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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?"
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.
It could amount to a very shrewd investment. We have about 30K traffic fatalities a year, which over the span of this proposal would amount to 300k deaths. If autonomous cars cut that number in half it'd cost us about $27k per life, again over the course of the ten years. The extra taxes you get to collect from those people over the course of the rest of their lives could quite possibly pay back that investment. And it's not like once the decade of funding is over autonomous cars would stop saving lives.
I'm curious what other areas you feel we as a society would be better served by investing $4 Billion in? Personally I'd suspect some medical research avenues might have better potential, but are likely already well funded. Even if there are better ways to spend the money, it isn't like we can only fund one such area at a time.
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.