Should non-autonomous vehicles be banned from motorways?

Should non-autonomous vehicles be banned from motorways?

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5lab

Original Poster:

1,645 posts

195 months

Sunday 9th October 2016
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Before I get lynched, I don't mean yet! There is a story about no more ICEs after 2030 - should manually-driven cars be banned from the motorways by a similar date? Autonomous cars are more accurate, and faster reacting than human driven cars, but they work best in 'controlled' environments (ie : not so good with pedestrians, snow, unknowns, etc). Running only autonomous on motorways could mean :

Higher running speeds (say 100mph)
shorter distance between cars (say 1m, maybe bumper-to-bumper - reaction speed to brake lights is essentially zero, could even be transmitted wirelessly between cars)
narrower lanes (cars could be mirror-to-mirror - say 5 lanes in the space of 3)
no hard shoulders (where they still exist)

those things together would triple the current motorway capacity (66% more cars due to the lanes, 30% more cars due to the speed, twice the cars due closer running). No-one 'likes' driving on motorways, and there's no-where you can't get to if you're banned from motorways (a/b roads run along side all of them) so people with older cars can still get there.

Motorways were originally built to increase speed verses a normal road by banning some sub-sets of vehicles. Maybe its time to plan for updating those rules? The money being spent on upgrading the existing road infrastructure (smart motorways etc) could be saved and spent on better things. A current 2 hour slog in the rush hour round the m25 @ 30mph could become a 36 minute whizz, reading the paper the whole way

cptsideways

13,535 posts

251 months

Sunday 9th October 2016
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Lol, you don't drive a modern car, with throttle lag, touchscreen lag, system crashes or badly calibrated radar cruise control do you ?

Frik

13,542 posts

242 months

Sunday 9th October 2016
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I think motorways are the only feasible roads you could automate.

mac96

3,715 posts

142 months

Sunday 9th October 2016
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The cynic in me says they will invent an excuse for retaining the 70 mph speed limit so removing what is for me the main point of autonomous cars- higher speeds.

Same as with managed motorways- odd really that the maximum variable speed is still 70 mph, a number which you could , maybe, argue is reasonable if it cannot vary according to conditions, but not once the limit can vary.

rich888

2,610 posts

198 months

Monday 10th October 2016
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Toyota high end range of cars aka the Lexus are already capable of driving along the M1 down to London with little if any intervention from the driver, give it a few more years and they will be more than capable of achieving this without errors.

When folks say they will pull out in front of an autonomous car they perhaps forget that laws already exist for careless or dangerous driving.

I've used computers for many years and I rarely see one crash nowadays, and before anyone moans at me, look at aircraft to see just how capable they are of flying tens of thousands of miles without incident.

I don't think non-autonomous vehicles should be banned from driving on motorways but I do think autonomous cars do have a place on our roads, for most drivers the commute from home to work is a necessary evil rather than for enjoyment.

Aside from which, think of the benefits of the drive home after a drunken night out with the wife - take me home...

Pothole

34,367 posts

281 months

Monday 10th October 2016
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rich888 said:
I've used computers for many years and I rarely see one crash nowadays, and before anyone moans at me, look at aircraft to see just how capable they are of flying tens of thousands of miles without incident.
Computers may not crash but programs often do...or hang. Aircraft don't have to contend with many junctions, hills, curves or other vehicles close to them, do they?

rich888

2,610 posts

198 months

Monday 10th October 2016
quotequote all
Pothole said:
rich888 said:
I've used computers for many years and I rarely see one crash nowadays, and before anyone moans at me, look at aircraft to see just how capable they are of flying tens of thousands of miles without incident.
Computers may not crash but programs often do...or hang. Aircraft don't have to contend with many junctions, hills, curves or other vehicles close to them, do they?
Good point, but Google and Apple cars are already mapping out many miles of roads along with all the junctions, hills and curves and potential accident spots. Cars have been fitted out with proximity detectors since the 1980s so already know where accidents might occur.

As for computers crashing I have to say I can't remember the last time my computer or software crashed.

Now in comparison unleash a new or unqualified driver onto the road and see how they perform in a real life scenario?

Most modern day aircraft crashes occur due to pilot error rather than computer error and most car crashes are due to driver error... you do the maths?

Terminator X

14,921 posts

203 months

Monday 10th October 2016
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rich888 said:
Toyota high end range of cars aka the Lexus are already capable of driving along the M1 down to London with little if any intervention from the driver, give it a few more years and they will be more than capable of achieving this without errors.
I have to reboot my laptop a couple of times a day and/or get the blue screen of death and/or it restarts itself due to some problem. This will never happen with a car you say?

TX.

Pothole

34,367 posts

281 months

Monday 10th October 2016
quotequote all
rich888 said:
Pothole said:
rich888 said:
I've used computers for many years and I rarely see one crash nowadays, and before anyone moans at me, look at aircraft to see just how capable they are of flying tens of thousands of miles without incident.
Computers may not crash but programs often do...or hang. Aircraft don't have to contend with many junctions, hills, curves or other vehicles close to them, do they?
Good point, but Google and Apple cars are already mapping out many miles of roads along with all the junctions, hills and curves and potential accident spots. Cars have been fitted out with proximity detectors since the 1980s so already know where accidents might occur.

As for computers crashing I have to say I can't remember the last time my computer or software crashed.

Now in comparison unleash a new or unqualified driver onto the road and see how they perform in a real life scenario?

Most modern day aircraft crashes occur due to pilot error rather than computer error and most car crashes are due to driver error... you do the maths?
A program on mine has crashed between this and my last post.

mwstewart

7,554 posts

187 months

Monday 10th October 2016
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I actually really like driving on motorways if the traffic is flowing, which does still happen. Always have - especially at night.

Trying to fathom why someone in to driving would ask such a question!

Blakewater

4,303 posts

156 months

Monday 10th October 2016
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Pothole said:
A program on mine has crashed between this and my last post.
Think how much your laptop costs compared to how much an aircraft costs, or the systems used by air traffic control. There isn't really a comparison. Hospitals and transport systems, everything in our lives including what is often keeping us alive, relies on computers that are very reliable. It's perfectly possible to create an automated running system on the roads but it will require more expensively built computer systems than just plugging it into your laptop and hoping for the best.

grumbledoak

31,499 posts

232 months

Monday 10th October 2016
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Oh great, let's stop people using their cars for long journeys and put all that traffic back through the towns and cities. So we'll make our safest roads slightly safer and our towns and cities more congested, polluted, and dangerous. A brilliant plan!



Just in case: I'm not being serious about the 'brilliant' bit

anonymous-user

53 months

Monday 10th October 2016
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These systems can work, but surely only if every single car is functioning properly, and well maintained....

kambites

67,461 posts

220 months

Monday 10th October 2016
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It may happen in the end but I think it's a very long way away. It wont happen until at least 20 years after all mainstream new cars have the feature, IMO.

CrutyRammers

13,735 posts

197 months

Monday 10th October 2016
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No, they should not.

spookly

4,011 posts

94 months

Monday 10th October 2016
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I think a lot of people are confusing PC type computers with the industrial control type computers they would likely use.

Similar to car ECUs, or control systems in aircraft or space shuttles, these 'computers' won't be running a bloated and complex OS (Windows, Linux, Android, OSX etc). I suspect they will be more like a microcontroller, running code directly flashed onto the chip.

Most PCs and phones crash because of the complexity of the layers of code in the OS and applications. This isn't the case with microcontrollers. Hence why most ECUs last the life of a car. In planes this is improved further by having multiple control systems as backup.

If you have the reliability of microcontrollers running well tested code, with redundant systems that can take over if the primary controllers fail, then I don't think the failure rate of autonomous cars will be much of a concern. The other autonomous cars will also stand a better chance of avoiding a car that does malfunction, albeit not if they are all running mirror to mirror and nose to tail..... but that would potentially reduce the risk anyway as it might reduce impact speeds of resulting collisions.

kambites

67,461 posts

220 months

Monday 10th October 2016
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The question from a safety perspective is whether they have to be "perfect" or we will accept them simply being better than human drivers. The latter should be very easy to achieve, the former is impossible however well designed and implemented the systems are.

Blue Oval84

5,276 posts

160 months

Monday 10th October 2016
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It's not a question of "if" but "when" in my eyes.

Automated cars could be so far in advance of humans in a controlled environment like a motorway that it's an inevitability that there will be some sort of restriction on human controlled cars at some point in the future.

OP has already given all the reasons that robot knows best (or will do eventually), including massively reduced gaps between cars, no phantom braking, no phantom jams, and massively increased average speeds. Hell, they would even zip merge properly. wink

However, as usual I'm pleased to see that many on PH can't see beyond today's technology and assume it won't ever get any better...

Jim AK

4,029 posts

123 months

Monday 10th October 2016
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grumbledoak said:
Oh great, let's stop people using their cars for long journeys and put all that traffic back through the towns and cities. So we'll make our safest roads slightly safer and our towns and cities more congested, polluted, and dangerous. A brilliant plan!



Just in case: I'm not being serious about the 'brilliant' bit
Reverse this idea & I think it could work.

Our Motorways are safer than local roads & the autonomous vehicles could be programmed to use A or B roads, depending on traffic levels.

One thing I do have a concern over is that if using an AV would it be likely that if traffic levels were high in your area it would not allow your journey to commence until the traffic has reduced.

We have an A road nearby that regularly sees bad accidents, usually due to speed, so surely if autonomous vehicles were using that type of road it would reduce the likelihood of a serious accident, even if it was autonomous v humanoid.

MrBarry123

6,025 posts

120 months

Monday 10th October 2016
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Yes, when the technology progresses to the level where a) it works without error and b) is affordable for everyone, then you could feasibly have a situation where non-autonomous vehicles are banned from motorways.

Humans are almost always the cause of ALL congestion on the motorway so the theory goes that by removing the human from the driving equation, you remove congestion and create a far more efficient road network.