Tag Archives: self-driving cars

automatic speed regulators

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Automatic speed regulators on private vehicles – YES PLEASE. This is an idea that will save lives, and its time has come. Won’t somebody please think of the children?

The article suggests limiting speeds to 100 mph, but come on! Why not limit them to the local posted limit? Or if saving lives that way is too interventionist for “‘Merica”, then install the technology and let insurance companies massively penalize people who choose to turn it off. This could be a middle ground between self-driving cars and people who insist on the preventable mass murder of letting human beings continue operating deadly highway vehicles on city streets, once it is no longer necessary.

December 2021 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story: Mass migration driven by climate change-triggered disasters could be the emerging big issue for 2022 and beyond. Geopolitical instability is a likely result, not to mention enormous human suffering.

Most hopeful story: Covid-19 seems to be “disappearing” in Japan, or at least was before the Omicron wave. Maybe lessons could be learned. It seems possible that East Asian people have at least some genetic defenses over what other ethnic groups have, but I would put my money on tight border screening and an excellent public health care system. Okay, now I’m starting to feel a bit depressed again, sitting here in the U.S. where we can’t have these nice things thanks to our ignorant politicians.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Time reminded us of all the industries Elon Musk has disrupted so far: human-controlled, internal-combustion-fueled automobiles; spaceflight; infrastructure construction (I don’t know that he has really achieved any paradigm shifts here, but not for lack of trying), “artificial intelligence, neurotechnology, payment systems and cryptocurrency.” I’m not sure I follow a couple of these, but I think they missed satellites.

cars = freedom?

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I don’t know how many regular readers of this blog exist, but if there are some, you know I am not a huge fan of cars. They ruin our urban areas, pollute our air and water, kill and injure us and our children, and make us fat and sick and sociopathic. Beyond that, I knew about traffic stops. The U.S. and U.S. states do not just issue you an ID card at birth. Generally speaking, your driver’s license is your most official government issued ID for most people, and there are enough hurdles to getting one that disadvantaged people (poor, homeless, unemployed, transient, undocumented, disabled, addicted, mentally ill, too old, too young, too busy, the list goes on…) often don’t have them. Those people still use cars to get around in many cases, because that is the only way to get around in many of our communities, and then when they get pulled over in a routine traffic stop they are in trouble. Especially if they already have a warrant or some past legal trouble, which the disadvantaged quite often do.

It’s also always bothered me that you give up your rights against search and seizure the minute you step into a car. Police can stop you and search your car and body on very little pretext in a way they would be unlikely to do if you were on foot (“stop and frisk” aside – another conversation, although it illustrates that police intrusiveness we routinely accept when we are in a motor vehicle can cause an uproar when we are not). Sobriety checkpoints also bother me – don’t get me wrong, drunk driving is very, very bad. But a random sobriety checkpoint subjects you to search and seizure on no pretext whatsoever other than the fact that you chose to get into a car, and if you have some previous legal trouble, or just a paperwork problem, suddenly you are in trouble you had no reason to expect. (The best solution to drunk driving is a walkable community.)

So that’s the disadvantaged portion of the population, who tend to get more disadvantaged over time because the deck is stacked against them. But what about the larger population as a whole? Well, this Freakonomics episode tells the story in a way I hadn’t fully considered:

  • Before cars, ordinary people and police just didn’t interact that much. Generally speaking, a search warrant was required for the police to stop and search someone. There weren’t as many police, they weren’t as heavily armed and they just weren’t that busy.
  • Once cars came on the scene and started killing and injuring people in large numbers, traffic laws were enacted. Police were told to enforce the traffic laws, and courts ruled repeatedly that the imminent danger posed by cars in real time overruled the need to obtain a warrant.
  • Add in guns, or really just the possibility of guns being present in any traffic stop, and you have even more violence on top of the deaths and injuries the cars are already causing – “The traffic stop is the most common encounter between individuals and the police, and it’s also the site of a lot of police violence and police shootings that we see in the news today.“
  • At this point, technology would allow us to handle most traffic violations as an administrative matter, with a picture of the violation and a ticket sent in the mail. The article likens this to tax collection and penalties. The police wouldn’t even be involved in most cases.

A couple more thoughts – First, there is a link between mounting fines and mass incarceration, so just imposing more fines on disadvantaged people and trying to collect them may not be the perfect answer. Second, this article doesn’t go into it, but there is also a critical role for safer street and intersection design, which can help a lot to reduce the number of violations, deaths, and injuries in the first place. And I already mentioned it, but the larger urban design and land use policy can reduce the need for driving and increase the number of people able to get around under their own power, which is good for the air, water, land, our bodies and our minds!

I still have some hope for computer-driven cars too. The hype has died down, which means the practical application will probably gradually creep up on us when we least expect it. A computer-driven vehicle should be able to come to a complete stop at every stop sign and red light, stay under the speed limit, stay out of the bike lane, and just generally avoid unpredictable behavior. And if it doesn’t, that is a malfunction rather than a crime, which it should be able to self-report to police and insurance companies and get corrected. Some people are still going to get hurt because there is no risk-free transportation system, but it should be far fewer than what we deal with now.

December 2020 in Review

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2020 is officially in the books!

Most frightening and/or depressing story: The “Map of Doom” identifies risks that should get the most attention, including antibiotic resistance, synthetic biology (also see below), and some complex of climate change/ecosystem collapse/food supply issues.

Most hopeful story: The Covid-19 vaccines are a modern “moonshot” – a massive government investment driving scientific and technological progress on a particular issue in a short time frame. Only unlike nuclear weapons and the actual original moonshot, this one is not military in nature. (We should be concerned about biological weapons, but let’s allow ourselves to enjoy this victory and take a quick trip to Disney Land before we start practicing for next season…) What should be our next moonshot, maybe fusion power?

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Lists of some key technologies that came to the fore in 2020 include (you guessed it) mRNA vaccines, genetically modified crops, a variety of new computer chips and machine learning algorithms, which seem to go hand in hand (and we are hearing more about “machine learning” than “artificial intelligence” these days), brain-computer interfaces, private rockets and moon landings and missions to Mars and mysterious signals and micro-satellites and UFOs, virtual and mixed reality, social media disinformation and work-from-home technologies. The wave of self-driving car hype seems to have peaked and receded, which probably means self-driving cars will probably arrive quietly in the next decade or so. I was surprised not to see cheap renewable energy on any lists that I came across, and I think it belongs there. At least one economist thinks we are on the cusp of a big technology-driven productivity pickup that has been gestating for a few decades.

Ford signals self-driving car’s “intent”

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Ford is trying a set of blinking lights to help pedestrians understand whether a self-driving car is likely to stop or run them over. Somewhat interesting, but really I think the legal responsibility needs to be on the car’s owner/programmer and not the pedestrian. If this saves a few lives by preventing a few otherwise unavoidable crashes it is a good thing. If it creates an excuse to blame the victim, it is a bad thing. In recent U.S. history at least, the situation between driver and pedestrian has almost always been the latter.

A back-and-forth white light means the car is yielding. When the car is about to go, the white light quickly blinks. Ford said it’s trying to find a way to communicate that doesn’t use text.

Once cars are machine-driven, any pedestrian-driver communication gets a lot harder. So how does a woman walking or a kid biking check in with a car to know it’s safe to cross the street?

March 2018 in Review

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Most frightening stories:

Most hopeful stories:

  • One large sprawling city could be roughly the economic equivalent of several small high-density cities. This could potentially be good news for the planet if you choose in favor of the latter, and preserve the spaces in between as some combination of natural land and farm land.
  • The problems with free parking, and solutions to the problems, are well known. This could potentially be good news if anything were to be actually done about it. Self-parking cars could be really fantastic for cities.
  • The coal industry continues to collapse, and even the other fossil fuels are saying they are a bunch of whining losers. And yes, I consider this positive. I hope there aren’t too many old ladies whose pensions depend on coal at this point.

Most interesting stories, that were not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps were a mixture of both:

self-parking cars

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Wired explains why cars that can park themselves are going to be so awesome, whether or not they are allowed to cruise the public streets and highways just yet.

Parking is a problem that engineers reckon self-driving cars can solve. Send the robot to find a space, after it drops you off at your destination. Summon it back later when you’re ready to leave.

The fatal accident in Arizona this week, in which an Uber autonomous test vehicle killed a pedestrian pushing a bike across the street, highlights some of the dangers of robo-driving at regular speeds. But low-speed movement, with scanners running on full, in a fixed area, is a much safer way to apply the tech. Building owners could have high resolution maps made of their parking lots, geo-fence them, and designate them as no-human zones, so cars can do their thing. It’ll be just like dropping your car at a valet stand, except you don’t have to dig around for singles. More cars will fit into each lot: Because doors don’t need to be opened, the vehicles can squeeze tightly together.

Being a tech magazine and not an urban planning magazine, they don’t realize the significance of the short phrase “More cars will fit into each lot”. Because most cars are parked most of the time, and they take up such enormous amounts of space, this could fundamentally change the land use in cities over time by opening up enormous amounts of space to other uses. And that is assuming people own the same number of cars they do now. As the incentive to own a private vehicle decreases, more of the fleet will be in motion at any given time and less will be parked, accelerating the virtuous cycle of reduced car demand even more. What kind of uses could be better than parking? Well, any – such as housing, commercial space, parks (the kind with soil and plants), natural areas, solar panels. Now might be a good time for cities and suburbs to start thinking about what they want to do with all this public real estate other than just letting it sit there generating heat, stormwater and pollution. As a start, installing separated bike lanes might not seem such a daunting problem, and just opening up some existing parking as temporary loading zones for deliveries, contractors, the elderly and disabled would be an enormous help in many cities.

humans as a check on self-driving cars?

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This article describes the safety protocols Uber had in place to try to avoid a pedestrian death like the one that just happened in Arizona.

Trainees spend time in a classroom reviewing the technology and the testing protocols, and on the track learning to spot and avoid trouble. They even get a day at a racetrack, practicing emergency maneuvers at highway speeds. They’re taught to keep their hands an inch or two from the steering wheel, and the right foot over the brake. If they simply have to look at their phones, they’re supposed to take control of the car and put it in park first.

Working alone in eight-hour shifts (in Phoenix they earn about $24 an hour), the babysitters are then set loose into the wild. Each day, they get a briefing from an engineer: Here’s where you’ll be driving, here’s what to look for. Maybe this version of the software is acting a bit funky around cyclists, or taking one particular turn a little fast.

And constantly, they are told: Watch the road. Don’t look at your phone. If you’re tired, stop driving. Uber also audits vehicle logs for traffic violations, and it has a full-time employee who does nothing but investigate potential infractions of the rules. Uber has fired drivers caught (by other operators or by people on the street) looking at their phones.