Are self driving cars the missing link to our long distance travel needs?

[bengangmo]

@usedtobe

The passenger car is not the answer to any long-distance travel, self-driven or manually driven.

Trains are much more efficient - we used to have many inter-urban rail lines (they were destroyed by a company run by GM, Goodyear, and Standard Oil - they bought the companies, scrapped the rolling stock and sold the right-of-ways). We now are re-creating these.

If you come up with a car which takes up no more space than the passenger compartment, and which can attach and detach from a train (think of driving onto a flatbed car, turning off you engine, and then restarting when near destination and driving off at your destination), you might have a solution to long-distance travel while using a “car”.

IMHO - this is exactly the kind of paradigm shift that driverless cars will bring about.
I think the ultimate destination is single passenger “cells” powered by small electric motors.
The cells will be “connectible” in various configurations for family or cargo, but also can be standalone for single occupants. they will be able to connect to other cells going to the same place etc etc.

And because the need for “space” between vehicles will be removed, speeds will be high, but energy consumption low.

Essentially - constantly variable trains that don’t have to travel on tracks, but can use existing roads.

[usedtobe]

Which costs more:

Two lanes of interstate or a single rail track?

Which requires more expensive maintenance?

I’ve seen light rail stations built on the meridian of interstates.

(and of course, the plural is “Rights-of-way”.

[Novelty_Bobble]

There is no technical barrier to self-driving cars right now.

I’m looking to change my car at the end of the year and in my (decent but modest) budget I can afford to purchase cars with the following:

Adaptive cruise control (maintains speed and distance)
Collision avoidance (puts the brakes on for you)
Automatic parking (it finds a space and parks the damn thing for you, doing all the steering as necessary)
lane guidance (does what it says, keeps you in the right lane)
Hill hold controls with stall protections, smart auto gearboxes and auto parking brakes.
multitudes of sensors, HUDs and GPS navigation.

So those things are here now and it doesn’t take a massive jump to see all of them put together to provide a truly “hands-off” experience for the driver.

I can see a first step being where those technological aids become so prevalent and reliable that a fully automatic mode is allowed on certain roads with such a mode being enabled/disabled under certain conditions and/or geographical locations (cars exist in Japan that have a limited top speed on national roads but automatically un-limit themselves when the GPS co-ordinates match those of a racing circuit.

From there it’ll be an ongoing discussion as to under what situations such a mode can be used. Evidence will come in regarding accidents under auto-mode and such situations will be spread or restricted accordingly (the more that use such an option, the more vehicles can use existing roads without causing a jam, I’d also expect accidents to reduce overall)

Such technology will be used for fully driverless cars as well, as a short range taxi transport for those who don’t want the expense of owning one themselves.

Mass commuter transport will still exist, undergrounds, trams, light rail are cost-effective where large populations need to be moved and high-speed city-city rail will expand and improve.

On a practical application, as a family we holiday in Austria summer and winter and the door to door time is around 15 hours (around 760 miles and channel tunnel crossing included). We need to move a lot of luggage (particularly in winter) and having a car is necessary to be mobile at the other end. The door to door time via air is around 11-12 hours and I much prefer to take a little extra time and not have to hump luggage and be more master of my own destiny in a car.
The only real downside is having to concentrate on the road all the way. I estimate that 90% of the journey is on a motorway of some description and suitable for fully automatic cars. Having an auto mode that means I can switch off and read a book or watch a movie sounds good to me. It only strengthens the case for car vs air or rail.

So, in a nutshell, I think fully auto will come in two directions. Designed as such for short, taxi-style urban transport (probably electric) and as an extended “cruise control” option for long distance cruising. And I welcome it.

[enipla]

@Evil_Captor

I speculate that once cars become self-driving, people will stop owning cars, will instead own travel pods, comfortable environments to travel in. When you are ready to go somewhere, you just call for a “car” which would just be an engine, transmission and wheels, which will automatically hook up with a car.

I don’t see how this could possibly work for those of us that live in remote regions. Especially for those of us that experience extreme weather.

[Steve_MB]

@Chimera

I have ZERO interest in a self-driving car.

I take the bus to work, so that’s taken care of. Local driving for other purposes I’d rather take care of myself. And long distance driving? That’s my joy. No way I let someone take that away.

If the technology gets perfected in your lifetime, you may not get the choice. The (richly deserved) crap the anti-vaxxers are getting would pale in comparison to the pushback for being on the wrong side of the “gee, should we keep letting tens of thousands of people be killed and maimed every year by avoidable human error, or not?” question.

[LSLGuy]

The OP is nonsense in the sense that driverless cars have exactly zero to do with the issues he/she presents. A driverless car gets you from home to station A and from station B to your destination no better or worse than a human-driven car does. And retains 100% of the hassle issues the OP complains of.

In other words, they don’t solve the problem the OP purports to have. Which is not to say they don’t solve some other problems.

The OP also seems to be mixing the idea of driverless cars as such with the idea of shared cars. Summoning a driverless car at the destination is no different than summoning a human-driven taxi today. IMO driven/driverless is orthogonal to owned/shared.
Setting aside the quibbles and talking to the issues …

IMO self-owned driverless cars would make longer car trips practical. IOW, for a human-driven car most folks will fly if the drive is longer than, say, 6 hours. If the car was driverless they might be willing to ride in the car 10 hours before choosing instead to fly.

And if eventually driverless cars were able to travel faster than human-driven cars, e.g. 120mph in driverless-only express lanes, those extra hours multiply by the extra speed to increase the distance where driving beats flying. The effect on US air travel would be profound once the practical car trip distance became ~= 1500 miles.
Trains are a dead concept throughout almost the entire US. The sooner we abandon any thought of them the better. The existing infrastructure cannot be upgraded cost-effectively, nor can new right of way be built cost-effectively. Yes, there *are *small pockets of the US where they’re marginally plausible. And they’re already in use there. On aging failing infrastructure that can’t be cost-effectively upgraded.

[Little_Nemo]

@Backwater_Under_Duck

Except that not everyone will have a driverless car. There will still be plenty of old beat up Chevys and Toyotas with plenty of drunk drivers, sleep-deprived drivers, angry drivers, inexperienced drivers, just plain lousy drivers screwing up the driving lanes and smashing into you and generally fucking up your driverless driving experience. Unless, of course, these miracle cars come with force fields that keep you from physically having mechanical intercourse with the hoi polloi.

Driverless cars will still be an improvement. Assuming driverless cars have fewer accidents than people-driven cars then every driverless car reduces the overall accident rate. It doesn’t matter if one percent of cars are driverless or ninety-nine percent are.

[Little_Nemo]

@LSLGuy

Trains are a dead concept throughout almost the entire US. The sooner we abandon any thought of them the better. The existing infrastructure cannot be upgraded cost-effectively, nor can new right of way be built cost-effectively. Yes, there *are *small pockets of the US where they’re marginally plausible. And they’re already in use there. On aging failing infrastructure that can’t be cost-effectively upgraded.

Getting off-topic but I think trains have a good future. The bottom line is trains can move cargo for about a third of the energy cost of trucks. As energy costs rise, that will become a bigger factor and make trains increasingly attractive.

[LSLGuy]

@Little_Nemo

Getting off-topic but I think trains have a good future. The bottom line is trains can move cargo for about a third of the energy cost of trucks. As energy costs rise, that will become a bigger factor and make trains increasingly attractive.

Right now energy is cheap & time is expensive. So trucks & planes win over trains & (for some applications) ships. If energy costs skyrocket I agree railroads will have *an opportunity * to play a larger role in freight and to a lesser degree passenger transport.

Whether railroad companies seize the opportunity depends a great deal on their ability to finance a wholesale upgrade of their entire operating model and infrastructure. Which may or may not happen depending on the “wisdom” of Wall Street at the time.

[kanicbird]

@Little_Nemo

Getting off-topic but I think trains have a good future. The bottom line is trains can move cargo for about a third of the energy cost of trucks. As energy costs rise, that will become a bigger factor and make trains increasingly attractive.

Yes freight trains are already doing well since mulli modeal transport and can afford to take longer routes at a slower pace. They are close to the efficiency of cargo ships (while trucks use about 10x the energy not 3x as I recall)

But passenger trains may still have a future for expansion, the right of ways are in, the interstate highway system. Not for replacement of interstates with tracks, but for along side and above them. Yes some large issues need to be worked out of how to use these right of ways for combined traffic, but it’s a far cry from the need to acquire them.

[Thudlow_Boink]

@Senegoid

The current issue of the Auto Club magazine (for Northern California) has this quote:

Originally Posted by via magazine, Jan./Feb. 2015 issue:

“People are so bad at driving cars that computers don’t have to be that good to be much better.”
– Tech pioneer Marc Andreessen on the potential upside of self-driving cars.

Driving is an immensely complex skill that most people manage to do quite well every day without even really thinking about it. Nevertheless, it’s difficult enough that people have enough trouble with it that someone can write in a car magazine that people are bad at it. If it’s that difficult, what makes you think we can program a computer to do it any time soon.

[Evil_Captor]

@enipla

I don’t see how this could possibly work for those of us that live in remote regions. Especially for those of us that experience extreme weather.

I’m sure there will be variations. It will only happen if it proves useful. For people in suburban and urban areas and even small towns, which is the vast majority of people, it would make economic sense. Why own the expensive and difficult parts of a car if you don’t HAVE to?

[Evil_Captor]

@Thudlow_Boink

Driving is an immensely complex skill that most people manage to do quite well every day without even really thinking about it. Nevertheless, it’s difficult enough that people have enough trouble with it that someone can write in a car magazine that people are bad at it. If it’s that difficult, what makes you think we can program a computer to do it any time soon.

Because people ARE programming computers to do it right now?

[enipla]

@Evil_Captor

I’m sure there will be variations. It will only happen if it proves useful. For people in suburban and urban areas and even small towns, which is the vast majority of people, it would make economic sense. Why own the expensive and difficult parts of a car if you don’t HAVE to?

I was just responding to this -
[QUOTE=Evil Captor]
people will stop owning cars
[/quote]
I think it would be optimistic to say that this would work for 75% of folks.

[RTFirefly]

Either self-driving cars or trains should compete well with planes in the shorter-haul trips, the ones where you could drive from your home to your destination in only a little bit more time than the time you spend (a) getting to the airport, (b) getting through security and waiting for your flight, © flying to your destination airport, (d) waiting for your luggage and picking up the rental car, and (e) driving to your actual destination.

Trains don’t do such a great job of it yet, for the most part, because (a) trains don’t go everywhere, (b) they’re slower than they ought to be, and © the infrastructure to get you to the train station by some means besides driving is often lacking.

Skipping past the debate over whether self-driving cars will get here in 10 years or 30, ISTM that once they get here, they’ll be optimal for a lot of trips like this.

For instance, I live in Maryland, to the SE of the DC area. I’ve got a good friend who lives in Pittsburgh. And quite frankly, every way of getting there sucks. Air sucks because it’s expensive and you spend too much of your time in airports, or going to and from them. The train sucks because the train is slow, and at this end, I’ve either got to drive to Union Station in DC and park there, or drive to a Metro station, park there, and switch from Metro to Amtrak at Union Station, with each switch of transportation mode inevitably eating up time. And driving sucks because it’s a really hard drive over the Appalachians, even on the interstate. (And I say that as someone who generally enjoys driving.)

Being able to zone out and let the car do the driving, door to door, would be an easy win for the car over plane and train.

[Barkis_is_Willin]

@Evil_Captor

Because people ARE programming computers to do it right now?

Not only that, there are cars that can drive on public roads without driver interference right now. No massive overhaul of infrastructure is necessary. More than one company has equipped a car that can autonomously drive from point A to point B, whether it requires city or highway driving.

[UltraVires]

It sounds to me like a massive upgrade of existing infrastructure would be required. How does a self driving car know where the edges of the road are? How does it know a red light is ahead? How does it know there is a construction zone ahead?

When more fuel is needed, how does it get off the expressway and find a fuel station? Will it sit for hours at a pump that is out of gas because the mom and pop gas station doesn’t use the technology to tell it that it is out?

[Evil_Captor]

@jtgain

It sounds to me like a massive upgrade of existing infrastructure would be required. How does a self driving car know where the edges of the road are? How does it know a red light is ahead? How does it know there is a construction zone ahead?

When more fuel is needed, how does it get off the expressway and find a fuel station? Will it sit for hours at a pump that is out of gas because the mom and pop gas station doesn’t use the technology to tell it that it is out?

These problems do not sound like they are outside the scale of programming, telecommunications and sensor technology to solve.

[Nava]

@RTFirefly

Trains don’t do such a great job of it yet, for the most part, because (a) trains don’t go everywhere, (b) they’re slower than they ought to be, and (c) the infrastructure to get you to the train station by some means besides driving is often lacking.

That varies a lot with location.

US: interurban trains are rare and can be ridiculously expensive, sometimes even by comparison with linked subways (which are, after all, also trains).

Western Europe: trains are often the best option, specially if either your destination or departure points are in the kind of urban areas in which cars are best avoided.

India: those are some seriously overloaded trains. Nobody can say they’re not a popular method of transportation, though.

[Nom_de_Plume]

The one question I still have about driverless cars is liability. Roads go where train tracks do not, including residential areas. Where I live, people seem to ignore crosswalks. Pedestrians will most likely continue to walk out into driverless car roads. Add to that animals, weather conditions, trees falling… whatever, and some accidents will continue to happen regardless of the removal of the human behind the wheel. Who is legally responsible? The car company? The driver who did not take over manual controls because he was drunk or texting?