Fancy sitting in a Level 4 driverless car roaming London? Get in line World+dog will be let loose with Level 4 driverless cars in London, the Greenwich Gateway consortium has declared. The vehicles themselves have been trundling around the southeastern London borough for about a year, as part of a wider trial led by the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) and the government. For the next four …
Out in the sticks to try?
Ideally preset route will be circular tour of various pubs including a stop off point near my home and that of a few of my friends.
That will enable testing of driverless car in only situation they are wanted - saving someone from the dread designated driver role.
"Are you sure?"
One look at the photo shows that vehicle couldn't handle a brick left in the road scenario. With a top speed of 10mph they couldn't participate in most road scenarios anyway which is why they have their own special road with their own lane and markings.
The whole scheme is pathetic, irrelevant, and a waste of money which of course means it must be...
"jointly funded by government and industry"
Funny how they always manage to misspell taxpayer.
>Letting me take a nap on the way to / from work is pretty high on my list of desired use cases, too.
Driverless cars aren't needed for that if you catch the train however you do run the risk of loss of wallet, mobile phone and bag plus to add insult to injury your buttocks may have been fondled and you wake up 14 stops past your station.
In fact there's a perfect use case near here. There are two villages on either side of the A36 to Bath, both with narrow streets. The bus service to Bath takes quite a while to navigate the villages.
A driverless microbus could travel around the villages and pick up and drop passengers at a bus stop on the main road. It would be a fixed route. It would save time, driver cost, and allow a more frequent service.
I am sure many other places have the same opportunities - I recall a bus service in Newcastle that goes round a sequence of housing estates parallel to a main road, another opportunity for a fixed route with dropoff points on the main road to the city.
It would save time, driver cost, and allow a more frequent service.
And be hideously uneconomic, due to the multiplicity of vehicles. Not to mention that in the UK, these micro buses would soon be used as mobile toilets, brothels and drug booths. A bit like trains are now, despite the supposed presence of staff, dedicated transport police and internal CCTV.
So long as the user's pay for the service without demanding a subsidy, I suppose that I shouldn't complain.
@AC - Cannot say any of teh trains I use have had obvious signs of drug / brothel use -maybe I just pick the dull trains. Though no need for brothel facilities on the sardine specials when people are tightly crammed in the aisle & you're never sure if its an umbrella handle or something else pressing against your buttocks
A driverless microbus could travel around the villages and pick up and drop passengers at a bus stop on the main road. It would be a fixed route. It would save time, driver cost, and allow a more frequent service.
To save a few minutes of driver time at £10 an hour you have to buy an extra autonomous vehicle which is parked out of use most of the time. This may not be the economic miracle you are looking for.
"A driverless microbus could travel around the villages and pick up and drop passengers at a bus stop on the main road. "
Yup, and a set of them can entrain themselves for peak periods.
Such a bus-train would majorly mitigate the stupid costs of running 40-seat busses when there are only a half dozen passengers AND the stupidly high roading costs of running 40 seat busses vs 40 cars (the 40 seat bus when empty does at least 10,000 times the road damage of 40 cars with 4 passengers onboard)
Automated vehicles will make some big changes to how perceive both taxi and bus services. There's a huge potential for blending (bus in peak periods, taxi in offpeak, etc)
ideally you could "subscribe" to a service where you can get a car within a few minutes, better than a taxi and on call for semi-emergencies, with a regular taxi service as a backup for unexpected demand.
Electric car fans would probably appreciate this kind of service the most. They could _ALL_ be electric, and would re-charge themselves at the "base" where they're all kept.
Ideally the service would include some 'long distance' vehicles that are gasoline powered, but otherwise your average trip to the mall or picking up groceries would be covered by your subscription.
If it's properly managed, cars will "re-arrange" themselves between storage lots as economically as possible, maybe driving you to the store, and parking at a different lot, then getting you at the store, and parking at the original lot [maybe not even the same car, but so what]. That kind of thing.
Best usage would be for people who have a hard time driving or can't get a license for some reason. TOTAL mobility. It's a good thing.
I doubt they'll replace privately owned vehicles, or human-driven vehicles, especially for long trips or "out in the boondocks" excursions. Still, I'm looking forward to seeing these things.
But I doubt they'll replace cabs. Sometimes you just need to have a driver, to handle luggage, for the extra customer service, to get local info from, yotta yotta.
And then public transportation is most likely going to remain cheaper than a "driverless car subscription". But the 'driverless car subscription' should be cheaper than a car payment + insurance + fuel + maintenance (and that would be the selling feature).
A friend of mine used to subscribe to a service where he could get a car to drive with an hours' notice or something like that. It worked pretty well for him until he started driving EVERY day and then he bought one for himself. Up until that point he'd take the train to work. When that became too inconvenient, he started driving. But if it had been available at BOTH ends of the trip, to the station, then from station to work, then back to the station, etc. he might've continued taking the train.
That will enable testing of driverless car in only situation they are wanted - saving someone from the dread designated driver role.
I agree, that is the primary use case, however... there are others.
Disabled people who cannot currently drive might enjoy the greater independence self driving cars can bring.
My personal most frequent use case would be to take me to work while napping in the morning, and bring me home again in the evening while I get in a bit of gaming time, or study something, or maybe nap again if it was a 'long lunch'.
"In practice a level 4 vehicle is capable of handling "most" road scenarios it may encounter, though retains the capability to throw control back at the human if it can't cope."
Not true. L4 means that the car is capable of full autonomy (i.e. it NEVER needs to hand back control to a human) but only when driving within a particular constrained situation or scenario. In this case that limitation is geographic: they can only drive around one area of Greenwich presumably on roads that have been mapped for the project.
"Allowing these unsafe vehicles on the roadways is inexcusable."
They're arguably safer than a piece of complex machinery piloted by an unstable, highly emotional monkey which statistically is likely to attempt to use the machine as a weapon from time to time.
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