So, you can probably imagine my excitement about the idea of self-driving cars. A car that you don't have to drive, because it can handle the entire trip by itself. You just get in, type in your destination and push go. Then you can do whatever you want while the car gets you where you're going. Such a cool idea.
Right now the biggest contender in that particular market is Google. 10 years ago, that would have been surprising, because Google was just the search engine, but they've been expanding their empire, and I, for one, welcome our new Google overlords. I jest in calling them overlords, but I'm actually all for Google expanding their market into tech, because frankly I think they do business the right way.
The Google driverless car, called Google Chauffer, is demonstrated in the video below. It is well worth a watch.
Currently the law requires that there be a licensed driver in the driver's seat of the car, just in case, and the controls respond to user input similarly to current cruise control technology, where moving the steering wheel or touching the gas or brake pedals will cancel the computer control. But, as shown, there isn't a lot of need for human input. Using a suite of sensors that maps the area around the car, and combined with maps and GPS and other motion sensors, the car can get itself around just fine.
So, this is super neat and all, but why is it important? More than just offering the user the ability to kick back and do something else while the car drives to the destination, self-driving cars will have a major impact on our society.
One of the things that these sort of vehicles can do is coordinate with each other. I'm sure almost everyone has pulled up to a 4-way stop before and had the fun waving conversation with another driver or 3. Without a working knowledge of semaphore signalling, you're reduced to trying to figure out if the other guy's wave means "go ahead" or "stay there cause I'm going". And that's a relatively simple situation compared to merging or changing lanes on a freeway. Not only can self-driving cars react MUCH quicker than a human driver and have a MUCH better sense of its surroundings, but multiple self-driving cars could have the capacity to communicate one with another, sharing intended paths and actions and increasing the cooperation on the road. Fleets of self-driving cars could band together on the freeway to create convoys, similar to the flying V of migratory geese, or drafting techniques used by bicyclists to reduce air resistance and increase efficiency.
Self-driving cars will decrease the accident rate and increase the survivability of the accidents that do happen. They don't have blind spots, they don't get distracted, and they don't sneeze/blink/reach down to change the radio station, etc.
Rush hour traffic isn't caused by having large numbers of drivers on the road at the same time, but by the inability for those drivers to coordinate their actions. How many times have you been stuck on an on-ramp because the person in front of you is waiting for a mile of clear road to merge? Self-driving cars can merge in a space only a few inches larger than the car itself, and do so at freeway speeds. They don't cut people off, they don't brake suddenly because they didn't notice traffic slowing in front of them, and they don't almost miss their exit.
Granted, not everyone is going to have a self-driving car as soon as they come on the market. Even though they're aiming to have self-driving models only cost a few grand more than their manual counterparts, that seems an unlikely goal until the product is sufficiently proven. The traffic problems and fatality rates aren't going to drop until self-driving cars constitute a majority of drivers.
However, at the rate technology is progressing, I don't think it'll be TOO long until we see affordable self-driving cars on the market, and I don't think it can come too soon.
I'm looking forward to being less angry because of all the idiots on the road.
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