Google Driverless Cars ----- Merged

[liminalien]

well when thinking about robot cars, think of it as replacing the bus driver, not the bus.

the bus driver didnt contribute anything to people getting together.

if the bus driver was the organiser, he could now sit in the passenger seat and join in on the fun.

well, that does sound nice.

But again, that wouldn't really serve a need that isn't perfectly well served already by capital sunk into existing systems and infrastructure, and therefore hardly a compelling reason for mass-market adoption of a radical new transport paradigm. Sorry.

Not saying it won't happen eventually, just that it won't be a revolution - merely yet another spin on the upgrade cycle. It'll be so incremental, so gradual, that it'll be difficult to point to the exact moment when mass-adoption occurs, and plenty other things will have happened in the meantime to make our discussions about motor transport seem odd and twee. The nature of futurology is such that we cannot say what these changes are likely to be, for we almost never get the future we were promised, or if we do, we get it too late to make the promised difference.

The premise of this entire thread can be summed up by something Marshall McLuhan said back in the Sixties, when the world was in the grip of authentic-seeming future narratives. He said, “We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.”

(I stole that last bit.)

The Ford Gyron was a futuristic two-wheeled gyrocar first shown to the world in 1961 at the Detroit Motor Show as a concept car. One wheel was at the front and the other at the rear like a motorcycle and the car was stabilized by gyroscopes. Only it wasn't.

[Guest eight]

I really, really don't have a problem with people owning cars. You'll have noticed that I've cited examples in the Netherlands to illustrate examples of new urbanism. Surprisingly enough, car ownership in NL is currently higher than it is in the UK. But what differs there is the way in which people use their cars. The people of Holland do not love their cars any less than people in the UK - they just better discriminate what is appropriate use for the different transport modes available to them.

In the same way that as a discriminating viewer, you might carefully choose what TV to view of an evening - doesn't make you an "anti TV-evangelist".

So, I'm not an anti-car evangelist, I'm just calling for people to be discriminating motorists. Is it too subtle?

I don't actually have a strong opinion either way. I'm an urbanite, I live within walking distance of the town centre and about 200yds from a main line railway station, but we still choose to have a car.

Our town has been badly pedestrianised in recent times though - it has changed from a vibrant thriving place to a windswept, soulless hellhole that is still plagued by too many buses. If ALL motor traffic could be eradicated from perhaps one square mile of centre I would support that but sadly there are too many VI's for this ever to be realistic.

One development I would like to see is covered (and perhaps moving) walking routes, like you might typically find at an airport for instance. We need to be realistic about the fact that, especially here in the north-east, it is essentially winter for ten months of the year. A Simpsons style dome over the whole town would be even better.

[liminalien]

One development I would like to see is covered (and perhaps moving) walking routes, like you might typically find at an airport for instance. We need to be realistic about the fact that, especially here in the north-east, it is essentially winter for ten months of the year. A Simpsons style dome over the whole town would be even better.

or...

(I think i've seen people in NY wearing these in winter?)

[motch]

well, that does sound nice.

Not saying it won't happen eventually, just that it won't be a revolution - merely yet another spin on the upgrade cycle. It'll be so incremental, so gradual, that it'll be difficult to point to the exact moment when mass-adoption occurs, and plenty other things will have happened in the meantime to make our discussions about motor transport seem odd and twee. The nature of futurology is such that we cannot say what these changes are likely to be, for we almost never get the future we were promised, or if we do, we get it too late to make the promised difference.

Yes, I think there will be many many more miles in the upgrade cycle to the part driver/part driverless cars. It would be nice to have all the upgrades near enough in one go, but where's the profit in that?? think of the slight upgrades we've had in PC computers over the last 25 years or so, very slight increase in cpu or graphics or hard drive size every year or so, with people going out and buying the latest model or waiting a year or two and then upgrading when a bit cheaper only for the next slight upgrade to come out and then it's all rinse and repeat again.

Then if we get the 100% driverless car (no other cars on the road driven by humans) in say 50 years time, can those owners of these charge whatever they want for the use? might not be very cheap. Could well be owned by big companies only, due to only one computer system being appropriate and safe to use on the roads say. Who knows.

[snowflux]

I'm reading a book about this sort of thing now. By a Japanese physicist (US based I think) about inventions of the future.

He thinks they'll be Ok, at best.

Michio Kaku?

[SpectrumFX]

Yes, I think there will be many many more miles in the upgrade cycle to the part driver/part driverless cars. It would be nice to have all the upgrades near enough in one go, but where's the profit in that?? think of the slight upgrades we've had in PC computers over the last 25 years or so, very slight increase in cpu or graphics or hard drive size every year or so, with people going out and buying the latest model or waiting a year or two and then upgrading when a bit cheaper only for the next slight upgrade to come out and then it's all rinse and repeat again.

Then if we get the 100% driverless car (no other cars on the road driven by humans) in say 50 years time, can those owners of these charge whatever they want for the use? might not be very cheap. Could well be owned by big companies only, due to only one computer system being appropriate and safe to use on the roads say. Who knows.

There's an interesting essay by Ray Kurzweil "The Law of Accelerating Returns" where he argues that we tend to underestimate the future rate of progress

The full essay is here http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns

And a quote.....

When people think of a future period, they intuitively assume that the current rate of progress will continue for future periods. However, careful consideration of the pace of technology shows that the rate of progress is not constant, but it is human nature to adapt to the changing pace, so the intuitive view is that the pace will continue at the current rate. Even for those of us who have been around long enough to experience how the pace increases over time, our unexamined intuition nonetheless provides the impression that progress changes at the rate that we have experienced recently. From the mathematician’s perspective, a primary reason for this is that an exponential curve approximates a straight line when viewed for a brief duration. So even though the rate of progress in the very recent past (e.g., this past year) is far greater than it was ten years ago (let alone a hundred or a thousand years ago), our memories are nonetheless dominated by our very recent experience. It is typical, therefore, that even sophisticated commentators, when considering the future, extrapolate the current pace of change over the next 10 years or 100 years to determine their expectations

[SpectrumFX]

The American department of transport has issued a policy statement about driverless cars.

On Thursday theTransportation Department made its first formal policy statement on autonomous vehicles. In a nonbinding recommendation to the states, it said that driverless cars should not yet be allowed, except for testing. But it said that semiautonomous features, like cars that keep themselves centered in lanes and adjust their speed based on the location of the car ahead, could save lives

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/31/technology/self-driving-cars-for-testing-are-supported-by-us.html?_r=0

It seems that they"re already explicitly legal in some American states

As it stands, driverless cars are not fully legal, but they're also not illegal. It depends on the state, the level of autonomy in question and the various regulatory layers that stretch from a state-enforced law to a Federal one.

First of all, the decision of whether to allow driverless cars on the road is not up to the Federal government. States have the power to set driving laws, like the age requirement for a driver's license and the range of penalties for driving while talking on your cellphone.

Because of this state power, California, Nevada and Florida have all legalized the use of fully autonomous cars in the last two years. It's those laws that make it legal for Google employees to cruise down to Mountain View without their hands on the wheel. In the case of Nevada, driverless vehicles are specifically licensed one-by-one by the state with a special license plate and a requirement that at least two people, one in the driver's seat, be in the car at all times.

http://readwrite.com/2013/05/31/so-wait-are-driverless-cars-legal

[Tired of Waiting]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-news-blog/2012/apr/04/flying-car-prototype-video-auto

[Qetesuesi]

All right, everyone: how about turning our attention to addressing the wide imbalance in utilisation of existing vehicle stock, viz. overcrowded roads in rush hours and gross underusage in the small hours. How might DC technologies smooth this all out? At the moment tens of millions of vehicles just sit uselessly in people's drives for many hours out of every 24.

[gadget]

All right, everyone: how about turning our attention to addressing the wide imbalance in utilisation of existing vehicle stock, viz. overcrowded roads in rush hours and gross underusage in the small hours. How might DC technologies smooth this all out? At the moment tens of millions of vehicles just sit uselessly in people's drives for many hours out of every 24.

Driverless cars don't solve this issue.

Car clubs do however.

[Guest eight]

All right, everyone: how about turning our attention to addressing the wide imbalance in utilisation of existing vehicle stock, viz. overcrowded roads in rush hours and gross underusage in the small hours. How might DC technologies smooth this all out? At the moment tens of millions of vehicles just sit uselessly in people's drives for many hours out of every 24.

And that's a problem why exactly?

I mean I hardly ever watch my telly, but I wouldn't consider that grounds to have it forcibly confiscated.

[motch]

All right, everyone: how about turning our attention to addressing the wide imbalance in utilisation of existing vehicle stock, viz. overcrowded roads in rush hours and gross underusage in the small hours. How might DC technologies smooth this all out? At the moment tens of millions of vehicles just sit uselessly in people's drives for many hours out of every 24.

I did suggest a similar thing to my partner the other year, she's always buying various glossy womans mag every day or two, every month or so we have a big clearout and loads go to the recycling (or in straight in the bin! sorry) so i suggested sharing between friends and family thus cutting costs to say a quarter. This did not go down too well.

[Guillotine]

Not sure its been mentioned yet but DC technology makes street lighting and a load of signage redundant...

Big savings to be had there on some routes..

[motch]

Not sure its been mentioned yet but DC technology makes street lighting and a load of signage redundant...

Big savings to be had there on some routes..

Only when/if humans are not allowed to drive.

[SpectrumFX]

Only when/if humans are not allowed to drive.

One potential way around thar could be a HUD either built into the car, or displayed with a googleglass style wearable HUD. All the info currently displayed as signage could be held on a database and presented in the HUD.

[Guillotine]

Only when/if humans are not allowed to drive.

Yes. I was dwelling a little on the future of that motorway travel during 7 hours on it this weekend, and quite frankly it is all too 1950s- joyless,dangerous and inefficient.

Although I was amazed/delighted to discover the motorway roundabout at the end of the M50 today!

[Qetesuesi]

Only when/if humans are not allowed to drive.

You wouldn't want to remove street lighting from built-up areas or anywhere where pedestrians are likely to walk in the dark.

But Guillotine's idea makes excellent sense for the very considerable total length of motorways. Indeed, if all cars were DCs they wouldn't need to switch on headlights either! Even if there were still a few human-driven ones, it might suffice for the DC majority to have good reflectors/fluorescent coating front and back?

Anyone able to access estimates of the savings if we could switch off all night lighting on the UK's major roads?

[liminalien]

Ach, nevermind the detail. It's the big questions which are the more interesting:

At present - the perceived good which is provided to its user by the private motorcar is a heady cocktail of agency and autonomy.

Notwithstanding the perceived increase in agency and autonomy which robot cars could bring to disabled people, they will otherwise severely erode both aspects of this good for mainstream motorists. I'd like to see some thoughts about that.

[fluffy666]

One potential way around thar could be a HUD either built into the car, or displayed with a googleglass style wearable HUD. All the info currently displayed as signage could be held on a database and presented in the HUD.

A decent HUD combined with car cameras would let you see through your own car. This would help visibility at the cost of being a bit weird.

[motch]

2000 people a year would probably disagree with that statement..

Although that is quite a few people and severe heartache for those involved and their families and friends,the services,, that figure has come down remarkably over the years. Major advances with introduction of Airbags, Seatbelts being compulsory, far superior energy absorbtion designs, less older tin thin cars on the road, reduction in speed limits at black spots, more roundabouts replacing blackspot junctions etc.

I'm sure as the years roll on that number can be reduced more and more with other advances in car designs and more importantly more driver training/awareness. I'm not sure how many cyclists and pedestrians are in that current 2000, I think Cyclist deaths are around 100, pedestrians ?

[happily renting]

Cycling would be 100% sure to increase congestion.

Only if we're in these:

[Qetesuesi]

Ach, nevermind the detail. It's the big questions which are the more interesting:

At present - the perceived good which is provided to its user by the private motorcar is a heady cocktail of agency and autonomy.

Notwithstanding the perceived increase in agency and autonomy which robot cars could bring to disabled people, they will otherwise severely erode both aspects of this good for mainstream motorists. I'd like to see some thoughts about that.

Yes, I'm keen to look at the big picture too. At the moment, it seems to me that travellers have to choose between being able to go door-to-door without multiple changes (cars) and being free to do productive work or leisure activity while travelling (public transport). With DCs, at last we'll be able to have the best of both worlds!

[liminalien]

Yes, I'm keen to look at the big picture too. At the moment, it seems to me that travellers have to choose between being able to go door-to-door without multiple changes (cars) and being free to do productive work or leisure activity while travelling (public transport). With DCs, at last we'll be able to have the best of both worlds!

A lot of this discussion has been centred on commuting.

But the vast majority of humanity walks to work, that's just a fact. Commuters are a vanishingly small subset of a minority. That's the thing that troubles me most about this robot car discussion. It is really just stuff white people like.

Accepting that... and setting aside all the things that will militate against this technology, there's a bit of a consensus that the 'car-club' model is what will bring driverless cars into the mainstream. This could have a paradoxical benefit for 'anti-car evangelists' like me.

At present, in this country, the major problem for new urbanism is that seventy years of car-first infrastructure has created a really vocal constituency of motorists. If you’ve sunk all that money into buying a car, and if you can’t really get out of your cul-de-sac without it, you’re going to want to be able to use it everywhere. Any street reconfiguration or parking removal is going to be seen as a direct affront to you.

So how do we get today’s car-owners to stop seeing themselves as motorists, and start seeing themselves simply as people who just need to get about? How do we undermine private vehicle ownership, while still being stuck with today’s car-first street designs and land-use patterns?

Today, all over the developed world, there are many stories of people who give up their car for a car-sharing membership, expecting to use it all the time, and then find that they don’t need to, that they end up grabbing a bikeshare bike or the bus or walking far more than they expected. It's said by car-share companies that for every car-club vehicle on the road, 10 others "drop off the radar". (cant find citation right now, but I think Co-wheels used to assert that)

Let's say that robocar-clubs arrive incrementally as an upgrade of today's existing car-clubs. (This is how motor manufacturers hope to gain motorist acceptance of electric vehicles, for instance.) So far, so plausible. This might be the way to erode the agency and autonomy deficit problem inherent in robot cars and gain user acceptance from the pool of existing motorists.

Robocar-clubs will therefore make it politically easier to implement pedestrian-friendly land-use planning: bus priority, bike and pedestrian facilities; mixed use streets, etc. They’ll also make it easier to price private travel by time of day.

Driverless cars might well be a big part of the strategies needed to deliver the sort of pleasant, liveable mixed-use neighbourhoods that everyone wants - for, sugaring the pill, they will undermine the agency and autonomy of the over-privileged and heavily-subsidised motorist of today and in doing so will consolidate the new urbanism. Paradoxical, huh?

[Guest eight]

Driverless cars might well be a big part of the strategies needed to deliver the sort of pleasant, liveable mixed-use neighbourhoods that everyone wants - for, sugaring the pill, they will undermine the agency and autonomy of the over-privileged and heavily-subsidised motorist of today and in doing so will consolidate the new urbanism. Paradoxical, huh?

Are you sure everyone wants them? I only really go outside when I'm going somewhere else - usually by car! But often on foot also. I'm off to the park with the dog now, no cars there and it's only a five minute walk away. The fact I will encounter some traffic on the way there doesn't really deter me, and if you grassed over my street I'd still rather go to the park.

[liminalien]

Are you sure everyone wants them? I only really go outside when I'm going somewhere else - usually by car! But often on foot also. I'm off to the park with the dog now, no cars there and it's only a five minute walk away. The fact I will encounter some traffic on the way there doesn't really deter me, and if you grassed over my street I'd still rather go to the park.

sounds as if you already live in a liveably pleasant, mixed use, walkable neighbourhood.