Thursday, March 31, 2016

Don't Bring It to Louisiana, Either

Driverless cars, that is.  I love the concept, think that it's a cool idea.  A driverless car will be able to give mobility to the disabled and probably will reduce accidents.

However,
Volvo's North American CEO, Lex Kerssemakers, lost his cool as the automaker's semi-autonomous prototype sporadically refused to drive itself during a press event at the Los Angeles Auto Show.
Why not?  No lane markings.
 "It can't find the lane markings!" Kerssemakers griped to Mayor Eric Garcetti, who was at the wheel. "You need to paint the bloody roads here!"
Paint the roads?  Are you high?  Hardly anyone paints roads in Louisiana.  I can take you to entire sections of roads that have never been painted.  Good, asphalt road with nary a center stripe nor a fog line.  Driving down them on a dark night is a lot of fun.
Shoddy infrastructure has become a roadblock to the development of self-driving cars, vexing engineers and adding time and cost. Poor markings and uneven signage on the 3 million miles of paved roads in the United States are forcing automakers to develop more sophisticated sensors and maps to compensate, industry executives say.
This technology is still in its infancy and it will be a while before it is mature.  But expecting government to paint the roads so that your technology can work, simply isn't in the cards.

Wirecutter says that they won't work in California if they need road markings.  They damned sure won't work in Louisiana, either.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh goodie, another European throwing a hissy fit because government is not sufficient in size to suit his demands.

Judy said...

Won't work in most states.

How many people have driven off the end of a bridge, dock or road construction because their GPS said to go 'that way' instead of paying attention to what was going on around them? Personally, I think it's a dangerous idea at this point.

Anonymous said...

So the government is suppose to take more of my money so some rich guy can sell more cars?
Steve

Old NFO said...

LOL, yeah good luck with that... Same in Texas too! :-)

Jonathan H said...

Lane markings? The road I live on isn't even paved - how could it have lane markings?
It is prominently marked with a Dead End sign at the bus turnaround and I STILL have people turn around in my driveway or ask directions!
Autonomous cars are a good idea, but like most clean energy gadgets, they aren't ready for prime time.

jon spencer said...

The roads that are good here in the U.P. have their lanes marked. The average and not so good are lucky to have a center line.
That's for the 6 to 7 months of the year when there is not snow or ice covering the surfaces.
Out of the next nine days there is snow in the forecast for four of them here.
One should not even use cruise control when the roads are slippery, don't see (at this time) how a computer can handle winter.

Gerry N. said...

So why doesn't this overblown, self important Swede SOB pony up the loot?" He wants to make several billion dollars selling self driving cars, he can pay to paint the bloody roads and add it to the selling price of the cars. After getting the permits and bribing the tens of thousands of the right officials, of course. We should begin seeing guide paint on the roads in oh, fifty to sixty-five years or so.

What happens if (when) some idiot takes a spray can and paints a guide line off the edge of a road on top of a cliff or mountain pass into a 200-300 foot drop or off a bridge into some waterway like the Mississipi or Columbia Rivers or San Fransisco Bay? Or simply into oncoming traffic?

Robert said...

Wisconsin winter. 'Nuff said.

And the idea of spray painting bogus lane markings is just evil. I like it. For entertainment and/or profit only. No damage or injury as I'm not a savage.