Sebastian Thrun and Google's Driverless Car (video)
techtalks.tv
techtalks.tv
For instance, in the minute 25:12, they show a graph that compares how often the time to collision among a human driver (a professional one, actually) and the self-driving car. For small reaction times, the self-driving car outperforms the humans by far. It is of course expected, but it shows that driverless cars are not that distant in the future already.
The biggest issue is how to avoid those outlier situations, such as a plastic bag being interpreted as an obstacle and making a mess. Fixing these is a huge challenge.
The Velodyne LIDAR Google uses costs somewhere near $75,000. I realize these sensors are new tech and are likely to nosedive in price, but having two is currently tremendously expensive.
There needs to be a LIDAR unit that performs as well for a lot less before these are going to ever hit regular people.
A year ago it was every 100 miles. Now it's half a year. (See around 14:20.)
More cars, different cars, smarter cars aren't the answer. It just leads to more roads, more urban sprawl, more pollution on the planet.
You are basically saying a society without need for any transportation whatsoever. That seems a bit of an unrealistic goal for anytime in the near future.
I'm not sure that autophil is advocating eliminating cars and roads altogether. Maybe he is. But it seems legitimate to be concerned about removing one limiting factor of car use--the patience and stamina of the driver. A 90 minute each way commute would be possible for more drivers, which isn't necessarily a net benefit for humanity given the increased road use, increased construction further from urban areas, and increased energy use, even assuming these self-driving cars become entirely electric.
I'm as fascinated by self-driving cars as anyone and believe self-driving cars have a useful place, but it's good to question the consequences.
Addendum: Not all unintended consequences are bad.
But even if the commutes do inch up somewhat, that should be offset by new opportunities to save energy via algorithmic collaboration. Future generation self-driving cars could organize in all sorts of energy-saving ways that human drivers aren't practically capable of doing (eg. self-driving cars could intelligently draft one another).
And if the increased energy usage is among the underlying concerns, then consider that a business person traveling for work, were they able to use the sleeper-car idea and arrive wherever the next morning (wasting no waking time with the traveling), will prefer that option in numerous plausible scenarios. So such cars can also reduce the amount of energy used on other forms of travel.
[1] http://www.autoblog.com/2012/06/23/parking-its-what-your-car...
"The top two were _________"