Slashdot Mirror
Obama Proposes $4 Billion Investment In Self-Driving Cars (transportation.gov)
An anonymous reader writes: The Obama Administration has unveiled a proposal for a 10-year, $4 billion investment in the adoption of autonomous car technology. The money would fund pilot projects to, among other things, "test connected vehicle systems in designated corridors throughout the country, and work with industry leaders to ensure a common multistate framework for connected and autonomous vehicles." The administration says it has an interest in cutting the death toll — over 30,000 people each year in the U.S. — associated with traffic accidents. The proposal also calls for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to work with industry to resolve regulatory issues before they inhibit development of self-driving cars. "This is the right way to drive innovation," said Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.
Why is he getting involved in this at all? We already have several companies working toward this goal. The only answer that makes sense is that he wants to fund those companies closest to him or his party.
Like it or not, government giveaways of your tax dollars will likely christen even the projects you support.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
"Have you not considered how much easier it is to control a walking population?"
Clearly the most pressing issue the U.S. has at this point are those damn human controlled cars! I'm sure there's no better use for $4 billion than this. Nope, none at all...
What we're seeing here folks is an outgoing president going into full "my legacy" mode. This frequently looks similar to "full retard" but the prez gets a pass...
He takes from the poor to give to the rich.
Obamacare was more like taking from the middle class and giving to the poor and the rich. The rich insurance company owners now get dollars from everyone at gunpoint. The poor get insurance paid for by the government (note that insurance is not healthcare. They still can't afford healthcare), and the middle class can no longer afford insurance OR healthcare, let alone both.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
It's always easy to make yourself look good when you get to spend other people's money to do it.
Last I checked, we had this little problem of a "national debt" and weren't exactly making ANY progress on paying it down. Yet Obama thinks he can just snap his fingers and pull another $4 billion out of the air, because he'd like to see driverless cars get some help from Federal government? (And let's face it.... whenever Federal government decides they can't bear to stay "hands off" of something any more, it means they want to micro-manage it and control it. That's the only kind of "help" they know how to dole out.)
Last I checked, they already handed companies like Tesla Motors some pretty big subsidies to promote what they're working on. How about govt. just steps back and lets private industry continue working on that?
So the administration is spending somewhat less than half a billion a year to test the road-worthiness of such autonomous vehicles and then ensure that the different models can operate with each other. It's not about crony capitalism but ensuring that the autonomous vehicle market doesn't degenerate into a Wild West of clashing, or worse crashing, standards. Of course, the ideal would for a world body to set the standards for autonomous vehicles, but waiting for that could mean some other country could get a head start in developing the technologies that would later be incorporated in those standards.
1. I drive 40 minutes to work every morning and up to an hour and a half driving home in the evening. I would love to hand this boring and wasteful task to my car. I could certainly do something much better with the time.
2. This technology will certainly become commonplace (look at aerospace, for example). It is going to take research to figure out how best to do this. It is going to require adjustments to how transportation is regulated. It may require changes to our infrastructure. You certainly don't to put these vehicles on the road without some thought to the implications of doing so. This costs money. What is the alternative?
3. The part that does concern me is what will happen when autonomous commercial vehicles become common. Talk about a job killer. How many hours each year do long haul trucks sit idle because the driver is required by law to stop to rest? That issue would completely disappear (along with a whole lot of decent jobs). Of course, this also could eliminate those accidents caused by drivers falling asleep.
As in almost all change, there are good points and bad points. There is also cost.
Who would care if the US spent 4 billion dollars on research, regulatory updates and infrastructure updates if the benefits far outweigh the cost? Unfortunately, sometimes you have to spend money just to find out if spending more is warranted. Consider the trillions we've spent recently that had almost no prospect of providing any benefit to the average American citizen. I'd much rather see spending on something like this.
I prefer PRT (e.g. Skytran),
Ya,except trains suck.
Okay, this is two of you meatheads so don't seem to know what PRT is and can't follow a link, so I guess I will explain for all the other children out there for whom the one-button mouse is too complex and who think my comment is bullshit because trains are stupid. PRT is Personal Rapid Transit, which is to say networks of autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicles. I mentioned Skytran specifically because it is an example of using rail for this purpose, although it is technically possible to do PRT using tires. In fact, you can do PRT with self-driving cars, in theory. In typical PRT systems, vaguely car-sized vehicles transport passengers between numerous, inexpensive stations.
The truth is that a half-autonomous car is dangerous, and we all know it. What is needed is a fully-autonomous car. But we also know that our infrastructure is not up to the task of supporting a network of self-driving automobiles, in basically any way; our road surfaces are inadequate, for example, as are our roadwork signage practices. There is no apparent standardization in temporary lane markings, for example.
Using rail solves or mitigates all of these problems. Using an ultra-light rail such as that proposed by Skytran solves the other problems you cite. Road too steep? Wrap the rail on contour, instead of going straight up the hill. You only need to place footings, rather than creating an entire road bed and topping it with a road. It's cheaper than either road or traditional rail. It's cheap enough to run right through neighborhoods. It's small enough to run right through cities. You work your way outwards from city centers and you reclaim streets as drivers use them less, whether it happens naturally or because you make it expensive to do otherwise.
In the golden age of rail, it was ordinary for the wealthy to have their own train cars. Under a PRT system, your private car can store itself in a convenient location, and come when you call for it, or it can hire itself out (perhaps to a more exclusive clientele than the general public) when you're not using it. Because the cars are equivalent to a normal automobile, they can cost normal automobile money and you can own your own. Indeed, it would not be exceptionally expensive to have one's own siding, although it would probably make more sense to locate one at every current intersection or so than for most people to have their own and store their vehicles in their homes. Since the storage facility can be essentially anywhere, I think most people would rather reclaim that space.
The freedom of vehicle ownership is largely illusory. Most vehicles go straight to hell if you attempt to drive them off road, and many of them these days cannot even manage to go over a curb without high-centering, or at least ripping off something expensive and maybe important. The state can seize your vehicle on little pretext, and you're lucky if you even get your fees paid, let alone recompense for your inconvenience. Some aspects of it are real, and PRT preserves those. It would take a very long time to "completely" replace cars with PRT, and it is likely that some remote locations would simply hang onto them well into its implementation. There is no one transportation solution that fits every situation. Still, PRT does have the potential to replace most use of automobiles.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Commercial interests seem to be handing the development of autonomous car travel just fine. Rather than having Washington jump into its own program of vehicle development, better to facilitate the development of the numerous industry standards, many of which will involve state and federal infrastructure, that we are going to need to make autonomous vehicles pervasive.
I'm thinking of cars that receive data from highways for local conditions, from NOAA for weather, and from each other to manage city traffic with least congestion.
Truck drivers. There sure are a lot of them in the US.
Just how many will there be when you can slap a sensors and servos package on an existing vehicle and have it drive without pause, without pay, consuming 25% less fuel and requiring less maintenance and tyre changes? How many fewer truck stops, diners, mechanics, etc?
He's tossing out silly but warm fuzzy proposals that will be shot down by Congress so Democrats can point fingers.
That is what the gov needs to work on
This is exactly the kind of thing that Obama is talking about. We need clear, nationally consistent regulations, so that companies can safely invest in R&D and know they'll get a return.
Dump the $4G into public transit, starting in the Washington, DC metro area, where the Metro, decades newer than Philly, NYC, and Chicago's subway/el systems, is so vastly worse than any of them. Cheap crap, and bad management, too.
mark
You're a slave to your car. To the payments, the maintenance, the smog and the wars fought to keep gas cheap.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Great, now the Republicans will develop an irrational hatred of self-driving cars and repeatedly try to repeal the laws allowing them to be tested. "Obama's coming for your steering wheels!"