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Tesla's Sales Increase - But Next Will We Need Smart Roads? (backchannel.com)
Elon Musk says Tesla's autopilot has now driven over 222 million miles, and the company is now selling twice as many electric cars as it did in 2015. (Despite complaints from a coal-mining CEO that Tesla "is a fraud" because it receives tax-payer subsidies.)
But Slashdot reader mirandakatz writes, "It's not enough to build self-driving cars: we have to build the roads to accompany them. Roadside sensors might have once seemed a pipe dream, but with the advent of 5G internet infrastructure, they're not out of reach at all. And their implications span far beyond road safety, GMU researcher Brent Skorup explains at Backchannel: Cities could use sensor data for conducting traffic studies, pushing out real-time public bus alerts, increasing parking space occupancy, metering commercial loading times to prevent congestion, and enhancing pedestrian safety. There are also commercial applications for sensor data: How many cars drive by a billboard? How many people walk by a storefront per day? How many of those people have dogs? These are all questions we could easily answer with roadside sensors.
But Slashdot reader mirandakatz writes, "It's not enough to build self-driving cars: we have to build the roads to accompany them. Roadside sensors might have once seemed a pipe dream, but with the advent of 5G internet infrastructure, they're not out of reach at all. And their implications span far beyond road safety, GMU researcher Brent Skorup explains at Backchannel: Cities could use sensor data for conducting traffic studies, pushing out real-time public bus alerts, increasing parking space occupancy, metering commercial loading times to prevent congestion, and enhancing pedestrian safety. There are also commercial applications for sensor data: How many cars drive by a billboard? How many people walk by a storefront per day? How many of those people have dogs? These are all questions we could easily answer with roadside sensors.
There are also commercial applications for sensor data: How many cars drive by a billboard? How many people walk by a storefront per day? How many of those people have dogs? These are all questions we could easily answer with roadside sensors.
How about you fuck off and die. Not everything needs to be used to deliver more ads to me.
Time to offend someone
How are we going to afford smart roads when we can't even consistently fix the potholes we've already got?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Smart roads are neither necessary nor sufficient to realize driverless cars. They are unnecessary, because imaging technology is increasing at a nice clip, obviating their need. All of the applications addressed in the article could be realized with smart cars communicating with each other, rather than smart roadside sensors communicating from the street.
Further, road sensors won't be sufficient, because even assuming the cost of these smart sensors becomes relatively inexpensive, there are simply too many less traveled roads to install them on. There are many millions of miles of unpaved dirt roads, newly constructed roads, and roads that are damaged by nature. Cars will need to drive effectively without roadside sensors.
The one application I can see of roadside sensors is possibly to increase accuracy on major highways, thus increasing the max speed of the driverless cars on the road.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
"There are also commercial applications for sensor data: How many cars drive by a billboard? How many people walk by a storefront per day? How many of those people have dogs? These are all questions we could easily answer with roadside sensors."
First of all, the last thing we need is more effective advertising. Second we don't need any new information gathering devices created and installed in our current political climate. If installed today these sensors wouldn't just track anonymous data, they would also track WHO did the walking and what car drove by. Today they'd build those capabilities in and probably lie about it. Even without building that capability into the system you could find the paths of sensors and correlate with GPS data to determine not only where my car went but whether or not I drove it.
It's only a matter of time before they say my car (which I say is lost and they fished out of the river) going to my office, combined with my gps signal and phone (which I conveniently say I lost) along with those of my wife is proof I killed her. There is a small chance any one of those could be a coincidence but the probability of all of the above being a coincidence exceeds any reasonable doubt! Little did I know I forgot my phone that day, my wife noticed and was bringing it to me when stopped at a gas station and was murdered by a mugger who disposed of the body and car in the river.
The only improbable thing there is actually my wife getting mugged and killed, the rest is actually a pretty normal occurance. No thank you. This is why the last thing you should ever want is the police to have more data.
How are we going to afford smart roads when we can't even consistently fix the potholes we've already got?
the rich people in your community have successfully brainwashed you. they have plenty of money, more than enough to fix the potholes and educate our kids. they have manipulated the mechanisms of society so that you think that it's your fault.
That we can do something does not mean that we automatically should do it & it looks to me like this is a solution in search of a problem that would propose financing to install it.
GPS/4G linked databases of road limits and mapping software already performs localization to follow traffic congestion and speeds.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue