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Self-driving cars projected to reduce injuries by 90%, save $450B annually

techspot.com

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Re: Self-driving cars projected to reduce injuries by 90%, save $450B annually

#71

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ekianjo wrote: post #66
drewrv wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will be a ton cheaper too. Lower fuel costs, maintenance costs, and labor costs. The three most expensive costs associated with operating a taxi will be lowered significantly.

By governments will probably still tax Taxi ownership just like they do now, and just like for the airline industry you'll end up with taxes doubling the price of your trip. I don't believe in a cheap future of transportation as long as government has a say in it...

Ah, because like...roads are free, just like airports and air traffic control systems.

Pesky governments building infrastructure. In a libercrazian future, the free market would make such trivialities free!

Re: Self-driving cars projected to reduce injuries by 90%, save $450B annually

#72

Post by theblackswan »

Osiris wrote: post #30

It'll probably take at least 40-50 years before autonomous vehicles become the norm. The interesting thing will be what happens in the meantime, when there's a mix of autonomous and human driven vehicles. Will the laws change to have 'autonomous only' lanes? Will they replace HOV lanes? Will autonomous vehicles be allowed to make maneuvers that human driven cars cannot in order to improve traffic flow, such as drivin…

The tech can make it possible in just 5-7 years what matters is how much time govt will take to formalize a law.. which probably you rightly said 40/50 years.

Re: Self-driving cars projected to reduce injuries by 90%, save $450B annually

#73

Post by jrs99 »

cylinder wrote: post #55
jrs99 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There would never be a need for a car in the suburbs. If i had an app that would just bring me a car and be ready at an exact time right in front of my house, bring me to a store and leave, and when twenty minutes before I'm done shopping I order another taxi to be ready for me outside the store, not need to go to the DMV or any auto shop, that would be a huge win for the suburbs.

Being driverless doesn't mean this kind of thing is necessarily going to be economically viable. You need density to optimize taxi operation and keep it affordable. There would need to be a lot of taxis driving themselves around for them to be so readily available in this kind of setting, and for that you need widespread adoption.

I'm in New Jersey which is pretty dense and already has a lot of human-driven taxi companies. It definitely might not work in a sparsely populated suburb.

Re: Self-driving cars projected to reduce injuries by 90%, save $450B annually

#74

Post by theblackswan »

With this there would be huge possibilities of new age designer automatic-cars as you will have all the place to yourself. Don't assume it to look anything like regular cars. Infact some designs will enable people to live in it. It would probably be auto-driven homes.

Re: Self-driving cars projected to reduce injuries by 90%, save $450B annually

#75

Post by ekianjo »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #71
ekianjo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By governments will probably still tax Taxi ownership just like they do now, and just like for the airline industry you'll end up with taxes doubling the price of your trip. I don't believe in a cheap future of transportation as long as government has a say in it...

Ah, because like...roads are free, just like airports and air traffic control systems. Pesky governments building infrastructure. In a libercrazian future, the free market would make such trivialities free!

Yeah, like, because, airports need to see their taxes quadruple in 10 years, with no improvement whatsoever in their infrastructures ? Isn't that very obvious to you that they are just milking the cow and not just paying back for the operational costs ? Same for motorways.

Re: Self-driving cars projected to reduce injuries by 90%, save $450B annually

#76

Post by visakanv »

loolo wrote: post #43
objclxt wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if the 1/10 of deaths are caused by computer errors then at least the problem can be fixed over time. This only follows through if you don't introduce new technology and innovations to your software (and thus new bugs), which isn't going to happen. If you look at air travel, the number of fatal accidents occurring each decade since the 1950s has stayed around the same, even though we've significantly improved autom…

The number of accidents has perhaps stayed roughly the same but there's a hell of a lot more planes flying every day now. So it's highly likely that the accident rate per flight has dropped dramatically. (Though I don't have the data handy to support either hypothesis).

This is correct. The better our flight technology gets, the more we push our planes to fly in rough weather, etc.

Re: Self-driving cars projected to reduce injuries by 90%, save $450B annually

#77

Post by hayksaakian »

cylinder wrote: post #55
jrs99 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There would never be a need for a car in the suburbs. If i had an app that would just bring me a car and be ready at an exact time right in front of my house, bring me to a store and leave, and when twenty minutes before I'm done shopping I order another taxi to be ready for me outside the store, not need to go to the DMV or any auto shop, that would be a huge win for the suburbs.

Being driverless doesn't mean this kind of thing is necessarily going to be economically viable. You need density to optimize taxi operation and keep it affordable. There would need to be a lot of taxis driving themselves around for them to be so readily available in this kind of setting, and for that you need widespread adoption.

isn't the human factor the largest cost among transportation service?

if 1/2 of your fare went to the driver normally, now it can go to having more cars available.

All I'm saying is the economics might work

Re: Self-driving cars projected to reduce injuries by 90%, save $450B annually

#78

Post by rogerbinns »

driver wrote: post #9

One of the big advantages of completely self-driving cars will be for the elderly. Thing about it, currently our grandparents and great-grandparents who cannot drive anymore rely on family/ public transport and expensive taxis to get around. Once we reach the age of our grandparents we will be much for fortunate to be able to still travel independently wherever we want. This is a massive plus to look forward to.

Linked to this is deliveries. They can be made to your door front at any time (eg the vehicle can require you use a code or scan something to unlock your delivery). The drastically lower delivery costs would reduce the need to have to go to various places.

Re: Self-driving cars projected to reduce injuries by 90%, save $450B annually

#79

Post by mistercow »

freyrs3 wrote: post #7
mistercow wrote: post #3

And perversely, if accidents happened one tenth as often, they'd become news, and people would think they were more common and dangerous than they do now. The question is whether we can get to a point of no return with self-driving cars before that effect takes hold.

I think most rational people would come to realize that even if the 1/10 of deaths are caused by computer errors then at least the problem can be fixed over time. With human error, there's not much you can do.

>With human error, there's not much you can do.

This is just it. Most people aren't rational, and they don't think statistics apply when they are causally involved. How many people have you met who think that "don't drink and drive" doesn't apply to them because they "can hold their liquor" or "have had enough practice driving drunk"?

The match up isn't even when you have "random thing happens and you die" on one side and "dangerous situation happens where your personal ability plays a small role" on the other. The only way I can see to spin it is to convince people that they don't want to be on the road with other human drivers.

Re: Self-driving cars projected to reduce injuries by 90%, save $450B annually

#80

Post by rogerbinns »

I wonder how the cars will deal with inevitable accidents - what does the self driving car prioritise? If there is no choice but to hit one of two different cars does it pick the one with the fewest occupants? Is there calculation of likely injuries (eg bounce off two cars causing less severe injuries to both than hitting one harder). Avoid all other vehicles resulting in more severe injuries to the occupant?

Cars can't stop instantly and the energy has to go somewhere.

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