Computer-driven cars will convulse the automotive industry
detroitnews.com
detroitnews.com
The future, at least in terms of the dangers of driving, is bright.
I look forward to the day when every car is a taxi, and the only cars parked on the side of the road are the ones owned by the very few people who can still be bothered at all to own a car full-time, which will hopefully be very few people.
1. As with people who row or sail, just for the enjoyment. Such usage could be restricted to specific places like racetracks.
2. Because I'm going somewhere I "shouldn't" and I don't want to tell my car (and have it record my journey for someone else to review, or refuse to take me). This may also be the case with emergency vehicles, an ambulance may need to drive along a pedestrian-only street, for example.
Now, there will be a need to mix human vs autonomous traffic on the run-up to that. Obviously, until sufficiently many cars are autonomous to warrant the removal of human-controlled cars, that will need to be the case. Furthermore, early production Autonomous cars may have routefinding flaws, or the computer may break down, meaning that someone may need to drive a normally autonomous car themselves.
Personally that's already how I cross the street, and my confidence in human drivers isn't anywhere near so great.
I could easily see a bunch of kids deciding they'll go challenge the AI by dancing in the middle of a crowded street. Admittedly a millionth chance occurrence though. "Computer, take a picture, get me facial recognition, and report them to their parents."
Not perfect by a long shot, but unless automatic vehicles offer some similar pedestrian signaling capability, there will be issues.
There's also the question of what happens, say, when a vehicle is surrounded by a crowd of people with ill intent. This happens:
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Motorcycle-Gang-Attack-...
Working on it. http://www.technologyreview.com/view/427743/how-do-you-know-...
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/296907,rio-tinto-prepares-mine...
The US military is also pushing remotely driven supply vehicles.
Then the next market is trucks on highways.
It's a bit like rail. People are obsessed with passenger rail but tend to ignore freight rail. For instance, how many people know that the US freight rail system is excellent?
I've done it myself in a passenger car on long trips -- once covered most of a state at high speeds behind a truck who seemed bent on making his schedule. 75+ MPH and my fuel consumption was well below typical for that leg of the trip.
Maybe we went through something similar when digging machines replaced people with shovels.
The main difference is instead of requiring the coveted commercial drivers license plus or minus hazmat certs, you'll have a grunt laborer who optimistically knows how to count in english and can handle a pallet jack and/or electric forklift.
The car unexpectedly accelerated and killed 5 people, an accident or a murder?
A new ransomware demands 1 BTC to start your car
Google keeps all the history of your car's movements
LAPD is testing a special device to remotely stop cars instead of chasing them
What is assisted? A car fitted with the self-driving computer, but rather than driving the car it instead compares your actions with one the computer would normally do. What is this comparison for? To determine whether you are a safe driver -- a Safe Driver Rating (SDR).
Self-driving cars will become the new gold standard for determining who is a safe driver -- and failing to meet that standard will result in higher insurance rates.
What does this have to do with malicious hackers? They can fudge the self-driving computer to silently and gradually increase your insurance rates by misreporting your SDR.
What about cars that are neither fully autonomous nor "assisted"? Simple: they don't get built/sold anymore due to being unsafe.
Or another interesting problem is how do you push a self driving car beyond its performance boundaries to save your life? "I'm sorry dave, but I can't let you drive during a hurricane/tsunami warning" "hey car, shut up and drive, the storm surge is rising and unless you get moving you're about to transform into a submarine"
If you get fired from your job because your self driving car decided its not going out in 1 inch of snow, how much do you sue the manufacturer? Or the other way around, your self driving car permitted you to go out in a 24 inch blizzard and it got stuck and you died, how much does your estate and survivors get to sue the manufacturer?" Obviously the proud american tradition of screw the little guy means the mfgrs can do anything they want, but the PR implications mean all self driving cars will shut off whenever the chance of precip is above 0%, or the temp is below 32F, etc. And THATs why I don't want a self driving car, it'll be useless in order to be legally intrinsically safe (only valid operating conditions will be 70 degrees, sunny, daytime, etc, which is about 2 weeks per year where I live.)
No, they'll probably still work. You'll just have to pay a premium for driving in "unsafe conditions" and "unsafe areas."
Considering human nature, I don't think I can imagine a way where this won't happen on some level or another.
Higher insurance rates will be only for people who insist on driving their cars. I believe this would be a very good thing.
The purpose of 'assisted' driving lies in the premise that a 'perfectly' automated system doesn't exist, and will fail, and when it does, it should fail to wetware.
I already accept a lot of places that I should let machines handle a task for me. I drive an automatic transmission rather then shift myself. I have traction control that overrides my foot to give me better control of the car. I fly in planes that are mostly flown by autopilot.
Assisted driving will only be a short stopgap. It will be quickly gotten rid of because of cost to maintain two systems and because the ugliness of a "drivers seat". Interiors will look nothing like they do now. There will be no drive-shaft (fully electric) so no big bump or center console in middle of car. No steering column, no mirrors and a completely different arrangement of seats then now.
In other words a fully automated car looks nothing like an assisted driving car. I doubt people are going to want to pay more and sit in less comfortable cabin, just for the opportunity to override the computer driver.
Yes.
Because human beings are the result of a million-odd years of evolution and perfectly capable of making their own decisions, negotiating obstacles, pattern recognition, adaptive reasoning and reflexive response. To decide that people are too stupid and clumsy to be allowed the luxury of driving so let's just have car companies, insurance companies and Google decide what's in their best interests, is essentially a well meaning but potentially pernicious form of autocracy.
Pun intended.
People die in housefires all the time too, maybe they shouldn't be allowed to cook their own food? People die from accidental gunshots and police misconduct, so clearly automated weapons systems should be the only ones allowed to enforce the law? Yes, sometimes there are auto accidents. But also, millions of drivers make it to and from their destination without incident every day. Proponents of self-driving cars make it seem as if it's bloodsport to let humans drive their own cars. Yet they seem to implicitly trust the result of those same humans building the network and infrastructure to do the driving for them.
How many people die because of a manual override that does worse than the computer? How many people die because the computer itself did a mistake that a human could reasonably have overridden safely?
I fully expect the second number to be much lower than the first —eventually. And when it does, I'll be glad when manual driving is considered a lesser crime. Because make no mistake: risking your own life is your choice. Drive on tracks, smoke, drink, have unprotected sex (with an informed and willing partner), whatever. On the other hand, driving on public roads put everyone else at risk. A small risk, but still. I say that having such control over their lives is simply unethical.
> Yet they seem to implicitly trust the result of those same humans building the network and infrastructure to do the driving for them.
Of course, never trust them farther tan you can throw them. But you can throw them pretty far: just sue their ass off whenever they're responsible for an otherwise avoidable accident (like a bug in the software caused by sloppy practices). Also, they can test the cars, and you can expect more consistency, compared to human drivers.
Which to me is the crux of the issue - in the scenario without an available override, when something goes wrong, there isn't anything you can do about it except hope that it doesn't kill you, because at that point it's no longer about the AI and all about collision physics.
You'll probably still be able to drive in the country side though.
Americans, in particular, don't drive cars for transportation. They drive cars because they wish to maintain the idea of having complete control over their lives.
This is already a reality, watch commercial for OnStar, this is exactly what they do.
The crackdown on people doing this, however, is enormous. It makes it very unprofitable to do any of these things.
The same applies to driverless cars as to smartphones, electronic medical records, reading of news articles, social media, etc, etc.
Autonomous cars will be safer than human operated ones so they will at some point be cheaper to insure. This will continue until it is either unaffordable for the average person to operate their own car or outright prohibited because of safety concerns.
Driving will become a hobby which people will be able to pursue on dedicated (race)tracks.
v1 Zipcars automatically move themselves around between designated spots to rebalance supply and demand
v2 Zipcar can come pick you up much like Uber << taxi industy is screwed at this point
v3 Zipcar can pick you up and then drives you to your destination << Zipcar becomes much more desirable than owning a car at this point
This will happen at first in big cities like NY or Sydney here in Australia where parking, registration and other costs make car sharing already popular.
Already today a lot of people have no idea how the internals of cars really work, do not properly care for their vehicles, and ultimately couldn't care less if someone set up a teleporter instead. The vehicle isn't the point for most people. For the people for which it is the point, they're the ones who obsessively follow Top Gear, wish they could buy Ferraris even if they have to rebuild the engine constantly, happily tinker away under the hood on the weekend: they already do that to the extent that their finances allow.
Driverless cars take nothing away from them except traffic jams during commute.
I am completely on-board with having my commute automated. If public transportation was an option, I'd take it. This is the next best thing.
It's not important though; you are a menace to society if you drive yourself once robot cars are commonplace and thus you need to take your driving pleasures/status symbol to the track.
I know in my cousins area they have a keys-to-us service. You drive to the party or wherever and they drop off a driver to drive your vehicle with you in home. Why? Because it's cheaper than a cab because you only pay one way, and you can get where you're going on time because you don't have to wait for a cab, which on say New Years Eve won't be on time or even in the ball park.
It's foolish to believe that leisure will beat practicality. People will get automated cars because it means they can work on their commute. Forget the dash it's a desk. Or you could watch a movie. Heck, not only could you predrink for the party, you could drink whilst on your way there.
Or the kids out at the movies and you decided to have a few drinks. They call wanting to be picked up? No problem, just send the car.
You'd no longer have to pay for expensive downtown parking, you could either pay for it to park in a cheaper less convenient lot or you could have it drive home if it's a short distance.
Yes I like to drive, but I also like starting fires with a bow and stick... but I normally just use a lighter.
No one in a position of authority cares if you liked your bank teller or not; you're simply told you're going to be using an ATM now for financial reasons. Ditto office automation vs clerks and secretaries. Did you enjoy getting magazines and newspapers before the web wiped them out, well, no one in a position of authority cares what you enjoyed.
The driverless cars will automatically take the safest action and let you through when doing something reckless like cutting them off on the freeway etc. It kind of sounds amazing, you could be a total asshole on the road and no one would care... Imagine cruising down the freeway at 90MPH in rush hour swerving between drone vehicles and watching as they politely get out of your way. Its a driver's utopia
Cars tend to be assigned to specific individuals (permanently, on an ongoing occasional basis for car-share programs, or for a trip duration in the case of dispatched livery) and, well, accidents happen, even with automation (other vehicles, mechanical failures, road or environmental conditions). Moreover, if your intent is to convey someone somewhere, it's a lot easier to do this via an automobile (which can travel anywhere on a paved road and non inconsiderable options on unpaved roads) than in an elevator, which, with the exception of Mr. Wonka's design, tend to follow a rather predictable and limited course.
If I were in charge of threat assessment for a VIP/HNWI, I'd very much take this threat into consideration.
This future is already here to some extent. All they need to do now is to clean up the evidence (remove a plug, or have it self-destruct) after the event.
http://www.techradar.com/news/car-tech/delphi-s-new-plug-in-...
The OBD2 bus has been around in most vehicles since the late 80's and you can assume that those who need such functionality, have had it for a long time.
Examples: 1) immediate unplanned stop at a yard sale 2) drive "off road" to get around an obstruction 3) dealing with unstructured parking situations 4) avoiding emergency stops in unsafe locations 5) driving through puddles (is it 2 inches or 2 feet deep?) 6) etc.
And for some significant transition period the road will be populated by both manual and computer driven cars.
How does the hybrid system work? Won't many people take advantage of "dumb" cars. How would you drive if you knew many cars were computer controlled. Would people figure out how to "game" the known computer driving rules? I don't pull out in front of cars that are too close because the human might not stop and hit me. Maybe I don't worry about it if I know the computer is in control of the other car.
Long haul freeway driving does not seem too complicated. But what about high density suburban and city driving?
2, 4 and 5 are a matter of smarter algorithms, but I doubt they won't be able to do all that way before they become commonplace. Particularly 4, since you can't reasonably expect people to have to take control to avoid an accident. Even professional pilots can struggle with that, let alone regular drivers.
Ha ha. No. Any freed-up cash will result in an increase in gas-prices, taxes or whatever. The cost living will continue to be just a bit more than you can afford no matter what. Any "avoidance of accidents" will just translate into profits for somebody, not you. The cost-environment is entirely artificial and is designed to exploit you right down to the bones and gristle. You don't get to enjoy the fruits of progress except in ways that make you a more efficient worker. Sorry.
aaaand you've lost me. Apologies for the snide remark, but there's no way we'll be there by that time. The industry won't let us.
Apologies for not having much reason in this post, and only stating a personal opinion without much detail to back it up, but I'm just curious to see if there's anyone that feels the same.
There are just too many technical, cultural, and political unknowns to think that you'll see more than prototypes and a few early adopters within 10 years.
The optimal (most efficient, safest) way to get computer-controlled cars to work;
- All drivable areas mapped (Not just the roads - EVERYTHING, since you might want to go off-road. What if; landslide, earthquake, someone digs a hole somewhere, leaves a brick on the street, etc.)
- Knows where everyone is (going) at all times (privacy issue)
- Has everyone on the same system (not happening within 12 years)
Since I don't see these three happen, they have to be dealt with somehow. The bracketed issues are fully remedied only by the solutions written before them. Anything less will be fighting the symptoms, not the disease, and be a never-ending battle.
There are so many obstacles to be overcome, so much politics to be done, so many technical challenges, so much bureaucracy ... 12 years really isn't that long.
I agree that ubiquity is unlikely, but because of cost.
(A high end Mercedes can already keep itself in a lane, slow down the cruise for a slower vehicle and will override the driver trying to crash into things. These systems are environmental, they don't depend on detailed maps. http://www.mbusa.com/mercedes/benz/safety
And they are one of several, not way out in front.)
I see what you're saying but a lot can happen in 12 years.
To think about it another way, the time between the first dotcom crash and now is only 13-14 years.
How? Because the way I see it, they will have to form a cartel to prevent one of their own from selling self-driving cars and make a huge profit at the expense of everyone else.
The various legal obstacles look bigger.
I'm not saying it's not going to happen, I'm just saying that this particular thing, I don't believe in.
But fair enough, I didn't provide any decent information to back up my statement, so I won't ask you to either.
Self-driving cars are already on the streets in certain cities. Did you see the recent S-class test in Germany?[1] They're here right now, maybe not quite production-ready, but certainly in beta. There's no comparison at all.
Count me skeptical. As I said, I don't think little over a decade is enough for that to happen.
Since the iPhone, we've added some pixels to its screen and a fingerprint scanner to the button.
Sure, in some circumstances we'll turn on this advanced version of cruise-control. But we won't be lounging while we get from A to B.
Or rather, I don't believe we will.
Did you forget about the 40x speed increase? Sheesh. I bet you're not still using an iPhone 1.
And no, I don't believe everyone will be being chauffeured around in their self-driving cars by 2025, but it will be an option at some price point. In fact, I expect that by 2020, if not earlier.
Would that be significant? Costs, travel times, risk of accidents/theft, failures, would still be much higher. Not to mention it is absurdly less efficient to travel alone in a car.
I imagine hopping onto a car to the train station, and having another one waiting for you right at the arrivals gate will be the preferred mode of travel.
As far as slow, I slept most of the way from CHC to NYC for a recent HOPE conference (which was across the street from the station, no $45 cab ride (or whatever it is) from the airport for me).
I find taking the train to be very pleasant, although I prefer the rolling stock west of the Mississippi.
Rail for moving humans is extremely inefficient almost everywhere on earth.
Additionally, any convenience gained by the user - relative to flight - is almost entirely due to security differentials. Harmonize security and those travel times fall in line right quick.
Apply a tiny fraction of HSR costs to speed up air travel security instead, and you'll see far greater rider convenience increases and save incredible amounts of money.
The security differential in the US is based in large part on the fact that airplanes can (a) be diverted by hijackers to alternate destinations, and (b) be used as weapons against arbitrary targets.
Since the risks aren't the same, why would you aim to harmonize security, except as a pure subsidy to the airline industry?
"The busiest high-speed lines in the world are capable of making money, Bel said, including those between Paris and Lyon, where about 25 million people ride the French TGV trains each year, and the Japanese Shinkansen trains between Tokyo and Osaka, which draw about 130 million riders a year."
As for Spain, they've spent $60 billion dollars since 1980. That's less than one high-speed rail train in California and they've got almost 2000 miles of track.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVE
We should dig up some other sources. They site that you provided doesn't seem like it's a great source. It doesn't say how much money is actually lost. Simply that it's not profitable.
Long distance rail competes with plane, light rail with autos.
Heavy rail at the distances for which HSR routes are planned in the US (such as California HSR) competes with autos more than air travel.
I think that one reason for that is that, for reliable connections, one needs a multiple-connected graph. Users must be able to 'go around' any disturbance that arises.
NY, the most subway-centric city, has the longest commutes in the US. LA, "the most car centric city" (probably not literally true) tends to have amongst the shortest.
Decommission those NYC subways and replace with private shuttles and busses. Bet you'll see dramatic drops in commute times for NYC. And it'll save incredible, incredible amounts of money.
Edit: Citation: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/new-yorkers-havelongest-...
The NYC subway system is also a red herring. The subway primarily serves Manhattan, The Bronx, and Brooklyn. Of those people who commute into Manhattan from another borough, a plurality come from Queens, half of which has no subway coverage at all; that's for people inside NYC proper and obviously excludes NJ, Westchester, and Long Island commuters.
NY has much, much higher population density than LA, which probably both explains why it was more subway-centric and why commutes are longer.
The fact that LA metro has such short commutes - despite being one of the largest and most car dependent big cities in the world - suggests that highways and private cars do, in fact, scale very well.
It'll never happen, as it's opposed by (1) Taxi operators, (2) Mass transit operators & unions, AND (3) Do-gooders who don't want private business to succeed where public service has failed.
However, I'm not quite sold that people will give up on car ownership. Yes, there's public utilities and public transport, which is not up for individual ownership. But a car in the sense that we have it now is something more personal than a train cabin - a car's body is very close to us and we touch it all the time; we leave personal belongings there; and there is something to the fact that this car is always in front of my house/appartment, especially in emergency situations. This last point could be amended with emergency cars which are available to each apartment block, with which driving is just more expensive. Imagine crying "Help! I need a car!" and an emergency unit comes right around the corner and takes you wherever you want.
Once self-driving cars show a marked decrease in road accidents, insurance prices will rise.
Car-as-a-Service companies will be created, making the cost of riding in a private car much cheaper than outright owning one. I'm already intending to start a car service as soon as the first cars are available.
Huh?
Edit: Just to be clear: The world you describe should see incuranse rates for self-driving cars markedly lower, with rates for driver-driven cars probably a bit lower (than current).
The number of millennials buying cars is already extremely low, computerized cars would most likely continue to reduce the number of new car owners.
As people mention, if they don't behave as the rider wants or if they can't deal with unexpected situations (or mechanical failures) or if they're required to be always-connected and the net goes down… And I'm sure all sorts of privacy types would love being carted about with no control on their environment. Unless the net connection's also amazingly robust, the computer-driven kidnapping possibilities are endless.
Oh, I didn't think computer vision's a solved problem… It's easy to lose the GPS signal in cities, and you can probably jam or spoof it without too much difficulty. Doubt cities are going to spend lots of $$ installing all sorts of "helpers" to deal with all that rebar.
And there are wider and more fundamental social benefits. City centres will become pleasant places to walk in. Cleaner air, less noise and less chance of being run over. Another example, children will play outside more, rather than being confined indoors as they increasingly have been.
Sounds like a car thief's dream.
But, to the broader point, I can't help but feel that a lot of people are conflating "able to tool down 280 with a human on board who is fully capable of taking over control--albeit not instantaneously" (or a next gen cruise control, if you would) with "a robot chauffeur who can drop the kids off at soccer practice." The second problem--which includes dealing with all the unpredictable things that happen on secondary roads--would seem to be enormously more difficult than the first.
I expect the ubiquitous automation of trains at around the same time at the ubiquitous automation of cars.
Furthermore, train drivers are cheap (compared with other infrastructure investments) and relatively efficient as they can be skilfully taught to drive according to a plan (compared with your fellow road commuters). Without other investments to tell the driver or the computer that they can drive faster/closer to the train in front at most railways are only likely to see efficiency gains (lower power/diesel usage) but struggle to drive those trains to denser schedules. It will happen for non-capacity reasons such as inter network usage, and safety to prevent trains from speeding around curves and falling off.
I expect the challenge will ease partly due to implementing automation of the management to provide safety at increased traffic densities and provide online decision support analysis. Later versions of ETCS could an example of part of that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Train_Control_System Example of some of the budgets involved: http://ec.europa.eu/transport/themes/infrastructure/news/ten...)
Once a future version of that is done (ATMS in Australia for example), driverless tech will be much closer to being the low hanging fruit.
Perhaps we live in different worlds, in my world self-driving cars will create more traffic jam, lead to higher road-use taxes and to harsher economic times due to people in trucking/delivery/cab driving losing jobs.
Energy: when you don't need to own your car, you can use the best car for the job. A commuting car doesn't need to be able to carry 5 people around. It can be much smaller. Again, the transition period likely won't look good.
Harsher economic times: this is good old technological employment, where productivity rises faster than demand. My 2 cents: self-driving cars will significantly contribute to technological unemployment, and that's good, provided we manage it well. An obvious measure would be to generalize a 32 hours work-week, over 4 days. It would mean less unemployment and less overwork. Workload will reduce anyway. We might as well share this reduction, instead of giving it all to the unemployed.
It would work just fine (as long as the rates were adaptable). But that is orthogonal to whether people will appreciate it.
The difference between a self-driving car and a bus/train is that the car goes wherever you want, just like a manual car.
I'm now imagining huge traffic jams caused on purpose to enable electric vehicles to crawl around the city for several hours to avoid paying massive parking costs.
As someone who enjoys nothing more than riding my motorcycle on mountain road trips, I can't help but dread that. The privacy and liberty implications make me uneasy as well, in much the same way as the NSA's overreach.
How human drivers interact with otherwise automated traffic flows might similarly increase risks. Much as largely horse-drawn or bicycle traffic is generally pretty safe, but mixed-mode traffic with cars, trucks, busses, etc., tends to produce (often fatal) accidents.