How Would Driver-less Cars Change Motoring?

Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that as Nevada licenses Google to test its prototype driver-less car on public roads, futurists are postulating what a world of driver-less would cars look like. First, accidents would go down. 'Your automated car isn't sitting around getting distracted, making a phone call, looking at something it shouldn't be looking at or simply not keeping track of things,' says Danny Sullivan. Google's car adheres strictly to the speed limit and follows the rules of the road. 'It doesn't speed, it doesn't cut you off, it doesn't tailgate,' says Tom Jacobs, a spokesman for the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles. Driver-less cars would mean a more productive commute. 'If you truly trust the intelligence of the vehicle, then you get in the vehicle and you do our work while you're traveling,' says engineer Lynne Irwin. They would mean fewer traffic jams. 'Congestion would be something you could tell your grandchildren about, once upon a time.' Driver-less cars could extend car ownership to some groups of people previously unable to own a car, including elderly drivers who feel uncomfortable getting behind the wheel at night, whose eyesight has weakened or whose reaction time has slowed." Another reader points out an article suggesting autonomous cars could eventually spell the end of auto insurance.

Comments

We already have driverless cars

[DontBlameCanada]

Any municipality that allows cellphone use while driving is, essentially, endorsing driverless cars. If someone gets engaged in a deep conversation on the phone, their driving skills drop below that of someone with 0.08% blood alcohol...

There won't be an end to insurance

[HeLLFiRe1151]

There are too many other things insurance pays for besides hitting another car. For example hail storm damage, tree falling on your car or an unavoidable cow jumping in front of you on a bind corner. Not to mention cruising at 50 miles an hour and hitting an ice patch or getting hit by that guy who still actually likes to "drive" his truck.

Re:There won't be an end to insurance

[StikyPad]

Well, right, you hit the nail on the head with that last part. As long as there are manual overrides -- and there will *always* be manual overrides -- there will be people who use it to game the system. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if human drivers actually drive more recklessly because they know that the automated vehicles around them will always yield, always be aware of the vehicles around them, and always avoid collisions. This would provide a huge disincentive for people to use automated vehicles, especially in rush hour traffic where they're needed most, because the automated vehicle wouldn't be aggressive enough, and the manual driver wouldn't be hindered by the same set of programmed restrictions as the automated vehicle. If people see a measurable advantage to driving manually, they will continue to do it.

In light of that, I can only think of one way this will work long-term and large-scale, and that's by making manual driving illegal on public roads except in emergency situations. (The penalties for noncompliance could be much more stringent than they are for reckless driving today, because intent would be a given.) I'm afraid anything less will only encourage people to drive like even bigger assholes than they already do.

Driver-less cars would eliminate car ownership for

[Attila Dimedici]

While driver-less cars would allow some people who currently cannot drive to have their own car, it will raise the price of cars so that some people who now can afford to own a car would not be able to afford one. It would also mean that someone other than you would ultimately determine where you could go. For example, only the cars of those authorized to go to certain places would even have the roads to those places in the maps in their cars. Since driver less cars will need to receive roadmap updates, you might discover that a place you went to yesterday was no longer accessible.

Re:It just doesn't work

[SJHillman]

America has many well designed cities. And many poorly designed cities. However, if all cars were converted to driverless, then the increased efficiency may be such that you could have far fewer roads because a road could handle that many more cars without becoming congested - especially with some sort of inter-vehicle communication protocol. You could have cars traveling 100 mph almost bumper to bumper on highways that are currently at 55mph. This would allow you to have more roads designated cars-only to avoid many of the pitfalls of mixed traffic. The next step will likely be driverless cars with the option to switch to manual (think Demolition Man) for areas that are not driverless-friendly.

Sounds great

[tthomas48]

I think this will be mostly the end of private cars for the majority of us. It seems ridiculous now, but once people start looking at the cost of owning a car versus a well priced car service I think the transition will be fast. Especially among the young.

We'll probably be able to get by with a fleet of super-effecient driverless taxi cabs. I image paying a couple hundred bucks a month to have car come and pick me up whenever I need one.

You could get even more efficiency by offering a reduced rate for those willing to share a car. The system could efficiently route, pickup up multiple passengers and dropping them off.

Re:Sounds great

[SJHillman]

A good point... a fleet of driverless cars could pick up a person, take them to work, then go ferry around other people when your own car would just be sitting in a lot unused. Of course, snowy weather might might it impractical as a driverless car now has twice the distance to go (first to pick you up, then to where you want to go) and thus twice the chance of getting stuck, going off the road, etc. Hertz and Enterprise would be all over this.

Re:Sounds great

[tthomas48]

Wouldn't work is a bit strong. Currently there's pretty much one car for every person in the US to get to work. That's a huge fleet. Even if you you did simplest blocking you could have 6:00am, 6:30am, 7:00am. 7:30am, 8:00am, and 8:30am slots. Most commutes are less than 30 minutes. With that incredibly simplistic system you just replaced 6 cars with 1. But by dividing the number of cars by 1/6th you've reduced cars on the road, so you've reduced traffic. And by reducing human error you've reduced traffic. So perhaps it'll only take 15 minutes to get those passengers to work. Now you can have 12 slots.

Add on top of that economic incentives to move your commute to a less popular time (perhaps $1.00 extra per day if you want to leave at 8am), and the numbers start getting very, very feasible.

ALCOHOL!

[gurps_npc]

They left out drunk driving. It goes away when your car can drive you home from the bar.

This is in fact the most important feature of the driver-less car. Particularly for teenagers.

The end of auto insurance?

[Chas]

Yeah! RIIIGHT!

Call me when you catch the tooth fairy.

Re:It just doesn't work

[fifedrum]

I would absolutely use a car that had an auto-drive mode. If everyone did, then you wouldn't even need stop lights or other controls at intersections, or speed limits, as the vehicles would work together to melt traffic into a perfect flow. It might be a bit unnerving at first, watching traffic weaving through intersections, but we would get used to it.

Google or not.

Re:Can already have all that

[SJHillman]

The only public transportation that even comes close to all of the advantages of an automated car is taxis... individual vehicles that go from Point A to Point B. Buses, subways, etc all fail hard when you start talking about suburbs, rural areas, etc. Automated cars would be able to handle all of these and more.

Re:It'd make red lights quicker

[Anonymous Coward]

It is impossible to do this in a human system. If I am the 4th car in line and just start going and the 3rd person does not, then I rear end him and get the citation. So I have to hesitate to be sure he truly is going before I match his speed.

The turn signal thing I TOTALLY agree with. How freaking lazy is it to just change lanes without signalling?

Re:It just doesn't work

[leonardluen]

I wouldn't mind having a self driving car, but i have a feeling your view of the intersections of the future wouldn't be safe for pedestrians.

Re:Sounds dangerous already

[dkleinsc]

when in Rome, do as the Romans do.

You've quite clearly never driven in Rome.

Re:Can already have all that

[w_dragon]

Please, tell me how public transit can get me from my front door on a minor city street with no bus service to my parents' house outside of a small town about 30 miles away. Public transit is a fantastic option if you live in a large city and don't leave it very often, but it's no where near good enough to replace a car for a lot of people.

Re:It just doesn't work

[Sarten-X]

Europe has tons of cities which aren't planned like that

When London, Beijing, Cairo, and most other ancient cities were first laid out, their main roads connected little groups of buildings, in whatever way was convenient at the time. Maps didn't exist commonly, let alone a postal service, so the only important measure of efficiency was transit time on foot. With nothing else around them, those roads could be made straight, bending only around geographic features. This is clearly evident in rural Africa, where the roads between farms are generally straight, but run at odd angles.

Newer cities (including all the ones in America, which were all built in the last 500 years) were designed for people and postmen. Cities were expected to have a high population density, so their roads are designed to make the biggest buildings possible: rectangles. Their addressing was designed for efficiency, to the extent where cities like Salt Lake City, Utah have primarily numbered streets, with names being used only for main routes. There are still many odd angles, but they're generally old major routes that the city has grown around. Even landscape is getting ignored in favor of efficiency, with roads often stopping at a river's edge and continuing on the other side.

All of this means that outside America, Google Car has little use.

Conveniently, modern routing algorithms have absolutely no problem with any of these designs. Modern algorithms treat the city as a graph of intersections, knowing what intersections connect to what other intersections, how far apart they are (by time, distance, and even traffic density) and knowing what building numbers are between what intersections. The actual placement of those intersections doesn't matter when planning a route, but only when actually making a map for humans to follow.

In fact they would be fatal to others on the road.

As I'm sure has been pointed out by others by now, this is ridiculous. An automated car can be just as sensitive as any human-driven car, and often moreso. An automated car has cameras and laser sensors on it, that can poll thousands of points each second to construct a map of the world. Unlike humans, the sensors don't suffer from blindness, distraction, or optical illusions. If there's an elephant in front of the car, the car will know that there's an elephant-shaped object in front of it, and it will recognize the turning lights on its ass. the moment they come on.

Also unlike humans, an automated car is capable of communicating with other automated cars on the road. Despite what the summary says, they can tailgate, and they can cut each other off. The difference is that they'll be in constant communication at the time, so that if one car needs to stop, it will give plenty of notice to other cars, who will all apply their brakes at the same time at different strengths, so they will decelerate in unison. Cars traveling a half-meter apart on the highway will stop a half-meter apart, too.

With this communication, it's fully possible for a car to see around corners. Not only are there sonar sensors capable of making a decent guess as to what's approaching, but there are also projects to make stationary sensors, to be placed near intersections. These would watch for regular old dumb cars (and people, cats, dogs, and elephants, too), monitor their position and velocity, and send reports to automated cars in the area, which can then make fully-informed decisions about what to do.

I doubt Google has thought of this and they will be in for a big surprise when nobody but Americans can use them.

I can assure you that Google has thought of this. That's why Google Maps works for routes outside the United States, and why self-driving robots have been a major field of research for a few decades.

Re:It just doesn't work

[ByOhTek]

Two points

the ggp post you made, #3 is wrong - it wasn't subtle.

Also, Bing maps did appear to be faster than Google maps when I tested it just now, but then again, it's less popular, so it's probably getting hammered less. That being said, it was very confused by rather simple directions request. I'll happily take the 3x longer load time for google maps, since it can not only get me within the right zip code, but to the right place.

Note - this was a simple query - street number, name, and city. Google maps had no trouble, Bing Maps gave me four results, all in the wrong zip coes.

Re:Sounds dangerous already

[SlippyToad]

The speed limit on my local highway is 55mph, the average speed is close to 70. It's a safe speed. Many areas put an artificially low speed to collect tickets at will.

So are you the asshole who tailgates me through the "no fly zone" on I-65 and then gets pulled over by Indiana's finest 2 miles down the road after you whip past me in a rage?

Your logic is garbage. I follow the speed limit because I am not paying $150 for a ticket. You can pay that, but I'm not fucking speeding so you can be more comfortable.

Re:End of traffic jams?

[dkleinsc]

Traffic is a result of ( volume of cars) > (capacity of road).

That's not the only cause of traffic jams. Some other causes, just off the top of my head:
- Lanes ending, either due to construction or accident.
- Major exit ramps onto another road with traffic issues. Not only does that screw up the right lane, it also screws up the next lane over with the jerks who drive past the line of cars waiting and then try to force their way into the line.
- A single slow driver can wreak significant havoc just by cruising down the right lane at 45 mph. The reason is that now the not-quite-as-slow 55 mph driver pulls into the next lane over to pass them, forcing the 60 mph driver into the left lane, leaving the 75-80 mph drivers going insane behind them.
- Sun glare and other natural conditions slowing down drivers, especially timid drivers.

Re:It just doesn't work

[mcgrew]

It would certainly take all the fun out of driving, that's for sure.

If you want to drive for fun, take your damned muscle car to the racetrack and risk your own damned life. I don't need you risking mine by your driving like a moron. Cars are for transportation, not fun... unless you're at the races.