How Driverless Cars Could Reshape Cities

[oidreez]

so where are these cars gonna be parked since there would be no street parking or parking lots? I dont think too many people would like their cars being a couple miles away from where they sleep at night. Also what about car enthusiasts who actually like driving and feeling the torque?

 

[mangudai954]

I don't get it. Why not just build more trains and focus R&D efforts into making them less expensive and eco friendly?

repairing these vehicles is moving towards less of being a mechanic, more of being a computer and electronics technician.

Not true. It moving towards mechanics having to have more knowledge as far as electronics and computer systems are concerned. This is why some of the older mechanics are leaving the field, same thing happened when fuel injection became common.

 

[wr]

I don't get it. Why not just build more trains and focus R&D efforts into making them less expensive and eco friendly?
Not true. It moving towards mechanics having to have more knowledge as far as electronics and computer systems are concerned. This is why some of the older mechanics are leaving the field, same thing happened when fuel injection became common.

essentially that was my point

 

[water]

I wouldn't have control so no bueno for me

 

[sniper]

I don't get it. Why not just build more trains and focus R&D efforts into making them less expensive and eco friendly?

repairing these vehicles is moving towards less of being a mechanic, more of being a computer and electronics technician.

Not true. It moving towards mechanics having to have more knowledge as far as electronics and computer systems are concerned. This is why some of the older mechanics are leaving the field, same thing happened when fuel injection became common.

So, basically, you want to stop evolution to conform to one's particular trade/skill?

 

[crcballer55]

I don't get it. Why not just build more trains and focus R&D efforts into making them less expensive and eco friendly?
 

The problem with trains is that you need a main thoroughfare where everyone on the train will be going to the same destination. Speaking strictly from a California standpoint, traffic here is horrible during rush hour and especially in LA, rush hour can span from 6am-10am & 3pm-7pm, people still want to drive because they don't want to be around other people and have to interact. If we had single passenger autonomous vehicles the size of a Smart car (or slightly larger for bigger people) it would essentially be a modular railroad system where vehicles would speed up and slow down depending on the amount of traffic and if a new vehicle were entering the road.

 

[airthompson]

That would cut into too much profit


- Auto industry

- car mechanics/repair industry

- City citations

- Real estate

etc.


Very interesting read, but also very unlikely.

Wouldn't auto industries still have to make cars?
Wouldn't Mechanics still have to fix cars?

Auto industries want people to buy cars. I'm assuming this is more of a Taxi type service where people don't need to own the cars cuz it states cars would be like shopping carts. But let's say consumers still have to go buy these cars...

Driverless cars means no accidents, so insurance companies wouldn't thrive on collision insurance, cuz they dnt care about our safety.

Less citations, less money for the city/state to collect. No parking violations, speeding tix, meters being needed, public parking garages, etc. job cuts for parking enforcement, and garage tellers.

No accidents mean less work for CHP and Fire Dept. so many be outta jobs due to cuts.

Excuse me for saying mechanics. The word i was look for was body shops. They won't get much work. More job cuts.

This would work, but this world revolves around money. They wouldn't let this happen eventho is safe.

 

[lacrimestopper]

getting places would be so fun.

just pack bowls in the bong and just browse facebook and instagram without any worries

 

[melo0115]

Change seems to be inevitable looking through the history of time. So eventually it will come to this point. A structure is being formulated, many will fall and many will succeed.

We were once a land with no cars at all, and look how that worked out. we already have people using autonomous cars for parking, and advanced sensory system for avoiding crashes. Google cars riding through law provided cities fully autonomous. Already in progress for a couple of years.

Think this article was posted on here a while ago, it had some good strategies on how to incorporate Driver-less cars into our economy.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkam...-driverless-car-part-3-sooner-than-you-think/

1. Google Fiber Redux. Google is the most likely player to put hundreds or thousands of driverless cars on the road to prove their effectiveness and clear away short-term hurdles. Google has a tradition of having its employees use its prototype technologies, a practice known as “eating your own dogfood.” Given recently passed legislation in California legalizing driverless cars (with backup drivers), Google might deploy hundreds of Google cars to chauffeur Googlers around the state. Google could quickly log millions of miles and accumulate mountains of evidence on the safety and benefits of the car. (According to various news reports, the Google car has thus far been hit twice by other drivers and once caused a minor accident—while under the control of a human driver.) Google could then move to pilot the technology at a larger scale, perhaps in Las Vegas, because Nevada has also approved the car. Google could use its deep pockets to invest in the necessary infrastructure, take the liabilities issues off the table (by essentially self-insuring) and make the cars available in Nevada at competitive prices. Such an effort would mirror the Google Fiber strategy in Kansas City to demonstrate the viability of high-speed fiber networks to the home.

2. The China Card. Although there are too many imponderables and cross-industry conflicts to imagine that the U.S. federal government would get involved any time soon, one can imagine scenarios where more interventionist governments, like China’s, might intervene. China has greater incentives to adopt driverless cars because its rates of accidents and fatalities per 100,000 vehicles is more than twice that of the U.S., and its vehicle counts and total fatalities are growing rapidly. In addition, the Chinese government could be motivated to accelerate the adoption of driverless cars because of the trillions of dollars that it would save by building fewer and narrower roads, by eliminating traffic lights and street lights and by reducing fuel consumption. And then there is the competitive dimension.  A driverless car initiative would fit into several of the seven strategic industries that the government is supporting. Chinese researchers have already made significant progress in the arena. And, of course, if China perfects a driverless-car system, it could export that system to the rest of the world.

3. The Big Venture Play. In this scenario, a startup steps into the market to launch a large-scale, shared, driverless transportation system. While this might appear to be the most outlandish of the three scenarios, the outline of the a profitable business case has already been developed. The business plan was designed by an impressive team led by Lawrence Burns, the director of the Program on Sustainability at Columbia University’s Earth Institute and former head of R&D at General Motors. The plan is based on expert technical and financial analysis and offers three sustainable market-entry strategies. For example, the team did a detailed analysis of Ann Arbor, MI, and concluded that a shared-driverless system could be fielded that offered customers about 90% savings compared with the cost of personal car ownership—while delivering better user experiences. Analysis of suburban areas and high-density urban centers, with Manhattan as the case study, also yielded significant savings potential and better service. Such dramatic results promise tremendous business opportunities for a “NewCo”:

 

[Gex the Damaja]

If they're trying to innovate a driverless car system I'm sure they're smart enough to account for pedestrians walking as well.  You'd probably just have walk signals as we do now without the traffic lights hanging.

But this is believing street lights are just for pedestrians and cars. Street lights show you who is around, more concerned about that than just cars.

 

[ICEBERGSLIM]

The reason I don't see this being the norm ANYTIME soon is because of the amount of money states make of off traffic fines.

great first response because it is exactly the case. for some small towns this is the police departments main source of income!

 

[bamez]

Too many variables.  Roads are constantly under construction, for several different reasons...

Add that to pedestrians, natural disasters, cars with drivers, blackouts (traffic lights), animals, etc...

So many things will go wrong.

 

[meek meals]

Surprised conspiracy theorists haven't already shut this thread down 

Would be cool to go somewhere with no worries but I don't like the idea of you not being in control of your car, also what if the computer "crashes" and you just *** out in the middle of nowhere lol

Would this mean kids would get cars as soon as they could walk and talk 

Has a lot of potential but also a lot of possible negatives

I do think it will happen in the next 30-50 years. Look at how different we are from 30-50 years ago.

 

[oidreez]

yall are acting like it's only gonna be driverless cars on the road. What about regular cars still being on the roads which mean accidents can still occur. What I would prefer is electric cars like the Tesla but affordable

 

[mangudai954]

So, basically, you want to stop evolution to conform to one's particular trade/skill?

How did you get that from what I said?

The problem with trains is that you need a main thoroughfare where everyone on the train will be going to the same destination. Speaking strictly from a California standpoint, traffic here is horrible during rush hour and especially in LA, rush hour can span from 6am-10am & 3pm-7pm, people still want to drive because they don't want to be around other people and have to interact. If we had single passenger autonomous vehicles the size of a Smart car (or slightly larger for bigger people) it would essentially be a modular railroad system where vehicles would speed up and slow down depending on the amount of traffic and if a new vehicle were entering the road.

I see your point. It'll be hard for me to come to a conclusion till I see it actually in practice.

 

[airthompson]

yall are acting like it's only gonna be driverless cars on the road. What about regular cars still being on the roads which mean accidents can still occur. What I would prefer is electric cars like the Tesla but affordable

Naw they're saying all driverless. Cuz it states all parking spaces would be no more.

 

[currensy]

Definitely not in my lifetime....

 

[tokes99]

yall are acting like it's only gonna be driverless cars on the road. What about regular cars still being on the roads which mean accidents can still occur. What I would prefer is electric cars like the Tesla but affordable

one of the keys to really making the driverless car thing work & be as safe as possible is to have most, if not ALL cars/vehicles on the road actually be driverless; enabling vehicle-to-vehicle communication & coordination...that is the one of the bigger hurdles for this type of thing, but it is definitely coming; outside of enthusiasts, cars for a lot of people are just a utility & studies have shown that many younger folk (think 20s & 30s) now are driving a lot less or not buying cars at all (mostly because they can't afford to, but those that can are more than ever deciding not to) and even younger folks don't seem to have the same attachment to cars as previous generations.

insurance would likely have to switch to auto manufacturers or maybe whoever writes the software controlling the vehicles? in theory, driverless cars would be MUCH SAFER than humans at the wheel, so much so that it would seem to be an obvious solution . however it brings the larger question of just how efficient/safe/sterile of a world do we want to live in? how much & how far do we go in effort to mitigate risk?

 

[buggz05]

Wouldn't realistically ever become a norm....too much potential for disaster.

I mean just think about the decade or so of planning/turnover/implementation/culture change/
Seemingly all infastructure would have to somehow be adjusted just so that we can be lazier in our cars.....

1. Faulty sensor on highway - dead
2. 1 AutoCar vs. 1 regular car w/ bad driver - dead
3. Teresa doesn't have a drivers license? Oh well, turn on car and hide in backseat till we get to the mall - triffling
4. Cars one day realize they don't have to take this **** - dead 

lmfao

 

[sneaky]

idea but i think we are a ways away from this.

 

[too steez]

That's cool and all, buts lets be serious. There are people who just love that driving feeling. This will be trashed like most ideas.

 

[SoleByThePound]

All of you naysayers in here remind me of two quotes.

The people working on weaving machines in 17th century, they didn't see the steam engine coming. One invention, industrial revolution. Encyclopedia Britannica didn't see Wikipedia coming. Great things don't happen in tiny little increments. They happen when someone thinks completely differently.

--- Lip, Shameless

Creating a new theory is not like destroying an old barn and erecting a skyscraper in its place. It is rather like climbing a mountain, gaining new and wider views, discovering unexpected connections between our starting point and its rich environment. But the point from which we started out still exists and can be seen, although it appears smaller and forms a tiny part of our broad view gained by the mastery of the obstacles on our adventurous way up.

--- Einstein

Bring on the driver-less car, we will all benefit from it.
 

 

[jordan23dotcom]

We don't even run on 100% electric cars yet even though its completely possible, and cheaper, why would this come any sooner?

 

[T Lo Sweater]

Inb4 iCar (irobot)

 

[Clyde Frog]

Technology and the future fascinates me but it really irritates me how stubborn our culture can be towards innovation. Like your telling me someone is slowing down the process of letting me chill in the back seat with a case of beer playing COD for a few hours, then take a nap as my car drives me across the country to my buddies house in Florida....cause some people would rather be able to floor it, make loud noises, and blow black smoke from the exhaust in their diesel truck? Cmonnnnnn