We've made a lot of progress with DARPA, anti-lock brakes, GPS sytems and collision avoidance systems. But imagine if you could fully automate driving.
1) It would allow the elderly, sick, and even youth, to be more mobile and thus more productive.
2) It would reduce automobile accidents, and associated productivity losses and health care bills.
3) It would reduce injury lawsuits.
4) It would reduce speeding tickets.
5) It would reduce fuel consumption.
6) Small unmanned vehicles could deliver groceries or meals or laundry to your house, reducing fuel consumption and resulting in new convenience.
7) Large trucks would be involved in fewer accidents.
Comments (7)
I would love to have a car that could drive itself! Being able to read, nap or do other things while commuting to work would be Awsome!
However, I would settle for a better public transportation system that would get me to and from work in the same amount of time as my car.
Automated driving requires computers. I was gonna comment, but then my computer went haywire.
Well obviously we couldn't let Microsoft design the operating system. There are reliable computers and software. This is not the kind of application you can roll out and let the users debug. You need to test it thoroughly. I wouldn't implement it in the field, until you could be reasonably assured that accidents would be at least 50% lower than with human driven vehicles.
We have the basic tools, not the mature technology - yet. It's one thing to conquer the DARPA Grand Challenge, it is another to mature this technology and integrate into a coordinated global grid.
I support the idea, but implementation is still decades away.
mwdabose, I agree full implementation is several years away. But I think some additional initiatives like DARPA focusing on the various technologies you need, could help speed things along.
If they are looking for ideas that could remove a lot of waste and non-productive activity from our economy and improve productivity, this one is it.
What if a highly paid computer specialist with many degrees said to you "Trust me, its safe!"
Do you know why airplanes carry a recording of all data deemed important in every flight of every modern jet plane, worldwide?
Could it be because someone replied "Yes! I trust you but I just want to make sure."
No, they have not found the Black Box in the Atlantic but recovered 28 and 200 remain missing.
mchlsrrb,
We know people driving isn't safe. "Car Crash Stats: There were nearly 6,420,000 auto accidents in the United States in 2005. The financial cost of these crashes is more than 230 Billion dollars. 2.9 million people were injured and 42,636 people killed."
Any automated system would need monitoring for crash analysis. But you mentioned planes, and they are highly computerized and are much safer than car travel.
They wouldn't be perfect. But what if we could get them to crash only 50% as often as people. That would be 3 million less accidents, 1.4 million fewer injuries, 20,000 fewer deaths, and $115 billion savings. And I guarantee the $230 billion doesn't adequately capture the full costs of the crashes, with lost labor, etc.
We couldn't implement this overnight. But we could incent the technology to develop like we have with DARPA.