Boston to start planning for driverless cars

By adamg on Wed., 9/14/2016 - 8:18 am

Even as we still try to tame our human drivers, Boston will begin planning for cars that drive themselves - in a year-long effort that will include figuring out how to test "autonomous" cars on our centuries-old roads.

Mayor Walsh this morning announced an initiative, with the help of the World Economic Forum and the Boston Consulting Group, to get Boston's roads ready for the cars of tomorrow.

Over the next year, the city, the consultant and companies developing driverless cars will try to develop both on-road tests and policies for dealing with the cars once they become widespread.

Nikolaus Lang, senior partner at the Boston Consulting Group, said in a statement:

Shared, autonomous vehicles have the potential to fundamentally improve urban transportation by enhancing accessibility for the city's residents and increasing road safety. We are excited to be engaging with the City of Boston during the coming months on making this vision for urban mobility a reality.

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Comments

Don't worry

By Rob O
Wed, 09/14/2016 - 10:41am

There is a large body of product liability law we can use to determine blame and get people deserved compensation. Not to mention auto insurance. There may be reasons to oppose driver-less cars, that's not one of them.

Yeah, product liability laws

By anon
Wed, 09/14/2016 - 12:07pm

Yeah, product liability laws and auto insurance are two ideas which are perfectly fair, cost-efficient, and provide all the right incentives to increase safety.

Hacked

By ElizaLeila
Wed, 09/14/2016 - 11:49am

Cars of today can already be hacked due to their drive by wire tech.

Hacked?

By JustinM
Wed, 09/14/2016 - 12:50pm

Are you referring to the episode of Dateline where the guy in a lab coat tore apart the dashboard of a Camry, re-routed all the car's wiring through his laptop, and then declared how "easy" it was to hack a drive-by-wire car?

I don't think so

By ElizaLeila
Wed, 09/14/2016 - 5:54pm

I'd seen an episode or YouTube of a couple of guys who'd done it via laptop. I'll see if I can find it.

OK - there's one from Wired where they killed a jeep on the highway remotely, with the author/journo in it.

[youtube]MK0SrxBC1xs[/youtube]

You can control failure states

By erik g
Wed, 09/14/2016 - 1:15pm

I wrangle bits for a living, so I can talk your ear off about this, but: the short answer to your question is, you can decide what the machine you're designing will do in a failure state. Like, if one of the main cameras goes dark, or the steering wheel stops responding--those are all cases that will be explicitly dealt with, and there will certainly be some sort of failsafe hard-wired into the engine that says "if the fancy driving computer stops responding, cut power to the engine and send an SOS to every other car in range." Your computer crashes the way it does (i.e. a blue screen of death, or a frozen screen) because someone designed it to. Cars will not behave like that.

Meanwhile, the advent of self-driving cars will be the greatest public health boon since vaccinations or penicillin. Seriously. Motor vehicle deaths kill tens of thousands of people a year, and self-driving cars will cut that number by 95%. We owe it to ourselves, or possibly our kids, to do whatever is in our power to get them here as soon as possible.

Well stated

By Gary C
Wed, 09/14/2016 - 2:31pm

Eric, you are of course 100% correct.

As I mentioned above, the legislation surrounding autonomous cars will not, IMHO, be decided based on science and statistics (i.e. cars will be safer and lives saved) but by emotion. Once a handful of people are killed by self-driving cars (even if it was 100% not the cars fault) there will be a revolt and overly strict laws will be passed.

Riiiight...

By anon
Wed, 09/14/2016 - 8:38pm

/* This should never happen */

Heh, I posted a comment

By anon
Wed, 09/14/2016 - 8:35pm

Heh, I posted a comment before reading this that this will be the exact attitude that we'll see a lot of. Regardless of whether or not self-driving cars end up safer, because can't blame someone for their accidents, people will react irrationally to them.

There already here

By Stephen Bickerton Sr
Wed, 09/14/2016 - 10:32am

Just come to Adams and gallivan and you'll see. Plenty of them

Here's how it'll happen here

By Anony-Mouse
Wed, 09/14/2016 - 11:43am

Here's another take on the discussion;

Once self-driving cars become sort-of, maybe, just about feasible, (maybe in 5 years?), Boston rejects them for all the reasons listed above (bad roads, bad drivers, bad pedestrians, bad cyclists, and Larry Bird ain't walking through this door any time soon).

But what'll happen, is that Pittsburgh, or SF, or Singapore will have Self-Driving cars. Boston will resist, because, Boston.

Then, the disability community will sue. Because blind people or elderly folks want to be able to get to work and do things. Then a Federal judge will order Boston to form a plan to accept self-driving cars. Then in another four years (see medical marijuana), we'll have policies drafted.

Policies which will state the

By anon
Wed, 09/14/2016 - 8:40pm

Policies which will state the roads will be ready in 10 years at a cost of $5B, yet 10 years out the costs will balloon to $20B and another 10 years... we've heard this story before...

Mayhem

By BlackKat
Wed, 09/14/2016 - 11:45am

You know they are using GTA V to train the AI for said cars?
http://jalopnik.com/self-driving-cars-will-use-gta...

And that means you will have crashes that rival the show CHIPS for ridiculousness:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqG0hCg5RL4

How is our technology even

By anon
Wed, 09/14/2016 - 12:11pm

How is our technology even close to there yet, when GPSes can't distinguish between the Big Dig tunnel and the surface roads above it, and Boston's traffic lights and lane markings (or lack thereof) are the brain-dead disaster that they are?

I hadn't heard that

By voter
Wed, 09/14/2016 - 2:06pm

I hadn't heard that driverless cars can't reliably detect cyclists. That's disturbing.

Autonomous vehicles only

By ITme
Wed, 09/14/2016 - 2:11pm

Make the downtown area autonomous vehicles only! We keep We are continuously reducing the amount of parking spaces in the city anyway...

Marty out front again...to his detriment, again?

By issacg
Wed, 09/14/2016 - 2:15pm

Regrettably for the Mayor, he does not have the authority to allow autonomous vehicles to operate on public ways, and until the state makes some rules to allow it, this will be traveling as fast as the F1 cars through the SB waterfront.

The Globe article makes the point only gently.

As long as the computer pays

By anon
Thu, 09/15/2016 - 2:46pm

As long as the computer pays a driving school to help get a road test appointment, it should have no trouble getting a license.