Would you want a self driving car?

[Zanza]

Re the efficiency savings. On longer trips cars could form virtual trains and drive very close to each other in the slipstream of the car in front, this would greatly increase fuel efficiency. It would also increase the carrying capacity of the road..............fewer traffic jams and less new roadbuilding required.

That's called "platooning" and is already tested on real roads with real trucks. The slipsteam effect there is much stronger.
https://www.eutruckplatooning.com/default.aspx

[Richard Hakluyt]

A big road-train of trucks will annoy human car-drivers of course. Imagine that you want to turn off the motorway in 2 miles but there is a 12-truck platoon ahead of you, you could either speed to get ahead of them in time or drive relatively slowly behind them till your turn-off.

The transition to driverless will generate a lot of similar frustrations I'm sure.

[Zanza]

It is possible that miles driven would increase because of what you are saying.

But think of some of the sources of savings:

-Huge reduction in costs of parking. Take a city like Atlanta. Say 6 million people. Maybe 3 million cars. The vast majority parked at any one time. All these parked cars are wasted space.
-Insurance--those 3 million cars need millions of insurance policies, which must be marketed, sold, and customized for the customer. Imagine if all the cars in Atlanta were effectively owned by 5 companies. The business of insurance would be less costly, even ignoring the theoretical safety benefits of self driving cars.
-Gas stations. People need gas stations near where they live. Lots of prime real estate is dedicated to gas stations. This would be unnecessary with self driving cars that could be based outside the city center.
-Maintenance. Imagine how much more efficient and effective maintenance would be if rather than having it overseen by millions of individual drivers it was managed professionally by a central entity? How much car damage is caused by skipped maintenance, and how much is wasted by unnecessary maintenance? For a simple example, just think how many fewer resources would be dedicated to emissions tests if all the cars in Atlanta were stored in a couple dozen locations.
-Avoiding obsolescence. Say a car lasts 200k miles and is driven 10k miles / year. How many cars from 1996 are still around? In the US it wasn't even mandatory to have airbags on both sides of the front seat until 1998. I suspect a not insignificant number of cars are being scrapped not because they hit a mileage number beyond which the car breaks down too much, but because they are obsolete or are breaking down from improper maintenance.
-Car selling costs: far more cost effective to just sell to a few fleet providers rather than millions of individuals.

I generally agree with your arguments, but it will be interesting to see how well those fleets of self-driving cars would balance in reality. At rush hour, you would still need way more cars than at other times of the day and you would need them in certain locations, which would still need lots of space. With current fleets that only works in densely populated areas as otherwise the cars idle too much to be profitable.

[Zanza]

A big road-train of trucks will annoy human car-drivers of course. Imagine that you want to turn off the motorway in 2 miles but there is a 12-truck platoon ahead of you, you could either speed to get ahead of them in time or drive relatively slowly behind them till your turn-off.

The transition to driverless will generate a lot of similar frustrations I'm sure.

I can't find the video right now, but the trucks can make space for cars at on- and off-ramps.

[frunk]

I love how you guys assume a self-driving car will be glitch-free, and immune to viruses or hacks.

No, I just assume that there will be fewer glitches, viruses or hacks then drunk, tired or crazy drivers.

[CountDeMoney]

DG is in the pocket of Big Seatbelts.

You mean he's a Nader Bro?

[Monoriu]

Is it a bit easier to rob a self-driving convoy as there is no need to deal with the drivers?  Park something in front of the convey to stop it, and help yourself with the goods.

And what about loading the convoy with bombs and sending it on a suicide mission without the need to hire suicide drivers?

[Zanza]

Robbing a self-driving truck would be nearly impossible. Just put a sensor on the rear doors and inform law enforcement when the sensor is tampered with. The fleet operator would always have perfect information on where the truck is and in what status it is. Internet of Things is quickly becoming reality.

[CountDeMoney]

And what about loading the convoy with bombs and sending it on a suicide mission without the need to hire suicide drivers?

Would never work.  Not enough panache.

[Zanza]

In general I would think that highway robbery is less of a concern than thieves stealing from parked trucks at night. No driver means the truck is always on the road.

[Savonarola]

We've had self driving trains here since the 1980s,  I think they are quite common elsewhere too, mainly light rail. No accidents as far as I know.

Light rail is a closed track; we have that in the United States as well.  The FRA (probably) won't allow us to run self driving trains on open track, that is where multiple carriers run over a track owned by one carrier or another entity.  The rail system I worked on in Colombia is an open track, FeNoCo owns the line and the mining companies run their trains on it.

[11B4V]

And what about loading the convoy with bombs and sending it on a suicide mission without the need to hire suicide drivers?

Would never work.  Not enough panache.

It wouldn't be a suicide mission then. Just a bombing.

[Gups]

We've had self driving trains here since the 1980s,  I think they are quite common elsewhere too, mainly light rail. No accidents as far as I know.

Light rail is a closed track; we have that in the United States as well.  The FRA (probably) won't allow us to run self driving trains on open track, that is where multiple carriers run over a track owned by one carrier or another entity.  The rail system I worked on in Colombia is an open track, FeNoCo owns the line and the mining companies run their trains on it.

Yeah, that's understandable. You'd have to have 100% certainty on the interface between the train and the signals.

[viper37]

This topic came up when I was talking with some people from AMTRAK.  Their fear is that our product will eliminate the need for conductors on trains.  In our case it won't; our product isn't designed to drive a train.  The Federal Rail Authority has made it clear that "Robo-trains" aren't likely to be approved to run on the public tracks.  Their argument is that a computer cannot replace an experienced conductor.  A conductor can recognize when something is out of place, while a computer can only recognize what it's been programmed to.

Given the nature of rail no one is lobbying to have self driving trains.  The first robo-train to crash would be a publicity nightmare. 

I would see from a good eye an auto-pilot like airplanes, something you can disengage at will if there's a problem.

People, though, are willing to accept a much greater risk when driving themselves than when riding on a train.  Given that, I'm curious if you would want a self driving car; assuming that they were within your budget and statistically no more dangerous than driving yourself.

I think I'd like that, but like a plane's auto-pilot, I want to take control of my machine sometimes, in case something totally unexpected happens.

If you're talking about a 100% automatic car where there's no driving wheel, than no, I would not want that.

[Zanza]

Trains seem to be fairly easy to automate completely. There is much less variance than in road traffic. If the train encounters an unclear situation or signal loss, just stop it and let a remote controller take over.