passing one but don't finish before you reach your exit (can't easily tell from behind how many cars you'll be passing), you're gonna miss your exit, 'cause that train isn't going to split itself to accommodate you.

It's gonna be worse if they allow it on other than Interstate highways, especially roads which have No Passing Zones. Even on multi-lane highways, it would be easier to get boxed in with a train in both adjacent lanes, someone impeding you in front and someone tailgating behind. And if the three lanes become two ahead, well the lead car of that train may not see you. You might as well be hitting a lightcycle wall.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[mangu]

I INTENTIONALLY slow down when someone is tailgating me

Someday you'll meet "pam" (first comment on the link).

I hope you die alone and don't hurt anyone else.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[tragedy]

But, wouldn't that agree with the prior statement that it's ok to travel in the left lane unless you're going under the speed limit? After all, they would have to speed in order to pass you that way (and I know that everyone speeds to pass, but it's still technically illegal), so you wouldn't really be forcing them to pass on your right as they would have no business passing you.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[tragedy]

I no longer have any tolerance for tailgaters since an incident a bit over a decade ago. I was on my way to work and there was a long stretch of road with a double yellow for no passing and no good place to stop or pull over. I was going 5-10 miles over the speed limit already, and I had a car right on my rear bumper the whole way. When we reached the stop sign at the end of the road, they hit my car from behind when I stopped, knocking me forward and jarring my foot momentarily off the brake. I ended up across half the road in front of me. Fortunately, the road was pretty clear except for one oncoming tractor trailer coming from my left which crossed over to the wrong side of the road to avoid hitting me. After that, I pulled over to the side of the road, expecting the car that had hit me to stop, and also to have a brief panic attack for myself. They didn't stop, but instead just headed on their way. To this day, I don't know what that person thought about nearly killing me.

As it turned out, they turned into the parking lot of my work. I still wonder if they thought nothing of the event or if they thought that they would just be able to go through the security gate and I wouldn't be able to follow, or what they thought. It's actually one of the regrets of my life that I just decided to let it be and not confront them about it. I never did actually see who it was, just their car, although it would have been easy to catch them coming out of the parking lot.

Anyway, since then, as I said, I have pretty much no sympathy for tailgaters. If they want to speed and I'm in their way, they can eat my bumper.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[tragedy]

Ah, the s/he was asking for it theory of assault. Very popular in certain circles.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[Anonymous Coward]

50% of all crashes are drug/alcohol related.

Vast majority of the remainder is mostly assholes that drive too fast for conditions or don't pay attention to the road.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[tragedy]

I think, given the disagreement on your claim, it would be best if you gave an actual cite that people could actually look up. Not just "it's in this other book", but actually something like "it's in section blah, subsection blahblah of California general law blahblahblah". That would clearly silence your critics if it confirms what you assert, and it would stop all this speculative back and forth.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[Anonymous Coward]

100 vs. 110 may mean 3 minutes, tops. But it also means that your kinetic energy is 21% higher and if you crash, that 10% speed results in significantly higher chance of dying. 60mph vs. 100mph is 278% the kinetic energy of the slower vehicle and you are traveling 146 ft. per second (vs. 88 ft. per second). Since your reaction time is irrespective of velocity, your chance of avoiding something on the road is significantly lower and chance of dying VERY much higher thanks to the kinetic energy involved. (the same applies to figures in km/h :)

This reminds me of my great uncle's story after WWII. He was riding a motorcycle 70mph and some soldiers were going in opposite direction at about the same speed. They thought it would be "funny" to throw a tomato at him.. The tomato luckily missed him, buy ended up inside the steel gas tank, punching a nice round hole at the front...

I do agree, driving faster does not save you time... on the contrary, you probably end up losing much more time in the end thanks to a 1-in-10-years speeding ticket or crash (each could cost hours of your time), never mind the extra stress for yourself and your passengers.

Speed kills. If someone wants to drive fast, go to a race track.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[nschubach]

Didn't say that, but there are certain people who like to push the limits on what they can do to you without retaliation a bit too much.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[Zironic]

I sometimes wonder how much better traffic would be if it was legal to mount massive backwards facing spikes on your vehicle. Sure tailgate me, but it's not my fault if you get impaled when I hit my brakes :=)

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[phorm]

Funny, because at one point in time I got ticketed for "following too closely" (tailgating).
Essentially I had a nice safe following distance, then as we're coming around a corner the guy in front of me punches the brakes. Given the distance between him, myself, and the traffic behind, it would take awhile to allow the distance to grow again. However, the reason he hit the brakes was that he had a radar detector, and a cop was just around the bend.

Similar situations can occur when somebody cuts into traffic. In a rear-end collision, insurance corps tend to take the stance that any rear-end collision is caused by deliberate tailgating and/or not paying sufficient regard to environmental conditions (slick roads etc). In reality, plenty of situations do occur, especially in traffic where one must maintain a minimum safe following distance, but also a maximal distance before some jerk sees an open space and cuts in....

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[tragedy]

Sure, but, in states without "fighting words" statutes, hitting them for it is usually a crime. There's almost always another way. Such as, if someone is blocking you from going to the bathroom:

If it's an actual public place, call a police officer and explain that they're disturbing the peace.

If it's a business owned "public place", tell the manager and have them thrown out, or at least made to step aside. If the manager won't, then you can leave and not patronize their business anymore, or contact whoever is above them and complain.

If it's a private residence belonging to neither of you, then you ask the owner to intervene. Follow the model above I outlined for businesses above.

If it's a private residence belonging to yourself. Tell them to stop it or leave. If they won't stop, tell them to leave. If they don't, call the police and explain that they're trespassing.

If it's a private residence belonging to them. Then leave

There are lots of other ifs in there, of course. What if they prevent you from calling the police? What if they prevent you from leaving, etc. If their actions go as far as turning into actual assault or kidnapping, then you can go the punching them in the face route and it becomes self defense. Plenty of people can't safely take this route, however, because there are plenty of people who are obnoxious trouble-making bullies who are also not, in fact, just cowards who will back down if you show some backbone. Some of them are just looking to manufacture an excuse to beat you up without technically throwing the first punch.

I suppose, from my point of view, pretty much all cases boil down to either the one where they're throwing the first punch in some sense (first actual assault at least), or you have another recourse.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[Zironic]

If you think about it logically, the jerks cutting in don't really lose you much time on your trip though it gets pretty annoying to keep having to rebuild a safe distance each time.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[StikyPad]

Sure, but suppose you drive 600 miles at 80MPH instead of 65MPH -- that saves you nearly two hours. Or drive at 130 and save a full 4.5 hours! The problem isn't that speeding doesn't pay; it's that speeding a little over a short distance doesn't pay. The shorter your trip, the more you have to exceed the speed limit to make it worthwhile. So if you're going to speed, do it right! ;)

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[Anonymous Coward]

Tailgating helps to prevent dangerous lane changes. (With an emphasis on the dangerous ones.) In most places, if you don't tailgate in traffic, someone will cut you off. And that sir... is much more dangerous than tailgating. I will say that if you are tailgating, that you have to be paying attention. It's not a "safe" thing to do. It's just that it is "safer" in some instances.

With road laws there are times when you are better off breaking the law to be safer. The trick is figuring out when it is safer and when it is not. For instance, you are not safer going the speed limit, but by going the same speed as everyone else. For accidents that are vehicle vs vehicle, it's the speed _difference_ that matters. If there were a way to implement it, a speed _target_ would be much better than a speed limit. In a 55mph zone, someone going 45 is just as dangerous as someone going 65.

But, the law (needing to be black and white) does not recognize shades of gray well. So of course, you still need to avoid getting caught. That being said there are times when I've said to myself that if I got caught that I'd just pay the fine knowing that it was the cost of staying safe. (i.e. speeding up for a mile or two to get away a bad driver)

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[Anonymous Coward]

It might have been a coincidence, but that same thing happened to me out by Pittsburgh once. Was in town for a wedding and was doing a fair amount of chauffeuring. Every damned entrance onto a roadway, the idiots would stop. Is there lead in the Allegheny?

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[drinkypoo]

I think, given the disagreement on your claim, it would be best if you gave an actual cite that people could actually look up.

I think, given the ease of finding this information, my critics are bitches. They don't actually give a fuck about the issue, they just want to make me look bad. The fourth result for my search leads us to CVC 21654(a) where it says:

21654. (a) Notwithstanding the prima facie speed limits, any vehicle proceeding upon a highway at a speed less than the normal speed of traffic moving in the same direction at such time shall be driven in the right-hand lane for traffic or as close as practicable to the right-hand edge or curb, except when overtaking and passing another vehicle proceeding in the same direction or when preparing for a left turn at an intersection or into a private road or driveway.

(b) If a vehicle is being driven at a speed less than the normal speed of traffic moving in the same direction at such time, and is not being driven in the right-hand lane for traffic or as close as practicable to the right-hand edge or curb, it shall constitute prima facie evidence that the driver is operating the vehicle in violation of subdivision (a) of this section.

(c) The Department of Transportation, with respect to state highways, and local authorities, with respect to highways under their jurisdiction, may place and maintain upon highways official signs directing slow-moving traffic to use the right-hand traffic lane except when overtaking and passing another vehicle or preparing for a left turn.

So in summary: You are required to get the fuck out of the "normal" flow of traffic if you are obstructing it, in spite of the speed limit, and the DoT may spend your tax money to put up signs reminding people of this in the state of California. The site I found this link from claims that 30/50 (aka the majority of) states have similar laws. And the people who were crying about the need for a citation could have found one with google in less time than it would have taken to bitch and whine about how I didn't post one.

Real summary: Driving in the passing lane is illegal more often than it isn't, and people who just hang out there and make you pass on the right are douchebags.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[drinkypoo]

As for the "why don't you just get the fuck out of the way" attitude, I hope all you maniacs get in car crashes. Nothing overly serious, mind you, but I want your insurance rates to go up. Because you're a bunch of flippin' maniacs.

Well, all you have to do is be a law-breaker and a douchebag and you will probably get your wish, because holding up traffic increases accidents. Unfortunately, the slow driver usually isn't involved in the resulting accident.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[drinkypoo]

No, go read the CVC, I posted a comment about this already, it's explicitly "notwithstanding" the speed limit. Get the fuck out of the passing lane when someone wants to pass you, FULL STOP.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[tragedy]

I'm probably replying to this a bit late for anyone to actually read it, but here goes anyway.

It's good that you've provided a cite. Given the nature of the discussion, I think it's a little unreasonable for you to complain that people didn't look it up for you. If you're telling people that they're wrong and you're right in a situation where confusion and ambiguity is reasonable (for example if a state is apparently publishing multiple, contradictory bits of information on the same subject), it's a little unfair to tell people "you're wrong, and go look up the reason for yourself."

Anyway, on to the law itself. It still looks to me that the law doesn't quite say exactly what you said it does, and the law you've cited doesn't seem to cover all of your assertions. You wrote:

In the state of California it is illegal to drive in the passing lane when someone else is going faster than you. It is NOT illegal to pass on the right; it IS illegal to be passed on the right. You are also legally obligated to PULL OVER AND LET CARS BEHIND YOU PASS when there are five or more of them behind you. All of this is COMPLETELY REGARDLESS OF SPEED LIMIT.

I'll start with the assertion that your cite doesn't cover at all. That is that "you are also legally obligated to PULL OVER AND LET CARS BEHIND YOU PASS when there are five or more of them behind you". The law you cited doesn't seem to say anything about pulling over to let people by, or name any particular number of cars. The law that mentions this is:

21656. On a two-lane highway where passing is unsafe because of
traffic in the opposite direction or other conditions, a slow-moving
vehicle, including a passenger vehicle, behind which five or more
vehicles are formed in line, shall turn off the roadway at the
nearest place designated as a turnout by signs erected by the
authority having jurisdiction over the highway, or wherever
sufficient area for a safe turnout exists, in order to permit the
vehicles following it to proceed. As used in this section a
slow-moving vehicle is one which is proceeding at a rate of speed
less than the normal flow of traffic at the particular time and
place.

Which only covers two lane highways, and only when passing is actually unsafe. Also, only when there's either a marked area for the turnoff or it's "safe" to do so, which can cover a lot of ground. Also, this section does not mention that it's "notwithstanding the prima facie speed limits" and goes on to define slow moving in terms of "normal flow of traffic at the particular time and place." So, perhaps then "all of this is [not] COMPLETELY REGARDLESS OF SPEED LIMIT." Whether "normal" speed of traffic can be above the speed limits or not is a bit ambiguous. Seems to me that you could argue quite well that the fact that the "notwithstanding" is in the other section but not in this one, that it's intended that the speed limits be factored in. In any case, clearly "normal" isn't defined simply as how fast the cars behind want to go.

You seem to be correct that it's not illegal to pass on the right. I can't find any law against it per se. Of course, I can't find any actual exception to the speed limits, even when passing. So, even if the "normal" speed of traffic is 80, and you're passing someone who is going 65 in the left lane and you're at the "normal" speed of traffic, you're both breaking the law.

Finally, I'll address your principle assertion. The main position you've taken that people seem to be disagreeing with. That is that "In the state of California it is illegal to drive in the passing lane when someone else is going faster than you." The law you cited seems to actually completely disagree with that. It talks about "normal" speed of traffic, allowing it to be faster than the speed limit. If we assume "normal" speed to be the mean average speed of "traffic moving in the same direction at such time", then if there are exactly two cars on the road

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[drinkypoo]

I only provided the citation for the issue of whether it is illegal to prevent left-side passing regardless of speed because it's relatively new. You've been legally required to pull over when people stack up behind you since time immemorial. I don't know if the five is in the CVC or if it's just case law. The particular code of the CVC where you can find that information is listed on signs all over my home county, but I'm not there right now.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[randyleepublic]

>>  Those 3 minutes are a rounding error of your day.

Oh horseshit!  Last night I drove from Lancaster, CA to Reno, NV.  According to Google Maps, the drive takes 7 hours 48 minutes.  I made it in just under 6.  Sure, if I get pulled over for driving 120 MPH as I was in some sections, I would be really screwed, but Hiway 395 at 2 in the morning is nearly deserted, so no problems.

Although I was driving faster than the various speed limits the entire way,  I could easily cut another hour or more off it if I could simply drive at a speed appropriate for conditions, since in a lot of sections, I limit myself to an "enforcement-safe" 8 mph over.  (Read: "ridiculously slow")  Other sections, with a "front door", I cruise at 90.  When there are literally no other cars in sight, I kick it up to what ever feels right.

Being an inveterate speed limit scofflaw, I have found that most highways in the US feel just right cruising at 90, and 120 is about right for the fast sections.  My car is an efficient 5-cylinder turbo with a 6 speed manual, so driving at that pace ups my gas consumption less than 10%.  Also, driving at the right speed keeps one fully engaged - at the posted limit, I have to fight and fight to stay awake.

God damn it, the world is so fucking backward!   

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[tragedy]

Ok, but according to what you posted, it's not "illegal to prevent left-side passing regardless of speed". It's illegal to do so if and only if you're going slower than the "normal" speed of traffic. That crucial distinction, I think, accounts for most of your differences with the people you were arguing with.

Once again, on the being "legally required to pull over when people stack up behind you". The five cars is in the actual law: 21656. I quoted it above. But that law applies only to two lane highways where passing is prevented due to unsafe road conditions and only if the car is traveling less than the vaguely defined "normal" rate of traffic and it doesn't have the language exempting "normal" speed of traffic from the speed limits. And then, of course, you only have to turn off at clearly marked locations or where it's safe for you to do so (I'm assuming that the police and courts would be sane enough not to demand that you turn off at clearly marked points where it's also unsafe for you to do so due to conditions).

That law seems to me to have a few road safety issues. It would seem to me that safety issues would prevent following it in many conditions where it applies. Let's say there's a very icy (does this happen in California?) two lane road with only the right lane clear enough to drive safely on, and a car going as fast as is possible for it to go safely has five cars behind it that want to go faster. Does anyone expect the lead car to pull over onto the icy death sheet at the side of the road? To pull off at some exit ramp, turn around and get on again just to do the same thing at the next exit? Seems a little odd.

Regarding the signs up all over your county, I'm now curious about their origin. Do they cite 21656, or is it some other law that I missed? If they do cite that law, are they up exclusively on two lane highways, or are they on roads where the law technically doesn't apply? Also, if they are citing 21656, do they get the crucial details right, or skip the bit about road conditions and "normal" rate of traffic? Finally, who put them up? I'm genuinely curious, because I've seen plenty of "illegal" road signs in my life put up by local authorities who either know the law, or sometimes who do know it, but are simply hoping to drive up traffic ticket revenue or to give them an excuse to pull people over for other reasons (looking for drunk drivers, illegal immigrants, etc.)

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[drinkypoo]

I'll see if I can remember to go forth and take a picture of one of these signs so that I can illustrate the point. The text, however, is SLOWER VEHICLES MUST PULL OVER TO PERMIT PASSING. At least, IIRC, but I believe that I do. As for your other points, the verbiage of the law contains the text about safe conditions, so that pretty much answers your questions.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[tragedy]

The text doesn't literally say that, however, no matter how much you capitalize it. It's not a bad summary, but the critical point is how you define "SLOWER VEHICLES". The fact is that the law defines them as slower than the "normal" rate of traffic, not merely as slower than the cars immediately behind them.

I genuinely would like to know about those signs about the five or more cars.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[drinkypoo]

You asked me what was on the sign, I answered you, now you tell me the text doesn't literally say that?

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[tragedy]

Ah, no, sorry. I apologize. I read that as saying that the law quoted earlier said that. Sorry.

Re:Causes vs circumstances

[Anonymous Coward]

While it's probably illegal in the US, it's never enforced. It's quite painful actually, it's far nicer to drive in other countries (France was particularly nice outside of Paris). US drivers are typically the worst drivers in Western countries.

Here's what's not going to happen in America:

[Anonymous Coward]

this

Re:Here's what's not going to happen in America:

[herojig]

Exactly. From what I remember about America, is that driving is not just getting from point A to point B. It's about the journey in many cases. Even taking a different route home from work to see the sights was a freedom greatly enjoyed in your own vehicle. And doing that on a two-wheeler was even better. For longer journeys, like cross country, the adventure was taking Route 66 bits instead of the interstate, or diverting to see the World's Biggest Ball of String was something that made long drives fun. Even in the EU, puttering around France and stopping for lunch in a farmtown cafe (with yummy table wine), for example, sounds so much more interesting then participating in an Autobahn cartrain. When it gets down to it, this sounds like another personal freedom take-away on the way to becoming just a cog on a wheel instead of being human.

Re:Here's what's not going to happen in America:

[Tom]

I don't remember it saying anywhere that road trains would become mandatory.

I've driven the whole of Germany several times. Some of the times, arriving is my goal and I take the Autobahn, and if there were road trains available, I would have gladly taken them. Especially driving at night (which I prefer for the long trips because the roads are less crowded) is extremely boring.

Other times, you are right that the trip is more important than arriving at the destination. I've driven through Germany from south to north with maybe 20 km of Autobahn in total (to cross a major river). It was a three-day trip, it was very interesting, and I enjoyed the driving and the sights.

In the one case, the existence of road trains would have been a boon. In the other case, it wouldn't have made a difference. So in sum total, it would have been a boon.

Re:Here's what's not going to happen in America:

[Anonymous Coward]

When it gets down to it, this sounds like another personal freedom take-away on the way to becoming just a cog on a wheel instead of being human.

Oh, fuck off. Its not a mandatory requirement. Its not an attack on freedom. Its an option. If you want to take detour-y journeys, then great - go do it. I do it too. The road train idea isnt for that, its for when you just need to get somewhere.

I fequently have to make 350 mile trips on motorways, usually after work and its a tiring and unpleasant 6 hour journey. I dont want to go see the sights, I just want my drive to be over. It would be awesome to join a convoy and have my car drive the monotonous parts while I rest.

Re:Here's what's not going to happen in America:

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

How can you enjoy the sights if you have to watch the traffic?

Never!

[miffo.swe]

As long as any part of it is made with anything Microsoft Windows that thing wont get near any car i own.

Doomed

[Alioth]

'This kind of system would also require a complete change in motoring culture for drivers to hand over control.'

And sadly this is why it is doomed to failure. The problems aren't technical, the problems are cultural. We already know that many people's personality changes as soon as they get behind the wheel (normally polite people become aggressive and rude) and that motoring culture already doesn't accept the simple low-hanging fruit of better economy: no one really needs a 235bhp V6 car when the speed limit is only 70 mph.

So I don't see it ever happening.

Re:Doomed

[black_lbi]

As others have already pointed out there are a lot of technical problems which need to be sorted out before something like this could be viable.
My guess is it will never happen.
Regarding your engine power vs speed limit comment: it's not just about maximum speed, acceleration matters also.

Re:Doomed

[PseudonymousBraveguy]

The adaption will be slow, but I'd say it's not impossible. Adaptive cruise control is commercially available, and that teaches drivers to simply follow the speed of other cars. The next step would prpbably to evolve systems that warn on leaving your lane to systems that actively keep your lane. From there, you are almost at "road trains". If will take a couple of years, but I wouldn't consider it to be impossible at all.

Fuel economy is an important topic in countries with high gas prices. Fuel prices in Germany are 1,57 EUR/l or about 8 US$/gallon. Accordingly, the average car in europe has a much better fuel economy then the avarage US car.

Additionally, one of the major advantages of "road trains" is not only economy, but comfort. Driving a few hours on the highway is tiering, if you can just add your car to any passing road train and let your car drive, you wil reach your destination much more relaxed.

Re:Doomed

[Loosifur]

Thank God it's doomed to failure! Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of "plugging in" to a freeway and doing a steady 65 mph (faster than you'd be going in rush-hour traffic, and without the headache), but I also want the option to drive myself, however I want to. I like the feeling of driving a car. I like shifting. I like the visceral feeling of becoming in tune with a machine, and knowing all of its funny little quirks. I like knowing exactly how far I can push a car, and then getting right up to the edge. Granted, I'm not talking about doing 105 mph past an ambulance and a schoolbus on a crowded street, but when conditions are safe, I like driving fast and taking corners hard. I also like just seeing how an '84 Volvo stationwagon runs when I've tuned it up and restored it to new(ish) condition.

You know, people don't need beer or ice cream, and indeed, both can contribute to numerous social ills. Surely everyone who spends money on beer and/or ice cream would save that money by not buying either one. However, a lot of people happen to like beer and/or ice cream. There are a lot of things you don't need, but that you buy, eat, drink, or do anyway. That's sort of what makes life enjoyable.

Re:Doomed

[seyyah]

Thank God it's doomed to failure! Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of "plugging in" to a freeway and doing a steady 65 mph (faster than you'd be going in rush-hour traffic, and without the headache), but I also want the option to drive myself, however I want to. I like the feeling of driving a car. I like shifting. I like the visceral feeling of becoming in tune with a machine, and knowing all of its funny little quirks. I like knowing exactly how far I can push a car, and then getting right up to the edge.

So become a professional driver and let the rest of us take a nap while driving between Frankfurt and Vienna.

Re:Doomed

[PseudonymousBraveguy]

Nobody suggests thouse would be made mandatory. I like to drive fast as well, and here, driving 200 km/h is even legal. But most of the times, I only care about arriving save and as relaxed as possible at my destinations, and then I'd really like to be able to join a road train.

Re:Doomed

[londoncaller]

I like knowing exactly how far I can push a car, and then getting right up to the edge.... but when conditions are safe

The only way you can know exactly how far you can push a car is to take it past the edge. The only time "conditions are safe" to do that are on a track, never on a road. You are kidding yourself. Yes, people don't need beer and ice cream but in moderation they're not going to significantly increase the chance you killing yourself or more importantly someone else. Roads are for getting from A to B not for having fun. If you want to have fun in a car take it to a track.

Getting back to the article... we are obviously a long way off being able to implement this sort of tech in the near future. But I think we could go some- way to improving things by having variable speed limits that are enforced properly. The car should receive instructions on how fast it should be going and should relay this to the driver so the driver can adjust things accordingly. The car could produce audible warnings so the driver doesn't have to take his eyes off the road and look at the speedometer. And if over some agreed distance the driver has gone above the required limit they should be fined.

You could probably write an App for it.

Re:Doomed

[just fiddling around]

Under a platoon control scheme, you will still have to drive manually to get to and out of the platoon. Ergo: a car equipped to work in platoons can still be fun while (manually) doing the tail of the dragon.

This just resolves the problem of doing long boring drives and traffic.

Call me a luddite

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole convoy reminds me of a grand parade, troops marching and Stalin watching over them. No thanks, I can drive on my own. I don't want to be forced to fall in rank.

Re:Call me a luddite

[Noughmad]

Only in America is washing your laundry in public machines OK, while driving in common lines is communist.

would love to

[Tom]

I'd love to have this. I don't drive very much, but a few times I year I need to take fairly long trips. That is lost time to me. If I could kick back and read a book, or work on a notebook, that would be many hours of personal time gained.

Re:would love to

[st0rmshad0w]

So who says this system will be going where you are on your time-table?

Some of us like to be self reliant enough to get where we want to go in our own time by our own means and actually ENJOY the journey.

Re:would love to

[Brannoncyll]

I have no need for this. I don't drive very much, but a few times a year I need to take fairly long trips. That is not lost time to me. I kick back and read a book, or work on a notepad, and gain many hours of personal time. I use the railways.

Re:would love to

[Tom]

So?

You are arguing as if this would entirely replace private transportation. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever made that claim. It is an option you can take. If you get on the Autobahn at A and want to get off 20 km down the road at B, you'll probably not use it, even if it is available. But when you go 500 or 700 km, you might want to hook up for the majority of the trip.

professional lead drivers to take the strain=safe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does anyone think professional drivers are safer than your average commuter driver? If anything, truck drivers spend more time on their mobiles or asleep at the wheel, and taxi drivers are all think they're perfect and can drive twice as fast as everyone else.

DC Metro, anyone?

[Loosifur]

Good luck selling this to anyone from the Washington, DC area. The Metro is, rightly or wrongly, notorious in the DC area for being dangerous. The WMATA is notorious for everything from ignoring safety recommendations, running old cars, and skipping maintenance, to promoting a culture of hostility within its workforce. Metro employees are underpaid, overworked, and, to put it delicately, benefit from a somewhat lenient hiring process. Now, who would you propose will be driving the lead car around the Capital Beltway? Unless you pick this one segment of public transportation to be contracted out to a private company, it's gonna be the WMATA in the DC area. If I wanted some surly bastard with no professional training who hates his job and hasn't slept in a day to drive, I'd do it myself, thanks.

Re:DC Metro, anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll never work in the US for one simple reason. There are to many people who absolutely cannot follow another vehicle. I see them everyday accelerating to 80-90-100 mph just to pass one car in front of them so they don't have to stare at another car's bumper. Gotta be first ya know!

Hmm...

[lennier1]

Somebody should've told them that the term "road train" is already widely used for a related phenomenon.

I want to be the driver

[Anonymous Coward]

And then I can take them here: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Swindon)

Mwuhahahahaa

And then

[unity100]

why are all the major innovations breaking important barriers coming from sweden, a socialist heritage country with a whopass personal income tax and beyond-american-dream social security ?

Re:And then

[0123456]

why are all the major innovations breaking important barriers coming from sweden, a socialist heritage country with a whopass personal income tax and beyond-american-dream social security ?

Which 'major innovations' would those be? Ikea furniture?

This whole thing is a pipe-dream which won't go anywhere any time soon. Programming a computer to drive a car around a closed track following another vehicle is pretty much trivial compared to doing it safely in the real world.

Re:And then

[unity100]

from this, to the wood chip plant that produces power from wood chips, to first godknowshowmuchsomething Terabytes of home connectivity test first to be done on the planet. search slashdot for sweden.

Re:And then

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's so great, why don't you live there?

Re:And then

[Anonymous Coward]

why are all the major innovations breaking important barriers coming from sweden

Simple: They aren't.

Re:And then

[unity100]

oh yesh they are, yesh they areeee.

Best of both worlds :*P

[TerribleNews]

You get all the convenience of having to conform to the train schedule, with all the fuel consumption of a car (okay, according to TFS, 80% of the fuel consumption of your car plus 1/n*the fuel consumption of the lead vehicle, where n is number of vehicles in the road train).

Why

[RandySC]

would I want to voluntarily be stuck behind a truck going 90 km/hr? Just thinking about it has me searching for third gear while sitting at my desk:)

Serial pile-up?

[Geminii]

Currently, if the lead truck in a convoy does something stupid, unexpected, or dangerous, the following trucks with their human drivers are able to instantly make the decision to stop following the first truck's lead and instead perform a much safer action, such as slowing down, changing lane, taking a different route, pulling over etc, regardless of location, road condition, weather, catastrophic damage to the route (landslide, bridge out etc). They are also able to reform the convoy and deliver their own cargoes even if the lead truck's driver has been turned into a road pancake. In the event that the lead truck is rendered immobile but the driver is still alive, the other drivers can notify emergency services, perform first aid, direct traffic away from the dangerous area, etc.

What happens to an automatic convoy when the lead truck clips something on the side of the road, flips over, and slides 200 feet into a ditch? Are the others obligated to follow suit like giant mechanical lemmings?

Re:Serial pile-up?

[PseudonymousBraveguy]

Of course, and if the lead driver gets killed in an accident and some of the passangers in other cars survive the crash, they will be automatically shot to follow the lead as closely as possible. Also, everbody who works in automotive research is stupid and not able to see this obvious problem.

Re:Serial pile-up?

[estestvoispytatel]

The leading truck has biggest mass and therefore momentum in the crowd, so its distance to stop will be massively longer. Also, '06 Volvo S80 owned by my gf's parents came equipped with three traffic radars and autobraking system, so I presume even not the bleeding edge cars can be updated to gently stop in proper lane if they suddenly lost the beacon on the leading car.

"Brakes"

[Joce640k]

Cars have brakes to stop them. "Break" is a verb.

Re:"Brakes"

[lennier1]

Not always (e.g., "a clean break with the past"). ;)

Re:"Brakes"

[gnarfel]

That's still a verb. The past would be your noun, and clean would be your modifier/adjective.

Re:"Brakes"

[lennier1]

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/break?show=1&t=1295568604

break (noun)

Definition of BREAK

1 a : an act or action of breaking

  b : the opening shot in a game of pool or billiards

2 a : a condition produced by or as if by breaking : gap <a break in the clouds>

  b : a gap in an otherwise continuous electric circuit
...

10 a : a rupture in previously agreeable relations <a break between the two countries>

  b : an abrupt split or difference with something previously adhered to or followed <a sharp break with tradition>
...

Damn

[PopeRatzo]

If Sweden had sunshine, I'd move there in a second.

Oh, and at least one NFL and one NBA franchise.

Re:Damn

[Anonymous Coward]

If Sweden had sunshine, I'd move there in a second.

Let's talk about that again in the summer.

"Bartender, I'll have another, please"

[PolygamousRanchKid]

"Don't worry, the 'road train' is driving me home."

Duplicate

[jklovanc]

How is this different from http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/01/18/0411235/How-Europe-Will-Lower-Emissions-mdash-Self-Driving-Cars posted two days ago? It is a slightly different angle but the same technology.

lane change?

[zmollusc]

How does the convoy agree to change lanes? Is there a discussion between all the vehicles' sensors or will some poor bastard get sideswiped into the guard rail? What happens when two convoys are side by side and roadworks narrow the road to a single lane? Imagine the chaos as a hundred 'drivers' have to be awakened/climb back into the front seat/ put down their spaghetti/ find their driving glasses etc.

And so i don't look out of place, I hope nobody will 'loose' their life when the 'breaks' fail.

Re:lane change?

[Necroloth]

Or they could be like buses and have different route numbers and you tag along to the one where you want to be heading.

Re:lane change?

[FatAlb3rt]

New vehicles already have side sensors. All vehicles in the convoy will have to be networked together. I'm sure that's at least part of how it will work. There will need to be lots of data exchanged - how heavy each vehicle is or some sort of stopping distance requirements or minimums (the lead shouldn't slow faster than any of the vehicles are capable of slowing), destination information (how long you intend to convoy), how long you can convoy (fuel), joining/exiting requests...

Real World?

[Dean Edmonds]

Since when is a closed test track considered a "real world" environment?

Re:Real World?

[nschubach]

Because it's not virtual world? /shrug

Heads I win, tails you lose

[jjo]

A system like this will indeed have to achieve a phenomenal level of safety, at least in the USA, because of how liability for accidents is assigned. Even if it saved 10,000 lives for every death it caused, on trial for causing that one death the manufacturers and system operators would get precisely zero credit for the lives saved, and would be vilified for causing the one death.

We have already seen this problem with vaccines, and it required special legislation to enable vaccine manufacturers to stay in business. The chances of getting such legislation for road trains are vanishingly small.

They've re-Invented Trains

[nukenerd]

An automated system is likely to make it safer as it takes away driver error'

Good luck with that. Railway trains are highly automated and the rails even take guidance out of the driver's hands, but trains still crash due to human error.

Which makes me think that all the Swedish system needs now are some rails to do the guidance. Wow, I'll patent that! Oh wait ....

Actually, it isn't

[Kupfernigk]

Another "urban myth". For gasoline engines, efficiency is lower at low specific output because the gas isn't compressed enough. Diesels are not affected by this and their efficiency curve is pretty flat from minimum to maximum power.

However, even for gasoline engines, the power required at low speeds drops more rapidly than the fall off in engine efficiency, for any sane value of engine size. Briefly, if your fuel consumption worsens at speeds below about 40mph, you are probably driving an old US V8 with a squirt-and-hope carburetor. People with sensible vehicles will not have this problem.

Re:Actually, it isn't

[jayme0227]

Actually, everything I'm finding says that fuel efficiency is worse at lower speeds, peaking in the 40-60 mph range, then dropping again. This has a good explanation of the math. This has a simple chart that shows the average results. AFAIK these exact figures deal only in gasoline engines, but the logic should be applicable to diesel engines.

To summarize, with the engine on, at 0 mph, you are getting 0 miles to the gallon and all of the gas that you are using is being wasted. Also, the power needed to increase speed and maintain it by 1 mph increases dramatically as speed increases. (The difference in the amount of work needed to maintain speeds of 60 and 61 mph is far greater than the difference in the amount of work needed to maintain a speed of 2 to 3 mph) When these two are combined together. It turns out that, for gas engines anyway, peak fuel efficiency is between 40 and 60 mph, although if you're driving at any speed between 25 and 60 you probably wouldn't notice. After that, fuel efficiency drops dramatically.

Perceived as unsafe

[morgauxo]

The professional drivers may be better and cut down on accidents but they are still human. When they do have an accident it could take out the whole 'train'. This might still lead to fewer total deaths but each accident will get a lot more press coverage. Compare this to airplane travel. You are much more likely to die on the road than flying but how many people are afraid to fly vs afraid to ride in a car?

Auto Rail

[__aazsst3756]

What if we built a single rail that mimics the interstate system, but made to hurdle small cars that meet a standard specification for size, weight, and aerodynamic profile. Perhaps the track is a single electromagnetic pipe cars hung from? You could then purchase a car with a built in connector to operate on this track, and a dash panel to choose destination and cost. You can drive local, and hop on the rail to travel longer distances. The rail control computer could slow and speed individual cars to group them for aerodynamic efficiency.

I thought of this years ago and...

[ehrichweiss]

I've had this idea for over 25 years at this point and they're missing several things to make this work. For example, what happens when one member of your convoy has a rear-tire blowout?** If your vehicles aren't *physically* connected then you're going to have an incredibly dangerous situation on your hands. It took me until a few years ago to work out how to physically connect the vehicles such that they are secure, yet easily detachable. I think they need to hire me on as a consultant.

**(for those who don't know, a rear-tire blowout can make you lose control of your steering if you don't have lightning fast reflexes)

Re:I thought of this years ago and...

[Captain Hook]

Computers do have lightning fast reflexes. And when in a train, it will always been the computer in charge because the whole point is to reduce the gap between vehicles to below that of what human reflexes are capable of so that the vehicles can take advantage of slipstreams.

Re:I thought of this years ago and...

[ehrichweiss]

Presently computers aren't capable of dealing with the circumstances that arise from such a blowout through *physical* means since servos, sensors, etc. do not indeed have lightning fast reflexes capable of dealing with the difference between a mere flat tire and an actual blowout, or even a tire coming undone. Being physically connected would allow for an even smaller gap and in the event of a blowout the computer could alert a human who could then take control and safely disconnect from the train.

The thing to ask yourself is how the computers of the vehicles behind you deal with your situation. If they're close and your car isn't physically restrained then if something malfunctioned majorly then all the cars behind you would have to suddenly and sharply brake(and possibly steer) which isn't safe for THEM in either situation and would likely lead to car wrecks with 50 or more vehicles involved on a regular basis; that changes if you're physically restrained. For the record, I've worked in an industry where I got to see all the things that could go wrong with a vehicle(especially tractor-trailers) and the only real solution is physical connection.... or bumper cars*snicker*.

Re:I thought of this years ago and...

[milkmage]

volvo's pretty smart.. i'm sure they've thought of it.. afterall, I think Volvos and Mercedes have collision detection.. meaning the car will stop automatically if you come to close to the car in front of you or something.

a PHYSICAL connection is... well.. how do you JOIN/LEAVE the convoy? I assume you're talking about a rigid connection so they all move at the same speed?.. but what to do to join.. pull everyone over so you can literally hook up? or everyone has have the same origination/destination? that's useless. even if it was just a cable, you have the same problem.. everybody stop.. i have to pee? everybody stop, this is my exit? you need to be able to join/leave w/o impacting everyone else.

I'd rather have a computer take over in the event of a blowout, because most humans will overcompensate (steering).. which is where the real problem lies - swerving into oncoming traffic, etc. computers are fast and efficient and can execute instruction w/o freaking out (stay in your lane and come to a controlled stop) there's no reason a computer can't maintain a safe interval (relative to speed). rule of thumb is one car length per every 10mph, if a computer was in control, you could probably cut that in half (which is where the fuel savings may come in... you can feel the strain on your engine drop if you're using cruise control and you pull into the wake of the semi in front of you)

biggest barrier i see is the hardware required.. not every car has cruise control, and no commercial vehicle I know of has any automatic steering.. it's new cars or factory retrofit... for everyone. I won't trust the jiffylube guys to install auto-pilot for me.

logistical problems of a pysical connection is why you've been thinking about it for 25 years, whereas volvo's built something.

Re:I thought of this years ago and...

[ehrichweiss]

Oh heavens no, a physical connection doesn't imply that at all. Think in terms of a mechanical linking device akin to what trains have, except with an automated lock instead of manual.

Also you've apparently never towed a car on a tow bar. You don't need "steering" except on the vehicle in front especially since you're not talking about making tight S-curves afterall, just mostly straight stretches.

The only thing you need to automate is the speed for most cars, and the link. Neither of those was that big of an issue. You would need a few cars that could have automated steering, or a driver willing to take manual control long enough for a car to link into the train. I've thought out the logistics of THAT as well but I'm not sharing that idea since this report empowers me to take my idea to people who will now be willing to listen.

As for the guys at Jiffylube installing it, nope, you'd want someone who installed trailer hitches to do that instead since they have the experience required to know what will work and what will not. Just like you wouldn't have the guys at Jiffylube install your new shiny operating system on your computer, eh.

And I came up with my solution about 5 years ago so I beat Volvo, etc. to the punch despite your comment to the contrary, and when I started this line of thought computers weren't powerful enough to do any of this so perhaps you've not thought this through as deeply as you think you have...like what happens if the computer has a major malfunction while the driver is asleep? Pain and misery. What happens in my system? Loss of speed/power contributed to the train yet still able to retain enough control to disconnect from the train. 25 years is a lot of time for me to have thought about this for you to think that you've got a handle on all the "holes" in it in just a few minutes.

Re:I thought of this years ago and...

[hUcKiECA]

Actually, it only takes about 13 seconds to google "automated vehicle tire blowout" to find that computers in 1994 were capable of dealing with the tire blowout scenario, at least according to peer reviewed journal articles.

Re:I thought of this years ago and...

[ehrichweiss]

Those are for a front-tire blowout from what I've read. A rear-tire blowout is significantly more dangerous and unpredictable.

Re:I thought of this years ago and...

[layer3switch]

would you be mad and delirious if someone made blowout-less tires that never come off the vehicle and made your 25 years of work obsolete?

Re:I thought of this years ago and...

[ehrichweiss]

None of that would affect the fact that you have to buy a new car to get the benefits from TFA's car whereas mine would require something that would cost around $2000-$3000 and fit on almost any car. Nice try though.

Re:I thought of this years ago and...

[layer3switch]

i'm sure you have thought about this problem for a very long time, but i am not sure about your statement where you said;

"you have to buy a new car to get the benefits from TFA's car"...

you see, i read the TFA and SARTRE project. there is not a single word or phrase that states what you just implied. what or which information am i missing that you have read solely from the TFA? or are you just making pretentious assumption?

not just driver culture

[Anonymous Coward]

It would take a complete change in mal-hacker subculture as well. Really, it's *not* fun to crash road-trains!

Since the driver will be asleep/inattentive, I imagine RF interference will be adequate.

Beep! Beep! Beep!

[danaris]

Except that if the driver is reading the paper or watching TV instead of paying attention to the car, they are less likely to notice their level of gas.

You don't think it would be possible to, say, make alerts of this nature more intrusive? Like loud beeps if the level of gas is getting too low?

It's really not hard to get the attention of someone who isn't deliberately ignoring everything that they don't want to deal with. And that kind of person...well, there's not an awful lot you can do about them in any situation.

Dan Aris

Small Bladders

[yogidog98]

Cars lack two critical elements for long-haul travel: toilets and room to stretch your legs. It's easy enough to pull over when you're in control, but in a convoy controlled by a professional driver, depending on the length of the trip, you may need to bring Depends. I'm not sure what you'd do about cramps.

When you want it, you can't get it.

[westlake]

The road train is plausible only on the limited access motor way --- where accidents have always been rare and the weather is an important contributing factor.

You are far more likely to be injured or killed before you join the train or after you leave it.

There's something similar to this already

[torrija]

BMW has a system to keep a constant distance with the vehicle in front of you, but it doesn't steer the wheel: http://www.bmw.com/com/en/insights/technology/technology_guide/articles/active_cruise_control.html

Re:There's something similar to this already

[Midnight Thunder]

I wonder whether these systems take into account the relative momentum to the vehicle in front of you - it would mean having this information communicated between vehicles. For example if a truck is following a car, then the system will need to adjust safe distance to be sure that it can break safely in an emergency (truck will take longer to break than the car and this will vary based on load). Other things that need to be accounted for are lane changes and sudden erratic behaviour of the vehicle in front.

It would be interesting to present emergency situations to both humans and computer and see which ones react best in that situation.

BTW Australia already has road trains, but they don't refer to the same thing. See top photo here: http://www.greenprophet.com/2010/04/time-to-hook-your-car-onto-the-road-train/road-train-australia-truck/

Too complex

[Anonymous Coward]

"using professional lead drivers to take the strain on long journeys”

If this is going to require a lead vehicle with a professional driver, why not just load the cars up on a truck, or a train, and let that get them to their destination and call it a land ferry?

Re:what if the car before me fails?

[just fiddling around]

Trivial case to resolve using a proper distributed command and control protocol. If each car in the platoon are aware of what the first car is doing in addition to what the car(s) upstream of it is doing, then if any car other than the first fails, the platoon can continue operating under sane conditions. Of course, collision avoidance has to be factored in but that is already on the market in the form of radar braking assist.

The case where the first car fails, well, it is one of the avenues for research.

Red Thunder

[JTsyo]

In the sci-fi book, the author had a system than were land trains that were created using whatever cars were on the road at the time. All the cars were controlled from a central location. I think something like this will replace the HOV lanes in the future. What they are talking about now seems to be the first step to working up to something better. Also don't confuse these roads trains with those from the past like TC-497 Overland Train. http://www.warisboring.com/2007/07/23/army-overland-train-hybrids-in-the-1950s/

Many things work outside the USA... ;-)

[fantomas]

unfortunately we seem to be following your lawyer driven society here in the UK as well. Can see it working in quite a few European countries though...

Crazy

[DarthVain]

Next I guess you're going to tell me they also invented rail cars?

Wait until the mouthers get a hold of this one

[rinoid]

If you think a "government takeover of healthcare" was a big to do, just wait until the government drives you to work!

The politicians are already driven to work by the government, our tax dollars, and, give themselves raises while minimum wage has barely budged.

probably best not to return control to the user..

[schlachter]

With good sensors and great algorithms, which we're quickly approaching on....I suspect that your average untrained driver would do a far worse job recovering from a blowout than the control algorithms and sensors on your car which have complete knowledge of all surrounding cars and road features and an extensive data base of maneuvers that are known to be effective in these situations.

No, *YOU* fail at physics - and math

[mangu]

there is no recursive slow down for the entire road.

That's only by your faulty reasoning, since you don't care about anything you see in the rearview mirror.

Try googling traffic waves to find out how much and how long your braking affects the drivers behind you.

Re:No, *YOU* fail at physics - and math

[Zironic]

So you link me to something that's completely unrelated to tailgating under normal conditions to prove what exactly? Your own link even states that the best way to prevent stop and go traffic is by having a good distance to the car infront of you so you don't have to stop all the time.

ultra prt

[Anonymous Coward]

platooning road vehicles is a dumb idea . It is much simpler to packetize rail traffic and put in a mesh network . See heathrow airport as an example .

this will rock...

[rgviza]

Can't wait. I _hate_ driving to work and if me giving up control to the car in front of me makes it go better, I'm all for it.

The only thing that would scare me is that for braking, your car would need to adjust your following distance based on the braking capability of the car in front of you and your own. IE if you have an Audi TT in front of a tractor trailer, and the audi driver brakes hard, that truck will go right up his butt if it's too close. Now factor that across 10, 20, 50 cars.

It has potential if they can get that worked out, as well as lane sensing. Like what happens if the lead car switches lanes and the guy behind him is snoozing? Does the whole train get discombobulated? If this happened it could be a disaster. Then you have the assholes that switch lanes every few hundred feet because the lane next to them starts going .5 mph faster. I'm convinced that these are the jerkoffs that cause 90% of backups. What happens when this guy (that presumably has the train software turned off) wrecks the following distance of the tractor trailer behind the TT and cuts it in half, then the TT guy has to brake hard for a deer? The truck thinks it has 250 feet to stop, but it's really only got 125 because the guy in front of him isn't hooked in and the computer in the truck doesn't know he's there.

This will be a hard sell in the US, where most of the drivers drive like they are playing Gran Turismo on the playstation, and transfer the disregard for safety and the need to pass whatever is in front of them, at any cost, no matter what their current speed, to the real world.

Variable Speed Limits

[trigpoint]

A few motorways in the UK have variable speed limits, enforced by speed cameras. When the limit drops, there is a slight delay to allow vehicles that are too close to slow down can get through. If the lead vehicle passes just before the limit changes, the first few cars will get through, but will everyone else not get a ticket?

So today, I ran a test

[Kupfernigk]

Small European turbodiesel with a 3-pointed star on front. I do tend to trust the fuel consumption gauge because its average tallies with fill ups.

Speeds by satnav.

• 70mph: indicates 55-60mpg
• 60mph: indicates 60-70mpg (road less level).
• 40mph: indicates around 70-85mpg
• 30mph: indicates around 80-99.9 (shows 99.9 when fuel cutoff.)

Your "explanation", by the way, has nothing to do with anything (it has no numbers), but in any case suggests the exact opposite of what you propose.

Re:So today, I ran a test

[Anonymous Coward]

40mph: indicates around 70-85mpg
30mph: indicates around 80-99.9 (shows 99.9 when fuel cutoff.)

I think this test would be much better conducted on a very flat and straight road, and taking into account engine RPMs, since I think diesels tend to have their peak efficiency at a lower RPM. You have to take account of gear, engine efficiency at current RPM, air resistance, rolling resistance, headwinds, road incline etc before making any general statements about overall speed and fuel consumption. Driving around at 35mph in first gear is going to be way less efficient than in second or third. Obviously once you get over around 50mph then drag becomes the main factor, but below that it isn't all so cut and dried. Each car will have a different speed at which it is most efficient.

Your simple chart is out of date

[Kupfernigk]

Ten year old figures are almost as bad as the guy quoting a 15 year old graph above. I'm quite prepared to believe that US cars in 2000 had terrible idling performance and economy at low speeds because, to be frank, their power plants and transmissions were way obsolete. Diesels hardly suffer from the idle problem at all, and modern European cars would be expected to do much better because they have much more advanced fuel injection systems with features like cutoff on overrun. Plus most US cars are vastly over-engined for highway speeds; as an acquaintance remarked years ago when pulled over for doing 135 by men with guns, "Why do you build your cars so fast if the limit is 55?"

History repeating

[awtbfb]

Yep, and autonomous driving in mixed traffic was done for No Hands Across America in 1995. Also, SARTRE is very similar to the CHAUFFEUR I and II European Commission projects in the 90's and early 00's.

The AHS History 1939 - 1997 movie (RealPlayer) is awesome.

People and computers can't share roads

[TBBle]

I don't believe that people and computers will be able to safe share roads. Here's my reasoning.

The major cause of accidents on the roads is surprise. If everyone drives the way everyone else expects then the road is a very safe place to be indeed.

Hence, our road safety largely relies upon drivers being able to successfully predict what other drivers (and technically, landmarks and animals) are going to do.

It's one of the main principles of driving: Don't surprise others, don't be surprised by others. If you don't know what someone is going to do, keep your distance.

You don't (as I've heard people be advised) assume that everyone around you is an idiot just waiting to pull a U-turn and drive head-on into you, because there's no way to drive safely under such a set of assumptions.

It's been statistically shown (i.e. I've been shown graphs) that going 10km/h faster or slower than the surrounding traffic makes you 10 times more likely to be involved in a multi-vehicle collision. Which makes sense if you think about it. If everyone's going in the same speed and the same direction, you cannot physically hit anyone else, your vectors do not intersect.

Now to the computers. The basic reasoning is this: Take your general population. Consider all those who are competent drivers. Now intersect that group with those who are able to successfully predict what a computer can do, and know it. That intersection will be the only group of people safely able to share roads with a computer. But the first group will be the ones who are allowed to do so.

On the other hand, computers _should_ be able to predict what the other computers are gong to do. Particularly with near-range wireless communications, they can simply _ask_ each other what they're seeing, and what they expect to do.

I think the best bet is to have highways built (or lanes declared and partitioned as) automation-only zones, and let people enter the highway under computer control only. Once on the highway, road convoys can self-assemble for speed/fuel efficiency purposes or not, but it's all computer controlled, so there's no drivers either acting unpredictable, or incorrectly predicting other vehicle's movements.

As a reward for reading this far: I did RTFA and I know this isn't actually what the article's about. In fact, I think the article's describing a really good and workable idea which I wholeheartedly support.

It's just something that's been weighing on my mind since having recently taken a motorcycle learner's course, (and I have other relevant background) and some of the comments on this article (who clearly haven't RTFA and think we're talking about a computer-driven convoy) are wildly mistaken about things like how road safety works, how this idea works, and in fact what this idea is.

Cool, but impractical

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a lot of things they will have to solve before this could even be considered for use on actual highways.

How will it handle...
- another vehicle (not a member of the train) cutting in?
- a vehicle that does not follow the expected trajectory (say, sliding while braking on ice)?
- an emergency return of control to the driver? What about when that driver is sleeping?

It seems arguments are being made that failures to handle special situations which result in accidents, would still result in less overall accidents than with individual drivers as we have now. Perhaps there is some truth to that, but even if there is, it doesn't hold true for everybody. I am very confident in my driving skill, and there are very very few people I know personally who could possibly exceed it. I believe even with a "professional" driver, even one who is good, and trained -- my individual risk of accident would go up. There are, however, a lot of people on the road I wish would give up driving!
 

Static or Dynamic - how does it work?

[hicksw]

Does a road train start off from an initial parked group and stop and separate at a single terminus?

Or are these trains dynamic? Can you join up to the tail of a train-in-progress? Can you depart from the train while it is in motion? Even if you are in the middle?

The static version has some operational overheads, much like taking the bus (with your car).

The dynamic version has all sorts of interesting issues.

Just asking.
--
If brute force isn't working, you aren't strong enough.

truckers outsourced.

[Anonymous Coward]

the argumentation that it will make us all safer is a little flawed.

(correct) assumption in the article: a lot of accidents happen because of human error. maybe it is because driver are too strained to keep up the concentration.

conclusion (imho wrong): if we could have this super fancy system then only one driver is needed for a whole convoy.

the inconvenient truth as seen by AC: if this system were implemented, a lot of truckers would lose their jobs, and the remaining "lead driver" would have as many hours to drive as before. but this time with a whole convoy behind him.

not necessarily...

[helios17]

"Usually under some law conserning disrupting traffic )" While not the norm, my room mate was ticketed for "disrupting" traffic by driving along side a large truck in the left lane and matching speed due to cruise control. He had caused quite the bottle neck and seemed oblivious until a state trouper pulled him over and ticketed him. I imagine if all the rage behind him could have been captured and focused, his car would have exploded by death beam.

Re:not necessarily...

[Zironic]

The worst thing ever is when two trucks drive next to eachother because they have a maximum speed limit lower then the highways so the entire road crawls. But imagine how much you'd save in fuel costs if you really could focus the rage and make it run the engine for you.