[chollida1]

> But traffic jams won’t even be a problem anymore: freed from the wheel, we’ll be able to make phone calls, work on a computer, or have a business meeting from inside our car (and maybe a doctor appointment, cf cosmopolis).

This just seems foolish. If i'm on my way home to my daughters birthday party, then traffic is traffic. If I"m on the way to the airport, then traffic is still a problem.

I can already make a call when driving and I can already take Uber or a taxi allowing me to do the things the author mentions any time I wish.

Self driving cars don't solve any of those problems. Self driving cars have many uses, but the author's use cases aren't any of them.

Traffic is still a problem regardless of whether or not i'm driving.

[dkrich]

I think that the answers to a lot of these problems lie in extremely complex algorithms and a drastic change in technology. Instead of each person owning and operating a car that operates exactly the same way that cars do today, I imagine pod-like cars that can connect and disconnect with any other car. Then, if every car knew where every other car in the area was headed and could coordinate, they could join and travel together, then disconnect and reconnect until each reaches its destination. So essentially a hybrid between trains and cars.

Yeah, I know, science-fictiony and a stretch of the imagination, and I don't expect to see anything resembling this in my lifetime, but I do think there are ways that self-driving cars could operate in a much more efficient network-based system than with each driver making their own decisions based on what is immediately around them.

[philwelch]

The biggest cause of traffic is wrapping each individual person in a 6 by 10 foot steel cage. http://giftrunk.com/gif/public-transit-vs-gridlock

[herval]

One of the biggest reasons of traffic is accidents. If self driving cars can reduce those, perhaps traffic will improve?

Another problem is coordination: one slow driver can cause a huge jam. Perhaps coordinated, self-driving vehicles can reduce those?

Granted, none of those things would work if you introduce one self-driving car in a jungle of meat-based drivers.

[jordanpg]

Much of the enthusiasm for driverless cars assumes that the automated systems will work perfectly.

Here is a fact: the systems will fail from time to time. Maybe a lot.

The reaction to deaths that occur due to automated systems will be like Biblical wailing and gnashing of teeth. It will be utter outrage.

Americans' (perceived) outrage to tragedy seems to be to usually be totally out of sync with the reality of the threat. It won't matter if they are safer statistically. In addition to more efficiency, the driverless cars need to have the best-designed fail-safe systems ever constructed or we will not see widespread adoption within decades, at least in the US.

[rayiner]

> Much of the enthusiasm for driverless cars assumes that the automated systems will work perfectly

Because the software industry has such a sterling reputation for delivering complex systems that are nonetheless extremely reliable!

[maxerickson]

The automobile industry does.

Or at least, they should. Even the very newsworthy recalls of recent years have only had consequences for very small numbers of people, across millions/tens of millions of vehicles (which still needs addressing, but the amount of problem being mitigated per recall dollar is growing smaller over time).

[rayiner]

The automobile industry doesn't have a great record with software, though. And a self-driving car is orders of magnitude more complex than a single bit of logic sitting in a throttle or engine controller.

[maxerickson]

Well, with the drive assist stuff that is already on the road, we get to see how they do with an in between problem.

(The early evidence is that they treat it as a serious engineering problem, but I'm sure no hands on the wheel needs a lot more complexity to fail safe than anything that is shipping)

[herval]

do you have any data to back up your "fact"? I'm specially interested on statistics compared to human drivers.

[jordanpg]

My fact is based on the related fact that all engineered systems fail from time to time. There is no such thing as perfectly engineered systems any more than there are perpetual motion machines.

The interesting questions are: - what is the likelihood of failure? - what are the likely failure modes? - are they designed to fail safe? - are there backups to the fail safes? - are there backups to the backups?

And of course complex systems will always have unpredictable failure modes. Failures due to interplay with complex external systems that couldn't possibly be predicted.

And so on and so on.

[Mimu]

I think what most people are afraid of is the fact that you can predict unexpected human behavior fairly well, you can't with a machine.

If you see a car moving weird, you can make stuff to reduce the risk of an accident happening, when a self driving car suddenly turn and kill you, you weren't able to do anything.

Now I love the intellectual challenge to it, however I don't think we'll ever see the today's situation only with self driving cars, way too many cars. My guess is self driving stuff will improve a lot public transportation and people will only travel that way.

[k-mcgrady]

Won't self-driving cars significantly reduce traffic? They can drive closer together, maintain a consistent speed, and work out the most efficient route. We may also get smaller cars eventually (without such large dashboards, steering, gear sticks etc.) which would also help.

[nick2]

Speed limits will be raised with fully automatic cars. The cars will also be able to travel closer to each other. The same roads will be able to handle bigger volume of traffic.

[onion2k]

Only if all the cars are automatic...

[mmcru]

once self-driving cars become the standard, intersections and merge points can be optimized for much greater efficiency, which will reduce traffic. also, speed limits will be eliminated.

[saosebastiao]

Merge points maybe...but merge points are, by definition, bottlenecks. Even hyper-optimized, you are still limited by geometry.

And definitely not intersections...despite what the fancy visual simulations propose. You would have to eliminate pedestrians to even get close to that.