Future of roads in self-driving cars world

[Jbte]

Will there be any changes in roads and highways for self-driving cars and trucks?
Is it safe to mix human-machine roads or separate them?
What changes would a road need in self-driving, not anything at all?

My speculation, the problem will be human behavior against machines, so that will need to separate human driving from self-driving, so the self-driving can be more efficient. Self-driving would be faster and efficient because the cars would be allowed to go faster, closer to other cars and group efficient, so will prevent any traffic formation, like this video does in example;

In urban areas, probably HOV highways lanes will turn for self-driving cars only lanes, same will happen to some tolled roads. Where any preference will be given to self-driving in the future. As for rural highways, extra lanes will be required to be built for self-driving exclusive. Regarding for the exit ramps, probably will require some special design or incorporate with the human lanes to prevent traffic to self-driving lanes.

Do you think this will be the future of roads?
What are your thoughts about this possibility in the future?

[SP Cook]

The human mind makes millions of decisions per minute, perhaps per second, while driving. 

If a computer is made that only makes a mistake 0.01% of the time while driving at high speeds as outlines by CGP Grey, EVERYBODY will be killed in a fatal crash within a few months. 

The future of self driving cars is, they are science fiction and will never exist.

[jeffandnicole]

Being that self-driven cars have been tested for a few years now on the same roads as humans, with most people not even realizing they are driving next to one, I would say nothing needs to be done.

Sure, feel free to point out the highly publicized death involving a truck, and a vehicle that turned in front of a bus.  I'll gather up the news stories involving the other 35,000 deaths and hundreds of thousands of accidents...at least those that made the news. 

[bzakharin]

The human mind makes millions of decisions per minute, perhaps per second, while driving. 

If a computer is made that only makes a mistake 0.01% of the time while driving at high speeds as outlines by CGP Grey, EVERYBODY will be killed in a fatal crash within a few months. 

The future of self driving cars is, they are science fiction and will never exist.

The human mind can coordinate only with traffic control devices and in a very limited way the car in front of yours and a few directly around you. A road with exclusively self-driven cars can coordinate with every single car on and around the road. Even a mixed road can do this if the human-operated cars are equipped with transponders that can be read by self-driven cars. An accident caused by a self-driven car on an exclusively self-driven car road will be instantly transmitted and there will be a good chance the other cars will avoid it. Of course distance between adjacent cars will have to be set to a safe level, but it will be a lot less than is safe for human drivers, and a longer distance will not affect the speed on the road the way it does for human drivers.

[Brian556]

I've always said that self-driving cars could be implemented on freeways way before other roadway types, because the task of driving on them is much simpler, and you can maintain good lane markings on them, but you can't in other situations such as rural areas where large paved gravel, dirt, or paved areas/parking lots blend with streets.

If cars could self drive on freeways only, that would be a huge improvement, since freeways are where almost all accidents and congestion occour, and 25% of all mileage driven in the US is on freeways.

Driving short distances on city streets bothers very few. Driving long distances and in congestion on freeways does

[Roadgeekteen]

Might happen in 1000 years.

[vdeane]

Might be a little sooner.  Insurance companies in the UK are already talking about getting human-driven cars off the road.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/25/autonomous-car-projects-plot-course-uk-driverless-future

[kalvado]

Might be a little sooner.  Insurance companies in the UK are already talking about getting human-driven cars off the road.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/25/autonomous-car-projects-plot-course-uk-driverless-future

Thing is, current cars are designed for 20 years service life. Even if provisions for installation of full automation are made 5 years before final technology is ready - mix would be 50/50 in 5 years after technology is fully introduced; with insurance trying to punish owners of older cars - i.e. those who cannot afford new ones. I can see some interesting political consequences..

[jeffandnicole]

Might happen in 1000 years.

Says someone who has never known life without the internet, GPS and cell phones.

The last 25 years have brought an immense amount of technology into our daily lives.  25 years ago, we still imagined flying cars.  No one talked about self driving cars. Today, no flying cars exist.  Self driving cars do.

[Roadgeekteen]

Might happen in 1000 years.

Says someone who has never known life without the internet, GPS and cell phones.

The last 25 years have brought an immense amount of technology into our daily lives.  25 years ago, we still imagined flying cars.  No one talked about self driving cars. Today, no flying cars exist.  Self driving cars do.

I am talking about all self driving cars.

[kalvado]

Might happen in 1000 years.

Says someone who has never known life without the internet, GPS and cell phones.

The last 25 years have brought an immense amount of technology into our daily lives.  25 years ago, we still imagined flying cars.  No one talked about self driving cars. Today, no flying cars exist.  Self driving cars do.

There are some flying cars. But development seem to stuck at about same level as modern self-driving technology. And unlike self-driving, flying cars don't have development momentum or multibillion corporations  investing....

[MNHighwayMan]

25 years ago, we still imagined flying cars.  No one talked about self driving cars. Today, no flying cars exist.  Self driving cars do.

Flying cars exist. They're called helicopters. Turns out, operating and navigating in three dimensions is much more difficult and expensive.

[kalvado]

25 years ago, we still imagined flying cars.  No one talked about self driving cars. Today, no flying cars exist.  Self driving cars do.

Flying cars exist. They're called helicopters. Turns out, operating and navigating in three dimensions is much more difficult and expensive.

There is some more car-like development, e.g. https://www.aeromobil.com/
I would say that safety - and liability, of course - would be big issues. You can pull over to shoulder and call AAA on roads; harder to do that in the sky..

[jeffandnicole]

25 years ago, we still imagined flying cars.  No one talked about self driving cars. Today, no flying cars exist.  Self driving cars do.

Flying cars exist. They're called helicopters. Turns out, operating and navigating in three dimensions is much more difficult and expensive.

There is some more car-like development, e.g. https://www.aeromobil.com/
I would say that safety - and liability, of course - would be big issues. You can pull over to shoulder and call AAA on roads; harder to do that in the sky..

They are nothing more than prototypes which won't see any use.  Self-driving cars though are fully out there.  Bits of self-driving cars, such as those that parallel park themselves exist (albeit they're slow). 

[kalvado]

25 years ago, we still imagined flying cars.  No one talked about self driving cars. Today, no flying cars exist.  Self driving cars do.

Flying cars exist. They're called helicopters. Turns out, operating and navigating in three dimensions is much more difficult and expensive.

There is some more car-like development, e.g. https://www.aeromobil.com/
I would say that safety - and liability, of course - would be big issues. You can pull over to shoulder and call AAA on roads; harder to do that in the sky..

They are nothing more than prototypes which won't see any use.  Self-driving cars though are fully out there.  Bits of self-driving cars, such as those that parallel park themselves exist (albeit they're slow).

I am pretty much with you

There are some flying cars. But development seem to stuck at about same level as modern self-driving technology. And unlike self-driving, flying cars don't have development momentum or multibillion corporations  investing....

A big question for me is if self-driving would develop to the point of avoiding a deer at 100 MPH. Without that it would be an exotic toy, not a mainstream product...
I don't think it can be solved with raw computing power - which doesn't grow as fast as it used to be. Everyone is talking about cognitive computing and stuff like that; but TrueNorth - probably one of most advanced ones - "shows potential to become a good speech recognition device", or something along those lines. 

[tribar]

Self driving cars will be a DISASTER. Millions will die as a result of it. Hopefully the politicians and what it can eliminate it from happening or at least prolong it.

[Rothman]

Self driving cars will be a DISASTER. Millions will die as a result of it. Hopefully the politicians and what it can eliminate it from happening or at least prolong it.

Millions will die?  Why?

[kalvado]

Self driving cars will be a DISASTER. Millions will die as a result of it. Hopefully the politicians and what it can eliminate it from happening or at least prolong it.

Millions will die?  Why?

Because we all are going to die at some point anyway! 

[kphoger]

A big question for me is if self-driving would develop to the point of avoiding a deer at 100 MPH.

Or slowing down when a basketball just starts to bounce the wrong way off the goal in the driveway, in anticipation of the child chasing after it.
Or moving over in advance of the storm drain, in anticipation of the cyclist swinging wide of it.

[triplemultiplex]

Self driving cars are very inevitable and much closer than the pessimists think.  Newer cars can already come with computers that will tell you if you are deviating from the lane or hit the brakes to avoid a collision.  Autonomous highway travel is going to be the next big step.  Once the concept has been tested enough with passenger autos, the trucking industry is going to be all over it.  They'll see how much they'll save in fuel and reduced collisions and put their thumb on the scale in states that are dragging their feet on rules for autonomous vehicles.  Before long, you'll see platoons of semis 20 deep, bumper to bumper like a great road train rolling across the prairie.

That should be the focus right now.  Long distance highway travel.  It's easier and will have the greatest cost savings for the smallest effort.  I want to drive my car to the freeway entrance and tell it, "Take me to exit 243." Then sit back and enjoy the ride.

[noelbotevera]

Throw my hat in the pot...

Computers aren't exactly the smartest beings - you can always alter them to do your bidding. If I wanted to be a jerk in a self driving car, I could pop the hood, alter the computer by installing things like software, solder stuff to the computer, and voila - I've just changed the entire car. I know, self driving cars are going to happen, and probably within months, but computers can't operate the entire world. Besides, do ya think a computer can tell the distance between the front bumper of your car to the back bumper of the next?

[Revive 755]

Changes that I've heard may happen with self driving cars:

* More pavement marking maintenance (which wouldn't be a bad thing for everyone else)
* Signs may have messages that would be readable by the self driving cars but invisible to the human driver.

I have also heard that much more detailed mapping is going on in preparation for self driving cars - think of a computerized map that shows where roadway lanes begin and end, and also shows the width of those lanes.

Besides, do ya think a computer can tell the distance between the front bumper of your car to the back bumper of the next?

There are tools that could be installed to allow the computer to do such a thing,  Google certainly indicates plenty are available.

[kalvado]

Besides, do ya think a computer can tell the distance between the front bumper of your car to the back bumper of the next?

As already said, in terms of sensing computers can be way better than humans. It may be not a cheap set of sensors, but at the same time computer is not limited with just 2 cameras mother nature gave us. LIDAR can tell you that distance down to a fraction of inch, and take action once that distance start changing.
Problems may occur when that distance is not the only factor required to assess overall situation. Smooth traffic flow on a highway is, probably, the easiest possible scenario.

[empirestate]

A big question for me is if self-driving would develop to the point of avoiding a deer at 100 MPH.

Or slowing down when a basketball just starts to bounce the wrong way off the goal in the driveway, in anticipation of the child chasing after it.
Or moving over in advance of the storm drain, in anticipation of the cyclist swinging wide of it.

And they will develop, to all of those things. Once the system learns to identify basketballs and storm drains, anticipation is the easy part. Besides, the vehicles' reaction time will be so much better that the need for anticipation is greatly lessened to begin with.


iPhone

[jeffandnicole]

Cars and computers already interact in other ways. Many people rely on Google maps to see how traffic is flowing with the green, orange and red icons. Its become extremely dependable to within a few hundred feet. They !eed something to accurate gauge that. Maybe it's cell phones.  Maybe it's the black box in your car. But it's something. And once that technology arroved, we don't give it a second thought anymore. Once self driving cars become more common (sorry SP Cook...Self driving cars are here...they're not science fixtion) we will start to forget what we think they can't do...and wonder what more they can do for us. Say, automatically pull into a gas station and self engage with the pump to fuel up, for example.