Our worst nightmare.

Escaping the Nightmarish Reality of Bad Traffic

I’m on an overly-crowded freeway. Which all too often, seems to be an endless roadway of hellish annoyance. All too often I find myself in the same situation, and it hurts to think of how many hours, minutes, and seconds I’ve wasted of my life sitting in the car angry, and frankly, upset with the world.

This inefficiency could possibly come to an end and thanks too people like Elon Musk, Nissan, General Motors, and Google. These brands are paving the way for an automated and traffic-free future. (fingers crossed)

For well over a century cars have been the main mode of transportation for the globe. Many regions of the world are still developing their automotive prowess, for example, Cuba is still packed full of 1950's era cars. Many believe that the wealth and GDP of a nation is pretty obvious when you observe it’s streets and notice what sorts of cars are being driven regularly and most commonly.

The grotesquely materialistic thought that one’s wealth is directly correlated to their automobile still doesn’t fix the irritating fact that no automobile relieves it’s driver of the anxiety, and anger, heavy traffic causes no matter how luxurious the vehicle is. How in the world can we fix this miserable problem?

Beijing’s awful traffic

Well, first off we don’t have it that bad. In Beijing during the year 2010 there were 5 million cars on the streets of it’s massive population that now reaches 20 million people (the 2nd largest urban area in China). In 2010 alone there were over 800,000 new cars that were registered in Beijing. Like many of our cities in North America, traffic congestion in Beijing is caused by too many cars on the road. There is no other explanation for it.

In the United States there are 812 cars for every 1,000 men, women and children. An increase in the number of trucks and commercial vehicles has also exponentially added to the ever-growing traffic problem, as most annoyed drivers want to switch lanes and speed by those slow hunkers ASAP. So how do we get cars off the road? How can we save space? Again, it all swings back to efficient driving and I believe self-driving vehicles will exponetially increase the future’s vehicle efficiency.

Government research indicates driver error is likely the main reason behind over 90 percent of all crashes, and in turn traffic.

Unfortunately, The true cause of traffic congestion is largely ignored here in the US of A. We are always trying to blame someone, or something, else for traffic problems. Largely, infastructure across thousands of cities is to blame for many small and large traffic pile-ups. Or, it is always seems to be the fault of someone else, our society, even ourselves who are taking taking ownership for issues that nobody can really solve like we all want.

I am guilty of being one of those annoyed drivers. I hope this inevitable grievance is soon a thing of the past. The dream of major, and hopefully even minor, traffic becoming non-existent. There is no “simple solution” other than self-driving vehicles as I see it. The efficiency lost with human error will now be regained…check out this video to see how human error is a major part of the daily traffic problem.

Concept BMW Self-Driving Car

Leading the way in driverless technology are tech firms, most notably Google and Tesla. These intelligent cars don’t drink and then climb behind the wheel, don’t do drugs, get distracted, fall asleep, or run red lights, and their reaction times are infinitely quicker than humans.

Other auto industry carmakers are stepping up their research as well. General Motors and Nissan are furthest along, but BWM, Audi, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, Ford, Volkswagen and Volvo have also begun testing their very own driverless systems. Google’s self-driving cars have clocked over 400,000 miles on California public roads.

In fact, these developing cars do such a good job that a new study claims “self-driving cars hold the potential to transform driving completly by eliminating the majority of traffic deaths, significantly reducing congestion, all the while providing billions of dollars in economic benefits.”

But significant hurdles blocking widespread use remain to be conquered, most important of which is cost. The countless added tech adds up quickly and includes loads of new sensors, software, engineering and computing requirements with an average approx. cost of $100,000 per vehicle, obviously unaffordable for the average citizen. Even so, large-scale production promises greater affordability over time, or we can only hope.

Nissan’s take on future self-driving cars

Nevertheless, the advantages of self-driving cars are so dramtic, that if only 10 percent of cars and trucks on the road were self-driving, they could reduce traffic deaths by around 1,000 each year as well as produce nearly $38 billion in economic and other savings. If 90 percent of vehicles on the road were self-driving, as many as 22,000 lives every year could be saved, and economic benefits could reach an incredible $447 billion.

Another major hurdle will be integrating the self-driving car into the mainstream flow of the auto industry. They need to be cost effective to the point where this is not just a gadget that the elite enjoy, but becomes the “way things are now”. A great example of this would be hybrid and electric vehicles. These cars have yet to overcome their price gap with conventional vehicles, and still remain a smaller share of the auto market than experts had ever anticipated they would be at this point.

When will this phenomenom occur? 5 years? 10 years? Who really knows other than the Auto Gods themselves. It will take radical acceptance from the population and will require ingenius engineering. But, if there is one thing I know us Americans lust and require, it’s an escape from the living hell we call heavy traffic.

Cheers,

Robert Fallon