Future Cars: Electric and Autonomous Vehicles

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QuietBlue
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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby QuietBlue » November 10th, 2017, 4:12 pm

That depends on whether you see them as something extra, or something that should be part of the minimum standards. To me, it's the latter. Especially since they don't seem like a difficult thing to fix.

I'm not against self-driving vehicles, or even limited road testing. I'm just puzzled by the lack of foresight on the manufacturer's part here. Hopefully they can correct it soon.

tmart
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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby tmart » November 10th, 2017, 4:33 pm

There are basically two standards that are relevant here:

- Are self-driving cars completely safe?

- Are self-driving cars demonstrably safer than human drivers in equivalent situations?

The former is clearly too restrictive--millions of people get on airplanes every day, despite the fact that they're only mostly, not completely, safe. The latter is clearly too permissive--we treat engineering and human errors differently, and when an autonomous car drives someone's kid off a cliff, nobody's going to be all that comforted by the idea that, statistically, it was very unlikely.

It's a hard, open, and somewhat philosophical question where we set the bar. I can guarantee Silicon Valley is going to go to Congress and push hard for the latter standard, and taxi drivers are going to take to the streets in support of the former.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Silophant » November 11th, 2017, 12:43 am

Another wrinkle to that issue is that, while neither human drivers or self-driving cars are completely safe, our road system is full of engineered mitigations of specific ways that human drivers are unsafe (curb reaction space, rumble strips, bike lane buffers, etc). However, self-driving vehicles, even if they are overall as safe as human drivers, are, as we're seeing, unsafe in totally different ways. It's going to take time and experience to even figure out what that shortcomings of self-driving cars even are, and even longer to retrofit hundreds of thousands of lane miles with whatever mitigations traffic engineers come up with. Until then, self-driving cars are going to keep getting into collisions that seem trivially avoidable to human eyes, and each one will be a significant stepback in public acceptance of autonomous vehicles, no matter how statistically safe they are.
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DanPatchToget
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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby DanPatchToget » December 12th, 2017, 10:55 pm

http://www.startribune.com/mndot-tests- ... 463742663/

I'm tempted to check this out even if I have to deal with Super Bowl crowds.

Multimodal
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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Multimodal » December 12th, 2017, 11:20 pm

Another wrinkle to that issue is that, while neither human drivers or self-driving cars are completely safe, our road system is full of engineered mitigations of specific ways that human drivers are unsafe (curb reaction space, rumble strips, bike lane buffers, etc). However, self-driving vehicles, even if they are overall as safe as human drivers, are, as we're seeing, unsafe in totally different ways. It's going to take time and experience to even figure out what that shortcomings of self-driving cars even are, and even longer to retrofit hundreds of thousands of lane miles with whatever mitigations traffic engineers come up with. Until then, self-driving cars are going to keep getting into collisions that seem trivially avoidable to human eyes, and each one will be a significant stepback in public acceptance of autonomous vehicles, no matter how statistically safe they are.
As we see the occasional failings of self-driving cars, and as the best cities are closing off their densest business districts to any & all cars, I think self-driving cars will work best initially on divided highways and the newest suburbs’ major roads, where roads are straight, lanes are wide, striping is reflective, bright, & consistently applied, lanes are dedicated (straight or left-turn only, e.g.), and traffic lights govern traffic flow.

Those seem to be the easiest problems to solve, the low-hanging fruit. Over time, as machine learning gets better (more data), they may also work in inner ring suburbs, residential areas of cities, and older cities.

But I think gas-powered cars will be out sooner than most people think.

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Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Multimodal » December 12th, 2017, 11:37 pm

http://www.startribune.com/mndot-tests- ... 463742663/

I'm tempted to check this out even if I have to deal with Super Bowl crowds.
The Edina Transportation Commission is studying where to loop a senior citizen “circulator” bus.

A fixed-path loop is a perfect application for this type of bus. Someday.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby mulad » December 13th, 2017, 9:56 am

That vehicle was on an episode of Fully Charged in October. It's a fairly slow vehicle with a "theoretical" max speed of 40 km/h (25 mph), and they said the in-service speed was more typically in the 10-20 km/h (6-12 mph) range. Okay for a very dense place, but I suspect this particular vehicle wouldn't cut it in the suburbs. I'm sure this is classified as a low-speed vehicle, so it is probably illegal for it to go on any roadways where the speed limit exceeds 35 mph.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k5TDZ6irG4

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Multimodal » December 14th, 2017, 10:16 pm

That was fun to watch, thanks for the link. Yeah, it looks like that particular vehicle isn’t much faster than walking.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby DanPatchToget » February 20th, 2018, 10:42 am

http://www.southwestjournal.com/news/gr ... -greenway/

We better not be shelving the Midtown Greenway LRT for this.

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VacantLuxuries
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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby VacantLuxuries » February 20th, 2018, 11:19 am

If it gets transit infrastructure built in the corridor this side of 2030 and it doesn't involve giving up the bikeway, why not?

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby MNdible » February 20th, 2018, 11:32 am

There was a big push back around 1999 or so to put buses in the trench, but the MGC rallied to kill that idea.

Bakken2016
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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Bakken2016 » February 20th, 2018, 11:51 am

There was a big push back around 1999 or so to put buses in the trench, but the MGC rallied to kill that idea.
Would that resolution from 1999 prevent operations of these small buses too? I think that running them would take away the usage from Pedestrians and Bicyclists. Midtown Rail should be a priority once SWLRT is built!

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby BoredAgain » February 20th, 2018, 2:11 pm

Where are they thinking it would run? Blocking the bike/walking path? I doubt it would handle the terrain challenges if it wasn't on the existing path. If it isn't blocking the path, the other half of the greenway is separated by a fence and "not accessible".

Also, a lot of that article talks about getting people that aren't near existing transit spines. That is essentially a short distance automated taxi service provided with public dollars. That sounds like a tremendous waste to me.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby tmart » February 20th, 2018, 3:11 pm

Where are they thinking it would run? Blocking the bike/walking path? I doubt it would handle the terrain challenges if it wasn't on the existing path. If it isn't blocking the path, the other half of the greenway is separated by a fence and "not accessible".

Also, a lot of that article talks about getting people that aren't near existing transit spines. That is essentially a short distance automated taxi service provided with public dollars. That sounds like a tremendous waste to me.
I won't be surprised if AV pushers try to argue that they should run in bike lanes (etc) because of their purported safety. The AV lobby generally shows a very poor awareness of geographic factors.

MNdible
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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby MNdible » February 20th, 2018, 4:04 pm

You guys saw that this was just running between Hennepin and Lyndale, right? It's not a real service. It's just a little demonstration project.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby EOst » February 20th, 2018, 4:34 pm

It's only 2 meters across, and it will probably move slower than most cyclists on a bad day, so it shouldn't be too much of an impediment.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Bakken2016 » February 20th, 2018, 4:55 pm

It's only 2 meters across, and it will probably move slower than most cyclists on a bad day, so it shouldn't be too much of an impediment.
It still makes me worry that they will scrap Midtown LRT for something like this. Midtown LRT should be built, 13 min crosstown would be a major improvement.

talindsay
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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby talindsay » February 20th, 2018, 5:09 pm

It still makes me worry that they will scrap Midtown LRT for something like this. Midtown LRT should be built, 13 min crosstown would be a major improvement.
I strongly agree. This sort of thing is a great straw man for killing real investment.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Multimodal » February 20th, 2018, 5:35 pm

Also, a lot of that article talks about getting people that aren't near existing transit spines. That is essentially a short distance automated taxi service provided with public dollars. That sounds like a tremendous waste to me.
Yeah, it’s proposed as a last-mile solution, and then in the next breath they talk about it as a solution for a transit line. Makes no sense.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby DanPatchToget » February 20th, 2018, 10:27 pm

Also, a lot of that article talks about getting people that aren't near existing transit spines. That is essentially a short distance automated taxi service provided with public dollars. That sounds like a tremendous waste to me.
Yeah, it’s proposed as a last-mile solution, and then in the next breath they talk about it as a solution for a transit line. Makes no sense.
In this country, and with our current not-so-friendly-towards-transit government, there will be more emphasis on AVs as transit line replacements. Meanwhile in other countries where their governments are more friendly towards transit (basically any European country) the emphasis will likely be on AVs being a last mile solution to/from a transit stop.

Midtown LRT could be built by 2030. Hell, it could've been built in 1998 when freight trains were rerouted out of that corridor. But that requires competent transit planners who aren't just focusing on trying to bring high quality transit to transit-hostile areas and politicians who don't automatically say "but what about autonomous cars?".


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