Cars parking themselves?

[Adam Y.]

ian - why bother automating the car? just make lousy drivers walk or take the bus.

Hmm... I believe there all ready is an autonomous car. It also isn't a matter of lousy drivers. It's a matter of machines respond quicker than humans do and they usually don't panic when problems arise.

When I heard that California was going to put a ban on talking on the phone while driving, I was very upset because there are dozens of other things far more distracting than talking on the phone. Also, I thought it is my personal right to talk on my own phone while driving in my own vehicle. But after the s**t I see on the road every day, I now fully support any legislation that will prohibit the use of cell phones while driving. Americans get so easily destracted while driving. Just today there was an accident on the freeway because of the rain (and somebody not being focused). Then another driver slows down to look at the accident, and they crash. Heck, most cars have cruise control and a good alignment and you don't even have to use your feet or your hands for going straight anyhow. Driving has become too easy. The requirements for driver's ed and training are too low. Testing is not done often enough.

Americans get distracted enough while walking and talking on cell phones let alone driving. I saw someone walk into the middle of a busy intersection while talking on her cell phone without even paying attention to traffic. Traffic pileups in the rain is another story though in California which is a matter of ignoring safety laws. I have watched shows about how if fog/rain in the west is in the right conditions then you can't avoid an accident that is up ahead if you are traveling too fast.

[abeD]

Florida has by far the easiest license exam. For me I went to the DMV where the tester got in the car with me and told me to drive around a fairly empty parking lot, do a 3-point turn, and park the car. That was it. I didn't even have to go out onto the street...


Now if that's not easy i don't know what is.

[Greg McCoy]

There are lots of logistical problems to implementing "automatic" cars, here are a few I just thought of:

• The street departments seem to have a hard enough time trying to keep the streets decent the way they are, I can't imagine them trying to implement equipment to automate vehicles.
  
• What American wants to spend tax dollars on roads for cars that drive themselves? Driving a car is a right many people wouldn't want to give up lightly, and adding features to our roads so cars can drive themselves reliably is going to be a challenge.
  
• What happens to the thousands of existing cars? Are they just junk? If you don't require everyone to have an automated car, are the roads any safer? How would automated cars react to non-automated cars?
  
• To what degree would people be able to drive manually? How would you transition from automatic to manual driving?

Not to say it's impossible, but it probably won't be happening in the near future. If you're going to go to all of this trouble to automatically drive a car, it seems like you might as well have a really good metro train system (with your Segway to travel from stations to destinations and vice versa )

[VGMasterShadow]

The idea is just plain looney. This could cause god-knows-what-kind-of-calamity on the road. Hate to see these in cars that are driven by bad drivers.

[IMDWalrus]

Just what we need...another way to distract rivers.

To be honest, though, you haven't seen bad drivers until you've been in Michigan. It's the only place I've seen where the speed limit is the minimum speed that most people drive at. (Then again, I haven't traveled very far and I'm a stupid teenager. What do I know?)

For the most part, anything that can take a person's eyes or focus off of the road shouldn't be allowed in cars. I understand using things like the radio or cupholders, but...TV? Websites? Karaoke? Those just sound like recipes for disaster.

For what it's worth, though, Michigan has a very structured driver's ed program. It includes two segments of classroom education, six hours of driving with a licensed instructor, and an hour-long road test that includes freeway driving. You also have to hold the permit for each level of the instruction for a set period of time before you can move on to the next stage. The program is only in effect for people under 18, but it's a start...We just need more states to adopt programs like this one. What do we have to lose?

[tkwetzel]

Originally Posted by IMDWalrus

To be honest, though, you haven't seen bad drivers until you've been in Michigan. I'm almost positive that we're the only state where the speed limit is the MINIMUM speed that most people drive at.

Sorry...but I do believe most people in every state drive using the speed limit as a minimum, at least in most places where I've been. And high speed does not mean that a driver is bad or good. Most of the people that I know and consider to drive poorly drive slower than I do.

[suneel112]

Does the car have crab drive or does it use the axle. Both would be great ways to parallel park, but a crab system would be the best to park under any circumstance.
Speed limit is the minimum:
Not really. During a trip, my family was driving through Virginia, going only 81 mph (limit was 70, methinks), and we got a really hefty (somewhere between $80 and $200, its too long back).
They also had a portable radometer that said "School zone...you are going:" It read 36 on it when I was a few blocks away, and I slowed down before it, but just as I passed by it, I slammed the accelerator, but it didn't tell me my speed. I should have gone 60 before it and run over some people ...or not.

[Wetzel]

As a complement to that, here is a hypothesized evolution of a transition to an automated highway system.

Personally, I think that the ability for the car to parallel park itself is a useful and cool feature. More useful would be teaching it in drivers ed.


Wetzel

[Squirrelrock]

Originally Posted by suneel112

Speed limit is the minimum:
Not really. During a trip, my family was driving through Virginia, going only 81 mph (limit was 70, methinks), and we got a really hefty (somewhere between $80 and $200, its too long back).
They also had a portable radometer that said "School zone...you are going:" It read 36 on it when I was a few blocks away, and I slowed down before it, but just as I passed by it, I slammed the accelerator, but it didn't tell me my speed. I should have gone 60 before it and run over some people ...or not.

i live in VA, and the max speed limit (the highest the signs will say) is 65mph, i belive.

and on those porta schoolzone signs, I have hit 25 going past one on a bike, according to it, so they probably get your speed and add 5 to 10 mph to it. (Actually, it could have been correct, I was going downhill very fast )