

All aboard the 'road train?' - frederickcook
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/01/18/sartre.platoon.road.train/index.html

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electromagnetic
What happens when the truck driver guns it on a yellow and has 6 cars behind
it? I'm guessing 2 or 3 T-bones and about 4 hours clearing up an intersection.

For this system to work, all traffic lights will need to be reliably
broadcasting their status and how long they're going to be remaining in it so
that either the fleet can stop, or so that some of the cars can drop out to
avoid running a red.

It would also need to communicate with other vehicles. I can turn right (or
left in some occasions here in Canada) on a red if I've got the room, but how
do I tell if my fleet has the room? If the truck driver becomes liable for
risking my vehicle then he's only ever going to move on his light and when he
knows he has the time, which will only cripple intersections with congestion.

It's a great idea and I can't wait for the day, but our road system is overly
complex as it is and these systems will need to be equally as complex to
guarantee safety.

Edit: Also the driver of the fleet vehicles would need to know the destination
and what exit the lead is taking. If I'm going to Montreal, I don't want to
end up in downtown Toronto and spend forever trying to get back on the
highway. Similarly, it will be especially dangerous if I'm just 'dropped' from
the fleet due to a communication problem or if my vehicle doesn't follow
because the lead is exiting before my destination is set to.

IMO this system would do best as an advancement of an auto-driver system that
can read lights and signals, etc. itself without endangering the driver.

~~~
lwat
This system is for highway traffic, there's no traffic lights. The maximum
number of vehicles in a road train is 5. Obviously it has all kinds of failure
recovery systems and in fact some top-end BMWs can already safely pull over to
the side of the road if the driver suddenly has a heart attack or is otherwise
incapacitated.

~~~
pyre

      > safely pull over to the side of the road
    

I hope it can detect when the 'side of the road' is the edge of a cliff with
no barrier.

~~~
lwat
Er... why wouldn't it?

~~~
pyre
Because it was only tested on highways/roads in flat areas, and not in the
mountains/hills?

~~~
lwat
And you think all of the engineers at BMW would never consider that particular
possibility?

What the fuck.

------
CapitalistCartr
We can already build self-driving cars. The obstacles now are societal and
legal. In the next 5-10 years they will become common, which solves both the
traffic problems of safety and traffic jams.

~~~
lwat
In 10 years they'll be common but not in the USA. Too many legal obstacles to
overcome for just one decade.

~~~
maxawaytoolong
Why do you think that? I don't believe there is any legal precedent
surrounding autonomous vehicles.

~~~
lwat
The USA has very strict liability laws. Any mistake is likely to mean massive
lawsuits in the USA even if the system is significantly safer than human
drivers. All these tests are happening in the EU, and the EU is already
getting ready to implement these systems.

~~~
jerf
For what it's worth, it flows the other way too. If computer drivers are safer
under some circumstances, lawsuits will be filed about how the computer
_wasn't_ driving the car.

My father works in the car industry. When I was young (though I heard about
this later so the memory is fresher than that), he was called as an industry
witness in a lawsuit in which his company was being sued for _not_ putting
antilock brakes on this particular car, "resulting" (for some value thereof)
in a fatal accident. At the time of the accident, antilock brakes were
actually an option on the car... an $X,000 option in mid-1980s money. The idea
of putting antilock brakes on all the cars was an economic absurdity.

The car company lost.

I know the cynical answer is to say computer will face major legal barriers
but I'm not sure it's that simple. One can look at the lawsuit-happy USA and
readily see a world in which licensing restrictions are actually significantly
tightened and it becomes _illegal_ to drive a car under most circumstances
using the exact same logic. Conclusion? Beats me.

------
jacques_chester
The expression "Road Train" is used in Australia and elsewhere to refer to
very long trucks. In the Northern Territory (where I am), a truck can pull as
many as 4 carriages.

Passing one on the highways is a test of endurance.

Having one go past at 130 kmh (80 mph) on the other side of the road is an
exercise in gripping the daylights out of your steering wheel.

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draebek
Anyone else disturbed/amused to see a Windows screensaver in the bottom right
on the dash computer of the guy in a "following" vehicle who's reading the
paper?

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jimboyoungblood
_The research is part of the European Union-backed SARTRE project (Safe Road
Trains for the Environment) and it's the first time that "vehicle platooning"
technology has been demonstrated outside of a simulator._

Uh, the PATH Project at Berkeley demonstrated platooning over a decade ago:

<http://www.path.berkeley.edu/nahsc/>

------
Cushman
Thought this notable: _SARTRE researchers say that around 80% of accidents on
the road are due to human error._

I bet if we extend the definition of "human error" to "something that a human
couldn't react to, but a computer could have" that number is a lot higher.

Around 100%, probably.

~~~
philwelch
The biggest unpreventable hazard is probably deer.

~~~
jerf
And I've seen demonstrations of sensor platforms that can detect deer far more
readily than humans. ISTR that at least at one point you could buy cars with
IR HUDs, though I don't recall reading anything about that in a while; I don't
know if that's because they don't really work or because they're just boringly
common by now on cars I can't afford.

Also, assuming a very good computer driver, a computer driver will have a much
better sense of when they are in trouble. They might refuse to drive fast in a
low-visibility situation. I see a world in which computers "want" to drive 55
in areas currently labelled 25 (though of course they will honor the speed
limit) and in some cases will insist on driving 25 through areas labelled 55
that turn out to be something like forest too dense to see through that may be
harboring deer or something, or other situations in which a human would
blithely speed through but the computer is "scared". Arguably correctly.

And per my other message, when the computers are tweaked to ignore that and
then hit a deer, lawsuits.

It's gonna be interesting times.

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jamesbritt
They called it SARTRE?

Are they _looking_ for "No Exit" jokes?

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georgecmu
duplicate. yesterday's submission:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2117025>

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rorrr
Seems like a nice idea, but it wouldn't work well with

1) Traffic lights

2) Roundabouts

3) Yield/stop signs

~~~
zalew
2) I assume you're from the US - you're really freaked out by roundabouts :)
It's just a type of intersection like any another, in Europe or the Middle
East no one cares and they're everywhere.

Left-turns on classic intersections (without separate light for turning) are
the most dangerous, passing a roundabout is safe. Even if there's a collision
on a roundabout, there are no fatalities due to the relatively slow speed and
no significant difference of speed between vehicles, while a left-turn
collision can be deadly or at least most of them are very destructive.

~~~
rorrr
That wasn't my point. I know they are safe. But you have to yield, and that
breaks the "train".

