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Author Peter Wayner Talks About Autonomous Cars (Video)
Peter Wayner is no stranger to Slashdot. Not only that, he's written a bunch of books, plus articles for InfoWorld, PC World, the New York Times, and many other publications. Now he's working on a book about Autonomous Cars. Last year Peter wrote an article for Car & Driver about the privacy implications of vehicle recorders. Driverless cars will bring us a whole new set of problems, questions, and -- no doubt -- legislation. We're hoping to have more conversations on this topic (and others) with Peter in the future, so with any luck this video will be the first of a long series. With all that said, take it away, interviewer Timothy Lord... Update: 06/05 21:56 GMT by T : Peter's book is still in progress, but it's got a website, if you'd like an early glance.
They'll never be trustworthy enough. Autopilot in relatively uncrowded skies at different altitudes, with a pilot close at hand, is one thing. On complicated, crowded roadways it's quite another. You'll never be able to get through the social suspicion, the legal liabilities, and government red-tape, etc. It is and will remain an experiment which periodically pops up, but remains "20 years away" forever.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
How far off are we from drinking in the car again?
Today. It's called a limousine.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_driverless_car
In August 2012, the team announced that they have completed over 300,000 autonomous-driving miles (500 000 km) accident-free, typically have about a dozen cars on the road at any given time, and are starting to test them with single drivers instead of in pairs.[14] Three U.S. states have passed laws permitting driverless cars as of September 2012: Nevada, Florida, and California.
More miles than most drivers rack up in 20 years, and without having caused an accident. Laws passed in 3 states.
This is a lot closer than positive net output fusion, for example.
Everybody always talks about the obvious things that Robot cars will do such as better road safety. But I think what will the most interesting are the Secondary and Tertiary effects. Such as the eventual near elimination of road signs and many other traffic control structures such as one way streets as these things can be programmed into the cars from a database and other things such as one way streets or intersections can have cars negotiate with one another before crossing paths. Highways can basically all go one lane each way(if everyone is going exactly the speed limit there is no passing) and roads can become insanely narrow.
But other things such as taxis and car rentals will become blurred as what exactly is the difference when there is no driver. Parking lots can significantly shrink if your car can park 10 cars deep bumper to bumper and negotiate to get out when you call it. (assuming you don't just rent/taxi when you need one)
Commuting patterns change when cars can utilize the roads at near perfect efficiency and you can either doze or do work (behind the wheel). Plus my assumption is that an all robot filled road will allow cars to go insanely fast and convoy bumper to bumper slip-streaming each other. This then changes the distance that people are willing to regularly travel by car.
Then you get other changes such as an all robot road system would have an insignificant number of accidents rendering much of the in-car safety systems worthless. So you can then chop the weight of a car if it has no airbags, crumple zones, bumpers, etc. This also implies that old fashioned cars will have to be banned from the roadways unless augmented with a robotic system.
Other non-obvious changes would be that the entire car-insurance industry will be decimated. If cars basically stop crashing you don't need much in the way of adjusters, liability premiums, comprehensive premiums, etc. You will only need insurance for theft (presumably harder in a smart car) and things like trees falling on it. A car that crashes would mostly be due to a manufacturing defect.
Also the whole accident related industry would be smushed. This doesn't just include car repair and paint/parts manufacturing but towing, fire/rescue, and even a significant reduction in many hospital's emergency trauma wards.
Then you have the impact on the auto industry itself. They will have a boom from getting to replace nearly every non-robot car on the road and then with the onslaught of improvements that will follow they will get to replace the first few generations of cars quickly. But some manufacturers will miss the boat and get sidelined. Others will not realize that many sales are driven through destroyed cars and mess that up.
Then there is the quality of life issues. Old people will maintain their freedom much longer than before.
But the one that I am most looking forward to are the struggles that lawmakers will have. They will keep thinking in old ways such as stupid speed limits that have no safety purpose. Things like stop signs will be an oddity and then there is the fact that if all the cars are perfectly driven then nearly all fine revenue will drop to zero. Lawmakers love punishing the sinful and this will be a huge sin tax that will be lost. I suspect that even drinking and driving laws will be slow to change as it is my belief that they are driven as much by religious temperance types as by safety concerns. In this regard I would predict that an unlicensed driver or even empty car will be allowed on the roads before someone can be passed out drunk in the back seat while automatically being driven home. Lastly this may very
I could not easily find complete data for 2012, (odd in itself) but in 2011 just over 32,000 people died in car crashes. I think there will be an evolution towards driverless cars. The distracted generation will want their cars to drive for them. And I for one really want their cars to drive for them. Think of it. Each year ten times the number of people who died on 9/11 die in cars (or under them). Maybe we should declare war on Detroit. Oh, wait. It self destructed. Okay, Tokyo then. But you get my point. Higher levels of automated auto safety will save lives. Let's really put auto in the automobile. Of course you can have my Chevy pickup when you pry it from my cold dead hands. However that time may come sooner than later.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
300K depends where you're driving. In San Francisco or New York (I've lived in both), that's impressive, if 200K of that are backroads in Nevada, it isn't. Said by a human driver who has > 300K since his last and only accident (not my fault, some idiot turned directly in front of me), driving in numerous countries on both sides of the road.
By the way, a computerized car isn't magic, I'll bet it also couldn't have stopped in time though I will admit it might have minimized the damage by braking sooner at least.
Having said all that, I would welcome automatic cars.