A few days ago we noted that an attack add had been made against Republican Representative in Florida for his support of driverless cars.

Marginal Revolution has also blogged on the topic. They note:

I do worry about lawsuits in the early years. I am not worried, however, about the following attack on driverless cars which appears to be real although it seems like something from the Onion.

Pretty much. Like several of our readers have pointed out to us, autonomous vehicles will increase mobility for the elderly and disabled making them a prime market for this technology.

The title says it all. This is hilarious.

The main reason we are excited about autonomous vehicles is that the massive reductions in fatalities they will bring about. Another reason to be excited is the potential of driverless cars to use far less fuel than driven cars. We think because most self driving cars will 1) be single passenger vehicles that will have less mass and require less fuel 2) self driving vehicles will be inherently safer and require less heavy safety features, further lightening the mass of the vehicle and its fuel consumption. 3) Autonomous vehicles may never have to slow down and stop at traffic lights, wasting energy in braking. In this line of thinking a recent article at published at e360.yale.edu made much the same point.

 Obviously, far fewer crashes means fewer fatalities and fewer traffic jams, but it also could mean a big change in car design and fuel consumption.

As originally pointed out by climate and energy scientist Amory Lovins, only about one percent of the energy in a gallon of gasoline goes to moving the driver forward. About 75 percent of the energy leaves the tailpipe as heat and almost all the rest is needed to move a 4,000-pound car. But the bulk of that 4,000 pounds is only there to keep the driver and passengers safe in the relatively unlikely event of a major crash. If that risk was reduced dramatically, 4,000 pounds might come down closer to 750 to 1,000 pounds.

Other technology, known as dedicated short range communications (DSRC), enables a car to tell an intersection that it is approaching. A computer system at the intersection would then be able to coordinate all the approaching cars — assuming they were self-driving cars — and funnel them through the crossroads without stopping. The reduction in crashes could be dramatic.

Of course, a massive reduction in fuel consumption means a lot less money is being paid to countries like Saudi Arabia that produce oil. This will cause a lot of political pain and a lot of political fallout as noted in Foreign Policy a couple of months ago.

The other potential improvement for fuel consumption that I didn’t see explicitly mentioned in the e360 article was the idea of platooning or road trains as being developed by Volvo in Europe. We did some rough back of the envelope calculations that if road trains were ubiquitous they could reduce fuel consumption in the US ~813,000 barrels of oil per day. When you think of combining road trains with super light, efficient vehicles that never have to stop at traffic lights, the fuel savings are immense.

Thanks to Paul Godsmark for putting these up on our Facebook page and apologies for not posting them sooner, both Mat and I have been swamped at work.

The European Commission is apparently mandating that new commercial vehicles must be fitted with Autonomous Emergency Braking by November 2013. In other words, if the car detects a collision is imminent it will engage the brakes independently of the driver.

From thegreencarwebsite.co.uk:

According to a study by the European Commission, road traffic accidents could be reduced by as much as 27 per cent with the technology: potentially saving 8,000 lives each year.

From 2014 onwards the crash test organisation will include it in its assessment making it nearly impossible for a vehicle to gain a five-star rating without it.

So the EU at the moment is looking decidedly pro-autonomous driving.

Edit: Thanks to Gabriel for linking to this.

Bryant Walker Smyth has a post up about a hypothetical collision between a self-driving and a driven car.

The scenario is quite interesting and involves an illegally parked self-driving car with outdated software being hit by a human driven car. Its an interesting hypothetical, if you’d like to contribute please head to Bryant’s blog and leave a comment.

From a little birdy:

Anthony Levandowski is the current head of the Google Self Driving Car program.

Should be interesting to see what comes of this.

An article in the WSJ has claimed we are wasting $100 billion in fuel and time due to highway congestion. The article has also been discussed here and here.

The main point these articles are making is that with driverless cars coming our highways need to be smarter too. I would argue that we can have driverless cars on our current system just fine. However, for them to reach their full potential driverless car only lanes and legislation for driverless cars to go through red lights without stopping need to be implemented somehow.

Just a quick one:

The federal Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI) says that accident rates were 14% lower in cars fitted with Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) – what Ford calls City Stop.

It said warning systems that alerted the driver to an obstacle but did not brake the car showed less improvement. We are not surprised about that – such systems tell you via a light and a noise that something is wrong, but you then have to take a fraction of a second to figure out what the message is all about. If you have not already noticed the obstacle, it is probably then too late.

The successful introduction of each new autonomous technology will only increase the confidence of legislators and consumers as to the viability of these advances.

Uber is a great business. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s fairly simple – use your iPhone to summon limousines. The start=up has been expanding across the nation but is facing difficulties fighting taxi lobby interests in Washington DC.

Two days ago it became known that the DC Council was planning to legislate price floors into Uber’s business model in order to limit their competitiveness against the taxi industry.

Yesterday, as a result of a massive online backlash, the plans have been shelved – for now.

At today’s D.C. Council breakfast, several members mentioned that since Kalanick’s email went out, they were inundated with impassioned emails from Uber customers. Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) said he has received more than 5,000 notes.

The amendment would have mandated that luxury sedan services charge no less than five times the minimum of the $3 flag drop collected by standard taxicabs on rides that are measured by time and distance. Uber’s pricing model includes a $7 base fare plus $3.25 for each mile traveled and 75 cents for each minute a car is hired, with a $15 minimum for all fares.

What does this all have to do with driverless cars, you ask?

Uber.com is seen by many as a precursor to driverless cars. The app uses functionality similar to what we’ll see in driverless cars but more importantly, it presents new competition to the taxi industry.

The taxi industry is seen to be one of the biggest pillars of potential opposition to driverless cars due to their lobbying power and general industry corruption (side thought – why is the US so tolerant of corruption compared to other Western nations? It’s mind-boggling.)

Taxi companies themselves will probably seek to get in on the driverless car rush (and it will be a rush – the commercial imperative is too great) which should mitigate many of the potential issues with entrenched lobby groups.

If you have a spare five minutes I recommend you read an opinion piece over at usridernews.com.

To summarise the piece the author makes the case that driverless cars will make riding inherently safe for motorcycle riders. On the other hand, the author sees a point in the future where ‘self directed’ vehicles as they put it are outlawed:

Google watchers and those with inside knowledge of the technology believe auto-pilot vehicles will first be deployed as delivery vehicles, taxis, and buses.  How quickly the technology transitions from utility vehicles to personal vehicles is anybody’s guess at this point, but the sad truth is that once a tipping point is reached, say 75% of vehicles are running on auto-drive, the push to rid the highways of “dangerous self driving vehicles” will begin in earnest.   In the NPR report, the author even alludes to a “future ban” on human operated vehicles.

When that happens, so will your ability to pick a destination on a map, load up the motorcycle and head out across this great country with your only worries being rain, bugs and that distracted driver who turns left in front of you.

I want to make a few quick points:

1. Agreement - I think  the usridernews.com article is essentially correct, riding a motorcycle will become safter, but eventually, riding it yourself will become illegal on public roads.
2. Gyroscoopes - All hope isn’t lost – the LIT motors C1 which we have reported on recently is effectively a motorcycle with a gyroscope. Granted it doesn’t look as exciting as riding a regular motorcycle but surely some innovative engineer can not only put those safety features in regular motorcycles making lawmakers less likely to ban them?
3. Speed - Driverless technology will probably be incorporated into motorcycles, and because they will be safer, they will be able to go a lot faster particularly on highways. In fact I think 20 years from now most journeys will be in two wheeled single passenger vehicles.
4. Renting - One of the great things about driverless vehicles is that we probably won’t own them ourselves. If you feel like it, for a few extra dollars you can rent that 500cc bike instead  of being stuck with Dad’s old 125cc that struggles to make it up the hill. (For the record my Dad had a very cool, occasionally operational, Kawasaki Ninja 900).
5. Turn off the auto-pilot - Even though 15-20 years from now every vehicle will be driverless, there will still be racetracks, deserts and national parks for riders to feel the thrill of riding a bike.

In a nutshell; don’t give up on riding that bike just yet!