What are you concerns? What should engineers in this space be considering?
- Yielding to an emergency vehicle with sirens on.
- Moving backwards to a safe and large enough spot when the route is too narrow to fit self-driving car and oncoming huge lorry (and there is no line marking the limit between road and ravine).
- Upon instructions from authority, recognize that the highway is closed due to an accident and, no matter what the driving code says, you actually have to make a U-turn on the highway and follow the crowd. Alternatively, just take that route (yes, the one with the large no-entry sign at the beginning) or that narrow path in the wood (yes, it exists, even if Google Maps isn't aware of it). At the bare minimum, park yourself off the road and let the others move on.
- Verify whether a queue is forming behind you. Listen to the honkers, they may be right. When you are an obstacle to the most part of traffic, moving to the side and letting others pass from time to time is sincerely appreciated.
Driving through a red light when it's obvious something's gone wrong with the traffic signal, and it's stuck on red. Harder than it seems at first, because other drivers at the intersection seem to make up the rules interactively, with you, via facial expressions and hand waving.
There's also a fair amount of variables, like looking sideways to see if the cross traffic is also stuck on red or not.
It's mostly a problem with motorcycles, and I've had to go through my fair share of red lights late at night when no one was around, but I've also (rarely) had a problem with a car.
Surely you're missing the point? With V2V comms there will never be a need to go backwards. All vehicle trajectories become 100% predictable (mechanical failure aside). The problem of massive trucks on narrow country roads (which we have a lot of in the UK) is solved by simple forward planning. Hell, the trucks could get even bigger, so long as there are passing places.
And if you expect you can force non-connected cars to not exist on rural roads sometime this century, you are delusional.
Exactly 100 years ago they outlawed horse-drawn carriages from the streets of New York City (https://www.nytimes.com/store/horse-cars-last-days-1917-nson...). Based on that, I cannot imagine what the roads will look like at the end of this century, but is it inconceivable that manually-operated cars will look as outdated as horses?
Could an anti-social person cause a bunch of cars to crash for kicks? Could someone with an axe to grind cause a bunch of cars to crash in order to further his goals?
- disincentivizing investment and innovation in public transit
Cars == freedom.
Freedom == control
Freedom as in own Geographic control. When. Where and how we get places with that freedom.
We control our freedom.
Before furnaces we burned wood. Furnaces helped. We accepted them.
But cars are different. An extension and expression of our freedom. Out health. Cars have been our best (& worst sometimes) friend as we used our freedoms. There is no substitute for this machine that affords is freedom control.
Risking the loss Is where my gut says people will fight this.
That is a very American statement. For me it is freedom not to have a car.
The future cannot come soon enough for me.
On wet days I drive, but I find sitting in traffic worse than pulling teeth, so avoid it as much as I can.
I enjoy driving (not in traffic), but autonomous cars would hopefully make my bicycle commute safer.
One could "reducto-ad-absurdum" the statement, and say "To be bedridden and unable to walk is to be free!" - which would obviously be a very absurd statement to make.
In America, part of the reason we feel this way is because of our vast travel distances compared to other areas of the world; it isn't unknown for people to commute to work over 50 miles (80 km) one way. Or to travel that far to go shopping.
Travelling to another state could easily be hundreds of miles and hours of travel. It would comparable to driving between countries in Europe (assuming a similar "interstate" freeway system).
We want that freedom so that we can live where we want to live, shop where we want to shop, play where we want to play, and work where we want to work - and not have that dictated to us based on economic situation, geographic location, etc. If we want to live in the slums, and commute to the "rich part of town" to work (or vice-versa!) - even if the distance is fairly large - we want that kind of choice.
One could argue about other forms of transportation - but those come with costs, and in the US we don't have great public transportation - and ultimately, you are chained to the decisions and whims of the transportation and other people using it; you can't decide where and when to go, and when to stop, or when to be picked up...
So I guess I'm trying to understand the statement "it is freedom not to have a car"? How is it freedom not to have faster, longer distance personal transport? I can understand economic freedom (it's expensive to own a car - and even more so if you have to pay to store or park it), and I can understand the licensing argument - but in general, being limited to the alternative options seems to me to be less freedom, not more.
I'm obviously missing something...
/also - I like to go off-road - 4-wheelin' in the dirt and mud - can't do that without a vehicle (and currently, you can't do it with anything not IC powered that is available to consumers at a decent price - and I don't know if an autonomous ORV would be fun or not - but I can't wait for 4wd electrics that can be lifted and modded with big 44" mudders).
It's the freedom to be able to get around without having to babysit a tonne of metal, and then find somewhere to put it when you get near where you're going, and then have to go back for it later.
>How is it freedom not to have faster, longer distance personal transport?
Decent public transport is faster and much more comfortable over long distances.
Significantly! You can stand up and walk the whole length of a train if you desire without having to stop. There's food and drink brought right to your seat, and hot food if you walk to the buffet car or are in first class. In the UK, if you book a non-Advance ticket, you can get out of the train, leave the station, go wherever you like, and get on any later train. On certain routes, you can even get on the train one evening, have dinner, go to sleep, and wake up the next morning pulling into your destination with breakfast waiting for you. Train travel can be just as flexible as car travel over long distances, so long as the infrastructure exists and gets investment.
That's debatable. It can be comfortable and convenient, though I've never experienced it since we don't have much in the way of a train system for passenger rail here anymore. But I can see the allure.
However, with a car, you can go anywhere you want on a whim. Want to get off the highway and take a random route up through the mountains to visit a random lake? No problem. Want to pop thru a small town via a connector road to a different freeway? Again not a problem.
With public transportation or rail, you are limited to where the system runs, and if you want to get off somewhere along the way that doesn't have a station (for instance - just to randomly take in a scene) - well, you can't.
Then again, one can't walk the length of a car, or get food and drink brought to your seat, or sleep in a comfortable bed overnight, etc.
Also - most people don't travel super-long distances here by car (some do, many don't) - instead, if they can afford it, they take a plane. Airlines have effectively become our train system, for the good and bad it has to offer.
Agreed on all statements, but I need to add the freedom to not pay an absurd amount of income toward insurance, maintenance, taxes, parking, etc. Automobiles are expensive and getting more so as technology gets added and taxes rise to support the roadway infrastructure for them.
In America, there isn't much "babysitting" of a vehicle - every place you want to go generally has decent parking near where you're going. Which ultimately is probably due to our mainly car-centric culture - our cities and "places of interest" are designed around the car, so you have plenty of parking and what-not geared toward cars. Also due to having a lot of land to "spread out" for car stuff...
Which then makes things terrible for public transportation! Everything spread out makes it difficult (and in some cases dangerous - if on foot or bike) to get around without a car, and public transportation has to conform to the cars (in some cases to absurd lengths - for instance, here in Phoenix, AZ we have a small light-rail system at ground level in the median of some streets. On these streets, the line has to respect traffic signals for cars, so in essence light rail becomes "large bus on rails". To me, this is stupid).
There's also the case here in America that using public transportation can be - interesting. In the times I have used it (even with the bad design of our light rail here, I still like taking it when I can), I have encountered crazy and hostile people who get violently aggressive at almost nothing. I've also encountered plain regular folk. It just all depends on the day, but the randomness can be off-putting to many. At times I mainly find it annoying, but many times I find it interesting.
> While I understand this intellectually (that is, I know that this is an American-centric thing, and that other societies in the world have a different view), I am curious how this view would be justified?
How would you justify views, if not intellectually?
This is because your country/states/cities are designed that way. I live 15 minute walk from three grocery stores. About 10 minute on bike to work. I do have a car, which I use sometimes for long distance travel if public transport isn't available. But it is a huge cost both in mental capacity and money to keep that thing going. Like keeping it serviced and full on fuel and so on..
If you want to visit a friend and have a beer, do you take the car? How do you get home?
In summary I do use a car maybe once or twice a month to go places, but if Uber made self-driving cars that could do those trips for me super-cheap then I would definitely sell my car. For me that would be freedom and like a sibling commenter said, even if you are using a car you heavily depend on others.
> /also - I like to go off-road - 4-wheelin' in the dirt and mud
I also actually enjoy driving, when I'm _not_ going from A to B. I don't see a reason to inhibit that..
As an old-values American, self-sufficiency is paramount: freedom is the ability to do what/when I want, with practically no reliance on others; to rely on others (say, for transportation) requires their ability/consent, and should that be denied for any reason then my freedom is limited without my choice. That includes the ability to travel 1000 miles on a moment's notice (hindered only by energy storage limits).
While I understand the "freedom" of not having to own & maintain things ("just get on the train! not beholden to servicing a vehicle"), it is those things that extend my abilities. Living out of a backpack, renting what I need when I want it, is certainly desirable - but relies heavily on the consent & capability of others to provide on request.
Take the road that goes past/to your residence. Who built it? Who repairs the potholes? If you live in an area with cold winters, who plows and salts the road when it snows? Then you have to multiply that by every municipality/county/state on your journey. You quickly find that maintaining the road network involves quite a large number of people. It's more of a sunk cost than one that recurs for every journey, yes, but it seems fallacious to say that car travel is independent of the effort of others. That is only an illusion.
You can repeat this exercise for the supply chain needed to get fuel to your car, too. There's an entire hidden network of people enabling car travel in the first place. And that isn't a bad thing; this interconnectedness in the economy is what allows us to specialize and find economies of scale and spend time writing software instead of everyone spending their days growing their own food just to survive.
I imagine there will be a fight, but it will be completed a lot quicker than people anticipate. For seniors and disabled people unable to safely operate a motor vehicle, the benefits of self-driving vehicles are huge. Those people care about their freedom as well, and they're well represented.