- 7 September 2012
- Safety
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Solar Flares to Cause Massive Driverless Car Pileups (Apparently…)
7 September 2012 Posted By matthewn
From the annals of “bizarre concerns Driverless Cars” comes this absolute doozy from TopSpeed.com.
They’re saying that Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) – once in a lifetime events that are major solar flares – will cause satellites to stop working, meaning that driverless cars will drive off the road or into other cars:
If a CME-caused geomagnetic storm should take place and knock out GPS satellites, imagine the massive traffic it would cause, at best. Even worse, it could result in major accidents, should these cars veer off of the road and out of control. That’s a scary possibility that this recent solar flare close call should bring to the forefront. The engineers must devise a backup plan that overrides the GPS part of autonomous driving, should the signal be lost.
I wanted to leave a comment saying that driverless cars don’t depend on GPS – like so many assume – but you need to register to comment.
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One Response to “Solar Flares to Cause Massive Driverless Car Pileups (Apparently…)”
Can we get over what I like to call the “Deep Impact Effect”. We cannot make our plans based upon the end of world type events. If this was a true issue, then we wouldn’t both to launch satellites in the first place.
You make the even better point, which is that this is only a problem if GPS is the ONLY system in the driverless car. Can someone that understands this technology write about this in popular press? Lidar, Radar, GPS, cameras and stored maps/data all provide single streams of data that COMBINE to provide a picture of reality. Omit the GPS and the system won’t drive you into a wall.