Get ready to disband the Road Safety Unit!

There may soon be a day when the need for a dedicated squad of eagle eyed and ready to write police officers, solely on patrol to keep our roads safe may come to an end.

No more need for radar guns, nor debates over whether that really was a stop your car made. No need to head for court, for a court will never request your appearance. Indeed the whole process of motorist and police officer may be changed forever and the only catch is you’ll never drive your car again.

GM is suggesting that within ten years, they will have off the assembly lines and into your driveway the first of a new line of driverless cars, automobiles linked by computer chips to ensure safety and cut down on the mayhem of the world’s roadways.

While it all sounds like something you would read in Popular Mechanics, GM is quite adamant that the future is very close and a change is coming very fast.

Describing the project as very much reality and not science fiction, the company plans to test driverless car technology by 2015 and have cars on the road around 2018.

Of course safer roads could actually mean less money in the province’s communities as less and less traffic fines would be available to top up the budgets of our cities, there is after all a little bit of money in a little bit of mayhem.

But the plans from GM are interesting and would be a major shift in driver evolution, the only thing is if the computer crashes and then the car crashes, who do you call first, ICBC or your computer support department?

Then again if the price of gas keeps going up the job of the traffic officer will be even simpler, nobody will be able to afford to drive anyways, making that one lonely department...

Globe and Mail--GM driving for driverless cars

GM driving for driverless cars
TOM KRISHER
Associated Press
January 6, 2008 at 9:53 PM EST

DETROIT — Cars that drive themselves — even parking at their destination — could be ready for sale within a decade, General Motors Corp. executives say.

GM, parts suppliers, university engineers and other auto makers all are working on vehicles that could revolutionize short- and long-distance travel. And Tuesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas GM chief executive officer Rick Wagoner will devote part of his speech to the driverless vehicles.

“This is not science fiction,” Larry Burns, GM's vice-president for research and development, said in a recent interview.

The most significant obstacles facing the vehicles could be human rather than technical: government regulation, liability laws, privacy concerns and people's passion for the automobile and the control it gives them.

Much of the technology already exists for vehicles to take the wheel: radar-based cruise control, motion sensors, lane-change warning devices, electronic stability control and satellite-based digital mapping. And automated vehicles could dramatically improve life on the road, reducing crashes and congestion.

If people are interested.

“Now the question is what does society want to do with it?” Mr. Burns said. “You're looking at these issues of congestion, safety, energy and emissions. Technically there should be no reason why we can't transfer to a totally different world.”

GM plans to use an inexpensive computer chip and an antenna to link vehicles equipped with driverless technologies. The first use likely would be on highways; people would have the option to choose a driverless mode while they still would control the vehicle on local streets, Mr. Burns said.

He said the company plans to test driverless car technology by 2015 and have cars on the road around 2018.

Sebastian Thrun, co-leader of the Stanford University team that finished second among six teams completing a 96-kilometre Pentagon-sponsored race of driverless cars in November, said GM's goal is technically attainable. But he said he wasn't confident cars would appear in showrooms within a decade.

“There's some very fundamental, basic regulations in the way of that vision in many countries,” said Prof. Thrun, a professor of computer science and electrical engineering.

The U.S. Defense Department contest, which initially involved 35 teams, showed the technology isn't ready for prime time. One team was eliminated after its vehicle nearly charged into a building, while another vehicle mysteriously pulled into a house's carport and parked itself.

Prof. Thrun said a key benefit of the technology eventually will be safer roads and reducing the roughly 42,000 U.S. traffic deaths that occur annually — 95 per cent of which he said are caused by human mistakes.

“We might be able to cut those numbers down by a factor of 50 per cent,” Prof. Thrun said. “Just imagine all the funerals that won't take place.”

Other challenges include updating vehicle codes and figuring out who would be liable in a crash and how to cope with blown tires or obstacles in the road. But the systems could be developed to tell motorists about road conditions, warn of crashes or stopped vehicles ahead and prevent collisions in intersections.

Later versions of driverless technology could reduce jams by directing vehicles to space themselves close together, almost as if they were cars in a train, and maximize the use of space on a freeway, he said.

“It will really change society, very much like the transition from a horse to a car,” Prof. Thrun said.

The U.S. government has pushed technology to help drivers avoid crashes, most notably electronic stability controls that help prevent rollovers. The systems are required on new passenger vehicles starting with the 2012 model year.

Vehicle-to-vehicle communication and technology allowing cars to talk with highway systems could come next.

Still in debate are how to address drivers' privacy, whether current vehicles can be retrofitted and how many vehicles would be need the systems to develop an effective network.