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Autonomous vehicles in UK conditions

Technical issues not related to a DLOC car marque, eg tyres, ethanol, other car makes, etc. and legal, political and insurance
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John-B
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Autonomous vehicles in UK conditions

Post by John-B »

Autonomous vehicles. We see them being used on US wide and well engineered roads but how will they perform in UK conditions?

Will they only be allowed on properly engineered highways, in the same way that road trains in Australia are only allowed on roads outside towns? The C road from my home into town is a bit narrow and lorries have gouged deep muddy ruts and potholes in the grass verge, so when you see a lorry or bus approaching you may think you have enough room, but it’s advisable to slow to a crawl to avoid massive bumping. I don’t think autonomous cars have the ability to take avoiding action like this yet. How will a vehicle avoid a small dead animal like a squirrel or a large one like a badger?

How will they cope with another situation where traffic halts because of an accident? Will a car wait forever, even if a policeman asks it to turn round and go away? (Assuming it’s an autonomous taxi and the passenger can’t drive.)

Suppose a non-driving passenger wants an autonomous taxi to stop briefly so that the person can post a letter or a child is being sick, how will that be possible?

Where a junction has a filter light or just a filter arrow sign, will it be able to judge whether the red or green light or filter sign applies to it?

There's width restriction on the approach to the Hammersmith viaduct comprising thick steel columns which is quite narrow, will an autonomous vehicle know exactly how wide it is? Similarly, car parks often have a height restriction to exclude cars with something on a roof rack, so can vehicles read the sign?

Can an autonomous vehicle read any sign like a diversion sign? If these vehicles are somehow automatically permitted only to use certain roads, reading a sign might be necessary for a temporary road works or diversion sign.

Presumably, initially, autonomous vehicles will have to be changed to manual control, how else will one avoid stopping completely when leaving a permitted road onto a road where autonomous operation isn't permitted, search for an empty parking meter, drive into your driveway or garage, etc.? Completely autonomous vehicles like taxis for non-driving passengers will be severely restricted, but how?

Overall I think autonomous cars may crawl, especially in combined car and pedestrian areas, and infuriate human-controlled vehicles, probably causing more accidents in the same way that slow or old drivers are often perceived to do – they often escape an accident but don’t realise that frustration for other users has caused it.

Fossil
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Re: Autonomous vehicles in UK conditions

Post by Fossil »

John

Excellent questions none of which I can answer; how far off is the day when we'll all be asked, pressured or ordered to surrender our driving licences to remove the road safety risk of having human beings in control of vehicles? One other catch for the autonomous - the unreliability of sat-nav. What happens when post codes cover a large number of properties in a rural or semi-rural situation and the house number does not provide an exact location? "You have reached your destination" "Er, no I haven't." "???" Will they be programmed to map references? Or do we have to get out and walk the rest of the way along muddy tracks? What if you are disabled? Above all what about historic vehicles?

Food for thought certainly.

Geoff

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John-B
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Re: Autonomous vehicles in UK conditions

Post by John-B »

Autonomous vehicle use will have to be achieved in easy stages, but some of my questions relate even to the first stage.

Another question - it's harvest time here, when I meet a combine harvester or tractor with a huge straw trailer, I have to back up and into the first gateway. Would an autonomous vehicle be able to travel backwards along a narrow country road and into a gateway, or would it continue backwards for half a mile or more to the first turning? Would it even have the intelligence to know what to do?

I've seen TV clips of huge dumper trucks at an Australian ore mine travelling entirely automatically. There's nothing on the ground to guide them as they run on rough stone tracks. They are programmed by GPS presumably, but I didn't see any reverse into position, they just stop in a predefined place and a human-controlled digger loads them. Then something gives them permission to start and they drive along haul roads avoiding trucks coming the other way, and presumably unload automatically, although I didn't see that. What this implies is that autonomous vehicles may have to be limited to pre-defined routes by GPS that are passed as free of roadworks, etc. I would be interested to know how autonomous taxis in USA cope with confusing town conditions, accidents, traffic jams, roads closed by police, etc.

On the matter of satnavs, it's about time that HGVs had satnavs that are only programmed with major roads; we frequently see TV clips of lorries stuck in a narrow lane.

NickDeAth
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Re: Autonomous vehicles in UK conditions

Post by NickDeAth »

You can get HGV dedicated sat navs where you programme in the vehicle dimensions and gross weight and it will route the driver accordingly. Trouble is they are about £400!

Nick.
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Sydsmith
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Re: Autonomous vehicles in UK conditions

Post by Sydsmith »

Interesting questions and suggestions.

20 years or so ago Panasonic built a vast warehouse in Normanton in the midlands. The place was entirely robotic and had racks as high as Big Ben which moved along on tracks to allow autonomous fork lifts to move up and down between the shifting shelving to place stock on shelves and to pick it again for delivery.

The huge entirely wireless computer controlled warehouse had no windows or lighting, why would you need them?

Dealers were invited to the launch of the warehouse into service and of course we all feared the worse, what would happen to our orders, we expected at least some misplaced items, how could such a huge building work like that and not make errors?

As it worked out there was never a single issue as far as our deliveries and the change from manual handling had proved to be extremely successful with almost no more damaged on arrival goods.

Now I know that there is a vast difference between a warehouse and a road, but as far as I am aware that warehouse is still pumping out the stock to the midlands and Wales.

So the development is not new, problem is if you put a human element into even foolproof equipment we will muck it up, recently a huge 44 ton truck headed up a 25% hill clearly signed not suitable for heavy goods vehicles, near my home. After a lot of grunting and grinding it made the top only to find it could not then negotiate the traffic calming out side a school at the top of the hill, having negotiated a turn round, it then had to face the terrifying prospect of going back down the 1 in 4.

I didn't hang around to watch him go back down.

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John-B
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Re: Autonomous vehicles in UK conditions

Post by John-B »

So many questions: my road into town often gets partly flooded, hundreds of minor puddles next to the verge, but also larger deeper floods extending over more than half the road. Most vehicle drivers make a judgment and just clip the outside shallower part of a flood which is obviously deeper near the verge, but if another vehicle is coming the other way you have to go through the deeper part of the flood, causing a large splash and possible flooding of the engine. Will an autonomous vehicle be able to make a judgment about the depth of a flood?

If a vehicle hits a dog, which has to be reported, or a cat which doesn't, will an autonomous vehicle know the difference?

It's obvious to me that these vehicles will have to have alternative manual control for unusual situations, but in USA vehicles are entirely autonomous, how do they cope with unexpected situations if the passenger is a child or non-driver?

Warsash 2
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Re: Autonomous vehicles in UK conditions

Post by Warsash 2 »

Hi
With the number of re-booting I have to do and the general unreliability of chips I think there should be less emphasis on technology and more on driver skill. Always remembering that a persons driving skill does not increase with their bank balance.
Regards

Colin

Bob Frisby
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Re: Autonomous vehicles in UK conditions

Post by Bob Frisby »

I believe that the change to self-driving cars will happen MUCH more slowly that its advocates seem to think. There are a great many hurdles to overcome, including legal ones as well as technical. Surely at this point it is generally illegal to unleash a driverless car on public roads without specific governmental exception/permission. That's not likely to change in the foreseeable future.

I think that within a few years (decades?), we might see a few driverless cars on a very small number of specified roads, but overall there will be no major shift within most of our lifetimes. The list of issues to be overcome is daunting.

We might have a minor advantage in the U.S., because with 50 different regulating entities, some can begin the process, and the rest can learn from the inevitable mistakes.

Bob Frisby
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Petelang
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Re: Autonomous vehicles in UK conditions

Post by Petelang »

If true to form in this country, with a heritage of under funded Road systems and appalling poor maintenance of roads, it will be an unmitigated disaster.
Local village roads near me have more holes in than a cheese grater, dodgy repairs for services that should clearly have been laid at the kerb or under the pavements and a surface, in consequence, akin to the moon.
Although autonomous vehicles have operated on the surface of the moon, I don't think I'd like to be a passenger in one.
It's dreamland, won't happen in my lifetime thank heavens.
Peter
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Fossil
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Re: Autonomous vehicles in UK conditions

Post by Fossil »

I agree with Bob, I hope that there are so many hurdles to overcome that it will take a long time for them to be dealt with. But there is a little creature at the back of my mind who worries me that, as with so many modern technological developments, there are so many clever people out there who stand to make very large amounts of money out of this issue, and will push it along as fast as they can by whatever means. It will be interesting to see how things change over the next 10 years.

Re expensive sat-navs, our first one, around 25 years ago, was a top of the range Tom Tom which cost slightly north of £500; but it had full European and North American mapping and has served us very well across the length and breadth of two continents. With updates every few years it still works well, better than the majority of navs in any cars we've had since, so there is still a place for it on top of the dash wherever we go.

Cheers

Geoff

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