Welcome Guest!
In order to take advantage of all the great features that Waterloo Region Connected has to offer, including participating in the lively discussions below, you're going to have to register. The good news is that it'll take less than a minute and you can get started enjoying Waterloo Region's best online community right away.
or Create an Account




Thread Rating:
  • 9 Vote(s) - 4.33 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
General Road and Highway Discussion
I have long said that regulating/metering lamps at on ramps that cause these problems would solve 90% of the congestion issues at rush hour. 401 WB would have them at Townline, Franklin and 24, for example.
Reply


Ontario Permits Autonomous Vehicles on Roads:

http://news.ontario.ca/mto/en/2015/10/on...1444755020

Very exciting news. This means the same infrastructure can theoretically 5x the capacity with no construction, by just running vehicles closer together in road trains or platoons. 100km/h with a 0.5 m gap.
Reply
(10-13-2015, 12:52 PM)Canard Wrote: Ontario Permits Autonomous Vehicles on Roads:

http://news.ontario.ca/mto/en/2015/10/on...1444755020

Very exciting news. This means the same infrastructure can theoretically 5x the capacity with no construction, by just running vehicles closer together in road trains or platoons. 100km/h with a 0.5 m gap.

Why do people think safety regulations will allow vehicles to travel at that speed with that gap? Won’t some sort of device between successive cars be needed? It would sort of couple the cars together, so maybe we could call it a coupler. For further efficiency, we could have one special car at one end that could have a really big motor in it so each individual car wouldn’t need to use its engine. A big motor could even use some mechanism to draw power directly from overhead wires, or failing that it could burn diesel fuel extremely efficiently. I see this working for transport trucks and buses as well, although I wonder if it would eventually be found convenient to separate freight and passenger traffic as much as possible.
Reply
(10-13-2015, 04:33 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: Why do people think safety regulations will allow vehicles to travel at that speed with that gap? Won’t some sort of device between successive cars be needed?

Why do you need to physically couple them? so long as they are in constant communication they can act as one.

The communication protocol standard is being worked on as we speak. The cars will work in unison, transmitting acceleration information (positive and negative) to each other as well as change of direction. So a car will tell others that it is about to decouple and move to another lane, so the "train" opens up, car leaves said train, train closes up. By the time this is said and done, I expect to see the cars moving in a dedicated lane in the 401 at 180km/h.
Reply
You don't even need to have the cars communicate directly to see increases in capacity and safe speeds. Computer reaction times are significantly better, they don't get tired or distracted, and they don't engage in road rage or rubber necking.
Reply
It's called non-mechanical coupling. The MATRA/Aramis project proved the concept with a rubber tired peoplemover system in France in the 70's.

I would counter-pose the question: why do people automatically assume automation is less safe, when quite the opposite is true? I suppose you've never riden in an elevator or airport peoplemover?
Reply
(10-13-2015, 05:25 PM)Canard Wrote: I would counter-pose the question: why do people automatically assume automation is less safe, when quite the opposite is true?

I wonder this myself. I've spoken with many people who claim to believe that a computer will "never" be able to predict whether the child on the sidewalk is going to jump out in front of the car, or any other number of examples of situations they mistakenly feel humans are uniquely good at. I can't understand how they reach this conclusion, especially given the carnage that human beings behind the wheels of cars routinely cause.

It probably doesn't help to tell these people that, given an alternative, human beings shouldn't be trusted to operate cars...but, really, that's the case: there's every reason to believe automated vehicles will operate much more safely.
Reply


Oh absolutely. For example, Google's automatic cars (the modified Prius and Lexus SUV's) look in all directions at once, with three different kinds of sensors. A human can only look in one direction.

The few fender-benders that Google's cars have been involved in are all results of other cars rear-ending it - never the fault of the autonomous vehicle.

In 100 years, we will look back with absolute absurdity that humans were permitted to operate heavy, powerful craft like these at speeds this high in such close proximity (both to other cars and to other modes of transport, like pedestrians and cyclists) with no automatic control or safety systems layered over top.
Reply
Driving is fun. That's the entirety of my thought.
Reply
(10-13-2015, 05:25 PM)Canard Wrote: It's called non-mechanical coupling. The MATRA/Aramis project proved the concept with a rubber tired peoplemover system in France in the 70's.

I would counter-pose the question: why do people automatically assume automation is less safe, when quite the opposite is true? I suppose you've never riden in an elevator or airport peoplemover?

I’m not assuming automation is less safe. Clearly, it can be under the right circumstances. My understanding is that elevators are actually safer than staircases — while elevators have lots of scary failure modes that excite the imagination, these failure modes essentially never happen, whereas tripping on a staircase can be and actually is fatal with noticeable frequency.

But railways have occasional collisions, even with sophisticated signalling systems. These systems, however, are enormously simpler than a distributed control system involving thousands of vehicles working together. It may be possible eventually to make such a concept work, but it’s an enormously difficult problem. Don’t forget the vehicles are usually proposed to have diverse ownership, and, at least at first, to operate in mixed traffic with ordinary human-driven vehicles. The idea that autonomous vehicles are a quick win for increasing road capacity is not in accordance with the state of the art: It might help eventually but not in the next few years. A quick win would be running lots more buses. A busy road has enough traffic in single-occupant vehicles to justify a bus every minute or two. What kind of ridership would be attracted by bus service that frequent?
Reply
(10-13-2015, 10:04 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: But railways have occasional collisions, even with sophisticated signalling systems.

I don't know what gave you that impression. Most signals can be overriden by conductors. That is not a sophisticated system. In fact of the last three accidents I can think of off the top of my head all of them would have been prevented by a basic computer-over-conductor override.

Also keep in mind that the bar isn't zero accidents but less than 11 million accidents, which is the present number of car accidents in America per year.  The google car automated driving experience (3 million miles, a handful of accidents) suggest that present technology has already achieved met this bar.
Reply
The vehicles don't need to work together. Just like I don't talk to all of the other people on the road with me.

I'm sure there are additional benefits to communicating - but its definitely not necessary.
Reply
Don't confuse lamp signals with ATP/ATC/ATO. It is extremely rare for accidents on automated metros. The catastrophe in Spain on the AVE (Talgo) was caused when the train hd exited a section of ATO and was under driver control when the accident happened.

But your bar analogy is fantastic - the bar is very high right now. Nobody is claiming there won't be accidents - there will be - but there will be an order of magnitude (or two or three) fewer accidents than today. Again, in 100 years, we'll look at the astronomically high fatality rates and wonder "how did we ever accept this?"

Volvo has a great idea for an interim solution, which is road trains using a lead vehicle driven by a registered, trained "pilot". The cars behind it simply follow at close range and can leave or join by request. I see his as the stepping stone to automated driving technologies.

http://youtu.be/xM5OuR7ICMc

http://youtu.be/tQnVGOoVvVk

The only question that popped into my mind is what if the road train passes an on-ramp in the right lane and can't move one lane to the left to courtesely allow a vehicle on the ramp to merge? Maybe the road train should be in the far left lane, like a designated HOV/Automated Road Train lane?
Reply


(10-13-2015, 05:25 PM)Canard Wrote: I would counter-pose the question: why do people automatically assume automation is less safe, when quite the opposite is true? I suppose you've never riden in an elevator or airport peoplemover?

When you design automation systems for a living, you know just how hard it is to make them foolproof. And then when you think you have, a bigger fool comes along.

The biggest automation we have currently for transportation is in rail (only one path to follow, speed and brakes are your variables, closed system), ships, and planes. All three have far more time to react to issues due to boats floating safely so long as they can use radar to avoid horrendous weather or shallow seas, planes that are undamaged and avoiding horrendous weather having high altitude to buffer issues, etc. But at 100kph (and it would be faster on highways, the extra speed would be the point), you don't have the luxury of telling the inebriated driver to take control, or to spin their chair around from a four-man face-to-face to avoid a collision. A big reason why we have traffic issues is because of how cautious we still are in driving, which leads to slowdowns when issues appear ready to occur.
Reply
(10-13-2015, 10:23 PM)BuildingScout Wrote: [quote pid='12421' dateline='1444788284']
Also keep in mind that the bar isn't zero accidents but less than 11 million accidents, which is the present number of car accidents in America per year.  The google car automated driving experience (3 million miles, a handful of accidents) suggest that present technology has already achieved met this bar.

[/quote]

The bar may not be zero accidents, but it will have to be an enormous reduction (i.e. 50-99% reduction, regardless of uptake).

The simplest explanation for this is gun control in the States. Virtually all experts agree that reducing the prevalence, availability, and lethality of guns in America will reduce their developed-world-leading gun death rate. But Americans will look at the ~1 in 10,000 Americans dying by gun in their country when armed by choice (and perceived ability to defend themselves if they are presented with a hostile armed person), and be told that we can make it only 1 in 20,000 Americans dying by gun in their country, but that it will require that they have no choice (no guns to defend themselves against any hostile armed person), and they will all-but-assuredly tell you to bugger off, they'd rather have 10-100 times as many people die by guns, so long as they believe that they can intervene should they wind up in a threatening situation.

The (misguided) sense of control is far more valuable than actual safety. Just ask parents who move out of cities and into less dense places: they often cite safety, even as less dense neighbourhoods and rural areas are noticeably *less* safe for their children, even
as the mistaken perception is the reverse.
Reply
« Next Oldest | Next Newest »



Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 4 Guest(s)

About Waterloo Region Connected

Launched in August 2014, Waterloo Region Connected is an online community that brings together all the things that make Waterloo Region great. Waterloo Region Connected provides user-driven content fueled by a lively discussion forum covering topics like urban development, transportation projects, heritage issues, businesses and other issues of interest to those in Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge and the four Townships - North Dumfries, Wellesley, Wilmot, and Woolwich.

              User Links