Autonomous Cars Will Save Money and Lives

cartechboy writes "Autonomous cars are coming even if tech companies have to produce them. The biggest hurdles are the technology (very expensive and often still surprisingly rudimentary) and how vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communication happens (one car anticipates or sees an accident, it should tell nearby cars). So what are the benefits to self-driving cars? They may save us thousands of lives and not a small amount of cash. A new study from the Eno Center for Transportation (PDF) suggests that if just 10 percent of vehicles on the road were autonomous, the U.S. could see 1,000 fewer highway fatalities annually and save $38 billion in lost productivity (due to congestion and other traffic problems). Right off the bat you can imagine autonomous driving easily topping your average intoxicated drivers' ability behind the wheel. At a 90 percent adoption mark those same numbers in theory would become: 21,700 lives spared, and a whopping $447 billion saved."

Comments

I like my A4 2T 6 speed

[vi.emacs]

Autonomous driving? No thank you!

Re:I like my A4 2T 6 speed

[geekoid]

I like my horse, cars? no thank you.

Re:I like my A4 2T 6 speed

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Yeah, but your boss can't expect you to work on your commute. This is really about adding 10 hours a week to your workweek.

Re:I like my A4 2T 6 speed

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to drive recreationally, on a closed course, I expect you'll be able to do that indefinitely in more or less whatever format you prefer. But there's no reason you need to endanger others with your manual driving just to scratch your recreational itch or satisfy some nostalgic idea of "freedom" (via dependence on the auto industry, the oil industry, and public roads).

Re:I like my A4 2T 6 speed

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't about benefiting people that can't put their phones down. it is about benefiting the people they run into.

Re: I like my A4 2T 6 speed

[Anonymous Coward]

If you work 2 h during commute, then you work 6 h in the office. That is all.

Lost revenue to the cops

[Anonymous Coward]

Cops won't like it because they'll see lower revenue from DUI fines, speeding fines, and all that crap they love taking money for.

Re:Lost revenue to the cops

[Chuckstar]

Why do you think cops care about that money? Municipalities may care about that money, but the cops couldn't care less (they don't get a cut, after all). But cops do try to avoid hearing "how come everyone else writes more tickets than you do?" So they make a point of writing tickets. But they really don't care about revenues, per se.

So what'll we do with half a trillion dollars?

[rsilvergun]

or put another way, what'll happen when we have half a trillion dollars less economic activity? Since our entire civilization is based around getting people to trade among themselves. I just don't see all these productivity gains are ever going to make it down to my level...

Re:So what'll we do with half a trillion dollars?

[epyT-R]

That's it. There will never be computer driven cars for the masses. It will always be cheaper for them to drive their own.

Not when the insurance companies artificially jack up the rates for human driven cars. They will force the majority into this, guaranteed.

Re:So what'll we do with half a trillion dollars?

[debrain]

or put another way, what'll happen when we have half a trillion dollars less economic activity? Since our entire civilization is based around getting people to trade among themselves. I just don't see all these productivity gains are ever going to make it down to my level...

Not all economic activity benefits society. Perhaps the most well known demonstration is the parable of the broken window:

The parable of the broken window was introduced by Frederic Bastiat in his 1850 essay Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas (That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Unseen) to illustrate why destruction, and the money spent to recover from destruction, is actually not a net-benefit to society. The parable, also known as the broken window fallacy or glazier's fallacy, demonstrates how opportunity costs, as well as the law of unintended consequences, affect economic activity in ways that are "unseen" or ignored.
 

The productivity gains failing to make it to your level are arguably a problem of inequality of the distribution of wealth, not lack of economic activity.

Re:So what'll we do with half a trillion dollars?

[Anonymous Coward]

Preach on, bro! You'll also never see GPS for the masses, it will always be cheaper for them to open a map. Or power windows. Or automatic transmission. Or...oh, wait.

Re:So what'll we do with half a trillion dollars?

[JanneM]

Not when the insurance companies artificially jack up the rates for human driven cars.

If humans are the cause of more accidents there's nothing artificial about it.

More realistically, I expect most people a generation from now will find the higher vehicle cost to be easily offset by not having to get a manual driving license, freeing up driving time, lower fuel consumption and using the car even when disabled, too young or otherwise not able to drive manually for whatever reason.

Re:So what'll we do with half a trillion dollars?

[FishTankX]

I don't think it'll necessarily put cabbies out of work, because unless i'm mistaken the primary reason people would take a taxi other than drinking, is either they lack a car (by choice, or a family with only one car, where the wife or husband needs to get somewhere while the car is out), or there is no parking at the destination. It would seem that autonomous cars wouldn't benefit people in either of these cases.

Re:So what'll we do with half a trillion dollars?

[jader3rd]

I can't imagine a future population truly being happy with this either.

Really? You don't think that people would rather be playing games on a mobile device or texting, than having to pay enough attention to their surroundings to avoid harm to others and themselves?

Skeptical

[Anonymous Coward]

You know . The way they're painting this , it seems like there's not going to be any unforeseen problems with it.
I can already predict crashes due to hacking/ buggy softwares and etc.

Don't get me wrong. I agree with the fact that automated cars are a step in the right direction. However, what I dislike is how it is being presented here. It is presented as if it was a holy grail of driving. The solution of all problems. That's very misleading and dangerous. That's what I can't stand. The dishonesty of it all.

  We should be very honest here with the end users about what auto cars can accomplish at this point and what they can't.

Re:Skeptical

[Dunbal]

I think it's a wonderful idea - maybe because I'm older. It would allow my in laws, for example, to continue being mobile in their late 70-s and 80's, whereas now they can't drive. It would allow me more mobility too, since I can't really drive due to health reasons. I can imagine automatic-only roads, where the speed limits are increased and traffic flow is automated - no more traffic jams, traffic lights would result in faster trips and more efficient fuel use.

Of course I like driving as much as the next guy, but I wouldn't mind if it became relegated to a "hobby" as opposed to an unavoidable daily chore.

Re:It already exists!

[dgatwood]

If you want an autonomous car where you can check mail and send texts on your way to work, you can have it right now. It's called a bus.

Only if either A. you have access to a park-and-ride facility that is closer to your house than your workplace is, or B. the bus stops very close to both your home and your workplace. I've usually found that unless your commute is at least half an hour by car, you'll spend more time walking to and from the bus than you would spend driving, and even if you don't count the walking time, it still takes 2–3 times as long to get there. As always, YMMV.

Public transit is great for moderately long commutes, particularly if parking sucks at your destination. If I'm going into San Francisco, I take public transit. If I'm going to work, though, there's actually enough parking, so it isn't worth the 20 minutes of walking and 30+ minutes on a bus just to save 15 minutes in my car. It would probably be slightly cheaper, but the inconvenience is pretty severe. And that's without having to change buses at all.

Risk Perception 101: People are Idiots

[Arancaytar]

People are willing to endure a risk orders of magnitudes higher of crashing by human error than by machine error.

Much as they're okay with the risk of dying from flu every year by not vaccinating, but not the comparatively negligible risk of a terrorist attack.

Assuming no faults in the driving AI.

[Chas]

That's the problem.

Currently, they're looking at data for autonomous vehicles in a complete vacuum.

I'm quite sure that having such cars on the roads in percentile quantities will yield their own sets of unique fatalities sooner or later.

In the mean time, I'm not an quadriplegic. So I'll choose to drive my own damn car.

Re:It already exists!

[JonBoy47]

Public Transportation: A great way to get from someplace you don't live to someplace you don't work.

Insurance

[Dan East]

This topic has been discussed here several times now, but one thing I haven't seen brought up is insurance. If my vehicle is driving itself and causes an accident, then what driver is to blame? The person sitting behind the wheel? Why would my insurance company want to pay for an accident caused by a piece of software when they can go after the company that produced the software? Or what if they will only insure Ford cars and not Chrysler because statistics show that one auto-driving system performs better than the other? If my car's autonomous system just flat out runs over a little girl playing in the street and kills her, could I be charged with manslaughter because I was behind the wheel reading the newspaper?

Think back a few years to the Toyota "auto acceleration" issue, and the lawsuits and government testing, etc, etc that was going on over that one issue. And that was possible hiccup in a single system that merely relayed user input to the engine. It wasn't even remotely as complex as a vehicle actually driving itself.

There's going to be a whole lot to figure out in the legal, insurance and liability areas that makes the technical challenge and development look like child's play.

Re:Insurance

[SeanBlader]

Self driving cars do not cause accidents, therefore insurance isn't necessary. Autonomous cars are such a huge game changer in society because of the number of ancillary things that go away because of them. Traffic cops, car insurance, taxicabs, truck drivers, all disappear. It's the next massive paradigm shift in world society, at a level comparable to the changes brought on by steam and electricity. The effects on the global economy and society won't be fully understood for decades afterwards. Flat out, it's going to be huge.

Re:Insurance

[Dan East]

Self driving cars do not cause accidents, therefore insurance isn't necessary

That's ridiculous. Things will happen to autonomous vehicles that will result in deaths and destruction of property, even if 100% of vehicles are autonomous. Insurance will not go away because the stakes are too high both with liability and the cost of the hardware involved.

Re:A breathalizer in the dashboard will do the sam

[epyT-R]

Except that a johnny cab done today would report your travel plans to the local police dept, insurance company, and any other institution that has a vested interest in judging your behavior. No thanks. I'd rather walk.

Reality vs Ignorance and inertia

[EmperorOfCanada]

Where this is going to get interesting is when nearly all the cars on the road are autonomous and the last remaining hold outs will be preventing many other cool solutions that only work when you have 100% autonomous such as eliminating traffic lights. Eliminating traffic signs such as one way, speed, stop, etc signs. Eliminating speed limits. Even eliminating things such as lanes.

Basically the last manually driven cars will be seen to be a homicidal menace and high cost nightmare.

Re:38 billion in productivity or

[Jeremi]

30 minutes more sleeping?

30 minutes more sleep would also make people more productive -- so either way it's a win.