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Study: Intelligent Cars Could Boost Highway Capacity by 273%
- michaelpinto 14y agoI think self driven cars are going to be an amazing blessing to senior citizens — this could really reinvent suburbia in a good way.
- ncavig 14y agoTrue, but not even that limited. Any individual that could benefit from not having to concern themselves with the outside environment. In addition to the senior citizens, you also have the handicapped, the makeup applicators, the cell phone users, limited eyesight drivers, the overall bad drivers, and more importantly, impaired drivers (alcohol especially). Not just performance in terms of efficient driving and merging, but also safety and essentially taking human operator error out of the equation (for the most part)
- jstalin 14y agoNot to mention exciting opportunities for mass transit. Imagine jitneys or other smaller van-like transit options that have dynamic routes based on demand. No more fixed routes and inefficient buses.
- sp332 14y agoAny individual that could benefit from not having to concern themselves with the outside environment. I think people will take this way too far. They'll turn on the autopilot and take a nap while blasting through a school zone or something.
- Goronmon 14y agoI think people will take this way too far. They'll turn on the autopilot and take a nap while blasting through a school zone or something. If the car can't handle those situations, then it's not going to be a very useful intelligent car.
- gknoy 14y agoIf the car is autonomous, I imagine it could be configured (or default) to avoid school zones when possible, and maintain speeds that would allow for safely stopping easily in case of kids.
- ceejayoz 14y ago> They'll turn on the autopilot and take a nap while blasting through a school zone or something. The entire point of an automated car is that it can handle stuff like that for you. Eventually it'd be safer than humans, who are quite happy to blow through the school zone outside my house at 50mph.
- justincormack 14y agoSurely not as much as widespread delivery services? Of course the delivery services could use self driving cars, to make them as cheap as they were 50 years ago when almost all shops delivered. Just because cars made suburbia possible still does not mean it is a good thing.
- stcredzero 14y agoWhen they are mainstream and people are comfortable with the idea, it will start filtering down to use by kids. Then we'll see the reinvention of suburbia and even deeper changes in the culture and the fabric of society.
- a-priori 14y agoWow, about a month ago on Reddit, I made a quick calculation where I predicted a 250% improvement in capacity. http://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y28g8/suspend_all_pessimism_for_a_moment_share_a_short/c5s0xqs http://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y28g8/suspend_al...
- yanowitz 14y agoIs it just coincidence that this is essentially e? I know the natural log pops up in all kinds of unexpected places. Is this one of them?
- mistercow 14y agoProbably a coincidence. Keep in mind that "273% more" actually means a multiplication factor of 3.73, not 2.73.
- sukuriant 14y agoUnless the article derped
- mistercow 14y agoWell, it would have to be a pretty big mistake since they also say: >And if all vehicles on the road are equipped with both adaptive cruise sensors and communication, capacity can be increased by a factor of 3.7 which is consistent with the headline.
- SilasX 14y agoI'd be more concerned about the phony precision. Not 250%, not 270%, no -- 273%.
- saraid216 14y agoConsidering this references an actual research paper, I'd wait to actually read the paper before calling the precision phony.
- SilasX 14y agoNo, you don't need to read the paper to conclude that three significant figures of precision is warranted. Perhaps the research is good, and this is just a case of PR having unwarranted input into the labeling, but that still wouldn't justify the headline.
- 001sky 14y agoIsn't the historical problem 100% of feasible capacity will be used?
- SilasX 14y agoBingo. Until you can handle the problem of people moving further out to make up for the shorter commute, you're just deferring the problem, not fixing it.
- lallysingh 14y agoWell, yes, but not from the way one thinks here. Governments will be fast to reduce their expenditures on growing capacity. This'll have the effect of making roads denser, and less pleasant to drive on, and increase the sales rate of self-driving cars...
- brittohalloran 14y agoMy first thought is minority report "pods"
- paulsutter 14y agoThe introduction of radial tires caused a collapse of the tire industry. People didn't start driving four times as far when the useful distance of a tire increased. Human driven cars are idle 95% of the time. Many fewer self-driving cars could handle the same capacity with ride sharing services like uber. I'm concerned that auto manufacturers would take actions to prevent this outcome, reducing the potential. EDIT: silverstorm that's an awesome point
- sliverstorm 14y agoOn the other hand, self driving cars open all sorts of possibilities. Radial tires didn't increase the number of tires in use, because the number of operators didn't change and neither did the number of wheels on a car. Self-driving cars releases the number of active vehicles from the constraint of number of operators.
- dvanduzer 14y agoThe point is that an industry currently operating at 5% efficiency whose profits rely on this fact will fight disruption. The Radial tire came from within the automotive industry, so even if there were some temporary losers, there wasn't any leverage point to fight adoption. With Google leading this charge rather than Ford, I think the best hope is for American car manufactures to strike a quasi-monopolistic partnership to gain advantage over foreign manufacturers. (I may be somewhat incorrect about the profit piece, what with the weird relationship between car manufacturers and car dealerships.)
- stcredzero 14y ago> With Google leading this charge rather than Ford, I think the best hope is for American car manufactures to strike a quasi-monopolistic partnership to gain advantage over foreign manufacturers. I'm glad Tesla is around for precisely this reason. Does it occur to anyone else that self-driving cars could be a solution to the chicken & egg problem for non-gasoline/diesel refueling/recharging stations? Cars could take the role of taxis, and computer algorithms could ensure that cars get routed to charging stations when they need charging.
- dvanduzer 14y agoCome on guys, you're the IEEE. Lead the story with the second set of graphs, not the first set of graphs. I'm also going to go out on a limb and guess that this study doesn't account for the inevitable malware when the majority of vehicles are communicating with each other.
- EliRivers 14y ago"I'm also going to go out on a limb and guess that this study doesn't account for the inevitable malware when the majority of vehicles are communicating with each other." It's not inevitable. The simple solution to malware - just don't run any software you didn't have when you were first turned on - seems pretty solid here. Software updates handled the way airliners do it - not by letting the consumer reach out into the aether and grabbing whatever shiny malware infested dreck he can find.
- dvanduzer 14y agoAha. s/malware/bad actors/ A little late getting back to the party, but the problem I intended to highlight was the potential for DDOSing the traffic network, or someone otherwise gaming the system.
- samstave 14y agoI sure hope Google and Tesla are partnering to bring the tesla's next model to the market as the first fully electric and robotic self driving car.
- JoeAltmaier 14y agoTesla's goal is to create a fun-to-drive electric car. It would be opposite to their goal to create a self-driving car.
- rscale 14y agoI'd love to see BetterPlace work with Google on this one, because an autonomous electric car with a robotically swappable battery is a lot more interesting than an autonomous car that needs to park for a large portion of the day. Most of the pieces are available for a wonderful new transportation infrastructure. Here's to hoping they mature sooner rather than later.
- praptak 14y agoThis is not necessarily good news. Among other thing this means the capacity for pollution also rises, although hopefully not by the same factor - maybe automated cars can be more energy efficient than human drivers.
- dwiel 14y agoThere is a large amount of pollution cause by the manufacturing of cars, which can have a net benefit. Another benefit is that you could use very efficient cars for the trips that they are suited for like going shopping for groceries by yourself, and inefficient ones like picking up a new refrigerator. That said I'm also worried that it could increase the time spent in cars since there won't be as much negative feedback from stressful/boring/unproductive driving.
- btilly 14y agoI'm curious what happens when you have highways filled to capacity, and then more cars are added. A busy highway moving smoothly at capacity is like a super-cooled fluid. As long as nothing goes wrong, it can last, but the second you introduce some delay, somewhere, you wind up with a rapidly expanding solid (ie traffic jam). Intelligent cars boost the capacity of smooth traffic more than they do the capacity of bumper to bumper slow traffic, and hence the transitions from "awesome" to "oh shit" should be much nastier than they are now. The traffic jams of the future could make our current ones look tame.
- paulovsk 14y agoplease, could you elaborate on this? I loved the metaphor. >"As long as nothing goes wrong, it can last, but the second you introduce some delay, somewhere, you wind up with a rapidly expanding solid "
- stupandaus 14y agoSupercooled water for example could stay in liquid form if it was in a vessel with no imperfections. All it takes is one imperfection or seed to be thrown in, and the entire mixture will suddenly turn to ice, even though the temperature has not changed. Plenty of videos on Youtube showing it happening.
- paulovsk 14y agoWow, I haven't heard of supercooled water until now. It seems this transformation is almost like crystal formation in one supersaturated solution. I'll check the youtube videos, thanks. edit: duh, it's exactly the same process of crystal formation.
- btilly 14y agoThe capacity of the road as being the number of cars passing by per second. Which is the number of lines times the rate at which cars are traveling, divided by the distance between cars in a lane. Now compare: Smooth: Going 60 mph and leaving 2 car lengths of space, so the distance from front bumper to front bumper is 3 car lengths. Congested: Going 30 mph and leaving 1 car length of space, so the distance from front bumper to front bumper is 2 car lengths. In the former road you go 2x as fast and need only 1.5x as much space, so the former road has a third as much capacity as the latter. So if cars are moving along a highway already operating at capacity into a congested area, cars are arriving at the transition faster than they are leaving. Thanks to the law of conservation of cars, excess cars must accumulate at that transition, and since they have nowhere to go, they wind up parked in a traffic jam. And as long as the road feeding it is at capacity, that traffic jam grows. From the point of view of the driver, this is what it looks like. You're sailing along in smooth fast traffic, and then hit a sudden traffic jam with no warning. After sitting there for a long time the road starts moving again, but goes much slower. This is common experience in Los Angeles traffic. And a significant fraction of accidents happen at that sudden transition from smooth sailing at 60 mph to a dead stop. (In fact my wife got rear-ended in that exact scenario a year and a half ago on the 405 near Los Angeles airport.)
- elchief 14y agoWith the right software, they will be able to drive like a school of fish, at very high speeds.
- wtvanhest 14y ago3 points should be considered: 1) Even with robots there will be unknowns which the robots will have to deal with which will still require a margin of safety. Likely that margin of safety will be lower with robots, but definitely will not approach 100% capacity. (things like tire blow-outs, deer, even sudden rain etc). 2) Road wear will still need to be considered in any cost benefit analysis. Presumably road wear is less of a factor than jamming cars on the road, but I don't know that for sure and someone should do the math on that. There is also a point where if you exceed a certain capacity percentage, anytime road work needs to be done it would dramatically impact traffic since there is less of buffer to absorb the lack of lanes. 3) As we increase capacity, we may run in to additional problems that we cannot imagine. Bridges for example could be an issue as the amount of weight would be increased dramatically, even more remote a possibility would be damage from additional vibrations etc. Those are just ideas that come to mind, but there are probably many other risks we are not considering. Overall, I am 100% for robotic cars, robotic passenger jets, etc. I just wanted to brainstorm a few future problems that may need to be considered as we move forward. The last thing I want to see is a 5 year setback. Then again, the engineers at google and elsewhere have probably considered all these things which just seem new to me as a casual outside observer.
- maxerickson 14y agoIf automatic car implies networked car, routes that are under construction could easily be converted into toll roads (presuming there is a toll that will offset the congestion). I guess lots of people wouldn't like it, but lots of people already don't like traffic jams.
- wtvanhest 14y agoCan you imagine how crazy that concept could become? I wonder how elasticity of demand for toll roads would change if a computer was driving your car. If when you got in, it gave you 5 options with estimated times and prices and you could always choose it would be awesome.
- ajross 14y agoI think your broad point is correct; no system can be perfect. But most of your criticisms have straightforward rebuttals. Robots, being robots, are going to be inherently safer at the stuff you mention (tire failure, sudden obstacles, weather) simply because those things are "dangerous" precisely because they are unforseen and require the driver to take action quickly. Robots are faster. Road wear is a cost, but it scales at worst linearly with traffic. I can't imagine anyone crying because we can now build ($$$$) half as many lanes of highways but much repave ($) them twice as often. And the bridges things is just wrong. Bridges are obviuosly designed for maximal loads, which in this case would be a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam of even more weight than a packed stream of robots. And that happens routinely.
- bencpeters 14y agoI've always had a few questions about the move toward fully automated cars (and I don't mean to raise these as luddite objections, I'm just curious how it will play out, and what steps are being taken to address this) 1)How will manual cars (and motorcycles) be managed once we have non trivial percentages of cars on the road automated? Will there be automated-only highways? Automated-only lanes? Is the beginning of the end for those of us who really enjoy driving (or motorcyles?). Or will those things just be limited to non-urban/track environments? 2)How does all this automation & closer car traveling @ high speeds work when natural events intercede. The most obvious one is weather (rain or snow), which can be a huge problem for cities as is, but it seems like having cars on the road with no "bubbles" of space to buffer great exacerbates the potential for massive accidents when there is marginal traction. Secondly, in many areas of the country, wildlife on highways is a very common occurrence (even in cities there's the occasional road debris/unexpected obstacle). I wonder how well an at-capacity automated highway could react to a sudden bit of road obstruction w/o running into a massive accident (or massive traffic jam) situation. Of course, many/most human drivers don't handle adverse weather or unexpected obstacles very well either, so maybe these are just facts of driving, not arguments against automated cars as such. Still, I'm interested to see what attempts are being made to mitigate the effects of such variables.
- maxerickson 14y agoI think there are a lot of situations where automatic cars would leave more space than humans, who seem to be prone to (unnecessary) tailgating.
- error54 14y agoLet's not forget traffic jams caused by rubbernecking.
- yk 14y agoThe first automated car needs to handle human drivers well. Therefore all later cars will just inherit the ability to share a road with humans ( and very likely there will be laws which mandate this until all cars are automated). About your second question, at least at high speeds the capacity of an break is more important for the distance needed to stop the car, than the reaction time. So the situation does not change much.
- TechNewb 14y agoIntelligent societies could build infrastructures and communities that don't need cars.
- moskie 14y agoThis type of information has made me rethink my overly-negative opinion of how the United States has chosen to spend its transportation infrastructure efforts. I've always been under the impression that car-centric designs are grossly inefficient, and used primarily due to culture and profit of the automobile and oil industries, while putting actually transportation efficiency on the back burner. But automated cars could flip the efficiency numbers around. Really excited to see where this technology takes us.
- tonylemesmer 14y agoAm I missing something here? Already our motorways / highways are not being used at this higher capacity but when something bad happens there is no redundancy. Everything grinds to a halt. What's the desire to make this worse? Also does it not put even more pressure on the roads leading to the highway? - increasing congestion to the point where having higher usage of highways is pointless.