Driverless cars on UK roads soon.

[deptfordmarmoset]

considering most cars i see only ever have the driver in the, then the roads will be full of empty cars!

.

Yup, rush hour occupancy rates down here are 1.2 per vehicle. Take away the driver and that leaves 0.2. Only 1 in 5 cars will have a person in them.....

 

[Shut Up Legs]

Unless http://www.shodanhq.com/search?q=vehicles

Sorry, I don't get it - what's that page for?

 

[classic33]

Sorry, I don't get it - what's that page for?

See

Hackers.

 

[benb]

I can't think of a realistic scenario where driverless cars will be anything but a massive safety improvement.

I can't wait.

 

[Brains]

I think it would be unsafe to have it based on something that needed recharging to keep the person safe.

Agreed, however it will need to emit an electronic signal and also have a "I'm working" LED light, therefore it needs power, therefore batteries or recharging.
But it could be something that gets fitted to say the hub of every front wheel, so it's powered by the rider.

 

[Brains]

Pedestrians would need to carry a sensor too, then?
The cars are going to have to be able to detect and avoid obstructions and hazards without them having sensors attached.

A car, driver-less or not, would struggle to avoid the pedestrian who suddenly steps across the road.
Therefore in theory if you are going to suddenly step across the road without warning you need a sensor that transmits a signal the car can pick up. Luckily most us already have one in our pockets. The humble mobile phone.

 

[Alex H]

A car, driver-less or not, would struggle to avoid the pedestrian who suddenly steps across the road.
Therefore in theory if you are going to suddenly step across the road without warning you need a sensor that transmits a signal the car can pick up. Luckily most us already have one in our pockets. The humble mobile phone.

So, you'll get lots of 'yoofs' playing chicken, knowing they can't lose?

 

[Brandane]

So, you'll get lots of 'yoofs' playing chicken, knowing they can't lose?

It's going to make robbing car occupants a much easier proposition too. One person steps in front of car while his mate sets about relieving the occupants of anything worthwhile.

 

[Genau]

The biggest problem with the cars is the enormous amount of floor space they take up. It doesn't really matter if the car is driverless, runs on rainwater and can rustle up kebab if it can't move because of all the other bleedin' cars cluttering up the road.

Getting people out of cars and onto public transport, bikes or their own two legs would do a lot more for city life than driverless cars. Making people pay for their parking spaces would help too - where did this idea come from that you can just dump a great lump of metal on the side of the public highway? If you are going to block half the carriageway then make it a bus lane (or even better, a tram line), rather than an unofficial car park.

 

[GrasB]

A car, driver-less or not, would struggle to avoid the pedestrian who suddenly steps across the road.
Therefore in theory if you are going to suddenly step across the road without warning you need a sensor that transmits a signal the car can pick up. Luckily most us already have one in our pockets. The humble mobile phone.

Nope, BMW already have the technology which causes the car to brake on your behalf if a deer, pedestrian, traffic cone, etc. moves into the path of the vehicle and is an unsafe distance away. This doesn't rely on mobile phones or any active device, it uses a combination of radar & image processing (possibly using an IR camera). I saw a demo of this with a car doing 100mph down a disused runway. Drive head long up to a cone & the car slows down to a stop 1m away from the cone. Then they did a chicken demonstration (pulling a polystyrene dummy on rollers across the road), the car did the emergency braking for you.

I also experienced this in a 5 series several times when larger wildlife ran across the road. The car brakes for you & it's response time is really good, it did seem to anticipate the wildlife's movements or that might just be a perception artefact with the human brain taking time to work things out. I didn't have any reason to test it out in the city and unsuspecting subjects.

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

The biggest problem with the cars is the enormous amount of floor space they take up. It doesn't really matter if the car is driverless, runs on rainwater and can rustle up kebab if it can't move because of all the other bleedin' cars cluttering up the road.

Getting people out of cars and onto public transport, bikes or their own two legs would do a lot more for city life than driverless cars. Making people pay for their parking spaces would help too - where did this idea come from that you can just dump a great lump of metal on the side of the public highway? If you are going to block half the carriageway then make it a bus lane (or even better, a tram line), rather than an unofficial car park.

I agree wholeheartedly with that but people already pay for their parking in many urban areas. The councils charge drivers for permission to block roads up. We have a fair few roads where two thirds of the carriageway are already consecrated to licensed street littering, leaving a single track corridor in the middle. And I get fed up playing dare as oncoming traffic decides the cyclist has no right to ''block'' the road up when they want to monopolise it.

 

[John the Monkey]

The biggest problem with the cars is the enormous amount of floor space they take up. It doesn't really matter if the car is driverless, runs on rainwater and can rustle up kebab if it can't move because of all the other bleedin' cars cluttering up the road.

Wide uptake of driverless cars could resolve that - there are models in which the cars communicate, and, for instance, are able to set off from lights together (i.e. not waiting for the car ahead to move - it reduces the road space used overall). There are certainly more problems with cars than their drivers running over people/things though, I agree.

Getting people out of cars and onto public transport, bikes or their own two legs would do a lot more for city life than driverless cars. Making people pay for their parking spaces would help too - where did this idea come from that you can just dump a great lump of metal on the side of the public highway? If you are going to block half the carriageway then make it a bus lane (or even better, a tram line), rather than an unofficial car park.

Yep - although we're such a motor centric society, that I doubt that will happen.

Have you read Donald Shoup's stuff (the high cost of free parking)?

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

Nope, BMW already have the technology which causes the car to brake on your behalf if a deer, pedestrian, traffic cone, etc. moves into the path of the vehicle and is an unsafe distance away. This doesn't rely on mobile phones or any active device, it uses a combination of radar & image processing.

Initial tests seem to have hit a few snags:

 

[GrasB]

Initial tests seem to have hit a few snags:

Har har... the technology I saw demonstrated & used was £4700 worth of optional extras on the current 5 series. Also while the car will do it's best to stop something from happening if you present it with an impossible situation there's not a lot it can do.

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

Har har... the technology I saw demonstrated & used was £4700 worth of optional extras on the current 5 series. Also while the car will do it's best to stop something from happening if you present it with an impossible situation there's not a lot it can do.

Yes, I was only mucking about. It most definitely not technology that managed to lift a car over the railings on the Elephant and Castle roundabout on Tuesday. It doesn't seem possible to perform that trick within the 30mph speed limit.

One thing that puzzles me is that I would have thought driving one of those Autos would be all about autonomy. It's surprising to see it replaced by automation.