Self driving cars have the potential to totally clog the roads

"Ron Calls on his years of experience....and freezes at the controls" (internerdstuff)
11/29/2015 at 01:09 • Filed to: None

This brief story on treehugger links studies and other opinion on what would most likely happen when (if) self driving cars happen.
I must admit their arguments make complete sense.If people have SD cars,and assuming fuel is affordable there are solid reasons to think car use would increase quite a lot, not decrease!
Some simple examples: Why pay for parking if you can have your car circle the block endlessly?Why not send it to collect kids from school while you are at work,effectively multiplying trips?

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DISCUSSION (16)

Hot Takes Salesman > Ron Calls on his years of experience....and freezes at the controls
11/29/2015 at 01:25

Ha! Why bother thinking about future safety and legal consequences when you can charge forward with technology? *weird mr regular voice* TIME IS MONEY KIDDIES AND THE MORE TIME YOU SPEND ON ‘ETHICS,’ ‘MORALS,’ AND ‘FORESIGHT’ THE LESS MONEY YOU GET BLURFHABLIGUH

Shankems > Ron Calls on his years of experience....and freezes at the controls
11/29/2015 at 02:50

More cars isn’t equal to more congestion. Autonomous vehicles will make much more efficient use of the existing infrastructure. I don’t know what the ratio will be. I do know that humans are terrible at using road space.

pip bip - choose Corrour > Ron Calls on his years of experience....and freezes at the controls
11/29/2015 at 02:56

sadly he’s got a point.

you’ll never get rid of congestion unless you stagger work knock off times or stagger school finishing times.

orcim > Shankems
11/29/2015 at 05:31

Well, looking at road development, it seems that planners plan for a certain amount of expansion (modulo money to bring it into being.) Tech is now the equivalent of “adding a lane or two” but if trends in the past are any indication, it’s over before it’s begun. (Except for the 10 glorious years of I280 in the Bay Area I got to experience... that was 70 mph designed road that could handle 100 mph easy and was almost never full.)

Klaus Schmoll > Ron Calls on his years of experience....and freezes at the controls
11/29/2015 at 07:04

Another problem is that they are programmed to follow the letter of the law and always err on the safe side. Take a double parked vehicle in a no-passing zone, for example. A human driver would check if there is oncoming traffic and when the coast is clear slowly drive around it. Technically illegal, but the only possible option. A self driving car would wait and wait and wait, clogging up traffic for miles.

Also the accidents which google reported as being other humans’ fault were also partly due to the cars being overly cautious, therefore not acting in what to us is a predictable manner.

JQJ213- Now With An Extra Cylinder! > Ron Calls on his years of experience....and freezes at the controls
11/29/2015 at 07:22

Id like to think it wouldn’t be a problem though. In theory these cars wont cause any accidents. They also wont be bad drivers. Hopefully they will maintain the proper speed limits. If this happens sure a few more cars will be on the road, but traffic might move faster than it did before.

If these cars can all do the speed limit, I welcome the autonomous overlords to my neck of the woods. Im tired of doing 15 below in the fastlane.

Blunion05 drives a pink S2000 (USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST) > Klaus Schmoll
11/29/2015 at 08:24

Big problem with your argument. This is assuming a self driving car would double park itself.

Blunion05 drives a pink S2000 (USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST) > Ron Calls on his years of experience....and freezes at the controls
11/29/2015 at 08:33

The original article is the stupidest article I have ever read.

For one, cars will be more efficient in how they execute usage of the roadways.

Two, it’s highly unlikely a manufacturer would allow the consumer to program a car to circle a block endlessly. I would definitely get heated on my programmers if I was the head of a car company and this slipped through the cracks.

Three, with autonomous vehicles, there is no need to pick up kids and drop them off from school. That’s what school buses are for. Sure, people have the choice to keep picking their kids up and dropping them off, but when the level of safety of your kids getting to school and coming home is the same, why use your precious car? This is assuming one’s children arrive and leave school at the typical hours. After school students will obviously need a ride home.

I could go on, but I've rebutted to all the information from the original article here.

Klaus Schmoll > Blunion05 drives a pink S2000 (USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)
11/29/2015 at 09:14

Nope. Not what I said. Read again.

Blunion05 drives a pink S2000 (USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST) > Klaus Schmoll
11/29/2015 at 09:43

I’m not sure what I’m missing here.

Klaus Schmoll > Blunion05 drives a pink S2000 (USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)
11/29/2015 at 12:31

I never said anything about self driving cars double parking. Imagine this situation, which you often encounter in inner cities. Some ahole double parked, blocking your lane. There is a solid line which says that under no circumstances whatsoever you are allowed to go into the other lane. This means that by law you can only wait for the ahole to return or go backwards until you can turn. Both not really an option with people already waiting behind you cursing. The human driver would check for oncoming traffic and then drive around the obstacle, ignoring the solid line. The slf driving car however can’t decide when it is ok to ignore a law and when it is not. It would simply wait for the obstacle to disappear, evn if that takes forever.

Blunion05 drives a pink S2000 (USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST) > Klaus Schmoll
11/29/2015 at 13:28

I see.

The way I see it is that this wouldn’t be an issue, as what it seems like you’re mentioning is this is a situation that would occur in the near future (thus, human takes control to get around the autonomous vehicle’s shortcoming) when there are autonomous cars and human driven cars together on the roadways.

What the argument in the post above presents are problems in a world where 99%+ cars are autonomous.

Regardless, this wouldn’t be an issue, ever. An autonomous vehicle being blocked by a double parked vehicle would be programmed to know of anomalies. A time limit on how long to wait before getting around the obstacle blocking the path, letting the autonomous vehicle know this is an anomaly. This would circumvent the problem on-hand when nobody is inside to override the controls.

wiffleballtony > pip bip - choose Corrour
11/30/2015 at 16:15

Or just mandate telecommuting.

wiffleballtony > Ron Calls on his years of experience....and freezes at the controls
11/30/2015 at 16:18

I don’t even see why everyone’s wasting time developing a new way to invent the wheel. The easiest solution that is the most environmentally conscious is to remove the need to commute in the first place. Almost everyone has a computer and an Internet connection. The only people who would need to drive to work is the retail and services industries.

pip bip - choose Corrour > wiffleballtony
12/01/2015 at 01:42

only practical if your job is computer based.

wiffleballtony > pip bip - choose Corrour
12/01/2015 at 08:44

I’d be willing to wager most 9 to 5 commuting are desk jobs.