25 Percent of US Driving Could Be Done By Self-Driving Cars By 2030, Study Finds (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Self-driving still seems to be a ways off from active public use on regular roads, but once it arrives, it could ramp very quickly, according to a new study by the Boston Consulting Group. The study found that by 2030, up to a quarter of driving miles in the U.S. could be handled by self-driving electric vehicles operating in shared service fleets in cities, due mostly to considerable cost savings for urban drivers. The big change BCG sees is a result of the rise in interest in autonomous technologies, paired with the increased electrification of vehicles. There's also more pressure on cities to come up with alternate transportation solutions that address increasing congestion. All of that added together could drive reduction in costs by up to 60 percent for drivers who opt into using shared self-driving services vs. owning and operating their own cars.

Comments

Its called mass transit

[Elfich47]

Larger cities need to invest in mass transit and maintain it. Look at NYC, Tokyo and London as working mass transit systems. Smaller cities need working bus systems that aren't starved for money in order to be useful.

And I'll get ahead of it here: mass transit needs to be properly funded in order to work properly. Mass transit does not appear to pay for itself on the surface, it pays for itself because of increase in population density that occurs as a result.

Re:Its called mass transit

[MrLogic17]

>, it pays for itself because of increase in population density that occurs as a result.

You say that like it's a good thing.

Re:Its called mass transit

[Anonymous Coward]

Larger cities need to invest in mass transit and maintain it. Look at NYC, Tokyo and London as working mass transit systems. Smaller cities need working bus systems that aren't starved for money in order to be useful.

And I'll get ahead of it here: mass transit needs to be properly funded in order to work properly. Mass transit does not appear to pay for itself on the surface, it pays for itself because of increase in population density that occurs as a result.

So if you don't have that population density, it can't pay for itself.

Interesting that your examples are some of the largest cities in the entire world.

Did you even think about the fact that the point you just made is that mass transit is only cost-effective at planetary extremes?

Why do I suspect that the answer is no?

Re:Its called mass transit

[Anonymous Coward]

back in the 50s, GM bought up a over 100 mass transit companies and then dismantled them so people would have to buy cars

Re:Its called mass transit

[known_coward_69]

NYC a lot of people drive cause large parts of the city have no subway or it's a 2-3 hour one way trip to get there from where you live cause some genius designed the system for almost every train to go through Manhattan

and the subway is actually controlled by NY State here. the city has very little control over it

Re:Its called mass transit

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

A lot of small-to-mid-sized cities use a city-sponsored taxi system because it's a lot more efficient (and safer) to move seniors and low-income people around than busses. (Think scary bus stations where randoms "hang out" or snowy sidewalks seniors have to traverse instead of getting out at their door.)

With Uber and the like in the mix, some towns are skipping expensive and inefficient busses in a new way:
https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/04/05/0439229/canadian-town-picks-uber-for-public-transit

Also remember that concentration of transportation in a few modes (busses, trains) can lead to havoc if there's a union involved and they feel like striking. It's much better to have a diverse set of transportation options in any city so one annoyed group can't bring a city to a halt.

Re:Its called mass transit

[geekmux]

...And I'll get ahead of it here: mass transit needs to be properly funded in order to work properly. Mass transit does not appear to pay for itself on the surface, it pays for itself because of increase in population density that occurs as a result.

Waiting for "density" to justify resources turns cities into a complete clusterfuck. While density creates justification for resource improvement projects, waiting for fucking years for those projects to be completed only adds more fuel to the chaos.

Ironically, the tactic of being reactive with regards to planning and resources isn't getting "ahead" of jack shit.

Re:Its called mass transit

[squiggleslash]

It is. People living there receive more services, and businesses located there get more custom. And nobody's forced to use a mode of transportation they dislike - you're allowed to walk, you can take a bus or train, or you can drive. It's a win-win for everyone.

Re:Its called mass transit

[110010001000]

He is saying that population density occurs as a result of adding mass transit. We all know Slahdotters are living in suburban hellholes, or in rural bunkers, but some of us are not afraid of other people.

Re:Its called mass transit

[oh_my_080980980]

Where??? The subway system is immense! You're going to have to better because driving a car in NYC is no picnic.

Re:Its called mass transit

[oh_my_080980980]

LMOL yeah because those cities are SUBSIDIZING Uber, because Uber can't make money in those towns. So yeah buses are expensive and inefficient. Ass.

Re:Its called mass transit

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdotter living in suburban hellhole here.

It is well worth the 45 minute walk to the office to avoid public transportation.

Re: Its called mass transit

[Anonymous Coward]

They are subsidizing uber so they don't have to bring in mass transit and keep the price of fairs close to what you would pay for traveling the equivalent distance on a bus.

Re:Its called mass transit

[stabiesoft]

So I took a quick look at the bus system budget in austin, a green progressive city. 32 million trips @1.25/trip or about 40 mil from paying customers. Meanwhile the 1% sales tax EVERYONE pays generated 217 mil. 100 mil came from reserves, which I imagine are sales taxes people paid in previous years or maybe a bond issue. Did not look. So yeah, buses are expensive and inefficient. Customers are paying about 10% of the cost of service.

Re:Its called mass transit

[jellomizer]

There is still the last mile problem with mass transit. The small city busses really do not cut it for people who are above lower middle class. Residental areas in small cities that are near the bus line are normally that nice places to live, and the busses don't travel to where the good jobs are (the small professional company). The problem is much bigger then just public transport. The problem combines racism, class warfare, upward mobility, education, environment...

Re:Its called mass transit

[gfxguy]

Walking is definitely preferable to public transportation. The problem I have is that it's roughly a 9 hour walk to work for me. Yes, that's by choice - but the alternative is to house my family of four in a substandard apartment in the city with rent twice as high as my mortgage payment and crap schools for the kids.

If the city is actually built nicely (and some newer developments around the world are doing this), you can have a decent amount of room while living in the city, requiring fewer vehicles on the road overall. Living in the suburbs, my wife and my son and I all have cars - we could get away with having one for the whole family if we lived in a decent part of the city where walking would take us where we needed to go in reasonable amounts of time, public transportation otherwise, and a vehicle for longer trips outside the city.

There's no good solution to get to that state for most existing cities. Instead, we have urban crawl as more lanes are added to freeways and more people escape the city and it's super high prices for tiny apartments or condos that are difficult for families (4 or more) to live in. The problem is they add more lanes to the freeway and all it does is cause more development OUTSIDE the city, causing the freeways to fill to capacity again and you're right back at square one. Public transportation out to the suburbs is lacking; the idiots in my county keep voting down proposed rail out here. I really just want to move to another area entirely, but I'm overpaid and won't be able to get the kind of money I'm making elsewhere (hey, at least I admit it).

But even if they built mass transit out to the suburbs, you have the same problem - more people will move there instead of living in the city, and it, too, would fill to capacity. Where I grew up it was awesome as a kid/teen - walking distance to several movie theaters, moderate restaurants that I could afford to take a date to, record stores (and a toys-r-us when I was younger), I could walk to most of my friends houses (and ride my bike to the others). But that kind of environment is enticing to people - so property values skyrocketed and my parents eventually sold and retired to Florida - no one in my family could afford to live there anymore.

Back to the topic at hand, it only takes one in a thousand drivers to be the kind of idiot that screws traffic for everyone. Unless we're ALL in self driving cars, you will always have the idiot trying to beat the pace of traffic and just screw it for everyone else.

Re:Its called mass transit

[__aaclcg7560]

Interesting that your examples are some of the largest cities in the entire world.

I've been using public transit (bus, light rail and trains) in Silicon Valley (~2M people) for the last 20+ years. The SV public transit is also integrated with the public transit for the entire San Francisco Bay Area (~6M people).

Re: Its called mass transit

[Anonymous Coward]

Switzerland, Germany, Japan and so on are doing it well enough to great without extreme population density all over the country. Doesn't change that you still occasionally need a car (might be someone else's or an autonomous one) but the everyday commute can be public transport.

Re:Its called mass transit

[Highdude702]

So canada is going back to a "Its not quite slavery but close" transportation system? Nice..

Re:Its called mass transit

[Gr8Apes]

You observe some justified problems with mass transit, but your conclusions are suspect. For mass transit to really work requires (sub)urban planning to actually be done and then followed through on, and will result in some significantly different layouts than currently exist. Mass transit really requires main arteries and connection points. One of the best I've seen is Paris, with local and "long haul" lines and cross-line connection points.

Re:Its called mass transit

[Anonymous Coward]

That is very presumptuous of what people want and basic market forces seem to indicate you are wrong. That is like telling me "having more work to do is always better, you get more money and other people get more services". Suburbs were a solution to a problem, not the other way around. There is a sweet spot in population density where costs are minimized and services are maximized and that sweet spot is in the medium density suburbs, not a big city.

Some people care about the quality of the life they live. Higher population density comes with many issues. Name one city where cost of living is lower in the city vs. the suburbs for the same accommodations. What are these "more services" you get in a city? From what I can tell "big city" living is the worst of all worlds: Cost more, higher crime, worse overall movablity, terrible schools, complete inability to even do basic things like grill food.

I can fly to a big city if I want to see a broadway play (or pick some other "city exclusive"). It will cost me hundreds of times less to fly in every weekend than to live there in a similar set of accommodations (3,000 SF house, 3 cars, 3 pets, etc.) I have done the math. So, please tell me again why I would want to pay hundreds of times more to live in the same situation that I do now but in a crime ridden city where I can even send kids to school.

Re:Its called mass transit

[__aaclcg7560]

While density creates justification for resource improvement projects, waiting for fucking years for those projects to be completed only adds more fuel to the chaos.

When the freeway system got planned in 1950's, land was set aside for roadway that wouldn't be built for decades. The 85 extension from 280 to 101, and the 87 from the 85/87 interchange to 280 and 101, in Silicon Valley were the tomatoes fields of my youth. Those roadways didn't get built until 1990's.

Re:Its called mass transit

[AuMatar]

Pretty much everywhere not Manhattan in New York has shitty public transit. Brooklyn is ok, but Queens (the largest borough) it may as well not exist. But if you live in Manhattan its pretty good.

Re:Its called mass transit

[geekmux]

While density creates justification for resource improvement projects, waiting for fucking years for those projects to be completed only adds more fuel to the chaos.

When the freeway system got planned in 1950's, land was set aside for roadway that wouldn't be built for decades. The 85 extension from 280 to 101, and the 87 from the 85/87 interchange to 280 and 101, in Silicon Valley were the tomatoes fields of my youth. Those roadways didn't get built until 1990's.

Reserving land for expansion was good planning.

Sitting around waiting for mass chaos to justify doing something with it, is not good planning. Neither is shitty (or corrupt) project management that creates predictable delays.

Re:Its called mass transit

[__aaclcg7560]

Neither is shitty (or corrupt) project management that creates predictable delays.

The Trump Administration is withholding federal funding to electrify Caltrain because the high-speed rail will use the tracks from San Jose to San Francisco. Never mind that electrification will help Caltrain run more trains than they can with diesel engines, reduce the standing room only conditions during commute hours (60K people per weekday), and reduce the noise impact on surrounding communities.

Re:Its called mass transit

[taiwanjohn]

I recently saw a lecture that made a similar claim: our current transportation and energy systems will be obsolete by 2030. (There's a book by the same guy called "Clean Disruption".) He cites several examples of disruption, from automobiles to cell phones, and notes that they are not incremental (though they may seem so at first). Instead, they follow an "S-curve" of exponential increase. He believes we are right now at the inflection point where several disruptive technologies are about to "go vertical" -- energy storage, electric vehicles, computing power, self-driving cars, solar PV, etc...

In 2014 (in the book) he predicted that $35~40k EV's would hit the market around 2017~18, and was right on the money. He further predicts that sub-$30k EV's will be available in 2020, and they'll hit $20k by 2023. Given the far lower operating costs of EV's, it will be very hard for gasoline cars to compete by that point.

As for self-driving technology... he predicts this will be "standard" on all new cars by the early 20's. In particular, he notes that the cost of LIDAR has dropped like a rock -- from $70k in 2011 to $90 in 2015 -- and Nvidia now sells a 2-TFLOPS GPU for fifty bucks. Adding the 'self-drive' option will cost about as much as the seat belts, and it has such obvious benefits... at some point it will probably become mandatory.

There's a lot more to the story... if the above sounds interesting, I recommend checking out the video.

Re:Its called mass transit

[Anonymous Coward]

I had to travel to Switzerland for work, they have mass transit down to a science there. I was really surprised how lacking the states are. I live in Arizona, they might as well advertise the state as "must own car" to live here. I live just a few miles from the airport, the busses are a pain to use to get there, taxis charge a min $15 because of some dumb law (meter will read about $6 when I get there before the min bumps it to $15). But I can catch a Lyft or Uber there for about $6. I don't trade in my cars I drive them for their life so I hardly see everyone now spending a ton of cash for self driving cars in the next few years.

Re:Its called mass transit

[Quirkz]

That's fine for cities. For those of us who are small-town/rural, I expect to see a self-driving car before there's enough infrastructure that I can take advantage of public transport.

Re:Its called mass transit

[Sloppy]

Smaller cities need working bus systems that aren't starved for money in order to be useful.

Look at it this way: shared cars (with robot drivers) are a way to get the flexibility needed to scale down to possibly accomplish what you just said.

It's a tiny bus with a flexible schedule. It's less efficient than a larger vehicle full of passengers, but more efficient than a larger vehicle with two passengers, or everyone having to drive their own car. It's another tool on your toolbelt, for addressing certain-size problems. And it happens to be an extremely popular size.

Re:Its called mass transit

[fluffernutter]

You expect to see a self driving car that can navigate an unmapped dirt driveway reliably? In winter as well? You have a lot more faith in self driving than I do. I think you'll be parking at the side of the highway and walking in for at least the next 50 years.

Re:Its called mass transit

[Anne Thwacks]

Mass transit does not appear to pay for itself on the surface,

That is because it runs underground :-)

In reality, cars don't pay for the road, but rail users pay for the track. This is not a level playing field.

When I was a student (in the olden days), I conducted a (very unscientific) survey: I asked a large number of car drivers stuck in heavy traffic "Would you pay 50p to make the car in front of you disappear?" Approximately 90% said "Yes"., with a few saying, "I'd be happy to pay £1".

You need to explain to these voters that that is why they should subsidize rapid transit (or even appallingly slow buses).

And why Libertarians are daft as a brush.

Re:Its called mass transit

[Quirkz]

Who said anything about unmapped or dirt? Most small town and rural driving is across paved, mapped roads. My route to work goes along 24 miles of one state highway, and one numbered country road. I'd expect dirt roads to need manual intervention for some time after the paved roads are automated.

Re:Its called mass transit

[fluffernutter]

Then you have far more rural money for infrastructure than a lot of places. Where I am, chances are significantly high you will need to go off road at some point in the country.

Re:Its called mass transit

[fluffernutter]

Come to think of it, a lot of people have seasonal homes here and there are a lot of long winding driveways under a canopy of trees. How is that going to work with a vehicle with no steering wheel?

Re:Its called mass transit

[Khashishi]

Self driving cars and self driving buses will come hand in hand. Self driving buses will be cheaper for cities than bus drivers in the long term.

Re:Its called mass transit

[Anonymous Coward]

This. I live in what was a small town, but got inundated by hipsters and "chuck ads at them while sucking telemetry data" startups. It now has 1.2 million people.

Quality of life? No significant highway improvement (except toll roads) since 1995.

I go to a surrounding city... find every amenity, if not more, just because the venues/pubs/clubs are not taxed out of existence. The food is better, air is less polluted, one can do things like have a backyard grill, and you don't have to kick over smelly winos at your front door every morning.

Re:Its called mass transit

[Anonymous Coward]

It will cost as much as the seat belts, but it won't be included unless you buy the 6000$ Advanced Technology Driving Comfort Package 3.

Re:Its called mass transit

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen it a bunch. All it takes is 1 guy to be going 15-20 under the speed limit on the interstate, and even though it's 3+ lanes, and you've just added 15 minutes to 3000 people's commutes.

Re:Its called mass transit

[Anonymous Coward]

There is still the last mile problem with mass transit. The small city busses really do not cut it for people who are above lower middle class. Residental areas in small cities that are near the bus line are normally that nice places to live, and the busses don't travel to where the good jobs are (the small professional company). The problem is much bigger then just public transport. The problem combines racism, class warfare, upward mobility, education, environment...

Put 350 electric mopeds at each bus stop. Anyone who gets off, can ride the electric moped for free for a certain number of miles before it deactivates and self-drives back to the bus stop.

Last mile problem completely eliminated.

The real problem is that people like us don't want to give up our cars. We like them and we want to be different from the "regulars" who have to take the bus. That is the real reason why we haven't already solved the last mile problem of public transportation.

Re:Its called mass transit

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you have far more rural money for infrastructure than a lot of places. Where I am, chances are significantly high you will need to go off road at some point in the country.

Then you have way less money for infrastructure than a lot of places. Where I am(and have ever been), dirt roads are pretty much limited to Private property. You don't have to go off roading unless you are going up some type of uninhabited mountain, or into the desert, or something like that.

I drive a dirt road(not on private property) probably 1 time a year or less, and I live in a town with less than 5000 people, in a county that could probably fit 60 million more people comfortably.

Re:Its called mass transit

[radarskiy]

The thing about people living in dense populations is that they are all in the same place. If you don't want to live in a dense population, then all of these people that do are of your way, thus it is a benefit to you.

That's it?

[MrLogic17]

I think that number is very, very low.

My prediction is that within 10 years, half of new cars will have some level of self-driving ability. High-end cars will be almost all autonomous capable.
I also predict that 1 or more of the classic "big 3" auto makers will go under or be purchased.

Re:That's it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe in 10 years half of new cars will but in 10 years there will be a lot of "old" cars in the roads so, yes, 25% will do self-driving.

Re:That's it?

[dohzer]

Do adaptive cruise control and lane following count? Because that's basically 25% of driving and it's already here.
The remaining 75% is when you've tuned out and the car forgets how to drive, it requires help, and you're forced to take over.

Re:That's it?

[squiggleslash]

That would be Chrysler, it's always being purchased...

If half of all new cars have some level of self driving ability in ten years, then it's highly unlikely the 25% threshold will be met. Most cars on the road aren't new, and we don't know what percentage of car users will use the self driving capabilities of the cars that have it. That said, Tesla plans to make the (mid-range) Model 3 self driving (with the firmware permitting the feature released later this year), so there's at least some chance that within 10 years virtually all new cars will have the feature.

Re:That's it?

[goose-incarnated]

I think that number is very, very low.

My prediction is that within 10 years, half of new cars will have some level of self-driving ability. High-end cars will be almost all autonomous capable. I also predict that 1 or more of the classic "big 3" auto makers will go under or be purchased.

My prediction: you're wrong. In mid nineties we had SDCs. Two decades later the rate of success of SDCs has improved only a fraction of a percent while the computing power required to drive the car increased by a few thousand percent.

Given the tiny progress made by increasing computional power by thousands of percent, what makes you think that significant progress will be made?

Re:That's it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Adaptive cruise control has been available in production cars for 25 years and requires infinitely less technology and hardware but it's still an optional extra found mainly in high-end cars.

Re: That's it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the number is absurdly high.
1- The technology is still in its infancy.
2- People don't want them.

Re:That's it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do adaptive cruise control and lane following count? Because that's basically 25% of driving and it's already here.
The remaining 75% is when you've tuned out and the car forgets how to drive, it requires help, and you're forced to take over.

No. The topic is 'self driving' not 'driver assist'.

Re:That's it?

[gfxguy]

I don't know if they "count," but it's not good enough to solve traffic problems unless 100% of the cars are completely self driving, taking the "driver" out of the equation. All it takes is one idiot to screw up traffic for tens of thousands of people on a busy freeway. You will never get human beings to all "be on the same page" when it comes to driving, so only 100% self driving vehicles will actually solve any traffic problems.

Re:That's it?

[wired_parrot]

One of the simplest forms of automation in a car, the automatic transmission, has been around for over 80 years. Despite this, only 20% of cars in Europe and Japan are sold with automatic transmissions. Given that the most often cited reasons are cost and a desire for control, and that a self driving cars will necessarily be more expensive, with less driver control, I find it doubtful that a self driving car will even approach 20% of the market.

Re:That's it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that number is very, very low.

My prediction is that within 10 years, half of new cars will have some level of self-driving ability. High-end cars will be almost all autonomous capable.
I also predict that 1 or more of the classic "big 3" auto makers will go under or be purchased.

The number seems reasonable to me. Its refreshing to see realistic projections on Slashdot. Self driving is not driver assist. Yes, driver assist will improve and increase, but self driving has a long way to go. We can't even handle simple highway driving yet, under good conditions. Interaction with humans drivers is a huge challenge with many obstacles.

  Even Tesla can't handle a simple lane shift and barrier...long way to go: http://www.carscoops.com/2017/03/tesla-model-s-hits-barrier-with.html

Re:That's it?

[Junta]

Level of investment due to a critical mass of well resourced companies? The big question whether that investment due to fad will sustain long enough to get to the end or if the fad dies down before they get to market.

A large part of progress is not whether it is technically possible to do so, but whether the right set of people get interested in making it a reality at the right time.

Re:That's it?

[religionofpeas]

only 100% self driving vehicles will actually solve any traffic problems.

Not even 100% will do that, unless you have some sort of token system that determines if you're allowed to enter the freeway at all. Otherwise, as soon as the number of vehicles exceeds the road capacity, you get traffic problems.

And even when you're under, but close, to road capacity, it means that small mishaps can cause delays. For instance, if it starts raining, the increased braking distance would force more space between cars, and cause traffic to come to a stop.

Re:That's it?

[religionofpeas]

The progress that has been made in the last 5 years is bigger than in the 15 years before that, despite general computing speed only increasing a little bit.

Re:That's it?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Despite this, only 20% of cars in Europe and Japan are sold with automatic transmissions.

Maybe we're just used to it. We don't have anything against automation around here. By the way, is the self-driving feature going to be more expensive than the driver? If not, such automated taxis might actually be cheaper to operate. The automatic transmission doesn't change the picture meaningfully, full autonomy does, though.

Re:That's it?

[WrongMonkey]

There was nothing close to SDCs in the mid nineties. The first DARPA Grand Challenge was in 2004 and was a complete failure with none of the teams completing more than 12 km of the course and no winner declared. The second DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005 was much more successful with five teams completing the course. This is generally considering the starting point for current autonomous vehicle development and most of the leading companies in the field can be traced back to successful DARPA challenge teams.

Re:That's it?

[liquid_schwartz]

Maybe in 10 years half of new cars will but in 10 years there will be a lot of "old" cars in the roads so, yes, 25% will do self-driving.

Until insurance rates make it cheaper to just get a car to drive for you.

Re:That's it?

[phantomfive]

There was nothing close to SDCs in the mid nineties.

Wow, can't you at least be bothered to read Wikipedia? Relieve yourself of ignorance before posting, we have a vast network of information queriable in seconds and somehow we still get these kinds of falsehoods. We've had things "like" self driving cars since the 1950s, and in to quote Wikipedia, "In 1995, Carnegie Mellon University's Navlab project completed a 3,100 miles (5,000 km) cross-country journey, of which 98.2% was autonomously controlled, dubbed 'No Hands Across America."

Re:That's it?

[WrongMonkey]

Wow, did YOU at least bother to read the Wikipedia? The very next sentence after the one you quoted: "This car, however, was semi-autonomous by nature: it used neural networks to control the steering wheel, but throttle and brakes were human-controlled, chiefly for safety reasons."

Re:That's it?

[phantomfive]

Do you deny that even that limited system is still at least close to a self-driving car? Admit you were wrong, and improve, that is your best scenario here.

To quote Wikipedia again,

the project was a journey of 1,200 miles (1,900 km) over six days on the motorways of northern Italy dubbed Mille Miglia in Automatico ("One thousand automatic miles"), with an average speed of 56 miles per hour (90 km/h).[43] The car operated in fully automatic mode for 94% of its journey, with the longest automatic stretch being 34 miles (55 km). The vehicle had only two black-and-white low-cost video cameras on board and used stereoscopic vision algorithms to understand its environment.

Re:That's it?

[WrongMonkey]

"Do you deny that even that limited system is still at least close to a self-driving?" Actually, that is exactly what I am denying. And your second quote from Wikipedia continues to back me up on that. Imagine a student driver taking a test where the instructor has to do 6% of the driving. That is not passing score and its not even close to a passing score. You can put on cruise control and snooze through a Nevada highway for 34 miles. Show me a vehicle tested before 2005 that operated on open course for a reasonable distance WITHOUT A HUMAN DRIVER and I'll admit that I was wrong.

Your original statement was "Two decades later the rate of success of SDCs has improved only a fraction of a percent". Saying that the current generation for self-driving cars is only a fraction better than the mid-nineties is like saying the current smartphones are only a fraction better than a telegraph. You're completely overlooking the quantum leap in technology that has happened in a very short amount of time.

Re:That's it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe in 10 years half of new cars will but in 10 years there will be a lot of "old" cars in the roads so, yes, 25% will do self-driving.

Until insurance rates make it cheaper to just get a car to drive for you.

Yeah, nothing in the universe could cause my insurance to go down lower than a car payment.

Period. A new car costs like 1800$ every 6 months MINIMUM. And that gets you a nice but featureless $16,000 Honda Civic or comparable. It's another 5k for the "self driving safety features" You'll be paying for it for at least 5 years, maybe 7 too. You're looking at probably 400$ per month for a car with those safety features, MINIMUM, assuming you got a 7 year loan.

Whereas my insurance has never gone above 150$ per month, even if it was completely eliminated the cost of a new car could not compare.

Right now my insurance and gas cost me about 100$ a month, driving 20 miles to and from work every day. How could a self driving car EVER save me money?

Re:That's it?

[phantomfive]

"Do you deny that even that limited system is still at least close to a self-driving?" Actually, that is exactly what I am denying.

OK, you're a moron.

Your original statement was "Two decades later the rate of success of SDCs has improved only a fraction of a percent".

No it wasn't, ltr. I'd like to hear you say again that we didn't have self-driving cars in the 90s. It's entertaining.

Re:That's it?

[WrongMonkey]

No it wasn't, ltr.

That is my mistake, I'm sorry. I thought that the person who was adamantly defending the stupid claim that self-driving cars existed in the mid '90s was the same person who'd made the original stupid claim to begin with. I guess I was just a bit confused because its not often that someone argues with me, cites a wikipedia article that supports my side of the argument, then calls me a moron. I didn't realize that there were two separate Knight Rider fans on slashdot today who would insist that it was a documentary filmed in real time.

It would be a stretch to say that self-driving cars exists today, let alone existed in mid-90s. So what are you even trying to prove here?

Re:That's it?

[phantomfive]

It would be a stretch to say that self-driving cars exists today,

That's kind of true, too. We're definitely not at SAE level 4 autonomous cars.

Self-Driving? Yes. Shared? No.

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

I'll be toward the front of the line when cars have reliable self-driving capabilities. But I'm not sharing my car - that's personal space.

I like having my stuff (umbrella, bag full of fitness clothes and shoes, kids toys, pens, sunscreen/lotion, med kit, sunglasses, etc.) right where I want it at all times. I also like being able to clean my car to my standards and know that someone else hasn't been doing who knows what in my seat ten minutes ago.

So when I'm in a city and I need a taxi, I'll rent your shared car...you just can't have mine.

Re:Self-Driving? Yes. Shared? No.

[Junta]

This is the thing that has had me scratching my head. People equate self-driving cars with 'always rent the car'. I don't understand why everyone things those two are necessarily tied together.

If anything, I would predict the opposite, between the lower maintenance of electric drivetrains and the experience of basically having a personal driver all the time, people would be more willing to own than rent.

Re:Self-Driving? Yes. Shared? No.

[Sloppy]

This is the thing that has had me scratching my head. People equate self-driving cars with 'always rent the car'. I don't understand why everyone things those two are necessarily tied together.

They aren't necessarily tied together. Of course some people will want one thing and not the other.

But they happen to go great together. For every person who needs their car to be personal space, there will be n people who don't need that. I think n is a big number, like 19 or something. Some people probably think that's absurd and the real number is incredibly low, like 3. Cool, whatever. I'm not a pollster or market analyst.

There are even degrees. How much money is a mobile safe and personal cleanliness standards really worth to you? How much money-saving would tip you? What if we're talking about your family's second or third car, the one that's only getting driven 3000 miles per year? Are you sure you're willing to spend an extra $20,000 on a second mobile safe to avoid carrying a backpack or briefcase, if we were talking about 20 days per year instead of 200 days per year? There are going to be so many possible intermediate cases, not just across the whole population, but even within one person's life. I suspect there's a real market here, and I would probably be one of its customers if the numbers were right.

Re:Self-Driving? Yes. Shared? No.

[fluffernutter]

I'm worried about the amount of renting that will happen. At least if people take public transit then they are contributing to their society by paying for the transit. Imagine a world where you have to pay a private company $5 a day to take you to work. It will be like a tax by a private company just to move you around. This is why it will be important for cities to keep up their public transit, but currently it isn't looking good. How long will it be before any average person can afford one of these though?

Re:Self-Driving? Yes. Shared? No.

[Junta]

It is a matter of degrees, but I find it hard to believe that a significant number of households currently owning three cars think they wouldn't need that third car if only they could rent a self-driving car. The reason being is they can rent such a car today, yet they still own a car, which they won't do unless they think it makes sense for them.

I don't say there is no market for rentals (obviously there is already), I just don't see self-driving long term tipping the scale in favor of renting more than it is today.

I know a lot of businesses will use *any* excuse to push renting/leasing because it's more lucrative for them. However the general market continues to go for ownership despite how hard the companies push against ownership.

Re:Self-Driving? Yes. Shared? No.

[Sloppy]

I just don't see self-driving long term tipping the scale in favor of renting more than it is today.

I think it comes down to this: Robot drivers are a nice feature for owned cars, but I don't think it expands the attractiveness of ownership as much as it expands the attractiveness of sharing.

Robots don't make ownership more attractive to many people who would otherwise not have bought a car. How many people are thinking, "I'd buy a car if they drove themselves, but they don't, so I'm going to get around some other way"? Maybe some people, but I don't think many. Most people who own cars are willing to drive them; they might prefer to read a novel on that desert roadtrip, but having-to-drive isn't a deal-killer. So your new customers are people who are willing, but unable. Is that a lot?

But how many people are thinking "I'd take a robot taxi, but it doesn't exist yet, so I'm going to get around some other way"? More, I think. If you can take the driver out of the comparison, the two cases of car rental and a taxi hire, just sort of blend together into unified case. I think that new thing can serve situations where people currently settle for solutions where they aren't really happy, turning more Nos into Yesses. And I also think those situations where people aren't happy, aren't very extreme; if the shared car scenario where just a little better, it would make a big difference. I know that Uber/Lyft tipped a lot of people who were not taking taxis all the time.

Re:Self-Driving? Yes. Shared? No.

[toddestan]

The basic idea is that self-driving taxis will be so cheap (since you don't have to pay a driver) that it will be more cost effective to take a taxi everywhere rather than own a car. This supposedly will come about because the people who still chose to own a self-driving car will let the car self-drive for Uber (or whatever) when they aren't using it themselves. This could work until the car gets smart enough to start demanding its cut of the profits.

I already see 5%

[OzPeter]

For at least 5% of cars on the road they already seem to be driving themselves.

Those self driving car engineers need to step up their game because the weaving side to side and driving well below the speed limit in the passing lane on the freeway is a dead give away that their algorithms can be improved.

Pooled driving? Already exists.

[MrLogic17]

We already have pooled driving and shared cars. It's called a taxi.
The only thing a self-driving vehicle does is take out the cost of the human driver. That's it.

People also carpool. That's been around forever.

Self-driving vehicles will change a lot of things: delivery trucks will go cross-country without sleep breaks, off-site parking will be more practical, highway deaths will drop like crazy - but nothing about city traffic will fundamentally change.

Re:Pooled driving? Already exists.

[netsavior]

nothing about city traffic will fundamentally change.

well in the shorter term it will get orders of magnitude worse. In many areas, it would be cheaper to have your car circle the block indefinitely than to buy/rent a parking space. Certainly for the duration of a meal or trip to the store, "drive to nowhere, then drive back" will be the standard way to "park".

Re:Pooled driving? Already exists.

[Anonymous Coward]

The driver is half the cost of the taxi - so hardly unimportant. More so if they are electric vehicles and thus no effective fuel cost.

It also allows for greater utilisation of the taxi, etc.

My guess is manual driving (and thus parking) of vehicles will be banned in many CBDs by 2030 - too many advantages of doing so.

Re:Pooled driving? Already exists.

[Anonymous Coward]

"but nothing about city traffic will fundamentally change."

Really? You know this how? Oh, you mean it's an opinion... stated as fact. Fuck off.

Re:Pooled driving? Already exists.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm imagining cross country delivery trucks being attacked for what they are carrying. Then the trucks being armed with killer robot turrets to prevent that. Then the bad guys using automating hijacking cars so they aren't hurt during it.

It will be like Mad Max but with automated drivers/gunners on both sides.

Really trying to figure out how this won't happen, but its not coming to me.

Re:Pooled driving? Already exists.

[Anonymous Coward]

thus no effective fuel cost.

Why do the EV devout keep saying this? My electric bill for my house last month was about $70. That's about what I spent on gasoline last month as well. Why does this myth that electricity is free keep circulating? Where do you live that you don't pay for electricity?

Re:Pooled driving? Already exists.

[Anonymous Coward]

City traffic is going to change.

70%-80% of the operating cost for a bus is paying for labor.

Excluding capital costs for right now (because they factor out to be fairly low over the life of a bus).
A fleet of city busses that went driverless could do so for 1/3 of the current cost... or 2-3 times as many busses for the same cost.

Either of those two things is going to have a significant impact... increased ridership is likely, which means increased revenue, which means more buses are possible, which leads to public transit becoming an increasingly viable option in cities.

uber/taxi's style transportation will remain in place, but increased public transit means those things will be doing short hops not longer backhaul runs.

Re:Pooled driving? Already exists.

[amiga3D]

70 dollars? Damn! I paid $138 last month and that's the cheapest in 2 years or more. I spend about the same on gas every month too. I'm watching electric cars closely. I think my next car might well be electric. I'm planning to set up solar panels on the garage so I can drive for free.

Re:Pooled driving? Already exists.

[amiga3D]

A lot of trucks are already networked. Hijacking isn't as easy as it once was.

Re:Pooled driving? Already exists.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do the EV devout keep saying this? My electric bill for my house last month was about $70. That's about what I spent on gasoline last month as well. Why does this myth that electricity is free keep circulating? Where do you live that you don't pay for electricity?

You drive little, as my cost is at least $70/month for fuel and . The charge cost for an EV is a small percentage of your house cost, comparatively.

Re:Pooled driving? Already exists.

[swillden]

nothing about city traffic will fundamentally change.

It'll change dramatically.

For one, it will largely eliminate parking. No need to park your car on the street in front of your home, have it park somewhere outside the city and have it drive in when you need it. When you go to the store or similar, no need to park your car at the store. It can circle the block, or drive a few miles away to where it can park. This will have the biggest effects not in dense urban areas but in moderately-dense suburban areas. Those huge mall parking lots will become unnecessary. Assuming car ownership stays high, parking will likely consolidate into enormous lots a few minutes' drive from merchants. It's also highly likely that many people living in moderately-dense areas that currently have a car will switch to using self-driving car services instead, since they'll be cheaper and almost as convenient, and they won't need parking at all since when they get out of the vehicle it will go off to service another customer.

In the longer run, cities will likely outlaw manually-operated vehicles and that will have an even more dramatic effect. Mutually-cooperating or centrally-controlled (could go either way) vehicles that communicate via RF have no need of things like stop signs and stoplights. Taken to the logical limit, there's no need for vehicles to stop at intersections at all as long as they can coordinate to arrange for gaps for cross-traffic to pass through -- and the gaps needn't be any larger than the time the crossing vehicle needs to pass through them (which will be terrifying until we get used to it). This will make city traffic smooth and predictable... which may in turn cause it to increase in volume until it's not.

On highways, such vehicles have no need of the "safe following distances" required by human situational non-awareness and slow response times. They'll close up into trains of vehicles inches apart, both to pack more vehicles into a given area of roadway and improve energy-efficiency by drafting. They will also be able to increase speeds significantly without danger, and without great loss of efficiency (due to drafting). I expect that it won't be too long after self-driving vehicles become commonplace that local governments will carve out self-driving only lanes so they can begin to take advantage of the higher efficiencies offered.

People also carpool. That's been around forever.

Sure, but people don't carpool very much, because unless you have a fixed group of people who go the same place every day at the same time, it's too hard to organize. It's often too hard to organize even with such a group of people. Self-driving cars with centralized dispatching systems can handle the organization automatically and dynamically. It seems entirely likely that in the future you'll put what time you want to go to work in your phone and your digital assistant will automatically notify your carpool service of choice. The service will take your requirements along with the requirements of thousands of others and construct routes that incur minimal overhead, and your phone will notify you when your ride is five minutes out. Note that it's not necessary that the vehicle be self-driving for this to work, but it will be a natural extension for self-driving car services, which will help mitigate the fact that ride demand is so bursty. They can purchase small vans which transport a half-dozen people during rush hour and make grocery store runs, etc., at other times. Demand-adjusted pricing will encourage people to take single-rider journeys at off-peak times, and to accept sharing at peak times.

Re:Pooled driving? Already exists.

[gurps_npc]

You are wrong about taking out the cost of the driver being the only benefit.

You also get improved safety, reduced racism (ask any black man in how hard it is to get a taxi), improved availability, and improved area served - the humans tend to concentrate in the most profitable area, leaving certain areas undeserved.

Also, city traffic WILL change, it will be far more predictable. Fewer attempts to pass, fewer attempts to speed, etc. etc. That counts - a lot.

Re:Pooled driving? Already exists.

[fluffernutter]

In my city we have bus shortages from time to time, and the problem is not the drivers, but the mechanics. They have enough drivers but they can't pay the mechanics enough / hire enough to keep all the buses going. Is automation going to relieve the expense for mechanics?

Re:Pooled driving? Already exists.

[apoc.famine]

Carpooling is ok, but thinking about where I live, I'd totally go for owning a self-driving car. My wife works about 10 minutes from home, I work about 20-25, depending on traffic. She leaves a half hour before I do, gets home a half hour before I do. Car could drop her off at work, come home, get me, drop me off at work, go home, and park in the driveway. 10 minutes before she heads out of work she can summon it, and it will take her home. Then 20 minutes before I want it, I call it. Or I go grab a beer if she's going somewhere.
 
No street parking, no lot parking, no real need for 2 cars, no adjusting the seat, no sharing with strangers. If she's going to be at the yoga for an hour, the car can come get me, drop me off at home, and head back to yoga.
 
I think this means a bit more congestion on the road, however. This should be mitigated by the auto-driving capabilities, and can be further mitigated by reclaiming parking for more lanes. We'd need a small fraction of the metered spots if cars could go park a little further away, and they could park in dense clusters, because they could move when one needed to get out.

Re:Pooled driving? Already exists.

[Anonymous Coward]

nothing about city traffic will fundamentally change.

well in the shorter term it will get orders of magnitude worse. In many areas, it would be cheaper to have your car circle the block indefinitely than to buy/rent a parking space. Certainly for the duration of a meal or trip to the store, "drive to nowhere, then drive back" will be the standard way to "park".

Sounds like a good thing.

All the pros of using a car to get somewhere, COMBINED with all the pros of leaving your car at home. Absolutely perfect. We could even get rid of parking spaces entirely and have all cars "drive around the block" while we do other things.

Fuck it, we could have those cars go and pick up other people while we do things, and give up the idea of personal ownership of transportation means. Anyone can get a ride anywhere simply by requesting it. A car shows up and takes you where you need to go, it then goes and picks up the nearest person.

Re:Pooled driving? Already exists.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with this. I live in Albuquerque and go to Denver to visit a client a few times a year. It's a 6.5 hour drive. Roughly the same with respect to time if i took a plane (airport parking, ticketing, security, boarding, getting luggage, getting a rental car, etc.)

Having an AI handle the largest part of the highway driving while I could stay productive? That would be a Godsend to me. If I had that, traveling by air for anything inside of a 24 hour drive would be non-existent and I would tell the airlines to fuck themselves.

Self-Driving Cars + Map Spoofing

[pipingguy]

Ha! wasn't there just a Slashdot story about map software spoofing?

This will end well...

Not going to happen.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a pipe dream shared by the techno dreamer amonsgst us, much like air cars or robot servants.

I don't know anyone who has a self driving car or who has any intention of getting a self driving car. I'm not even aware of any for sale. Most people would never trust their lives to this kind of technology.

People need to get their heads out of their sci-fi asses and understand that there are enormous legal and regulatory hurdles here. The first multi car, multi fatality crash is going to have lawsuits flying thicker than mosquitoes in an Alaska summer.

Re:Not going to happen.

[queazocotal]

I have various health issues.
I cannot legally drive.
A self driving vehicle would be enormously freeing.

Re:Not going to happen.

[Applehu Akbar]

"I don't know anyone who has a self driving car or who has any intention of getting a self driving car. "

Of course. They are not on the market yet.

But now that the many beta models cruising with regular traffic are already better drivers than humans, it has become inevitable that they WILL come to market.

Re:Not going to happen.

[Kiuas]

This is a pipe dream shared by the techno dreamer amonsgst us, much like air cars or robot servants.

No, no it isn't. The sensory tech to make cars self-driving is already there. Google has millions of miles of successful testing under their belt. I myself have been riding in a Tesla going 120 km/h while the driver was doing nothing. Now Tesla's solution is not fully automatic and requires you to still pay attention to the road, but this if anything should point out to you that we're much, much closer to self-driving cars than most people think. There are issues to solve still before the tech is ready to hit the market widely, but these obstacles (handing of weather conditions etc) are things which can be solved with existing technology and innovations.

I don't know anyone who has a self driving car or who has any intention of getting a self driving car.

I will get one as soon as the price is right. I'd much rather climb onto the car, tell it to get me to wherever, and sleep/eat/do work/whatever else with my time rather than drive,

Most people would never trust their lives to this kind of technology.

All existing data from ongoing self-driving car pilots, including Google's, point to self-driving cars being vastly safer than human piloted vehicles. The cars have technology allowing them to have a far superior understanding of their surroundings than any driver ever can. Google is using radar. The car can see and know the location of vehicles, pedestrians and obstacles far outside the reach of a humans vision. The car is able to do real-time physics calculation and actually figure out the smartest way to for example evade stuff. Humans take about a second to a second and a half to even react to a sudden emergency. In that second the computer has not only detected the obstacle/danger but processed through the different alternatives it has (ie. it has figured out whether or not to do perform an emergency braking maneuver or whether it's better to evade, and in which direction) to respond to that and has started to take action far before human reaction times even kick in. Literally in the time it takes for the human brain to go "OH FUCK A MOOSE!", the self-driving car has already mapped a solution and began implementation taking into factor numerous things (brake-force per tire, road surface conditions, etc) that the human never could. And if a crash is unavoidable, the car can calculate a way/place to crash the in a way that does minimal damage to the passengers and start dialing emergency services immediately, even rely to them crash data so that the dispatched emergency staff will know what kind of injuries to prepare to treat.

Computers are simply better suited to handle the chaotic nature of traffic. It can track and predict the movement of all of those vehicles and pedestrians simultaneously. This video showcases that well at around the 12 minute mark: the cars are all stopped at a crossing, and there's a cyclist that's about to blow through a red-light. The human-operated vehicles all miss this and start to move forwards on a green light as the cyclist hits the crosswalk, nearly hitting him. The self-driving car has known (based on speed and trajectory of the cyclist from LADAR) that the cyclist is going to blow through the red light before he even does so and doesn't start to move until the cyclist has crossed the road safely.

Couple that with the fact that the cars can communicate with each other. A car that spots something like a tree or an accident on road can relay this info to other vehicles which can take this into consideration immediately and re-route far ahead of time.

People need to get their heads out of their sci-fi asses and understand that there are enormous legal and regulatory hurdles here.

Yes, but those can (and will) be sorted.

The firs

Re:Not going to happen.

[93 Escort Wagon]

It would also improve the quality of life for a lot of elderly patients with various forms of mild dementia.

My elderly mom is fortunate that she still has her wits about her and can still handle driving physically - but I've seen her get flustered, and can see the eventual writing on the wall. I've seen other people wrestle with when to take the car keys away from their parents... it's not something I look forward to. Self-driving cars with some sort of limitations regarding where it's allowed to go - perhaps a pre-programmed list of destinations - would be a Godsend.

Re:Not going to happen.

[amiga3D]

People die by the thousands on the road every year. Sure there are challenges but it's going to happen. I think in the next 5 to 10 years you'll see it begin. The testing has shown it's safer than letting people drive. Already there are automatic anti-collision features in cars.

Re:Not going to happen.

[pnutjam]

Self driving cars will be a neat exhibit in Disney Land, like the "Home of the Future".

Re:Not going to happen.

[Junta]

are already better drivers than humans

Problem is this is based on data that is hardly that rigorous scientifically, from parties that have a vested interest in a specific result.

On the data from autonomous driving:
-Sometimes includes 'simulations'
-Necessarily done only on cars less than a couple years old
-Additionally, they have particularly rigorous maintenance
-Has the benefit of all modern safety systems apart from the autonomous driving system itself.
-Any time the autonomous system determines it might not be able to operate safely, it surrenders to the human
-Only done in select areas.
-Sometimes has a 'no true scotsman' tilt to it (e.g. 'autopilot' isn't an autonomous system when there's an incident, but sometimes it counts when it looks good)

This data is then generally compared with incident rates from cars that:
-On overage, are an order of magnitude older
-With frequently spotty maintenance
-Many don't have anti lock breaks, stability and traction control, adaptive cruise control, collision warning, lane departure warning/avoidance
-Operates under circumstances the autonomous system won't even try
-Done everywhere
-Contain willfully reckless drivers, who will be a source of incidents unless they are *forbidden* from driving, even if their cars *can* be autonomous.

My suspicion is the safest is the 'semi-autonomous', systems double checking the human and having a much wider view, but still with a human forced to pay attention will yield the best results. Note that systems that don't punish a user for neglecting to be attentive will give it a bad name (e.g. the Tesla incidents).

Re:Not going to happen.

[Junta]

All existing data from ongoing self-driving car pilots,

All publicized existing data from pilots run by groups that would profit from a favorable result, and generally interpreted by those groups into a press release that is regurgitated by an ever less critical media. Skepticism is not such a bad thing to have when faced with neither research nor journalism with an objective, critical eye.

Re:Not going to happen.

[Kiuas]

Skepticism is not such a bad thing to have when faced with neither research nor journalism with an objective, critical eye.

You're entirely correct. However, in general the reasons for the cars being safer (reaction times, better situational awareness) are such that they can - and must - be objectively demonstrated before mass market release. That is, we're not going to take the companies' word for it, obviously the cars need to be tested by outside/3rd parties before being put on sale.

My general point is that there's a whole host of reasons why computerized monitoring of traffic is safer than relying on a single human. I don't really see a logical reason for why a self-driving vehicles wouldn't be less-error prone simply due to the fact that human drivers make a lot of errors as is. That is, the bar for being a better driver than even an above-average driver is not nearly as high as people think.

Re:Not going to happen.

[fluffernutter]

While we're running comparisons, as long as self driving cars don't cause more accidents than other heavy machinery on the market currently do, automated or not, then I'll be happy. Let's be clear here that companies are selling a machine for the purpose of transporting people, it should be held to current industry safety standards for heavy machines.

Re:Not going to happen.

[fluffernutter]

Maybe it could look like the 80's or 90's. It would be a nice improvement to the Tomorrowland that looks like the 70's.

Re:Not going to happen.

[fluffernutter]

Self driving cars are only safe if a majority of people on the road are driving them. That will be well beyond the time span in this article, which only gets us to 25%.

Re:Not going to happen.

[Anonymous Coward]

The first multi car, multi fatality crash is going to have lawsuits flying thicker than mosquitoes in an Alaska summer.

Why are you using future tense? That lawsuit happened before you were born; people have been getting killed by cars for a century. It shouldn't surprise you, because one of the problems cars had from the beginning, is that they were operated by apes, and the apes had atriocious safety records, killing tens of thousands of people every year and causing immense property damage. Been there, done that.

Most people would never trust their lives to this kind of technology.

It's not about whether or not you trust something, as it's about how much you trust it. This tech is only competing with the apes. It's merely vying for a 1st place win.

Yes, there are going to be some horror stories (some of them amusing, to those of us who appreciate black humor). People are going to die because of math or logic errors. Innocent children carrying cute puppies in their laps, sitting next to nuns, are going to slowly burn to death, screaming, due to known bugs that didn't get patched! Someone you love might be maimed for life because someone decided it would be fun to trick a different car into driving into oncoming traffic. That cool guy you know, the one who always seems to do the right thing, will be killed because some middle manager told his engineers, "That's not a common case, we'll handle it next revision." There will be traffic jams that the robots don't know how to get out of. Illusions might be able to trick sensors into parking stupidly.

Every bad thing you're imagining: it really might happen!

But take a look around at 2017. You're living with all that, right now. All those horror stories are the status quo. The goal is to have less of it.

Re:Not going to happen.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a nonsense argument. Self driving cars only have to be better then the average human in avoiding accident causing mistakes of other humans. That threshold is probably already demonstrated on the testing grounds - the tech just isn't cheap enough yet. I'm very much looking forward to replacing my declining driving skills (I'm over > 50 and see it happening) with an ever improving autonomous car that will avoid many mistakes that I wouldmake and be better at avoiding the errors of others.

Re:Not going to happen.

[Anonymous Coward]

Preapproved Destinations:
[Warning: Use of this vehicle is subject to it's ToS and EULA. By getting into this vehicle you indicate your acceptance of these terms.]

Grandma:
The Home.
The Home.
The Home.

Kids:
School
Home

Parents:
Work

You:
Drive-In Detainment Depot

Re:Not going to happen.

[Junta]

There are things that inarguably are going to work better in software and sensors (the systems can know at the same time 360 degrees and within inches of each corner, if appropriate equipped) and can manipulate hardware faster when correct decisions are made.

On the flipside, we have whether the systems fail to recognize something real or 'hallucinate' something fake and react poorly. If some completely unexpected situation comes up not in the training (while driving training may be more exhaustive for the system than for a human, the human driving training takes for granted a ton of not-strictly-driving but still relevant decisions).

Also we frame the debate between completely manual and completely autonomous generally being the only two points to compare. In reality, we already see some of the most valuable safety and convenience of autonomous driving working itself into market ready cars (adaptive cruise control, lane guidance, collision warning/auto braking) that takes a lot of the tedium out and uses computing systems for things they are naturally good at (paying unending attention to detail that would bore a human brain to death) and the human is providing the ability to intelligently take in some of the bigger picture and make decisions. It's not such a bad place, and that should be the comparison point for autonomous driving, rather than people driving around 10 year old cars.

Re:Not going to happen.

[Sparowl]

I have a friend whose girlfriend could not drive due to epilepsy. He continually had to stop what he was doing (admittedly, hanging out, normally), to go pick her up and drive her to and from work, or home, or whatnot.

A self driving vehicle would've helped both of them out immensely.

Re:Not going to happen.

[amiga3D]

Considering how rapidly this tech is advancing I believe it'll be introduced withing the next 10 years. It might be many years after that but eventually almost all cars will self drive. Who knows, one day maybe only law enforcement vehicles will be allowed to drive manually, if those.

Another point to consider - truck drivers

[Weaselmancer]

Let's say that trucking follows the same metric, 25% self driving inside of 15 years or so.

The trucking industry employs 3.5 million people. Source.

That means that we are potentially looking at 875,000 freshly unemployed truckers over the next 15 years.

Is anyone planning for this?

Re:Another point to consider - truck drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless loading and unloading is also automized the truckers will still have a job.

Re:Another point to consider - truck drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

Is anyone planning for this?

I'm not, but I'm not a trucker, so I don't care.
If I was a trucker, then yes, I'd be planning for that.
Of course, if I was a trucker, that probably implies I wasn't good at planning in the first place, or I would have a degree.

Re:Another point to consider - truck drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Over the past decades more and more jobs have been replaced by automation. Not necessarily by replacing the workforce all at once but rather by making it possible for fewer workers to do the same jobs with the aid of machines.
That more and more work will be replaced by automation isn't at all a surprise.
The problem was first noticed during the first stage of industrialization and gave birth to socialism.
I know that US schools doesn't like to distinguish between socialism and communism that much and teaches another definition of the word than the rest of the world, but if we ignore the definitions for awhile we can at least say that most western nations have realized that since companies to a larger extent wants to quickly replace workforce with automation there have been a need for a social security net that extends beyond the immediate family and can handle that even a significant part of a small town can find themselves jobless quickly.

Now we are reaching a time where automation means that a lot of wealth is produced with a very small workforce.
There is simply no need for everyone to work 8 hours a day anymore and the system is setup in a way that it expects the surplus of humans to just disappear.
Since we still need some people to work and previous experiments with communism have failed some places have started to experiment with UBI to solve the issue.
The benefit of UBI is that it unlike communism doesn't require an all or nothing attitude, it can be scaled according to the needs of society.
If a nation only has the need for 83% of the available workforce UBI can be set to cover 17% of the needed income. For some households where it previously was necessary for two people to work full-time it might be possible for one of the persons to scale down to a half time job and thus make place for more people to share the employment.
This of course requires that the wealth created by automation is taxed so that it can be redistributed.
UBI supports that a nation finetune the numbers as they go and it can be adjusted in steps that doesn't break havoc to the local economy.

TL;DR;

Yes, people are planning for it and are already trying out solutions.
The likelihood is that you live in a place that isn't prepared at all, so you will either have a rough time being jobless or have a rough time with high criminality until a solution is tried and tested enough for your population to support that your country starts to test and finetune the solution for your particular case.

Re:Another point to consider - truck drivers

[amiga3D]

Most truckers don't load and unload their own trucks. And warehouses are becoming more and more automated as well. Robots are a bigger threat than Mexicans to jobs. :)

Re:Another point to consider - truck drivers

[amiga3D]

I have an Uncle that put 4 kids through college driving a truck. He loved doing it driving on until he was 70. It's not a bad life.

Re:Another point to consider - truck drivers

[Weaselmancer]

My father was a truck mechanic, which he did until retirement. We had a nice house growing up.

My concern is that this entire industry is set to evaporate, suddenly and most likely catastrophically. As a mental exercise try to imagine what it would be like for the economy if suddenly 3.5 million people became unemployed. I spend a lot of time worrying about this. It's going to be terrible. And worse yet, we aren't currently doing anything about it. This would be the perfect time to prepare for it because we know it's coming. But we're not.

Re:Another point to consider - truck drivers

[fluffernutter]

Because if they become unemployed then they must be lazy or something!

Re:Another point to consider - truck drivers

[fluffernutter]

So the truckers will get the minimum wage warehouse job? Wow how wonderful for them! What does the kid putting himself through school do now? I know someone who put themselves through school working in a warehouse unloading trucks.

Re:Another point to consider - truck drivers

[apoc.famine]

I don't think 'freshly unemployed truckers' is going to be that much of a problem. It's not 875,000 people all at once. It's more likely going to ramp up over those 15 years, but that's a lot of time.
 
How many drivers will retire in that time? For every one that retires, you just won't need to hire a new one. It's not a job lost, unless you somewhat disingenuously call "I would like a job in that profession but can't find one" a lost job.
 
How many people considering trucking are going to look at the automation and decide that it's not a viable career path? Again, not really jobs lost.
 
Buggy whip makers didn't immediately go out of business when the Model T rolled off the lines. Like most change, truck driving will likely be a slow decline with a few dramatic drops as major businesses change over wholesale.
 
Just guessing, but UPS and FedEX are huge shipping companies, and I bet the first automation there won't replace the employee in the truck, because there still won't be a way to get the package to the door. However, that package handler could be relegated to the passenger seat. Just jumping out to deliver and jumping back in. The truck knows what's in the back, where it needs to drop it off, the road conditions and traffic, and picks the most efficient route. Not a job lost, but likely one that gets a reduction in pay, because the the reduction in job duties.

Re:Another point to consider - truck drivers

[Weaselmancer]

Exactly! That's exactly the problem summed up. That's how this whole thing will be viewed initially. "You're unemployed? What a loser! Just go get a job." But there aren't going to be any to get. The economy simply won't be able to absorb 3.5 million unemployed people. For instance, what about Amiga3D's post upstream, his 70 year old uncle. What if the Automotive Singularity hit when he was 65? What the hell is he supposed to do, go to college?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the tech. This will save lives, be more efficient, all that. But socially there will be a downside. A lot of people are going to be hurt by this. And they don't have to be. We know it's coming, we could be getting ready for it - but we're not. It's going to be a huge problem.

Re:Another point to consider - truck drivers

[fluffernutter]

I think there will first have to be mass dissatisfaction and then a bloody war and then the system of economy may change to something more appropriate for our time.

Re:Another point to consider - truck drivers

[mrpolyrhythm]

Automation is coming for so many more jobs than just these. But, the "OMG the Jobs!" concerns are the EXACT same concerns back when horseless carriages were introduced. What about the blacksmiths? What about the horse trainers and breeders? It's the same concerns here. I would argue that with the truck driving being automated, that the drivers will be reassigned to security guards. After all, you'll need someone to guard that cargo that no one is driving. Of course, until the security aspect also becomes automated, which brings me to my next point: The US government does not realize how much automation is coming. It's not just the menial jobs, like fast food that is going to go full automation, but think about higher level jobs -- medical diagnosis, paralegal work, IT -- automation is coming full-force for much higher level positions than most people realize. There needs to be an honest discussion starting right now about guaranteed living wages, because before this century is up (assuming humans are still alive), there simply won't be enough jobs to keep a middle class.

Re:Another point to consider - truck drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

Most truckers DO in fact load and unload their own trucks, in my experience.

Re:Another point to consider - truck drivers

[amiga3D]

I don't know but I worked at a grocery store and the driver never unloaded. All the warehouses I've ever worked in or seen or known anyone that worked at one had no drivers involved in loading or unloading. I've heard of drivers unloading such as you telling me but in my 58 years on this Earth the only trucks I know of personally where the driver was involved in the load was when I was in the military. I drove them and unloaded/loaded them then but they were only 5 ton or Deuce and a half, military trucks. I'm sure some do but somehow I doubt it's most. I take it back, the guy that brought my shingles to me for my house on a flat bed offloaded with a mobile fork lift for me. That's one.

Re:Another point to consider - truck drivers

[amiga3D]

I imagine it wont happen over night. The big money players will start it and it'll gradually spread taking many years. Hopefully attrition will help soften the blow.

Re:Another point to consider - truck drivers

[amiga3D]

I'm sure all the blacksmith's thought the end of the world was coming. Nothing lasts forever and new things always appear. Someone will have to have jobs or we wont need the trucks to carry goods!

Re:Another point to consider - truck drivers

[Weaselmancer]

Well maybe, and maybe not. My opinion is that we are at the start of something new and never seen before. In the past - your statement has always been 100% correct. Something new always did come along. People that sold buggy whips and horse harnesses were put out of business by Henry Ford. But they could go work for Ford building cars, so no loss.

But now, that may not be the case. Automation is making ALL jobs scarce. If computers take up 3.5 million truck driving jobs, can we move those 3.5 million people into computer construction? No. There aren't going to be 3.5 million computer jobs made. Maybe a few hundred thousand, at best. And this is happening in all industries - farming, coal mining, warehouses, construction, you name it.

I can give you an example of what I'm talking about. I'm a BSEE by trade. I'll bet that if you let me select a team of 5 of my friends, we could easily design a robot that could pick lettuce inside of a year or two. It would drive itself down the rows, steer using GPS and cameras, use those cameras and computers to identify the heads of lettuce using a nice neural net type program so it can tell lettuce from a rock, and would pick up more than 95% of all the lettuce in the field. This robot would take the dozens of workers per farm that manually pick lettuce and replace them with a single gadget. And that's it - there isn't anything beyond that. As soon as robots are picking lettuce, the lettuce picking industry is over. Nobody will ever work there again. No new jobs will be created from this final step. And if the workers move down the field to a carrot farm, my five guys are still making robots and it would be just as easy to make a carrot picker.

We really are entering a new age, right now. Automation is just now beginning to make most labor unnecessary. We really need to think about how we are going to deal with this.

Re:Another point to consider - truck drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, truckers are in serious trouble, because once autonomous becomes more profitable, they are all fired very fast, or the companies that employ them will be out of business.

UPS and Fedex drivers may last longer (but what do you think drones are for), but that's going from a decently skilled and paying position to minimum wage.

Automation so far has been slow, nibbling at the edges. But this could be a big shock to the system. It may also require us to reconsider a lot of things about our economic models, so that might be a good thing.

Re:Another point to consider - truck drivers

[amiga3D]

But that's the thing, you can make a lettuce picking robot sure. But it costs a certain amount of money to make. The cost of labor makes expensive robots profitable. Now you have all these goods and food for sale but who will buy them? Something will have to give. If labor costs drop due to all the unemployed then the price of goods will have to drop too. It's pretty complex but I think it would have to work out somehow because unemployed people don't buy things. I'm going to quit now, my head hurts.

Circlejerk

[Anonymous Coward]

B...b...but the futorologist neckbeards said 100% self-driving cars by 2021!!!!! Singularity by 2029. Where's papa Kurzweil????

3D transporation networks

[sjbe]

Mass transit does not appear to pay for itself on the surface, it pays for itself because of increase in population density that occurs as a result.

Sort of. Mass transit pays off biggest in cases where it allows you to use three dimensions instead of two. Subways allow you to use trains underground or overhead instead of on surface streets. Aircraft allow you to fly above the surface streets. When you get a dense city like NYC or Tokyo, you have people living in three dimensional buildings (high rises) but transiting in a two dimensional road network. This ensures congestion if you don't have a robust subway and tunnel network.

Busses obviously don't work in three dimensions but they can help optimize the 2D surface street usage. But above a certain population density they are limited in how much they can help. Street cars are basically trains on surface streets so they lack the routing flexibility of buses but don't take advantage of three dimensions like subways do so they really are a terrible solution for most circumstances as public transit.

Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

No, not likely.

Including 'could' in a headline is not journalism, it is editorialization, in other words, an opinion. Statistics have also shown that vegetables 'could' cause cancer (lies, damned lies, and statistics). I'm beginning to believe that millennials and their inability to critically think, because they refuse to outgrow the infantile notion that they know all and best, are the ones responsible for clogging up our media platforms of every kind with hearsay (I also think journalism should have an age requirement of *at least* 35, in the modern age. 25 year-olds today are outright babies compared to previous generations).

Like searching a hashtag, articles like this 'could' leave you less intelligent than you were before you read them.

Population density is both good and bad

[sjbe]

People living there receive more services, and businesses located there get more customers

That depends on the services you are seeking and what sort of customers you are looking for. Good luck finding a tractor repair store or any customers for one in downtown Manhattan.

And nobody's forced to use a mode of transportation they dislike - you're allowed to walk, you can take a bus or train, or you can drive.

You can only drive in a city like NYC if you are rather wealthy. Costs too much and is far too impractical for most people. You essentially are forced to take public transit and not everyone likes that.

  It's a win-win for everyone.

It's a win-win for people who want/need to be in a dense city. It's a huge loss for those who dislike living in such a place. Dense populations have their good and bad features. It's not a clear "win-win".

Re:Population density is both good and bad

[parkinglot777]

Your reply seems to miss the point and/or doesn't make sense of the gp...

People living there receive more services, and businesses located there get more customers

That depends on the services you are seeking and what sort of customers you are looking for. Good luck finding a tractor repair store or any customers for one in downtown Manhattan.

Why would people who own a tractor be living in Manhattan or nearby for? What are other services usually located in a big city? Farming??? A repair shop for heavy equipment like this may not have good business in the city because of the cost of the land/lease and surrounding businesses...

And nobody's forced to use a mode of transportation they dislike - you're allowed to walk, you can take a bus or train, or you can drive.

You can only drive in a city like NYC if you are rather wealthy. Costs too much and is far too impractical for most people. You essentially are forced to take public transit and not everyone likes that.

The example does not need to apply to NYC only because NYC is quite a unique case. Other big cities aren't lands that surrounded by water...

It's a win-win for everyone.

It's a win-win for people who want/need to be in a dense city. It's a huge loss for those who dislike living in such a place. Dense populations have their good and bad features. It's not a clear "win-win".

You actually explained it in your own reply. Those who want to live in dense population (big cities) would be happy to live there (win-win). Those who aren't will move out at some point to find a more suitable place for themselves because they dislike to live there anyway. I'm sure people are living where they are for reasons (often times work). Though, most people have a goal to get to in the future, and in this case could be retirement. Many people are not retired at where they work anyway. Besides, a town/city wouldn't suddenly become a dense population location unless either it already a dense population city or there are some special sudden changes in the area (which is extremely rare).

Re:Population density is both good and bad

[Kristoph]

You can only drive in a city like NYC if you are rather wealthy. Costs too much and is far too impractical for most people. You essentially are forced to take public transit and not everyone likes that.

I am wealthy and I don't drive in Manhattan, where driving is a PITA irrespective of your wealth level. I do dislike the subways though and so I use a car service, most often Uber. Although I personally take regular Uber the use of Uberpool is pervasive in the city and is reasonably priced. Indeed, for shorter trips it can cost the same as the subway.
 

Re:Population density is both good and bad

[sjbe]

Why would people who own a tractor be living in Manhattan or nearby for?

Exactly my point. Not all services or companies benefit from high population density. That's why I used such an absurd example.

The example does not need to apply to NYC only because NYC is quite a unique case. Other big cities aren't lands that surrounded by water...

It's not unique to NYC at all though NYC may be a more extreme example than some. Driving into downtown Chicago for example can be hugely expensive and aggravating. Same with most large cities big enough to justify a robust public transit system.

Re:Population density is both good and bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would people who own a tractor be living in Manhattan or nearby for?

Exactly my point. Not all services or companies benefit from high population density. That's why I used such an absurd example.

Your "point" is stupid.

Businesses that don't benefit from a high population density won't be in a city in the first place and therefore are irrelevent to intra-city public transportation.

Re:Population density is both good and bad

[painandgreed]

It's a win-win for people who want/need to be in a dense city. It's a huge loss for those who dislike living in such a place. Dense populations have their good and bad features. It's not a clear "win-win".

Hey, look. Nobody is trying to go all Agenda 21 on you and force you to move to the big city and ride mass transit. For the city, it's what's needed for multiple reasons. And automation such as the article is talking about will probably help provide that. It will also have an effect in the rural areas. Tractors are already going towards GPS autodriving. Trucks will be next. For the last hundred years urbanization has been happening because of economic reasons and no reason to think it's going to stop as farms need less workers and industry switch from need of small pools of unskilled labor to larger pools of skilled laborers.

If they really want to be creative..

[Neuronwelder]

Forget the 3,000 lb. "missiles" that they want to control. If you want something real for humans, build a bullet train! Instead prove A.I. is trustworthy with smaller things first: Make automatic cooking and cookware cleaning. Make something you can drop on a toilet to convert it to an automatic butt cleaner, a shoe tyer for old folks, personal car washer and maybe a waxer too, an actual lawn mower that mows straight rows and is safe to children and pets and mows around obstacles, an automatic weed puller, a mail getter, a dog walker, a real home floor mopper that changes it's own water and puts itself away, a duster/crumb picker upper (Tell me that would not be popular!!), a real a.c. vacuum cleaner, a real animal feeder, a rug cleaner that cleans up animal droppings.. These a but a few things that are actually useful to the average person. A.I can actually make things easier for daily life for a change!

75 percent couldn't care less!

[Anonymous Coward]

Some percentage thinks these percents were made up.

Boston Consulting Group is being conservative

[93 Escort Wagon]

The vast majority of Boston driving could be automated today.

Current AIs could easily handle merging in without checking whether a car is there or not, getting in minor low-speed accidents regularly, and constantly sounding the car horn.

Won't happen as fast as we imagine

[sjbe]

My prediction is that within 10 years, half of new cars will have some level of self-driving ability. High-end cars will be almost all autonomous capable.

That's not exactly putting yourself out on a limb. That would be true if half of new cars got lane departure monitoring or adaptive cruise control. Like most new technology it's going to move both faster and slower than most people think. You'll see self-driving tech appearing in some vehicles but it's going to take quite a while to become ubiquitous. Some niches will probably move faster than others. Liability issues will hold things back. And development cycles are rather long in the auto industry and that isn't going to change.

Here's why it's going to take a while. Development cycles on new cars take 3-5 years and once in production cars don't change drastically for 4-8 years. Given that most cars under development right now do not have any meaningful self driving tech in them, you aren't going to see it start to seriously take off for another decade. I know this because I work in the industry and I know a fair bit about the cars we'll see in the next 3-5 years. Development of a car is a much more drawn out affair than most people realize. So you won't even see the tech start to arrive in a substantial way for another 5-10 years and it's going to take some time to get into the market place. 15-20 years is probably a more realistic time line to see mass adoption of self driving tech. There will be some niches that move faster but it's going to take a while.

This all assumes that the liability issues are worked out in a timely manner. It's not entirely clear how fast they will get sorted. It's also not clear how fast people will become comfortable with the new tech even if it works well and can be made available at an affordable cost.

I also predict that 1 or more of the classic "big 3" auto makers will go under or be purchased.

Always possible but you aren't basing that on evidence unless you are talking about FCA which has been bought and sold three times in the last 20 years. It's pretty unlikely Ford or GM will get bought because there simply aren't a lot of potential buyers given their size. It would require either some sort of catastrophe or some company like Apple with ludicrous amounts of cash decides to buy them. (Apple could buy both Ford and GM in cash if they wanted to but it would be a terrible idea for them to do it) Mergers on the other hand happen all the time. I could maybe see Ford or GM merging with another car company but otherwise it would take a company like Berkshire Hathaway to buy them and so far they haven't been interested.

Owning a car

[Anonymous Coward]

... is as American as apple pie.

Re:Owning a car

[WillAffleckUW]

... is as American as apple pie.

What's a car, grandpa?

HAHAHA no.

[Anonymous Coward]

>= 5 years minimum to get the tech in a state where they can even think about putting it in consumer vehicles.

>= 5 years after that to devise appropriate safety regulations and get cars approved by NHTSA etc. and to resolve liability issues through legislation (Because Google sure as fuck isn't going to accept financial responsibility for every accident that ever happens in one of its cars)

>= 20 years after initial models become available for it to become cheap enough for low-end cars. (Adaptive cruise control has been around for 25 years and is still a luxury option)

>= 10 years for it to filter into the used car market to the point where average Joes who can't afford new cars are buying them. (Average age of a car on the road is well over 10 years and rising)

And then somewhere in there add in about 30 years for an entire generation who refuses to cede control of their transportation to Google to die off.

As for the 'shared fleet' thing, that's nothing but an idiotic and wasteful (yet highly profitable) substitute for a decent public transportation system.

Re:HAHAHA no.

[fluffernutter]

I see so many features that have been available in cars for years and not available in low end vehicles, I really wonder what could possibly trigger automakers to decide to put something as advanced in a low end vehicle. They had to be forced by law to put airbags and seat belts in, and those cost what, $10 per vehicle?

Shared driving ignores reality

[Anonymous Coward]

Like all of these studies, it ignores the reality that prevents shared self driving cars from ever becoming common in cities that don't already have efficient mass transit systems - nearly everyone has to be at work or school at the same time. You can't share a car with anyone that has a similar schedule as you, and the vast majority need to be at work or school between 8:30am and 9:30am. With a 20 minute commute, each self driving shard car can, at best, drive 2 people to work each day, the same as rate a couple that only owns one car now.

I certainly hope so...

[__aaclcg7560]

The year 2030 is when all the baby boomers are supposed to retire, retirees will out number workers, and two-thirds of the federal budget will go to Social Security/Medicare. Taxes will have to go way up to pay for everything else. Someone will need to drive all those seniors all over the place.

Re:I certainly hope so...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, we'll be too busy with politicos saying: "We can't afford the SS / Medicare crap anymore. So it's going away." and the death threats that will happen. (Of course that's the boomer's own fault for allowing the government to pull a mafia and "borrow" from the SS / Medicare accounts, but they'll claim Alzheimer's and deny it.) Most of the boomers will end up in homes or simply go without care.

Long story short don't expect a Japan style response to a US generational imbalance. Remember, we're the country that still thinks that healthcare is a privilege not a right, and if you want good healthcare that you should pay for it.

that's it? 25% by 2030?

[Anonymous Coward]

i thought truckers and taxi drivers all going to be unemployed in five years? oh, you mean that was just hype by overvalued startups? shocked.

What about emergency vehicles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does a self-driving car recognize warning lights and sirens, especially when the emergency vehicle is approaching at an intersection? How about "courtesy" lights such as those used by volunteer fire and EMS personnel? Humans are bad enough at this, but will these cars "see" a flashing light mounted on a dash or in the grill of an emergency vehicle and react appropriately? Even better, can they recognize the hand-signal/flag/flashlight wand traffic directions being given by a responder at an emergency seen?

I can believe this

[DrXym]

Most people would drive forwards without turns for more than 25% of their journeys. Self drive vehicles should be able handle this reliably by 2030.

Advantages

[Anonymous Coward]

I will always have the ability to manually drive my vehicle untracked, even if I have to change out all the hardware myself.

There is a major advantage to Self driving cars. If it's at a repair shop out in the parking lot waiting to be picked up, you won't have to take off from work, or get Uber to take you, you can just tell your car to come on home.

You won't need to park at the airport anymore, you can just tell your car to drop you off then go back home.

Hopefully the self driving cars will be able to find an empty parking space.

Re:Advantages

[Anonymous Coward]

Why even own a car when self-driving cars are the norm? It's more efficient if after the card drops you off at the airport is drives back into the city with a passenger. That's uber's endgame: on-demand self-driving cars.

Will suck in traffic

[Anonymous Coward]

Driving the 405 in a self-driving, always yielding TechnoWonderCar will be hilarious. Expect it to double your time of commute and good luck getting over when your exit shows up. I'm also expecting some funny videos of smart car owners getting robbed cause all it takes to stop a car is put something in front of it. Your local hoods are gonna love that feature.

When the zombipocalypse happens, self-driving car owners will be sucking hard.

no stop signs & stoplights = underpass / overp

[Joe_Dragon]

no stop signs & stoplights = underpass / overpasses for pedestrians.

You mean Taxi's

[sdinfoserv]

" self-driving electric vehicles operating in shared service fleets in cities", that's a description for electric, autonomous taxi's.
Taxi's are here now and under used. Electric vehicles are here now, but the range sucks and they're not practical for 1/2 the country. Try using a battery vehicle in Minneapolis in January - nope.
Once self driving cars are widely available and "safe", which could be (c) 2030, traffic will double. All these prognosticators ignore American / human nature. We like to drive alone. If you have a vehicle that drives you to work, why pay the high cost of city parking when you can send it home, have it go pick up the kids after school, have it get groceries (Walmart is already planning for this eventuality), release it into a revenue earning driving system (send it to work for you in Uber while you're at work), have it go run any number of errands for you- but it still has to come back to get you after work. Now instead of 2 runs (1 to work, 1 home) there are 4 runs + errands all of which will effectively double+ traffic in cities. Sounds like more of a problem than a solution.

Re:You mean Taxi's

[hackel]

It's not as bad as you're suggesting, since those tasks the vehicles are carrying out are currently being done by some other means, that would no longer be necessary. Still, it's a good point and why we need to prohibit individual ownership of these vehicles.

Re:You mean Taxi's

[sdinfoserv]

"prohibit individual ownership"... really? First, what dystonian Czar run system do the think the US is? It's based on rights and personal liberties. The notion of telling citizens that "can't" own something is UnAmerican
Second,since this country is actually run by the multi-national corporations that pump billions into the electorate system for the purpose of their owned pawns enacting policy to maximize profit - Auto companies, unions, insurance companies, and a plethora of civil libertarian groups will ensure people can buy them when available.

Sad news

[fluffernutter]

At 25%, self driving will come nowhere near to meeting all the lofty safety estimates being thrown about. Nor is it enough to offset expensive insurance costs so that people in self driving cars get affordable insurance. This is very sad news for self driving indeed. How long until we are at 95% because that is probably closer to the critical mass we need for self driving to actually work for common people.

25% of pigs ...

[Anne Thwacks]

might fly by 2030.

Or, they might not.

However, now that buffaloes have wings, you might want to keep you head down!

Re:no stop signs & stoplights = underpass / ov

[swillden]

no stop signs & stoplights = underpass / overpasses for pedestrians.

Or walk signals for pedestrians, which tell the vehicles to stop. But, yeah, when intersections have free-flowing traffic except for pedestrians there will be a lot of incentive to build pedestrian overpasses or underpasses.

Proud to be the 75%

[Rick Schumann]

I'd rather walk everywhere the rest of my life than ride in some so-called 'autonomous' death-trap.

Very Quickly?

[hackel]

In what universe is 13 *years* just to hit 25% "very quickly?" We need to put a plan in place that *prohibits* humans driving cars at all. 2030 seems like a good goal for that. Only then will self-driving cars realise their full potential, in terms of safety, efficiency, environmental savings. Individuals need to be prohibited from purchasing vehicles, unless they can justify the expense for a work-related reason or living out in the middle of nowhere.

25%, try almost 100%

[bkedersha]

Please, if the nanny and security state gets its way, it will be 100% of the driving by then.

And 50% of ped/bike deaths

[WillAffleckUW]

hey, so a few million kids pets and cyclists die, what's the diff?

Missing something..

[Sqreater]

These technology and dollar-and-cents kind of analyses always leave out the most important thing: human psychology. The acceptance or rejection of control loss will be the deciding factor. The rest doesn't matter if people refuse to sit helplessly in a vehicle that does what it does in some unknowable way.