This may be the biggest long term threat to our hobby....

If you think this is a threat to the hobby, just wait until they come out with the FLYING car. We're supposed to get those too!

 

Yeah, I know; I read about them in a 1955 Mechanix Illustrated. Any day now.....

 

If the computer "crashes", so would the car?

 

I think the driverless car is definitely on the way. Only, it'll be a pod-like mini mass transport system. Bet they'll show up in places like Portland and San Francisco first.

I'd imagine a network of these little (4 to 6 citizen-pods each) train cars would route the civilians to the inner city on a web of lines where, on arrival at the central depot, everyone will grab some form of public usage individual transport device (maybe a bike or one of those 2 wheel standup gyro deals) and finish one half of their daily commute. TLC (or Discovery) had a series about the automobile awhile back and touched on all this crap.

 

Why don't they build some mass transit flying cars and leave the roads to those of us who like "manual conveyance mode".

I've always wanted a flying car. Of course, my luck it would be powered by Windows and would need a reboot half way to work.

 

In some instances a driverless car would be an improvement! We all see brainless drivers on the road every day. Its doubtful a self piloted car would try to drive around railroad track barriers or make a left turn in front of oncoming traffic if it were programmed properly. Of course more complicated systems generate more complex problems. What happens when a software bug causes all of a manufacturers vehicles to make simultaneous left turns?

 

They've been trying to push this stuff on us for decades and it never gets anywhere. The main reason is that nobody really wants it. I sure don't want it. They take money that should be going to fix the roads and highways and throw it into these useless boondoggle research projects with big companies like TRW to do research and waste money. The companies get rich with our tax dollars, and it never goes anywhere. I don't see the public demanding to have something like this -- it's just a big scam to take our tax dollars and waste them.

Part of it is probably a "big brother" scheme too -- where the government will know and have records of exactly where we are in our cars at all times. They'll also know exactly what speed we're going at all times, how many milliseconds we waited at a stop sign, and everything else about how we drive.

Here in the S.F. Bay Area they urge everyone who drives across the bay on any of the toll bridges to get "Fast Track", which puts a transponder in your windshield. When you drive through the toll plaza, they automatically charge you $4.00. But what a lot of people with FastTrak don't realize is that there are overhead receivers in a bunch of locations over highways all around the Bay Area, where they record info on all of the people with FastTrak transponders as they pass under them. They know where you are and where you're going and at what exact time. They supposedly use that info to figure out traffic flow through the highways, but all of that info is stored. I think it's kind of creepy knowing that the government is keeping records of where and when I'm driving just so I can have the privilege of not having to sit in the long "cash only" lines at the toll plazas.

 

They already have "driverless" cars, just look in their dealer showrooms and on the lots.

 

You hit the nail on the head. The Japanese havea smaller and much more integrated management structure and it seems to work.

 

Agreed!

I'm not sure how realistic this idea is, however, if it worked, I'd LOVE it. I have a 30 mile (each way) commute and it takes me a hour or more each way, morning and night. It's not just the amount of cars on the roads, it's the fact that people are unaware of the proper rules of the road. Merging, passing, fast lanes/slow lanes, tailgating (and the accidents that occur because of it), and distracted drivers all add to one huge mess on roads and highways. I'd rather have a cars controlled by a computers instead of people shaving, on laptops, cellphones, applying make-up and digging around in their glovebox around me.

 

Great minds must think alike, this was my first thought. The first one of these cars to crash due to faulty software is going to be a massive lawsuit that would cripple the program.

Might have some use in military applications, I know some shipyards have unmanned trucks that move containers around but put people in them on the roads and I don't think you could make it work.

 

Considering the quality of gm electronics and vehicle management systems I don't think they will be the ones to market such an idea. This means of transportation will be many years in the making- the old computer adage will always hold true....."junk in, junk out".

Troll

 

I don't think I'd sweat it. If you read any science books or magazines in the 50s we were all supposed to be driving our own personal flying cars, and rocket belts now.
If computer operated cars crash as often as my PC does the Highway Saftey crash statistics will sky rocket, and kill thousands.

 

I agree wtih squirrel


mms://sargasso-3.arc.nasa.gov/2008/first/kickoff/Overdrive.wmv
and the software side of it is un freaking believable.. sensors etc etc..

likely Not to happen with current roads..

squirrel
my students are doing this too.
perhaps we'll meet in Atlanta?

 

wait 50 years and see how many hondas are left! 4 is still 3 outside of museum too many for me!


of course, hondas wont last fifty years anyway.

 

i wonder how these driverless cars would hold up in an electrical storm

 

it would be cool to adapt it to my chebby(as an option of course) so she could drive me home from the bar.... hmmm i wonder if this "computer" can drive a 3 on the tree-

 

Uhmmm, Rusty.... this stuff came from some "techies" at General Motors. NOT from generals at the pentagon. But,I do share your sense of being creeped out about how long and what they are useing all that "fast track" info for. Like the new version of the pledge of alliegence states,"One nation,under survailance,without liberty and no justice unless your rich and politically connected" Oh well, as "The Kinks" Ray Davies said so eloquently"paranoiya, will destroy ya!"
Keep smiling! It make them wonder what your up to!

 

The biggest threat to our hobby is those people in powerful situations who's idea of a great day out in their car is to spend it riding in the back seat while someone else handles the driving 'chore' for them.

These are the same people who will ban 'old junk' from the roads, enforce 50mpg standards on new, and then older vehicles, and eventually force everyone to drive 'standardized' cars that will fit precisely in oparking spaces, take up the minimum space on public roads, and follow all the 'environmentally friendly' buzz words while boring real car drivers like us to death.

Cheers, Glen.

 

this would be the big issue. would the old cars still be allowed on the roads? as for now, the govt can't force old cars to follow the new standards. i think by the time this actually comes around, car makers will have probably done everything to take the fun out of driving already - no more manual transmissions, everything will be limited by the computer, so much electronic crap we can't fix our own cars, etc. i'm glad i'll be old and or dead by the time this shit comes true

for daily commuting i could actually see alot of people going for this, most people want to talk on their cellphones and not worry about driving

 

I found this on the US Dept of Transportation website. The "initial cost" when they started this was $200 million. And 80% of the initial funding came from government. The rest came from a consortium of companies including GM. I don't know how much more money they threw at this boondoggle, but if it's been going on for this many years, it must be into the billions. Basically money that should be going to fix up the highways being dumped into research for something that most people don't want. I remember hearing about TRW wasting millions on a similar project even before this one that never amounted to anything.

http://www.tfhrc.gov/pubrds/winter95/p95wi18.htm

cut and pasted from the above page:

The selection of the National Automated Highway System Consortium (NAHSC) to develop, in partnership with the Department of Transportation (DOT), the prototype for an Automated Highway System (AHS) was a momentous occasion for two reasons.

First, on Oct. 7, 1994, when Federal Highway Administrator Rodney E. Slater signed the NAHSC agreement, it marked the embarkation of the United States on a major research program to develop what is expected to be the next significant evolutionary stage of our vehicle-highway transportation system.

The agreement was signed with a national consortium led by General Motors. Other principal members include the California DOT, Bechtel, Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas, Delco Electronics, Hughes Aircraft, the University of California Partners for Advanced Transit in Highways, Carnegie-Mellon University, and Martin Marietta. The cooperative agreement is for approximately seven years, and the initial budget is for approximately $200 million, which will be cost shared with the federal government funding up to 80 percent. The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 requires a demonstration of a prototype AHS in 1997.

 

They invented the brainless driver, so why shouldn't they invent the driverless car? )))))

 

I see a few driverless cars every day on my way to work.I saw a cute blonde yesterday putting on eyeliner in her rear view mirror,she was the only one in the car. Passed me and I was going about 70. Looks like it works very well.

 

I have a driverless car,brick on the gas,seatbelt around the wheel and walk away!