urbanMSP

Although I won't be buying an electric car until they match the utility of a gasoline one, if I had one I'd prefer to charge up by the interstate, although preferably by a McDonalds or something. To me the point of interstate travel is to bypass towns like Worthington or Albert Lea, not drive through them. I'd think even Worthington would add an extra 5-10 minutes to the trip.

While that's an interesting and important question, human drivers have to contend with the same problems. In theory, autonomous cars will be able to more fully think out the possibilities and may have a better ability to choose an action to take. But too many of these articles imply that human drivers are just victims of accidents in these types of situations.

Of course, I think we're seeing that autonomous cars are being designed to be more cautious than typical human drivers, so the possibilities of these already rare events coming up probably becomes even more rare.

We're nowhere near having having computers that can evaluate a situation and make a moral judgement of the type that the article discusses. About the best we can do right now is "avoid crashing into things", and if that appears impossible "avoid crashing into things that look human".

Despite the demonstrated progress, the obstacles to self driving cars are immense.

"Would you buy a self-driving car that couldn’t drive itself in 99 percent of the country? Or that knew nearly nothing about parking, couldn’t be taken out in snow or heavy rain, and would drive straight over a gaping pothole?"

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/53 ... ving-cars/

The way I figure it I have a good 30 years of driving left. By then driverless cars will have been perfected so I won't have to worry about getting around after that.

As much as I enjoy driving, I'm looking forward to a day when my car with drive itself. yes, there are a lot of issues that still need to be solved, but just imagine what it'll do for accidents and traffic once there are enough of these cars on the road. The technology to implement self driving cars is here now. I took a "test drive" in a few self-driving vehicles at CES in Las Vegas back in January. Traditional auto makers are being very cautions about their approach, but Google and a few others will be stepping in and pushing the industry forward within the next decade.

from what I've seen, the first commercial driverless cars will available to consumers before 2020, but it'll be at least 2040 before they become more prominent than traditional cars.

I don't understand why people think driverless cars will solve our transportation problems. They don't address our real transportation problems at all: land use, ever-expanding freeways and the unsustainable costs of both. The only things that will start really addressing our transportation problem are shortening our transportation corridors and packing more people into them. Driverless cars may use a roadways slightly more efficiently but it's a rounding error in the grand scheme of things. Driverless cars are no better than PRT at solving the real problem.

It will reduce deaths that's for sure. And it won't allow gawkers to slow down and see why there's a cop there. A lot of congestion can be caused by human error to a point.

I think there's some thought they'll all operate like taxis and just go somewhere else during the day. But that requires electric cars or some other power source that minimizes emissions (also assuming that electiricty is produced greenly) otherwise you're just doubling or more emissions (instead of drive to work and drive home, car drives to work and back home, then back to work and home again). But that doesn't solve the storage problem. I could shuffle all the cars off some parking lot 50 miles away, but then the lead time to get your car becomes incredibly high.

I guess your 90 minute commute could become bearable because you don't have to focus on driving, but that's an awful commute for all sorts of other sociological reasons.

Imagine driving down a road with no billboards, no huge signs for gas stations or drive-through eating, lanes and shoulders narrow enough to be safe for the computer, not the human. Low-clearance tunnels with open spaces above will abound! Birds will chirp and song will fill the air!

Light Rail Train = land line: fixed location
Autonomous cars = cell phone: goes anywhere

Ironically by the time SW LRT is built, autonomous cars will be becoming mainstream, and LRT will become obsolete.

They can co-exsist and we don't know that for sure. I'm 100% for the driverless car but I won't trust it in the next 4 years

Light Rail Train = land line: fixed location
Autonomous cars = cell phone: goes anywhere

Ironically by the time SW LRT is built, autonomous cars will be becoming mainstream, and LRT will become obsolete.

If your car could fold up into your pocket Jetsons style, sure.

Driverless cars don't do anything to address the needs of car storage.

There's no more fitting word for the fantasy of driverless cars than JHK's "techno-narcissism".

Driverless cars don't do anything to address the needs of car storage.

Well, that's not entirely true -- they'd do something. Driverless cars would still need to be stored, but they could be stored in very high density garages that could be more remote than would be feasible/acceptable for current parking spaces.

Imagine driving down a road with no billboards, no huge signs for gas stations or drive-through eating

I don't have to imagine it. I go to Canada.

Light Rail Train = land line: fixed location
Autonomous cars = cell phone: goes anywhere

Ironically by the time SW LRT is built, autonomous cars will be becoming mainstream, and LRT will become obsolete.

Not an appropriate analogy at all. LRT carries a large number of people in a very small space. The capacity is much higher than any guideway with single-occupant vehicles. Buses carry a lot of people but we still find LRT useful. They serve different purposes.

What I'm concerned about is people talking like we can just stop building transit once driverless cars arrive.

It will reduce deaths that's for sure. And it won't allow gawkers to slow down and see why there's a cop there. A lot of congestion can be caused by human error to a point.

It may help congestion but it won't change the terrible economics of freeways and sprawl one bit.

Light Rail Train = land line: fixed location
Autonomous cars = cell phone: goes anywhere

Ironically by the time SW LRT is built, autonomous cars will be becoming mainstream, and LRT will become obsolete.

Unless you can get an unlimited use pass for an autonomous car at $85 a month, I don't see light rail dying the death you predict.