Self-Driving Cars

Don't know if there's any interest here, but I'm pretty excited about the possibilities presented by self-driving cars. I'm sure most people have heard about Google's self-driving cars, and this year's auto show included several manufacturers displaying self-driving concept-car models.The impact will be on more than just driving. More than just freeing us from the mundane tasks of keeping our cars on the road, obeying traffic laws and signage, guiding the car to our destination, etc., it should have a significant impact on our roads. Highways full of cars that know the position, speed and intent of all the surrounding cars can sail down the highway at high speed separated by mere feet, and this will hopefully reduce the number of lanes needed. The amount of real estate taken up by roadways should diminish over time.Even more amazing will be intersections. The need for overpasses, traffic lights, yield signs and stop signs will evaporate. Many bridges and underpasses will go away. Traffic lights will disappear. Stop signs will be a thing of the past. There will be no need to stop at intersections as cars communicate with each other to insure safe passage. Cars on side roads will negotiate paths across busy highways, an appropriately sized space magically opening up in each direction with the speed of traffic barely affected. Two busy intersecting highways would present an amazing mosaic as the streams pass magically through each other.The effect on fuel consumption will be equally amazing. Imagine what kind of mileage you would get if once started you never stopped until you reached your destination.But most amazing will be the reduction in automobile related injuries and fatalities. There are currently around 34,000 fatalities per year, and this should easily drop below 1000. Automobile fatalities will be caused by system failures or erroneous information or mechanical failures, but never by driver error such as inattentive driving or driving too fast for conditions. In fact, in the future automobile accidents will be so exceptional that they'll probably be cause for investigation by the National Highway Safety Administration in a manner similar to aircraft accidents.--Percy

With that car and all surrounding cars under computer control it shouldn't be a problem. Let's imagine something much more difficult, a car at night with it's lights off under manual control and not in communication with the network or other cars crossing the median and plowing head on into oncoming traffic. Long before the car reaches oncoming lanes the automatically controlled cars will have seen it coming, projected its possible range of paths, and coordinated all their motions to avoid it, including avoidance strategies for other manually controlled cars in the vicinity. These kinds of obstacles are already detected by the current crop of experimental cars. I've only seen a brief description of how these cars currently "see", but there's a device mounted on top that with mirrors directs a laser beam in all directions and then uses the reflected light to figure out where everything is.I think there will be a great deal of resistance in the beginning because of the loss of control. People will still die with automated driving, and even though it will be tens of thousands less deaths, people will still feel uncomfortable not being in control. Being in a car will be like being in an airplane so far as being in control goes.--Percy