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Cooperative Cars Battle It Out In Holland
An anonymous reader writes "The first cooperative platooning competition, where vehicles use radio communication in addition to sensors, was held in Helmond, Holland a week ago. By using wireless communication the awareness range of each vehicle is extended, enabling vehicles to travel closer together which increases road capacity while at the same time avoiding the shockwave effects responsible for traffic jams. The Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge distinguishes itself from earlier platooning demos (e.g. the PATH project) by having a completely heterogeneous mix of vehicles and systems built by multiple researcher and student teams. Using wireless communication to coordinate vehicles raises concerns about the safety of such systems, would you trust WiFi to drive your car?"
I would trust WiFi more than the tired trucker or the drunk driver in the other lane.
Answer: Lots and lots of money spent on legal cases with uncertain outcomes.
This is part of the reason why people say we should have one road for human drivers and one for automated (which makes them so prohibitively expensive, it's not worth it). Basically if there's an accident, the human "driver" of the vehicle is responsible, whether he was on cruise control or his ABS failed or whatever. You can still have that but with automated cars, I foresee instant-law-suit as soon as something like that happens (in the style of the Toyota lawsuits) blaming the car.
And on an all-automated road, if you have an accident then it's *GOT* to be the automation fault, right? So you think that the car companies and road companies are going to pick up the tab for the first 50-car multiple pile-up? What about the associated traffic delays for a thousand people driving their automated cars just behind? Again, it gets prohibitively expensive and risky for the car/road companies to operate.
If you have an automated car on a "human" road, then the human has to be able to take over (seeing as he is the one responsible in case of a crash!), so it becomes a little bit like cruise control and also becomes 100% the driver's problem, even if the automation fails.
More interesting - can you get arrested for something like "driving without due care and attention" if you're the driver of an automated vehicle and do something behind the wheel? If so (and current laws say "YES!"), you might as well just drive the damn thing yourself.
It's pretty much why these things are university projects and not actually on the road except in "tests" (and also things like the demonstration of two "crash-proof automated Volvo's a couple of months ago that, when aimed at each other head on at 30mph were supposed to stop before any possible accident - in front of the press they crashed about a dozen times and stopped once).
We've had the capability to remote-control and computer control a car for YEARS. Hell, we do it with aeroplanes and oil-tankers. But the fact of the matter is that we ALWAYS have a responsible human behind the wheel with the control to take over and, if they take their eyes off the controls, are deemed to be irresponsible (imagine if your airline pilot and his co-pilot both went to sleep and left it on auto?). The problem is that the law, economics and common-sense tell us it's a stupid thing to do.
You want an automated vehicle? Get on the London Docklands Light Railway. Entirely driver-less. But they had to put conductors on the trains to reassure passengers because occasionally the things get stuck and go wrong even though they are on rails. "a Passenger Service Agent (PSA), originally referred to as a "Train Captain", on each train is responsible for patrolling the train, checking tickets, making announcements and controlling the doors. PSAs can also take control of the train in certain circumstances including equipment failure and emergencies." Been in operation since 1987, can only travel on the rails, can't go past their stated safe speed, and you can have actual physical objects on the rails that activate brakes to avoid collisions and STILL they have a "driver".
Automated cars are like the "flying cars" of science fiction - yeah, it'd be cool, and we probably have the technology - but do you really want joy-riders flying over your house?