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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday December 16 2015, @01:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the who's-gonna-drive-miss-daisy? dept.

The race to bring driverless cars to the masses is only just beginning, but already it is a fight for the ages. The competition is fierce, secretive, and elite. It pits Apple against Google against Tesla against Uber: all titans of Silicon Valley, in many ways as enigmatic as they are revered.

As these technology giants zero in on the car industry, global automakers are being forced to dramatically rethink what it means to build a vehicle for the first time in a century. Aspects of this race evoke several pivotal moments in technological history: the construction of railroads, the dawn of electric light, the birth of the automobile, the beginning of aviation. There's no precedent for what engineers are trying to build now, and no single blueprint for how to build it.

Self-driving cars promise to create a new kind of leisure, offering passengers additional time for reading books, writing email, knitting, practicing an instrument, cracking open a beer, taking a catnap, and any number of other diversions. Peope who are unable to drive themselves could experience a new kind of independence. And self-driving cars could re-contextualize land-use on massive scales. In this imagined mobility utopia, drone trucks would haul packages across the country and no human would have to circle a city block in search of a parking spot.

If self-driving vehicles deliver on their promises, they will save millions of lives over the course of a few decades, destroy and create entire industries, and fundamentally change the human relationship with space and time. All of which is why some of the planet's most valuable companies are pouring billions of dollars into the effort to build driverless cars.

After automation puts everyone out of work, will anyone need to drive anywhere anymore?


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  • (Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Wednesday December 16 2015, @03:50PM

    by Rivenaleem (3400) on Wednesday December 16 2015, @03:50PM (#277148)

    You seem to have missed a real opportunity
    I want self driving cars to do away with multiple lanes altogether, and to interact with eachother like train cars, attaching and detaching from an aerodynamic convoy as they travel as over 200kph
    I want the advent of self driving cars to herald the end of intersection lights altogether, as all cars will negotiate with eachother to approach them at times when they won't interfere with eachother.
    There won't be any clowns on the road, because it will have been finally proven that the greatest source of death on our roads was the flesh bag in control.

    Remember, if I leave home and it takes me 1 hour to get to work, that's one hour for which my car is part of the traffic. If humans are no longer driving, then the speeds at which the cars can go will increase. Suddenly, it only takes 30 minutes to get to work, which means that fully 1/2 of the cars are no longer part of the traffic. Fewer cars means you can go EVEN faster. You'll find that when your car reaches an intersection, the chance that there's actually going to be another car in your path declines massively, and for the edge cases where there would be, a minor correction in velocity (determined back when you entered the car in the first place) is all it will take.

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  • (Score: 2) by snick on Wednesday December 16 2015, @04:12PM

    by snick (1408) on Wednesday December 16 2015, @04:12PM (#277168)

    What you suggest would naturally follow. (except for the traffic lights I think. They wouldn't actually be needed as cars would only enter intersections when they have a reservation, but I _think_ that they would remain as a failsafe/verification)
    The key element is self driving cars in constant communication with each other and the road, and cooperating for optimum flow. (as opposed to current self driving cars which are focused on driving as if they had a skillful human driver at the wheel) Once self driving cars make that leap, lanes, lights, limits, ... they all become more guidelines than actual rules.

    You'll find that when your car reaches an intersection, the chance that there's actually going to be another car in your path declines massively, and for the edge cases where there would be, a minor correction in velocity (determined back when you entered the car in the first place) is all it will take.

    I agree with all but the "determined back when you entered the car in the first place" bit. I doubt that we could put together a system that schedules whole trips. I would expect cars to be actively negotiating with cars/intersections up to .5-1 mile ahead in their path, and decisions being made accordingly. The longer the forward planning the better, but also more complex. Some fixed distance (1 mile? .5 mile?) might prove to be good enough to keep traffic moving close to optimally without the need for the complexity of planning complete trips.