The future.......

[sven360]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18248841

[Speedy88]

They've done self drive vehicles since the 70s. They never caught on. Simple reason is that people don't like to feel out of control.

If they ever did implement something like this they'd have to have their own roads as there's no way it could mix with "normal" traffic.

In my opinion.

[Hell Driver]

I just read that and had just copied a link for a thread...no need to bother!

They would need to join the cars together to make it safer, build special roads to avoid other traffic, make them more efficient by only having one big engine and maybe lower friction metal wheels in tracks and.....wait a minute, that's already been invented....it's called a railway

The only difference is that these 'carriages' can peel off at your town, take you into your suburb/village and even deliver you to your door!

Me thinks it's the beginning of the end for freedom to drive yourself. In a normal car how the hell do you merge in to turn off a motorway when faced with a train of cars only 19 feet apart 3 miles long? Then again, maybe it could be great fun as 19 feet is just enough to fit in and the car behind would presumably automatically drop back?

It sounds very safe, cos as we all know, computers never have software glitches do they

[Ride_on]

Self drive is only a recent phenomena, that uses significant computer power to do image processing and combine many sensor arrays with enough reliability to match or beat a human. The idea is that these will mix with normal traffic, the train idea is the latest development (although yes an old idea). Various governments have already given the go ahead to allow these things on the road for testing.

I personally support driving monitors, they would not brake for you nor do any steering, simply warn you of high margin situations. It would be a better development platform for the technology, volume testing etc. It won't be until these things get on the road in volume with normal people and cause some accidents that the designers didn't foresee that they will be able to make it really good.

Will they replace humans? probably not because they will become as expensive to maintain as aircraft where certain complex systems are life critical. The best Cars or even electronics have a significant failure rate compared with humans over the same period. The average human lasts for 80 years with no regular 3rd party maintenance required, although occasional repairs are needed, I don't know of any modern human technology that will last that long. Cars do have life critical system but are extremely simple and have significant redundancy, eg brakes. This is why we don't have steer-by-wire or brake-by-wire, they are hard connected systems that require major mechanical failure to fail and are inspectable. Some cars have accelerate-by-(electrical)-wire, and that has caused enough problems for the standards authors to consider them safety critical. A software bug or sensor wear can cause the car to accelerate uncontrollably. Its not impossible to make these reliable, but once something is considered 'safety critical' you have to have at least 2 levels of protection in the design and certain monitoring in production and during operation.

They got the technology to work, now they need to make it reliable and safe, and be able to demonstrate it as such.

[jtbo]

Nice watch from distance, will never get into one that is for sure.

I rather give up driving and go by cycling than use such, same goes to public transportation too though

[trabitom99]

I personally would welcome it ... as long as they don't introduce some kind of legislation which "discriminates" car owners who don't have the "self drive" component fitted.

Lots of the roads I drive are the same tedious plod, endless traffic jams and bumper to bumper galore. I'd much rather do something else at the same time, like watch TV or read the paper But give me an open road, and the thing gets turned off.

Cheers

Tom

[jtbo]

I personally would welcome it ... as long as they don't introduce some kind of legislation which "discriminates" car owners who don't have the "self drive" component fitted.

Lots of the roads I drive are the same tedious plod, endless traffic jams and bumper to bumper galore. I'd much rather do something else at the same time, like watch TV or read the paper But give me an open road, and the thing gets turned off.

Cheers

Tom

I have heard about bumper to bumper traffic, but only places that I have found something bit like that have been at one of the largest cities at the time of the road construction work, but even then delay has been not much more than 5 minutes. When I cycle to shop and back, I'm lucky to see more than 5 cars and that is 9km trip

I would just replace roads with platforms where you park your car and platform moves cars in those sections where is too much traffic.

For city traffic I would welcome rule that allows only pedal propelled vehicles or those platforms, maybe could be possible to make big car park towers at edge of cities where people would continue by cycling or by some other means, but that is big city things, we have probably 5 or 6 areas that might be good for that.

I would also ban buses, every time bus passes me in a city when I'm walking, my ears hurt and lungs start burning, I take 100 cars passing me over one bus at any time.

Most issue is that people think clock is the time, so they are thinking it is not possible to go slower, however there is only one time, which is persons time alive and breathing, then it is just choices how that time is spent, rushing from thing to another and such is perhaps bit silly to spend that time that one has.

It would require some sort of change to attitudes to learn that it is perfectly meaningless if one manages to do trip bit faster or if one would gain tiny amount of more wealth, at the end everyone gets zeroed anyway, so if one would take his own time and enjoy it by going slower, it would be the same at the end, but for all people that would be better, less problems, more freedom and no traffic issues.

Maybe in 1000 years or so it will be realized how silly this era has been

[trabitom99]

Most issue is that people think clock is the time, so they are thinking it is not possible to go slower, however there is only one time, which is persons time alive and breathing, then it is just choices how that time is spent, rushing from thing to another and such is perhaps bit silly to spend that time that one has.

Well said I agree ...

Tom