2014-01-26
SmartDrivingCars_012414 Detroit AutoShow
January 26, 2014
What Will Happen to Public Transit in a World Full of Autonomous Cars?
by Emily Badger, Jan 17, 2014 “…The great promise of autonomous cars is not that we could each own one in our own driveway – the 21st century’s version of owning your own Model T, or your own color TV, or your own bulky Macintosh – but that no one would need to own one at all.
That’s because when cars can drive themselves, they can drive off when we’re done with them. They can pick up other people instead of sitting parked outside. We’ll request them on-demand. They’ll pull up out front, take us right where we want to go, then do the same thing for a hundred other passengers, a hundred times over. They’ll behave, in other words, like sophisticated ride-share services – or like personalized mass transit.
If autonomous cars can one day better perform some of the functions of transit, shouldn’t we let them?
This isn’t an entirely silly question in 2014. We make billion-dollar investments in new transit infrastructure because we expect to use it for decades. Metropolitan planning organizations are in the very business of planning 30 and 40 years into the future. The Washington Area Metropolitan Transit Authority recently released its dream map of subway service in the city for the year 2040. By then, autonomous cars – in some form – will surely be commonplace.
The question of what they’ll mean for transit was actually on the program this year at the Transportation Research Board annual meeting in Washington, where several thousand transportation officials and researchers met to talk about state-of-the-art asphalts, biker behavior, and the infrastructure of the future. In one packed session, I heard Jerome Lutin, a retired longtime New Jersey Transit planner, say something that sounded almost like blasphemy.
“We’re just wringing our hands, and we’re going to object to this,” he warned the room. “But the transit industry needs to promote shared-use autonomous cars as a replacement for transit on many bus routes and for service to persons with disabilities… But Lutin’s broader point is a fascinating one: If autonomous cars can one day better perform some of the functions of transit, shouldn’t we let them? Shouldn’t we take the opportunity to focus instead on whatever traditional transit does best in an autonomous-car world? “If you can’t get more than 10 people on a bus, or five people on a bus, then why bother running it?” Lutin asked me after his session. “You’re wasting diesel fuel.”
The implication in this raises (at least) two more questions: Exactly where (and when) will it make sense for people to use buses or rail instead of autonomous cars? And if autonomous cars come to supplement these services, should transit agencies get into the business of operating them? In my initial daydream – where shared self-driving cars are whisking us all about – it’s unclear exactly who owns and manages them..”If it looks like we can trade in our buses for a fleet of autonomous vehicles, and we can drop fares and at the same time we can make money, somebody in the private sector is going to want that.”….” Read more In fact read the whole thing as well as the 266 Comments. This may be the first time that these concepts have received any attention in any of the public press, the better reports by KPMG and Rand or the Congressional hearings. The Lutin-Kornhauser TRB Presentation. Alain
U-M to build fake downtown to test driverless cars
By John Gallagher “As vehicles learn to drive themselves minus human control, the place they’ll learn is on the University of Michigan’s north campus in Ann Arbor.
Today, Gov. Rick Snyder and other officials touted a new $6.5-million, 32-acre site to be built on U-M’s north campus as a test center for technologies for autonomous, or self-driving, vehicles.
Peter Sweatman, director of U-M’s Transportation Research Institute, said this fake downtown will feature building facades, parked vehicles, traffic signals, a tunnel, bicycle lanes and other realistic elements of an actual Michigan streetscape. The idea, Sweatman said, is to test self-driving technology in realistic conditions that can be measured and controlled with precision….The testing site will be built on what used to be the grounds of the Pfizer pharmaceutical research center. Pfizer announced it was abandoning that site in 2007 and U-M took it over. U-M will split the cost of the new testing center with the Michigan Department of Transportation…” Read more
Some of us had been proposing the use of a 3 sq. mile former Army Base, Fort Monmouth, NJ, as a test site while it is being re-purposed. Many have supported our efforts to use a real developing environment for the testing and the initial introduction of Level 4 technology. Unfortunately, we are not as far along with public sector support as Michigan. Alain
Google set to lease Castle site for self-driving car program
By Victor Patton and Ramona Giwargis Jan. 24, 2014 “…Technology giant Google has entered a lease agreement with Merced County to use 60 acres of land at Castle Commerce Center to help develop the company’s self-driving car technology….The site, referred to as Building 175, includes the old flight simulator facility from the property’s days as Castle Air Force Base.
Google will lease the space for two years for $456,000, according to county documents. The lease payments are about $19,000 a month, beginning in May 2014…” Read more Hmmm…60 acres v 3 sq. miles…seems as if Fort Monmouth would be a better test and deployment site, but that’s just me. Alain
Taxonomy and Definitions for Terms Related to On-Road Motor Vehicle Automated Driving Systems
“This Information Report provides a taxonomy for motor vehicle automation ranging in level from no automation to full automation. However, it provides detailed definitions only for the highest three levels of automation provided in the taxonomy (namely, conditional, high and full automation) in the context of motor vehicles (hereafter also referred to as “vehicle” or “vehicles”) and their operation on public roadways…” Read more
Similar but apparently not identical to NHTSA’s Levels 0 -> 4. This report is not free so I can’t divulge the details. Hopefully having yet another taxonomy doesn’t add to the confusion. For now I’m sticking with SmartDrivingCars as the general category and NHTSA’s levels as the refinement. At TRB, I provided some cognitive perspective to NHTSA’s numerical levels by naming Level 0: “55 Chevy” (needs to be driven); Level 1: “Cruise Control (CC)” (why do I need to do that drudgery); Level 2: “CC + Automatic Emergency Braking” (help me when I missed something); Level 3: “Texting Machine” (Let me do what I really want to do) and Level 4: “autonomousTaxis” (or “elevator”; be there when I need you and just take me to where I want to go. It’s OK if someone else comes along for part of the ride.) Alain
The disruption of driverless cars
| by Insurance Business | Jan 13, 2014 “… For insurance companies, their primary revenue streams will shift from personal lines to commercial lines as carriers retool their offerings to sell product liability insurance to vehicle manufacturers. The impact will be of a higher magnitude than that of Obamacare, which shifted healthcare marketing targets from employers to consumers. We should expect to see extremely competitive pricing and some very big winners and losers in the insurance industry, since there are far more insurers than there are vehicle manufacturers. |
The target audience for telematics, the technological underpinnings of Usage Based Insurance (UBI), will also transition away from consumers and personal auto insurers and will instead become a valuable tool for both automakers and their product liability carriers. Automakers will rely on telematics to determine the root cause of equipment failure or any intervening activities that impacted or altered the design or operation of the vehicle.
Vehicle related financial responsibility laws (e.g. No-Fault regulations) will be replaced by tort based product liability laws. We can only speculate whether new laws will surface to address injuries sustained as a result of vehicle malfunction, or if vehicle based injuries will be covered by Obamacare instead of auto insurers.
Consider the ripple effect of driverless vehicles and fewer accidents on the service industries that rely upon auto accidents and their resulting injuries for a significant percentage of their revenue stream…towing, ambulance, vehicle repair, car rental, glass shops, salvage yards, auto parts suppliers and manufacturers, emergency rooms, medical professionals and radiologists, DUI counselors, breathalyzers, attorneys, subrogation vendors…the list goes on and on. Driverless cars might even bring some relief to our court dockets…” Read more A very good summary of the insurance implications of SmartDrivingCars. All (except DUI counselors) don’t require “driverless” (Level 4) and will be likely much earlier with Level 3 “texting machines”. What is missing is the promotional opportunities of insurance companies to underwrite the implementation of SmartDrivingTechnologies using the expected unrealized claims. Alain
Smart technology takes a back seat at Detroit Motor Show
“… heavy-duty pick-up truck, a sleek compact saloon and an unadulterated sports car headlined the Detroit Motor Show this week, as technological advances and futuristic vehicles that have stolen the limelight at previous car shows took a back seat.
Read more at: http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/wire-news/smart-technology-takesback-seat-at-detroit-motor-show_1025416.html?utm_source=ref_article heavy-duty pick-up truck, a sleek compact saloon and an unadulterated sports car headlined the Detroit Motor Show this week, as technological advances and futuristic vehicles that have stolen the limelight at previous car shows took a back seat.
heavy-duty pick-up truck, a sleek compact saloon and an unadulterated sports car headlined the Detroit Motor Show this week, as technological advances and futuristic vehicles that have stolen the limelight at previous car shows took a back seat… “We don’t want people to be moved in our cars from one point to another,” said Herbert Diess, head of development at BMW, the world’s biggest-selling luxury car brand. “We are for driving pleasure. We have to protect the fun of driving.”….”Read more There you go! No thought of becoming the “Ultimate Riding Machine” Alain
Stanford, MIT to carpool with Ford on driverless technology
by Karl Henkel and David Shepardson, Jan. 22, 2014 at 10:52 pm “…Ford Motor Co. will team up with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University to broaden its research into driverless vehicles, the Dearborn automaker said Wednesday.
The two institutions will split research, with MIT focusing on how to plan for scenarios when pedestrians or other cars can potentially obstruct a vehicle. Put another way, MIT will research scenarios that — right now — are better handled by the human brain, such as pulling to the side of the road upon hearing an ambulance siren.
Stanford will explore how a vehicle can use sensors to see around objects, so that in the instance of a highway lane closure, the vehicle can “see” around other vehicles and determine the correct lane to take. …” Read more
Serving New Jersey’s Mobility Needs:
With Walking, Cycling, aTaxis and Trains; Mobility, Congestion and Environmental Consequences. Very interesting student PowerPoints and Drafts of Chapters. A little rough in places but still well worth browsing. Alain
Drafts of chapters: http://orfe.princeton.edu/~alaink/NJ_aTaxiOrf467F13/Orf467F13_FinalReports/
Calendar of Upcoming Events:
Google’s Self-Driving Car: What We’ve Done and What We Need
Andrew Chatham, Principal Software Engineer, Google will lead the plenary session on Tuesday, March 11. Chatham leads the offboard software and mapping efforts for Google’s self-driving cars. He joined the project in 2009 and has helped the team achieve over 500,000 miles of autonomous driving. He is especially interested in the intersection of Google’s technology and the existing transportation world. He joined Google in 2002 and is a graduate of Duke University.
Register TODAY for the ITE 2014 Technical Conference and Exhibit.
Recent Versions of:
January 17, 2014
Autonomous Vehicle Technology: A Guide for Policymakers
by James M. Anderson, Nidhi Kalra, Karlyn D. Stanley, Paul Sorensen, Constantine Samaras, Oluwatobi Oluwatola
This report is excellent
January 6, 2014
Self-Driving Cars Moving into the Industry’s Driver’s Seat
Jan. 2, 2014 “Accident rates will plunge to near zero for SDCs, although other cars will crash into SDCs, but as the market share of SDCs on the highway grows, overall accident rates will decline steadily”. Self-driving cars (SDC) that include driver control are expected to hit highways around the globe before 2025 and self-driving “only” cars are anticipated around 2030, according to an emerging technologies study on Autonomous Cars from IHS Automotive, driven by Polk.
In the study, “Emerging Technologies: Autonomous Cars—Not If, But When,” IHS Automotive forecasts total worldwide sales of self-driving cars will grow from nearly 230 thousand in 2025 to 11.8 million in 2035 – 7 million SDCs with both driver control and autonomous control and 4.8 million that have only autonomous control. In all, there should be nearly 54 million self-driving cars in use globally by 2035. Read more
December 27, 2013
December 20, 2013
“The New Killer Apps
How Large Companies Can Out-Innovate Start-Ups” by Chunka Mui and Paul B. Carroll Now Available Highly Recommended. See also Chunka’s Dec. 19 Forbes article Will The Google Car Force A Choice Between Lives And Jobs?
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