Robocars - Autonomous Drive, Self-driving, Driver-less cars

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Or ride a bike.
Predicated on humans lazy gene that keeps every urban centre in UK gridlocked every day at happy hours

Predicated on humans lazy gene that keeps every urban centre in UK gridlocked every day at happy hours>

Actually adressing gridlock is relatively easy: price it out. It is currently quite easy to monitor intersections using smart image capture/sensoring and ticket anyone-- willing or not-- caught in the gridlock-- see, for example, the California Anti-Gridlock Act of 1987. Yellow grids or warning signs are clearly insufficient. Conventional ticketing takes too long-- an average of 10 min. and an increase in congestion--- and does not have a big enough a net. Increasing the chances of being penalized as well as the price of gridlock for those involved (cost of the citation which in California is currently around $300 but also indirectly via insurrance premiums) vs the increased speed of traffic from their reduction might not wholly end gridlock but significantly reduce it.. and perhaps also train motorists some manners. The problem right now is that in many countries getting into a gridlock is not punishable-- in Germany, for example, even blocking an ambulance or emergency vehicle results in, at most, in a fine less than that of riding a bicycle without working lights (by daylight)-- or hardly enforced (and when citations are issues they are relatively low).

Actually adressing gridlock is relatively easy:

'Gridlock' is a traffic phenomenon possible only in gridded cities:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gridlock

It cannot occur in less regularly-planned cities. (Incidentally, all gridded cities also have bits that aren't.) It does occur in gridded cities, but typically only very briefly in fairly small areas and is much less of a problem than what the term is incorrectly used to refer to, i.e. perfectly ordinary congestion. The term has become so widespread mainly because people seem to love the sound of it. :)

Fortunately, we don't need 'gridlock' to talk about a real problem, and common-or-garden congestion will do fine.

price it out.

Road user charging that is adequate has not been devised yet. It's always poleaxed by political pressures. The agenda has essentially been stale for ten years or so. Part of the reason for the inertia has been the uncertainty over which technical solution to go for. The days of static number plate recognition (as in the London Congestion Charge) are numbered, as so many other possibilities exist now.

Another problem with road user charging is, simply, that it doesn't solve the underlying problem--people go where there are economic opportunities of which they want to avail themselves. With a geographically well-distributed economy, this wouldn't be a problem, but in cities like London, economic opportunities are very unevenly distributed.

Even if road use was made more expensive in economic hotspots, this would most likely not contribute to a 'cooling down' there; rather, the 'inverse prestige' of such additional cost would probably be reflected in higher prices and, paradoxically, even more economic clout. (I believe this is the main long-term effect of the Central London Congestion Charge.)

The only solution is proper work on land use planning, namely deliberate, government-led more even distribution of (economic) activity. Given the influence wielded by landowners in Central London, this is, of course, exceedingly unlikely to happen.

Great answer Oliver
I was on the way to reply to @EdwardZ who may or may not have been replying from U.S.
The idea that blocking grids and raising charges for that behaviour is interesting but as Oliver points out isn't part of Euro infra.
why exactly the authorities don't have any mitigation for walking speed peak time sole occupancy vehicles is a mystery in U.K...

£500/day congestion charge. Sorted.

When do car manufactures expect autonomous vehicles to be available...

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^data from Steer Davies Gleave robocar car expert presented at hackney cycling conference

As everyone has, I assume, already heard a nasty crash apparently occured this past 7 May when a Tesla-S apparently did not see the white side of a turning tractor trailor and drove "right through it" (the driver was apparently playing "Harry Potter" and so not attentive to road obstacles).
First indications in the news is that the camera sensors could not segment the tractor side from the sky. While this could indeed have been the case what I find quite disturbing is the fundamental lack of LiDar and other sensors that might have worked around the blindness-- with computer vision there will always be conditions where a ANN is either blind or sees things that are not there (both sides effects of CNNs).
In defense of Tesla their current "autopilot" is not really a solution to "self driving" but to "auto-steering"-- or, more properly, steering assist. Interestingly the same driver apparently was also saved from a near crash by the "auto-pilot" a month earlier-- perhaps why he put so much trust in the technology (which despite this most unfortunate accident still demonstrates a dramatic increase in safety over wholly man controlled autos).

You might have mentioned that the Tesla driver was actually killed:

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/us-government-investigating-first-known-fatality-involving-selfdriving-car-after-tesla-ploughs-into-a3285576.html

The Tesla statement added: “This is the first known fatality in just over 130 million miles where Autopilot was activated.

“Among all vehicles in the US, there is a fatality every 94 million miles.”

And yes, it's not the same as 'self-driving'.

How do they know the 130 million miles figure? Computer tracking of these cars?

Estimated US fuel sales / avg mpg of US vehicles / US road fatality rate attributable to vehicles.

How do they know the 130 million miles figure? Computer tracking of these cars?

And yes.

To an extreme.

They'll be some analytics in the software that register when it's on, how long it was on for, how far the car travelled with it on, etc.

They'll be some analytics in the software that register when it's on, how long it was on for, how far the car travelled with it on, etc.>

Load of data collection. All the testbeds are collecting data and its a real "Big Data" issue with strong demands for analytic collaboration-- a number of German automakers and suppliers are whence joining forced under the flag of ASAM and the Eclipse Foundation to establish some open standards.

On the subject of data collection etc, I enjoyed reading [link removed because it wasn't the one I meant]

I can't actually find the link I meant, seems to have been removed, it was a blog post describing how Top Gear has misrepresented one of their cars.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37117831

That will piss off sooo many people. Cabbies as well as uber drivers.

In fact with so many people about to lose work because of this tech, no one will be able to afford to take a trip in these

Change happens. I still think this will be for the best.

For as long as humans have been able to fashion tools, the advance of technology has always meant that people have lost jobs through redundancy. As ever, people like yourself are decrying the loss of jobs.

Isn't it time that we do the intelligent thing and learn the lesson that has been taught to us repeatedly for millenia and apply ourselves to how we might reshape the workforce before people lose their jobs? Or are we still too attached to the tired old sackcloth and ashes routine and need to wait for the bad thing to happen first?

This is also based on the fallacy that there are a set number of jobs in an economy.

I suspect that the people who will lose their jobs due to self driving vehicles are contact centre staff- the vehicle (if, say a DPD van) will still need an operative, but when they're not actively delivering a parcel they are now a passenger - who can be answering the phone to customers whilst looking at a laptop screen. No further need for contact centres, which burn a lot of power, take up a lot of space, and have high overheads.

That one, yeah that one. The bad thing happens first and then we complain about it one.

I've thought for a while that the reason why Uber evidently received so much venture capital funding was precisely because of this plan to form a corporation that would be able to drastically cut its staff. As Neil says, for the time being there still needs to be someone in the cars, but I expect that the next stage, getting rid of them, will not be too far away. There are likely to always be a few (wo-)manned cars because of the need to assist disabled passengers, for example, but most of them will probably be empty in the not-too-distant future.

Isn't it time that we do the intelligent thing and learn the lesson that has been taught to us repeatedly for millenia and apply ourselves to how we might reshape the workforce before people lose their jobs? Or are we still too attached to the tired old sackcloth and ashes routine and need to wait for the bad thing to happen first?

My main concern here isn't so much about automation (which is a problem, because it causes de-skilling and alienation), but the attempts by these companies to erect global oligopolies or even monopolies. A separate worry is about self-driving cars causing ever less active travel, which I believe is a certainty, but that applies more generally and not only to Uber.

I completely agree. its really a no brainer to balance people's work/life balance by reducing the hours people work, incentivising part time working etc... all of which would need regulation and intervention in the labour market, which is deemed anti-capitalist, left wing madness at the moment. It is the global oligopolies and monopolies (that worry @Oliver Schick) that call the shots rather than elected government.
(I also worry like olver about the lack of activity these technologies herald and the innate laziness of our species damning us all to hell...)

But isn't automation only a source of de-skilling and alienation when we fail to pre-empt the job losses allow a portion of the workforce to become redundant. You're forgetting that new skills come into existence all the time. Afterall, when the original combine harvester was put into production, resulting in a loss of agricultural jobs, how many flight engineers or computer programmers were there?

And yes, there could well be less active travel. But isn't that already happening? With a net decrease in the cost of motoring and a rise in car ownership, haven't we already seen a persistent decrease in active travel? Do you really think that the lack of automation in cars will lead to that decrease stalling? I'm not convinced. And is there anything that has actually shown an increase in active travel? For instance, do you think that by implementing cycle friendly road infrastructure, the Netherlands were able to preserve active travel and by installing the same sort of infrastructure has London been able to facilitate a return to active travel? I think that this is the case. The question that then remains is whether the advance of automation in vehicular transport will give us the opportunity to redesign our road network to allow for more infrastructure that facilitates active travel?

We have a robot cleaner.