Of course, a vehicle can still go around those road blocks, currently — a car _can_ drive across grass or dirt, just not terribly well. That's very different from an area-denial killswitch.
Roads are all fine, I just want them to be gravel or dirt ;). While we're dreaming that is.
I grew up in rural California and dirt roads were quite common not far out of town, it's a different way of driving and one that'll make you wonder why you aren't using a mountain bike, if you aren't hauling a bunch of kids or gear.
This all said I am beyond biased, I escaped the bay area to London at least partially because I don't want driving to be a part of my daily life. But I understand opinions vary and people back home love their cars and TV ;)
Old world streets are narrow and sometimes cobblestone. Usually enough.
Compare that with the 50 foot wide boulevards of suburbia, USA. One job I had you couldn’t even cross the street for half a mile because it was built like a freeway.
"Shabby roadways"? If there was ever a case of "first world problems", this is it.
Frankly, US roadways are really good. I was amazed by the amount of signage present, not to mention the pavement itself.
Yes there are imperfections. But when was the last time you tore apart your car's axle due to inability to avoid the 20th gaping hole you ran across in just one way of your commute?
You want shabby roads? Go to third world countries. That's the real test for self-driving cars.
Yeah the layout is mostly the same, but the costs for a dirt/gravel/cobblestone road are much less and there wouldn't be as many roads out to the middle of nowhere. There would have been decades of building density in the hearts of cities, something which is lacking now.
The government had the job of creating a flat surface. I got a surface with holes in it.
If we had a competent government they could probably just upgrade the roads nation wide with smart sensors that cars can use for guiding - along with a integration module for car manufacturers to use. But we don't have that kind of competency, so for now we're stuck with Google and Apple.
I live in Russia, and none of the roads outside of Moscow Ring Road have any markings at all. Yes, even big cities. At best the markings are painted in spring and disappear within a few months. Getting autonomous cars to work in these conditions is a huge challenge.
There's a famous saying that Russia has two problems: fools and roads, and it's just as true as when it was first coined.
Keep in mind that while the US loves its highways, many "roads" in rural areas are dirt or gravel tracks. Here's a drone shot of Hartnet Cathedral Rd in Utah:
Roads before the car were mostly dirt. Humans can walk just fine on them. If they were paved it was probably cobblestones where are again fine for walkers but too rough for cars.
It isn't clear if bicycles or cars drove paved roads in the early days though: both need smooth surfaces to be useful. Bicycles started it first, but it isn't clear how much success they had.
The army's needs of roads came last. The Civil War was fought around railroads (and boats) for long distance travel, and horses for the rest. Only after WWII did the army really realize the advantages of cars and switch to that mode in their plans.
And they might have to abandon some streets and only keep up the ones necessary to get around from property to property. We might even see some gravel roads in some places. :/
With the exception of the loss of gas tax revenue, I think potholes become much more manageable in such a world.
No lanes and cars constantly talking to each other means that potholes are simply avoided with no meaningful loss of momentum.
It's also not hard to envision automated pothole filling vehicles that are constantly roaming, waiting to hear other autonomous vehicles discovering road damage, and then drop their load (colorful metaphors abound) over the hole. Maybe it's a temporary patch for humans to follow up on later, maybe it's a permanent fix.
Seems like this could actually lead to the elimination of large potholes entirely. They start small, are detected and reported by autonomous vehicles, and are fixed by other autonomous vehicles running 24x7.
I could see autonomous vehicles working in a city, but not out in the country where a driveway might be an unmarked dirt path.
reply