@Min, Regardless of how the cars enforce legal requirements such as stopping at the scene of an accident they will presumably be able to report their drivers long after they have fled the scene:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/hit-run-driver-caught-after-6973712
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
"UK to allow driverless cars on public roads"
(116 posts)-
Posted 8 years ago #
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Those look more like the KSI stats than general collisions.
Posted 8 years ago # -
@ACSimpson - oops yes, that'll teach me to try and do things in my head!
The premise of driverless cars is that the people in them don't have to concentrate at all, so I think it's reasonable to think that most driverless cars would crash whenever a human intervention was necessary to prevent a crash. But they're (presumably) getting a lot of data on when the system performs less well than it should and are making improvements all the time.
Good point about under-reporting of real world crashes though, particularly if they 'just' involve hitting the kerb.
Posted 8 years ago # -
Acsimpson - teehee, nice one! :-)
Posted 8 years ago # -
This article covers many of the ways driverless cars will make matters worse.
They missed a couple though:
- driving to, from & between the pub(s) causing a night time rush 'hour';
- sending the car empty to your holiday destination in advance, then flying there in comfort.Posted 8 years ago # -
"
Driverless cars are already on the road in America. And the future is barrelling down the highway quicker than we think. Mark Fields, chief executive of Ford, predicts fully autonomous cars by 2020. Tesla expects true autonomous driving – “get in the car, go to sleep and wake up at your destination” – by 2023.
"
http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/comment-rudderless-oil-markets-more-of-a-worry-1-3872579
Posted 8 years ago # -
I wonder how self-driving cars will be able to cope with tyre-blowouts?
see: http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=3748&page=162&replies=4856#post-217073
Perhaps they will have pressure sensors in the tyres that will automatically disable the vehicle if the pressure gets too low?
Posted 8 years ago # -
Imagine the TRAFFIC CHAOS there would be if the pressure became too low on the Corstorphine Road and the vehicle was disabled immediately...
Posted 8 years ago # -
Next up: driverless HGV convoys. Talk about pointless - this is a TRAIN!
Convoy of self-driving trucks completes first European cross-border trip
‘Platoon’ of wireless-linked trucks arrives in Netherlands port city of Rotterdam, giving a glimpse of the future of road haulagePosted 8 years ago # -
As ny fave comment on the above article states:
"a shipment of grain moved 215 miles (so, bulk goods, but not long-haul) Trucking was heavily affected by road congestion (something it both suffers from, and causes, meaning it strongly negatively affects public infrastructure), has 2.5 times the accident rate, produces 4-5 times the pollution, and has an extremely heavy dependence on public infrastructure, while rail has none. And the carrier cost as defined in the report is roughly 4 times a great for trucking.
Most of the "advantages" of trucking come down to two important things: it exploits public resources for private good, and it depends on less-secure, largely ununionized labour. But of course, those are false savings, and in both cases, there are huge social and environmental costs that the actual trucking companies do not bear."
Posted 8 years ago # -
How would you get the grain from the farm? What if you are a farmer just outside of Dollar, and need to get your grain to Rosyth?
Trains are fantastic when the shipment originates somewhere on the network...
Posted 8 years ago # -
"How would you get the grain from the farm? "
That's what freight yards and railway sidings were devised for. Truck from farm to train depot on the network.
Mass road haulage on the scale envisaged in the article inflicts external costs on the public which trains do not.
Posted 8 years ago # -
Unfortunately today's rail network is not really set up for freight-by-the-wagon - it can only really do large shipments from depot to depot, and that's only ever close to being economic when it can be reliably guaranteed and over a longish distance.
Posted 8 years ago # -
"Unfortunately today's rail network is not really set up for freight-by-the-wagon"
Well it didn't end up that way by accident. The effect of transport policy for decades has been to strip the railways of freight business in order to benefit road haulage. We can't just throw our hands up collectively and sigh that there is nothing to be done, that's just the way things are, etc. as though it has ever been thus and will always be. The only way to reverse the situation is to find a way to impose upon road hauliers the true costs of their use of public space, and pursue policies that encourage investment in heavy rail, sea freight, etc.
Posted 8 years ago # -
The railway used to have thousands and thousands of local sidings in cities that would be local hubs for deliveries. Waverley was a great example, mail hub located within the station delivering directly into the GPO and freight into the East Market St yard.
Other freight only stations in North Edinburgh alone: Brunswick Rd. Jane St. Bonnington. Newhaven. North Leith. Commercial St. Restalrig Rd. It should be immediately obvious how ubiquitous these small freight stations were. Everywhere there was a railway there was freight stations or industry sidings.
Goods wagons would then be sent on short shunter trains from these small yards to bigger yards - Leith Docks, Millerhill, Portobello, where they would be formed into actual trains. The reverse true of deliveries. Before motor vans were so affordable and efficient as they are now, this was the only way to do things.
Exactly how this infrastructure was abolished isn't a story I know. However even today there's clear consolidation of freight away from cities into out of town motorway connected estates. Most of us will have been affected by Royal Mail collection depots moving to the edges of the city in the last 10 years. Courier service hubs for 'Edinburgh' being located at Newbridge, Livingston etc.
Posted 8 years ago # -
A number of factors do come into play. The railways ceased to have the requirement of being a common carrier with the Transport Act in 1962, and with this milk tanks, cattle trucks, horse boxes and other limited use vehicles vanished with great speed from the railway.
It was only in 1956 that the speed limit for HGV (not towing trailers) was raised from 20mph to 30mph, and operator licensing at the same time made it easier to compete with the railway for long haul transport. Most vehicles were the 8-12T units used for local deliveries from railway goods depots, often owned and operated by British Railways or the Nationalised Bitish Road Services(BRS).
In 1962 the speed limits for HGV were again raised, neatly coinciding with the loss of common carrier requirement for British Railways.
HGV without trailers could then travel at 40mph and with trailers 30mph.
Speed limits were again increased in 1967.
Posted 8 years ago # -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Act_1962
"the Act goes much further in giving effect to laissez-faire in the law of transport than English law has ever done at any time since the seventeenth century"
Except in London, of course.
Posted 8 years ago # -
I wonder if anyone in the haulage industry will pay any attention to the unplanned driverless truck test on the city bypass yesterday, demonstrating the effectiveness of the use of a guiding rail. If they can then extrapolate that idea to two guiding rails, then they could be onto something.
Posted 8 years ago # -
Just shows you can patent anything.
And how exactly would you clean the flies off such a thing?
Midge cakes anyone?
Posted 7 years ago # -
I would assume that any living body stuck to the outside of a driverless car would be absorbed and used as fuel.
Posted 7 years ago # -
I thought you needed to prove a working concept to obtain a patent rather than just a pie in the sky idea.
Posted 7 years ago # -
I was just listened to the 'Best of Today' podcast summarising Friday's business news. Driverless cars were mentioned briefly towards the end of the podcast in discussion with David Lockwood, CEO of Laird PLC. which has developments in this area. He said that the technology is well ahead of the social acceptability (fair), citing an example of whether we would be happy "if a car has to choose between hitting a school bus, which has just blown a type, or killing a cyclist ... are we prepared to let a machine make that choice?" This already seemed like a rather insensitive example before he went on to speculate that "or are we allowed to program our own moral choices into a car so, for example, if you're in London and you have a thing about cyclists, do you load it in your own way?" Worrying...
Posted 7 years ago # -
Presumably that was a strawman example of the immoral consequences of letting people choose. Right..?
Posted 7 years ago # -
Do planes' autopilots have to choose whether to ditch into the sea killing all onboard, or try for a field where a tractor driver will get killed?
Or do they just not crash?
The "if a car has to choose between hitting a school bus" is a total nonsense argument
Posted 7 years ago # -
"The "if a car has to choose between hitting a school bus" is a total nonsense argument"
Not really.
Apples and pears comparing planes autopilots (which hold a set course, which is programmed in, and determined by markers, in a primarily empty sky - and the choice between ditching in the sea or a field means something has gone wrong which essentially means the autopilot no longer has control) and automated cars (which operate in much busier environments, in a more proactive and reactionary manner, that could have a cyclist pull out in front of them from a junction with no space to brake, while directly alongside a bus full of schoolkids into which it would have to swerve to avoid the cyclist, and be in complete control of the 'choice' to make).
They are fundamentally different systems in fundamentally different scenarios.
"... for example, if you're in London and you have a thing about cyclists, do you load it in your own way?"
That, however, worries me immensely!
Posted 7 years ago # -
It was the comparison between merely "hitting a school bus" but "killing a cyclist" that bothered me about the first quote. Obviously the cyclist is the more vulnerable of those potential targets in a straightforward scenario so I find it hard to compare, but what also worries me is that an autonomous vehicle is likely to value the safety of its occupant highest of all so may therefore choose to collide with the cyclist instead of the school bus on the basis that its occupant is far less likely to be injured. Who knows what he meant with "a thing about cyclists"?!
Posted 7 years ago # -
'Choosing who to hit' is an awful argument to land against driverless vehicles given that their defensive driving logic will ensure they don't get into 99% of the situations that cause common crashes in the first place.
Point this out and of course you get quoted back all the outlier 1% situations that typically involve irrational behaviour of other, human controlled vehicles.
Posted 7 years ago # -
@Klaxon good point... A short-term transitional issue is likely to be lots of human drivers rear-ending autonomous vehicles as a result of their inability to react as fast in the event that sudden braking is necessary, as Google has already found out during their autonomous car testing.
Posted 7 years ago #
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