Driverless Cars and Creative Destruction
Give Nevada credit for being forward-looking. According to PC Magazine:
Last week, the state of Nevada passed a bill that will require its state Department of Motor Vehicles to draw up rules for self-driving cars, essentially paving the way for autonomous vehicles to be used on state roadways...
Self-driving cars have been tested by Google since 2010, and most recently by Volkswagen, whose Temporary Auto Pilot (TAP) car is part of a research project in the EU, but with what the company describes as "production-ready" components…
One might argue that Google has already tested its self-driving cars extensively; when the company announced them in 2010, Google said that Google engineers have already driven a fleet of them around the San Francisco Bay Area, to the tune of over 140,000 miles.
For those of us who live in traffic hot spots (here in Los Angeles, the annual cost of congestion has been estimated at about $10 billion by the Texas Transportation Institute), this technology looks very promising.
It won’t eliminate our problems, of course. That would almost certainly require some combination of expanding the freeway system (extremely difficult because of the dearth of available space for expansion and the myriad regulations that would accompany it) and moving towards congestion pricing (for more on both topics, see here). It also wouldn’t hurt to get rid of counterproductive nanny state initiatives like carpool lanes.
What it would do, however, is improve traffic flows by minimizing accidents (Google researchers – whose tests resulted in only one accident, where the self-driving car was hit from behind – estimate they can cut accidents in half), free up the time of those of us who lose hours of productivity a week to sitting in gridlock, and increase efficiency by synchronizing with real-time traffic alerts to find the most efficacious route to a chosen destination.
There’s a bigger hurdle to reaching this breakthrough than just getting the technology right, however. While Nevada got its new law through the legislature relatively easily (36-6 in the Assembly, 20-1 in the Senate), similar glide paths may not emerge in the nation’s biggest traffic hot spots. The big three (Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago) are all situated in the midst of deep blue states – and if liberal lawmakers in California, New York, and Illinois are taking their lead from the president, you can bet that driverless vehicles will be attacked as job-killers. Remember this pearl of wisdom from Obama, earlier this month?:
There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don’t go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you’re using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate.
You can bet that this rationale – combined with pressure from limo drivers, cabbies, and truckers – will coalesce into tremendous political opposition (a topic on which I’d be delighted to hear from our own Dave Carter).
One final note of caution: even if you’re a dyed-in-the-wool “creative destruction” type pining for our driverless future, this initiative creates a capacity for mischief on behalf of the state. If these vehicles are the wave of tomorrow, so are the endless attempts by government to exploit the technology. It's only a matter of time before legislation is considered to make it impossible for the cars to exceed the speed limit, to monitor their emissions in real time, or to levy a tax based on mileage -- something the Obama Administration has already floated. Quite a price to pay for being able to text in the car.
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Comments :
Nov '10
Re: Driverless Cars and Creative Destruction
Well, you will have special lanes for these vehicles as well, but maybe put to better use. These vehicles will not at first be autonomous and "free range", but integrated with others of like kind (as I understand it).
May '10
Re: Driverless Cars and Creative Destruction
I can't help wondering if this was the real point of Google Street View - creating a visual database that cars can use to help drive themselves. Human use of it might be just a handy side effect.
Jul '10
Re: Driverless Cars and Creative Destruction
You'll have to pry my 5-speed manual transmission from my cold, dead hands.
Jul '10
Re: Driverless Cars and Creative Destruction
If it was, they're screwed. I've lost count of how many times their directions sent me the wrong way or had me looking for non-existent roads.
Jul '10
Re: Driverless Cars and Creative Destruction
Exactly. There is a visceral enjoyment for some of us in the driving itself. No one else is driving my Jeep but me.
Re: Driverless Cars and Creative Destruction
Troy, I'd love to hear more about this technology. The problem in many of these major traffic centers, as the truckers explain it on the CB is, "too many cars and not enough asphalt." This technology doesn't reduce the number of cars though, from what you describe, it has an advanced collision avoidance system. That's all just ducky, but I wonder how it will work when a few thousand of these things are sharing the same amount of pavement. How will it work when a tire blows out, or there is some sort of mechanical failure that throws a wrench into the whole symphony of traffic that this system will bring?
I'll withhold judgment pending some real knowledge on the topic. For now, it's certainly intriguing.
Jul '10
Re: Driverless Cars and Creative Destruction
Dave Carter: Troy, I'd love to hear more about this technology. The problem in many of these major traffic centers, as the truckers explain it on the CB is, "too many cars and not enough asphalt." This technology doesn't reduce the number of cars though, from what you describe, it has an advanced collision avoidance system. That's all just ducky, but I wonder how it will work when a few thousand of these things are sharing the same amount of pavement. How will it work when a tire blows out, or there is some sort of mechanical failure that throws a wrench into the whole symphony of traffic that this system will bring?
I'll withhold judgment pending some real knowledge on the topic. For now, it's certainly intriguing. · Jun 25 at 9:19pm
Yesterday, as I made a left-hand turn, a stupid woman in the lane to my right, which prohibited left turns, also turned left, into my space. I saw her from my peripheral vision and managed to steer away from a collision, into oncoming traffic and then, accelerating, back into my lane. Can a computer do that?
Jul '10
Re: Driverless Cars and Creative Destruction
Again: a few weeks ago, a deer came crashing out of the woods into the path of my car. Within less than a second, I saw her, steered away and accelerated so that she merely bounced off my rear quarter-panel rather than coming through my windshield.
Can a computer do that?
Re: Driverless Cars and Creative Destruction
Kenneth
Yesterday, as I made a left-hand turn, a stupid woman in the lane to my right, which prohibited left turns, also turned left, into my space. I saw her from my peripheral vision and managed to steer away from a collision, into oncoming traffic and then, accelerating, back into my lane. Can a computer do that? · Jun 25 at 9:30pm
THAT's the question. Of course, if a computer were driving her car, she wouldn't have veered over into your lane to start with. Then again, computers are not infallible. Entering the Simi Valley area a week and a half ago, my GPS just shut it self off and rebooted, loosing the address I was driving to in the process. So what happens when the computer driving the car reboots? I've also noticed that computers can't swear with the same flair as people, which is a key component of negotiating traffic.
Re: Driverless Cars and Creative Destruction
Kenneth: Again: a few weeks ago, a deer came crashing out of the woods into the path of my car. Within less than a second, I saw her, steered away and accelerated so that she merely bounced off my rear quarter-panel rather than coming through my windshield.
Can a computer do that? · Jun 25 at 9:33pm
Undoubtedly, there is a human element in these split second decisions that I just don't know that a computer could duplicate. Additionally, in a large truck there is much more involved with the high center of gravity, the chances of jack-knifing, etc. Also, in a vehicle this size, we are trained from day one not to swerve to miss an animal, since we could easily lose control and hurt a lot of people instead. If there are other vehicles around, we can slow down and that's about it. But if there's a chance of hurting another person, then it's bye bye Bambi.
Apr '11
Re: Driverless Cars and Creative Destruction
Kenneth
Yesterday, as I made a left-hand turn, a stupid woman in the lane to my right, which prohibited left turns, also turned left, into my space. I saw her from my peripheral vision and managed to steer away from a collision, into oncoming traffic and then, accelerating, back into my lane. Can a computer do that? · Jun 25 at 9:30pm
I'm not a techo-utopian and still strongly believe in the ultimate limitations of AI with regard to human communication, but I'm fairly sure a computer, in what is essentially a robotic function (e.g. "driverless" cars) can do most things falling under your "that." Check out the 2:40 mark here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KxjVlaLBmk
Edited on Jun 25, 2011 at 10:13pmJul '10
Re: Driverless Cars and Creative Destruction
Theoretically, the computer can integrate omnidirectional inputs and avoid the deer and a meteoroid at the same time faster than a human could react. Or the kid that chases the ball into the street. Often drivers break on seeing the ball, before we even see the kid. In practice, I am not convinced that pattern recognition algorithms are up to that level of responsibility just yet.
The first pedestrian death with these things could set the whole idea back a generation or two.
Mar '11
Re: Driverless Cars and Creative Destruction
While I'm sure a computer can sound the car horn when necessary, I'm dubious that it can offer up the same type of "digital response" some situations warrant.
Jun '10
Re: Driverless Cars and Creative Destruction
Maybe I'm just being too sensitive about this, but isn't this just another example of foisting central planning upon us? Maybe I'm just tired, but there's something about this that seems too controlling for me. I'm with the "cold dead hands" position.
Mar '11
Re: Driverless Cars and Creative Destruction
This reminds me of a Roger Zelazny story I read years ago (can't recall the name) in which all vehicles were automated. Keeping true to the Law of Unintended Consequences, a new sport was created by teenagers (who else?) in which the little scamps would grab a couple of bottles from their parents' liquor cabinet, jump into the family sedan and enter so many destinations into the onboard computer that it would fry the programming. The result: crazy joy rides and lots of traffic accidents. I can just see all the PWI arrests in my mind's eye...
Edited on Jun 26, 2011 at 6:47amMay '10
Re: Driverless Cars and Creative Destruction
The best mass-transit system ever devised is the private automobile. Advances in technology of this sort just makes it better, provided people are left alone to use it as they think best.
This is much preferable to herding all us hapless citizens onto buses and streetcars in order to fulfill some egghead from central planning's wet dream.
Feb '11
Re: Driverless Cars and Creative Destruction
Kenneth: Again: a few weeks ago, a deer came crashing out of the woods into the path of my car. Within less than a second, I saw her, steered away and accelerated so that she merely bounced off my rear quarter-panel rather than coming through my windshield.
Can a computer do that? · Jun 25 at 9:33pm
Kenneth, computers operate at speeds of nanoseconds (10^9). Humans operate at speeds of perhaps milliseconds (10^3). That means theoretically, computers can do things about 1,000,000 times faster than humans. The artificial intelligence technology isn't there yet to do the things you're talking about, but it probably will come because the profit incentive will be there.
Feb '11
Re: Driverless Cars and Creative Destruction
This technology is initiated by DARPA which has given grants with the idea of using it in combat situations especially for truck convoys. So it is federal governments research money at work. DARPA has had road races since about 2000 in the deserts around Las Vegas and there is a pretty good PBS program about this from 2002 or 2003. There is also a federal guideline that by some date in the future most of the vehicles will be enabled for not having drivers for DoD heavy vehicles.
I am dubious about using this on the roads in the near future because of the liability issues that would be involved. The advertisements of the law firms haven't started yet, but it's easy enough to imagine them: Hurt in an accident by an unfeeling machine put on the road by greedy automobile, computer, trucking companies. Call 1-800-SUE-EM-NOW.
Re: Driverless Cars and Creative Destruction
I just remembered an incident that happened a few years ago, when one of our company drivers rounded a curve on a two-lane highway, going the speed limit, and came upon some sort of accident that had happened only minutes earlier. There people and vehicles in the middle of the road. Our driver, knowing she could not stop the truck in time, elected to turn sharp left and intentionally roll the truck on its side, rather than run over those people. She was injured, but recovered, and everyone else lived. I wonder how a computer program would respond to that, or was this the human element that such a program would miss.
Apr '11
Re: Driverless Cars and Creative Destruction
Autonomous vehicles just won't be the same. Not unless the software is designed to drive slowly in the left lane; speed up when an adjacent vehicle tries to pass; look directly at an approaching car so as to pull out in front of it and drive slowly; stare, dumbfounded, at a just-turned green light - completely surprised that a red light eventually turns green; signal turns only after slowing to enter the turn... you get the idea.
It the software is to mimic human behavior, modules will need to be written to implement cluelessness, rudeness, and bewilderment. To mimic the cellphone-talking/texting driver, I suggest loading updates and rebooting to install them during rush hour freeway driving.