Auto Manifesto

January 7, 2008

GM to Announce Driverless Cars Within A Decade?

Time will tell if it’s premature PR-spin but the web is abuzz today with word that GM CEO Rick Wagoner is going to announce tomorrow that GM will begin to put driverless cars on the road within a decade. A bunch of blogs are saying it. Here’s the scoop at Autoblog.

As explained in a previous post, I totally believe driverless cars for transportation is inevitable. A decade time frame is much too soon though. The reason is because it’s not just a matter of building the cars that can do it.

The road infrastructure has to be there and that’s not going to change as quickly. Cars will not be able to drive themselves on every road and in all conditions safely enough for them to be deployed in large numbers until the infrastructure is “networked” and the communication between vehicles and roads is proven.

Maybe it will happen first in another country, one with fewer roads, fewer cars, and a more cohesive highway policy. Maybe it will happen in limited geographic areas (see my next post). But for these changes to take place and then be proven enough within a decade for cars to drive themselves? That would be one hell of an accomplishment – especially in light of the current state of US automobile manufacturers. I wouldn’t bet on it.

The Lexus LS460 and (Japanese-market) Toyota Prius being able to parallel park themselves was the first step. Then we’re likely going to go through phases with limited deployment in a few areas and have cars for a time that have two modes, one where they can drive themselves and another where they can still be driven, albeit with varying levels of electronic assistance for safety reasons. And those vehicles will be able to drive themselves in those deployment areas.

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January 3, 2008

Advantages of Autonomous Vehicles

Imagine that all obstacles were sufficiently overcome and that autonomous vehicles were a daily reality. What would some of the benefits include? Let’s take a cursory look.

First, there would be huge safety gains. Since most road accidents are due to driver error, assuming 2002 crash rates and miles traveled, if 90% of the 43,005 fatalities were reduced 38,704 lives would be saved. According to this 2002 press release by NHTSA they estimate each highway death costs society about $5.3m. If you multiply the two we could potentially be saving over $205 billion per year. Not only would nearly 40,000 lives be saved, imagine how many millions of injuries a year would be avoided.

Further, from an energy and efficiency standpoint we know that people are not the best drivers either. Having computers drive is going to save tremendous energy. But since vehicles will be networked and traffic flow synchronized, it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison.

Driverless cars won’t have to deal with congestion and stop-and-go traffic as we do today. Travel will become faster, more predictable, and passengers will have time to do other things while in transit.

The vehicles will also be much lighter. They won’t need to be designed for surviving impacts with today’s heavy vehicles driven by error prone humans, nor will they need to be equipped with safety devices to protect us from ourselves (e.g. crumple zones, airbags, or even seatbelts).

The cars of tomorrow will be far safer, much lighter, and there will be little to no congestion. If a clear national plan is created and implemented, the future can be very bright indeed.

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January 2, 2008

How to Improve Highway Safety

From a safety standpoint it is obvious that there is no way of drastically reducing the number of fatalities and injuries from highway accidents unless the drivers become much better. That simply isn’t going to happen with the human population.

There are steps that can be taken that will help, but it’s unlikely that any of these potential steps would be politically palatable. Plus they won’t make enough of a dent. The first step is to reduce the VMT (Vehicle Miles Traveled). For a given fatality or injury rate, the fewer miles driven, the fewer accidents will happen.

Discretionary travel would have to be reduced. We’d have to cut the maximum speed limit to under 55 mph (about 51% of all traffic fatalities in 2006 occurred in places with speed limits 55 mph or higher according to NHTSA). Not too many Americans would be willing to do that.

How about annual driver certification to make sure everyone who is licensed can driver properly? Taking away licenses of those who don’t pass isn’t going to look good – especially if they’re AARP members. Stiffer penalties for those who break traffic laws? Draconian penalties for DUI convictions? The end result is going to be a lot of people are not going to be able to get around unless public transportation is available. And that’s going to create a whole host of other problems.

Instead of reducing the number of people who have access to individual transportation, how about increasing it while simultaneously improving safety? Is it possible?

The way we’re headed, yes. It’s quite clear that if we want to drastically improve highway safety we have to take human drivers out of the equation. The advantages and reasons are numerous. The technical, social, and economic hurdles considerable but it will happen. Yes, the future belongs to driverless cars. You just get in, tell it where to go, sit back, and enjoy the ride.

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