WEBVTT - The Automated Highway Concept 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:11.800 --> 0:00:14.120 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host 0:00:14.200 --> 0:00:16.720 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio. 0:00:16.880 --> 0:00:21.000 And how the tech are you? You know, we've been 0:00:21.040 --> 0:00:24.279 talking about driverless cars for quite a few years now, 0:00:24.640 --> 0:00:28.320 Even on this show and in previous episodes of tech Stuff, 0:00:28.360 --> 0:00:31.560 I've talked about the various levels of autonomy, which range 0:00:31.600 --> 0:00:35.160 from zero, which means the vehicle in question really has 0:00:35.240 --> 0:00:38.960 no driver assist features at all, and the human behind 0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:41.519 the wheel is responsible for everything, you know, barring some 0:00:41.560 --> 0:00:45.800 sort of mechanical issue at any rate, and then you 0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:48.760 go all the way up to level five autonomy, which 0:00:48.760 --> 0:00:50.519 is a car that's so smart you could enroll it 0:00:50.560 --> 0:00:54.160 in Harvard. No. But seriously, a level five autonomous vehicle 0:00:54.640 --> 0:00:57.880 would have no need for human accessible controls. It would 0:00:57.880 --> 0:01:04.360 just transport people and our cargo wherever, under any driving conditions, 0:01:04.400 --> 0:01:08.800 at any time of day or night. Where currently hovering 0:01:09.160 --> 0:01:12.720 around levels two and three at the moment, mostly there 0:01:12.760 --> 0:01:15.640 are pushes to get to level four, but as it 0:01:15.680 --> 0:01:19.640 has turned out, the technology necessary to create truly autonomous 0:01:19.720 --> 0:01:24.520 vehicles that can operate anywhere at any time is harder 0:01:24.560 --> 0:01:28.960 than some of us myself included, initially thought and most 0:01:29.000 --> 0:01:32.160 of our discussions about driverless cars treat the vehicles as 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:35.760 you know, self contained computing systems that just happened to 0:01:35.760 --> 0:01:38.800 be on the go. So by that, I mean the 0:01:38.880 --> 0:01:42.399 car mostly is relying on its own sensors to understand 0:01:42.600 --> 0:01:45.760 what is going on around it. The car's decision making 0:01:45.800 --> 0:01:49.720 systems are fully contained within the vehicle itself. And you 0:01:49.760 --> 0:01:52.560 can think of a highway filled with those types of 0:01:52.600 --> 0:01:55.600 autonomous vehicles being kind of similar to a room filled 0:01:55.600 --> 0:01:58.320 with computers that are not connected to each other, so 0:01:58.360 --> 0:02:01.360 they are not network. They're all individ jewel computers. Each 0:02:01.400 --> 0:02:05.000 machine is sophisticated and it's capable, but it's also independent 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:09.639 of all the others. Other visions of a driverless future 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:14.359 involved cars that can communicate with one another directly or 0:02:14.400 --> 0:02:19.240 even potentially with roads and infrastructure. These cars would depend 0:02:19.360 --> 0:02:22.720 not just on their own sensors, but those are the 0:02:22.800 --> 0:02:26.680 vehicles around it. They would remain in constant communication to 0:02:26.720 --> 0:02:30.960 provide the smoothest, safest, and most efficient ride from point 0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:32.840 A to point B, so they would be kind of 0:02:33.400 --> 0:02:36.920 part of a mesh network. And to get to that future, 0:02:37.200 --> 0:02:40.440 we would need to agree upon a standardized protocol for 0:02:40.480 --> 0:02:43.760 these cars to follow. Otherwise you could have a world 0:02:43.840 --> 0:02:47.600 where Toyotas wouldn't talk to Fords, they would only talk 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:50.239 to other Toyota's, and that kind of thing. That would 0:02:50.280 --> 0:02:53.720 be a nightmare, that would not be helpful. Anyway, That's 0:02:53.840 --> 0:02:56.480 not the direction that most companies are going in right now, 0:02:57.000 --> 0:03:00.120 though I suspect some companies that are more focusing on 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:04.320 creating autonomous transportation vehicles for stuff like cargo, or at 0:03:04.400 --> 0:03:09.040 least looking at this from a fleetwide perspective that could 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:13.880 serve a similar purpose, but specifically for this particular you know, 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:17.760 business model. But today I wanted to talk about a 0:03:17.760 --> 0:03:20.760 slightly different approach. Uh And I've talked about this a 0:03:20.800 --> 0:03:23.200 little bit in the past when I've talked about autonomous cars. 0:03:23.200 --> 0:03:27.400 So this one has had several different incarnations over the years, 0:03:27.440 --> 0:03:32.079 and it's it's a cool idea on the surface, but 0:03:33.040 --> 0:03:38.160 it's probably the least practical for driver lest vehicles or 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:41.440 autonomous vehicles insofar as the amount of work we would 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:44.960 need to do on an infrastructure level and the amount 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:48.120 of consensus we would have to have across all parties 0:03:48.120 --> 0:03:51.040 in the space but this is the concept of the 0:03:51.120 --> 0:03:56.320 automated highway system. With this kind of system, you would 0:03:56.320 --> 0:04:02.480 have embedded networks that are along or under or above highways, 0:04:02.520 --> 0:04:06.080 and these systems would provide guidance to the vehicles on 0:04:06.120 --> 0:04:09.760 the road, perhaps even to the extent of controlling all 0:04:09.800 --> 0:04:13.800 the vehicles on the road. So and that kind of 0:04:13.800 --> 0:04:16.320 a system, the road would be the one doing the driving. 0:04:16.360 --> 0:04:19.200 In other words, it would send commands to all the 0:04:19.279 --> 0:04:23.080 vehicles traveling on the lanes, which would follow those commands. 0:04:23.400 --> 0:04:26.680 And it would be kind of like an automated air 0:04:26.720 --> 0:04:30.680 traffic control system, with the automated highway guiding vehicles on 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:33.360 and off the highway seamlessly in a way to avoid 0:04:33.440 --> 0:04:38.240 traffic congestion and to avoid accidents. And it's a neat idea. 0:04:38.640 --> 0:04:43.000 It's just I won't I won't say impossible, but about 0:04:43.040 --> 0:04:45.320 as close to impossible as you can get without it 0:04:45.360 --> 0:04:48.279 being impossible to do. But that doesn't mean that folks 0:04:48.320 --> 0:04:52.920 haven't tried. The idea itself is actually coming up on 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:56.440 being a century old. I mean, okay, we still have 0:04:56.520 --> 0:04:59.560 seventeen years to go, and yees, seventeen years for for 0:04:59.640 --> 0:05:01.400 many of you will seem like a really long time. 0:05:01.440 --> 0:05:04.400 But the older I get, the less the less long. 0:05:04.520 --> 0:05:07.920 Seventeen years sounds to me, but we are getting close 0:05:07.960 --> 0:05:12.839 to a century of following alone this idea. So back 0:05:12.880 --> 0:05:17.799 in nine GM sponsored a pavilion at the World's Fair 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:20.240 in New York. I've talked about this in past Tech 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:23.440 Stuff episodes too, but it's one of my favorite historical 0:05:23.560 --> 0:05:28.240 examples of futuristic thinking. So GM had a pavilion that 0:05:28.320 --> 0:05:33.000 was called the Highways and Horizons Pavilion, and the centerpiece 0:05:33.560 --> 0:05:38.680 of this pavilion was an exhibit called Futurama. Bum bum 0:05:38.720 --> 0:05:42.840 bum bum bum. That's all I can hum of that 0:05:42.880 --> 0:05:47.360 before I get a d m C A strike. Anyway, Futurama, 0:05:47.360 --> 0:05:50.320 in this case was this massive model of what a 0:05:50.400 --> 0:05:54.520 landscape of the future could look like, and it included, 0:05:54.960 --> 0:05:58.960 you know, city scapes and rural areas, included farms and 0:05:59.040 --> 0:06:04.239 hydro electric facilities like it was expansive. It was huge 0:06:05.000 --> 0:06:10.279 and incredible and included some moving components to A theatrical 0:06:10.320 --> 0:06:14.960 designer named Norman Bell get Is masterminded this exhibit and 0:06:15.040 --> 0:06:19.360 get his he was a real forward thinker. You can 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:23.719 actually watch a full film that details the Futurama model 0:06:23.880 --> 0:06:28.360 on YouTube. It's about five minutes long. And you can 0:06:28.400 --> 0:06:32.560 even tell that this film inspired lots of later attractions, 0:06:32.600 --> 0:06:36.200 particularly the ones that opened with the debut of EPCOT 0:06:36.320 --> 0:06:39.280 way back when at Walt Disney World. If you've ever 0:06:39.320 --> 0:06:41.680 been on any of those old EPCOT rides, or you 0:06:41.760 --> 0:06:44.880 watched videos of those old epp cut rides, they owe 0:06:44.920 --> 0:06:49.400 a lot to this particular film of the Futurama exhibit 0:06:49.440 --> 0:06:54.360 from way back in. Anyway, the film covers a lot 0:06:54.360 --> 0:06:57.599 of different bits, but the part we're interested in is 0:06:57.640 --> 0:07:01.480 this idea of automated highways. Now, keep in mind this, 0:07:01.480 --> 0:07:04.479 this blue sky automated highway concept came at a time 0:07:04.480 --> 0:07:09.560 when highways themselves, we're really new. In the United States, 0:07:09.600 --> 0:07:12.560 the US was in the process of laying out highways 0:07:12.640 --> 0:07:16.160 in nineteen thirty nine to connect major cities together, even 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:21.480 as get as his exhibit suggested a revolutionary approach. Also, 0:07:21.560 --> 0:07:24.240 I want to add a note here. While the view 0:07:24.280 --> 0:07:27.120 of the future was very forward thinking, if you watch 0:07:27.160 --> 0:07:31.160 this film, you're like, wow, this was, you know, really imaginative, 0:07:31.920 --> 0:07:36.320 the social concepts definitely were not forward thinking. The film. 0:07:36.840 --> 0:07:40.080 Um that's about the Futurama exhibit. It pretty much outright 0:07:40.120 --> 0:07:42.720 says that men are behind all the progress. It just 0:07:42.800 --> 0:07:46.440 uses men as the default, and clearly that ignores the 0:07:46.440 --> 0:07:51.520 fact that countless others besides men made significant contributions up 0:07:51.560 --> 0:07:55.200 to ninety nine and and since and uh yeah, I 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:57.920 just want to call that out because you know we should. 0:07:58.400 --> 0:08:01.600 So it's It's certainly not a perfect film by any 0:08:01.600 --> 0:08:04.640 stretch of the imagination. However, the exhibit gives us a 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:09.280 view of the far off future of nineteen sixty. Keep 0:08:09.320 --> 0:08:12.880 in mind that was twenty years away when this exhibit 0:08:12.920 --> 0:08:17.120 was being shown, and the motorways in this exhibit allow 0:08:17.240 --> 0:08:21.280 cars to travel at designated speeds. The accompanying film says 0:08:21.360 --> 0:08:26.680 that those speeds are fifty miles per hour and they 0:08:26.720 --> 0:08:30.360 will maintain proper distance from other cars through quote unquote 0:08:30.480 --> 0:08:36.199 radio control. So presumably the motorway itself is the transmitter 0:08:36.240 --> 0:08:40.000 and the cars are receivers. Alternatively, the cars could be 0:08:40.040 --> 0:08:43.080 both transmitters and receivers and be communicating with each other. 0:08:43.840 --> 0:08:46.839 It's not entirely clear. Now, you could argue that the 0:08:46.920 --> 0:08:52.240 nine exhibit was marketing and it was just overly optimistic 0:08:52.240 --> 0:08:56.200 projections about the future for the purposes of marketing for GM, 0:08:56.240 --> 0:08:58.360 And I think you would have a pretty solid argument 0:08:58.400 --> 0:09:01.960 if you said that, I'm not or anyone involved really 0:09:02.120 --> 0:09:05.480 believed that this particular vision of the future was what 0:09:05.520 --> 0:09:08.400 was going to happen by nineteen sixty. But then it's 0:09:08.440 --> 0:09:10.560 always hard to protect the future, even if it's just 0:09:10.600 --> 0:09:13.880 a short ways out. Also, the US of nineteen nine 0:09:13.960 --> 0:09:17.439 was entering into very uncertain territory. It was recovering from 0:09:17.480 --> 0:09:20.760 the Great Depression, which was finally coming to an end 0:09:20.800 --> 0:09:24.600 after a decade of economic turmoil, and the US had 0:09:24.640 --> 0:09:28.200 not yet entered into World War Two, And obviously the 0:09:28.240 --> 0:09:32.080 experience of World War Two would affect the American point 0:09:32.080 --> 0:09:36.679 of view significantly. It would really boost xenophobia for one thing. 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:40.240 But let's skip on ahead while get us his vision 0:09:40.280 --> 0:09:43.520 of nineteen sixty did not manifest in reality. We did 0:09:43.559 --> 0:09:47.400 not get these automated highways by nineteen sixty. There were 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:51.360 folks who were working on the concept of automated highways, 0:09:51.400 --> 0:09:55.239 at least researching ways where perhaps it could be possible, 0:09:55.880 --> 0:09:59.920 and that was mostly focusing on mechanical systems and radio 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:05.319 control systems. And over time, as computers began to evolve 0:10:05.440 --> 0:10:09.560 and become more commonplace, there was a transition toward looking 0:10:09.559 --> 0:10:13.160 at computer controlled systems, the hope that maybe a computer 0:10:13.240 --> 0:10:17.440 would be sophisticated enough to handle the complex operations that 0:10:17.440 --> 0:10:21.840 would be required to have a truly automated highway system. 0:10:21.880 --> 0:10:25.880 But computers themselves were really large and limited early on. 0:10:26.280 --> 0:10:30.680 As they evolved, there was also another big shift, and 0:10:30.720 --> 0:10:33.440 I'll talk about that after we come back from this 0:10:33.520 --> 0:10:45.320 quick break. Okay, before the break, I was talking about 0:10:45.320 --> 0:10:49.520 how as computer systems were starting to get more sophisticated 0:10:49.559 --> 0:10:53.880 and smaller, mentorization being a big part of this, we 0:10:53.920 --> 0:10:56.520 started to see a shift, and that shift would end 0:10:56.600 --> 0:11:01.760 up being a really significant one as far as the 0:11:01.800 --> 0:11:07.320 concept and plausibility of automated highway systems are concerned. And 0:11:07.360 --> 0:11:09.840 that was that car companies were starting to design and 0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:14.960 integrate driver's safety features in vehicles, and these features bordered 0:11:15.040 --> 0:11:19.920 or sometimes overlapped the autonomous car concept. So, for example, 0:11:19.960 --> 0:11:23.559 cruise control. The actual idea of cruise control is almost 0:11:23.559 --> 0:11:26.800 as old as the car itself. It's essentially a way 0:11:26.880 --> 0:11:31.400 of having a car maintain a set speed. In some cases, 0:11:31.480 --> 0:11:33.960 it was a set speed that the driver couldn't choose, 0:11:34.120 --> 0:11:38.120 like it was either full throttle or not. But then 0:11:38.240 --> 0:11:41.920 later you had more sophisticated systems that let you set 0:11:41.960 --> 0:11:45.319 cruise control at a speed of your choosing, and your 0:11:45.400 --> 0:11:47.480 vehicle would just maintain that speed. Now, that was just 0:11:47.559 --> 0:11:51.839 one tiny step toward creating systems that would augment a 0:11:51.920 --> 0:11:55.520 driver's ability to navigate the roads safely and more over, 0:11:56.400 --> 0:12:00.760 service kind of building block toward autonomous cars. Obviously, a 0:12:00.840 --> 0:12:04.040 lot more systems would be needed in order to even 0:12:04.120 --> 0:12:07.400 remotely consider a car to be autonomous, but these were 0:12:07.400 --> 0:12:09.680 the steps that we're leading in that direction, and we 0:12:09.720 --> 0:12:13.160 would see that trend continue over time. Cars would get 0:12:13.840 --> 0:12:17.160 more systems that would make them safer and be able 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:20.120 to take over certain operations. You know, cars would get 0:12:20.120 --> 0:12:23.360 integrated cameras, which would help when you're backing out of 0:12:23.360 --> 0:12:26.920 the space for example. They'd get collision sensors, they get 0:12:27.000 --> 0:12:31.360 lane detection sensors, and much more so. The cars were 0:12:31.480 --> 0:12:36.040 evolving into smart machines that could operate on essentially a 0:12:36.160 --> 0:12:38.800 dumb network. Right. You can think of the roads and 0:12:38.880 --> 0:12:44.199 highway systems as a network, and the network itself is 0:12:44.360 --> 0:12:47.319 fairly robust. I mean, if you drive in Atlanta, you 0:12:47.360 --> 0:12:49.480 might question that with all the potholes, but you get 0:12:49.480 --> 0:12:52.600 what I'm saying. It's a robust system, but it's dumb. 0:12:52.840 --> 0:12:57.280 It does not have any real intelligent components itself. And 0:12:57.320 --> 0:13:01.680 the cars became the smart art components, smart devices that 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:07.480 could navigate dumb systems. Meanwhile, in research organizations such as 0:13:07.520 --> 0:13:12.040 the Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways or PATH, which 0:13:12.080 --> 0:13:15.320 originated out of the University of California, you had researchers 0:13:15.360 --> 0:13:19.600 who were looking into various approaches for autonomous driving, which 0:13:19.640 --> 0:13:24.120 included auto highway technologies. So not just you know, how 0:13:24.160 --> 0:13:27.280 can we make an autonomous car, but would it be 0:13:27.320 --> 0:13:31.560 possible to make a highway system that itself was intelligent 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:37.079 and remove the requirement of having intelligent vehicles instead. Now, 0:13:37.120 --> 0:13:40.880 this was in the nineteen eighties, and it started to 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:43.480 take up some momentum because you know, in the nineteen 0:13:43.480 --> 0:13:47.720 eighties we certainly were miles, no pun intended miles away 0:13:47.800 --> 0:13:51.840 from the technologies that would allow a truly autonomous vehicle. 0:13:52.600 --> 0:13:56.760 So by n things got shifted into a higher gear. 0:13:56.800 --> 0:13:59.080 To use another pun, I'm just gonna keep doing those 0:13:59.080 --> 0:14:01.760 I guess I don't to, I honestly don't. But the 0:14:01.840 --> 0:14:07.280 US government passed the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act or 0:14:07.559 --> 0:14:12.120 is T and that's often a question we ask here 0:14:12.240 --> 0:14:16.120 in Atlanta, Georgia, when someone hands us a drink, we 0:14:16.160 --> 0:14:20.840 point to and say, is t anyway? This Act laid 0:14:20.880 --> 0:14:24.800 the groundwork for early testing of automated vehicles and roadways. 0:14:24.960 --> 0:14:28.040 So the U. S Department of Transportation would then create 0:14:28.520 --> 0:14:33.000 the National Automated Highway System Research Program or in a 0:14:33.400 --> 0:14:38.160 h s RP. This program's main purpose was to establish 0:14:38.280 --> 0:14:43.480 specifications for an automated highway system. Again, because with so 0:14:43.520 --> 0:14:46.880 many different players in the space, like all the different 0:14:47.360 --> 0:14:53.280 law agencies across you know, federal and state and regional systems. 0:14:53.760 --> 0:14:56.680 You have all the different car companies that are involved, 0:14:57.040 --> 0:15:00.440 Like there are a lot of different players who are 0:15:01.240 --> 0:15:06.120 uh deeply concerned with things like highway technologies. You have 0:15:06.240 --> 0:15:11.200 to establish standards so that there is interoperability between the 0:15:11.240 --> 0:15:14.720 system and all the vehicles. Right. Again, if you have 0:15:14.760 --> 0:15:17.920 a system that only communicates with one type of vehicle, 0:15:18.200 --> 0:15:21.600 then it's not really a good system, right for anything 0:15:21.640 --> 0:15:24.720 other than that vehicle, it's a terrible system, or it 0:15:24.800 --> 0:15:29.720 might as well not exist. In the Department of Transportation 0:15:29.800 --> 0:15:35.120 created the National Automated Highway System Consortium, So this was 0:15:35.200 --> 0:15:37.920 kind of a think tank that was made up of 0:15:38.880 --> 0:15:44.640 more around like a hundred different members across nine major categories. 0:15:44.920 --> 0:15:49.800 Those categories included things like research organizations, government agencies again 0:15:50.040 --> 0:15:53.680 at different levels like federal, state, and local. It included 0:15:53.840 --> 0:15:58.280 academic organizations like the University of California, and of course 0:15:58.640 --> 0:16:03.520 representatives from the transportation industry. So the hope was that 0:16:03.560 --> 0:16:07.440 by including all of these groups in the conversation that 0:16:07.520 --> 0:16:10.560 everyone would be able to arrive at a consensus that 0:16:10.600 --> 0:16:15.320 would make the most viable, efficient, safe, and practical solution 0:16:15.960 --> 0:16:23.000 for automated highways. Um also hopefully most affordable, because you 0:16:23.000 --> 0:16:26.200 would ultimately be turning to the US taxpayer to foot 0:16:26.240 --> 0:16:29.640 the bill for these kind of things. And I think 0:16:29.720 --> 0:16:33.640 that was a wise move in some ways, because it's 0:16:33.640 --> 0:16:37.440 always good to get stakeholders involved. One just to make 0:16:37.480 --> 0:16:40.440 sure that the solutions you are designing actually solve real 0:16:40.440 --> 0:16:43.080 world problems. There are a lot of times where we 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:46.800 talk about an approach or a technology and we refer 0:16:46.880 --> 0:16:50.280 to it as a solution that's looking for a problem. 0:16:50.320 --> 0:16:52.640 That's not ideal. Right, if you are if you have 0:16:52.720 --> 0:16:55.440 identified what the problem is, then you can work to 0:16:55.640 --> 0:16:58.160 solve it, but you have to make sure that your 0:16:58.160 --> 0:17:01.040 solution actually does address the problem them. That's one reason 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:03.200 why you want to have lots of different stakeholders there. 0:17:03.560 --> 0:17:05.960 You also want to have buy in across the entire 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:11.240 industry or else Again, interoperability becomes a problem. However, when 0:17:11.280 --> 0:17:14.679 you include all these different voices, there's always the danger 0:17:14.960 --> 0:17:18.760 that projects descend into a designed by committee approach where 0:17:18.760 --> 0:17:21.159 it feels like all the really progressive concepts have been 0:17:21.200 --> 0:17:24.120 sanded down until they aren't really interesting anymore, or worse, 0:17:24.960 --> 0:17:28.760 you fail to find any common ground and nothing gets done. 0:17:29.920 --> 0:17:37.600 So between and researchers poured some serious effort into conceptualizing 0:17:37.680 --> 0:17:42.119 and automated highway system. So the benefits of such a system, 0:17:42.119 --> 0:17:45.359 if it worked, were obvious on the surface. Like, everyone 0:17:45.400 --> 0:17:49.159 could agree this is a good idea insofar as what 0:17:49.359 --> 0:17:53.400 the goal is because you would reduce traffic congestion, which 0:17:53.440 --> 0:17:57.160 would improve traveled times. It would also reduce fuel consumptions 0:17:57.280 --> 0:17:59.680 that was an added benefit, and it would improve the 0:17:59.760 --> 0:18:02.439 quality of life from motorists across the nation. They'd be 0:18:02.480 --> 0:18:07.280 spending less time in transit and more time doing whatever 0:18:07.320 --> 0:18:10.280 it was they wanted to do. So like, those are 0:18:10.440 --> 0:18:13.639 pretty obvious benefits of such a system. The reduction of 0:18:13.720 --> 0:18:19.560 accidents would also be incredibly important. It could save tens 0:18:19.600 --> 0:18:24.440 of thousands of lives every year. It is impossible to 0:18:24.640 --> 0:18:30.840 overstate how important that is. The impact of deaths due 0:18:30.840 --> 0:18:36.240 to traffic accidents is gargantuane. There's the personal impact on 0:18:36.280 --> 0:18:39.400 all the friends and family of the people who are lost, 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:44.760 there's the financial impact. There's the societal impact. You know, 0:18:45.040 --> 0:18:48.760 we no longer have those people contributing to society. So yeah, 0:18:49.000 --> 0:18:52.119 that's one of those things where not only is it 0:18:52.160 --> 0:18:56.199 great just the idea of saving these lives, we all 0:18:56.280 --> 0:19:00.080 stand to benefit from that, right, we all stand to 0:19:00.160 --> 0:19:02.639 benefit from the fact that these people are still around 0:19:02.640 --> 0:19:06.080 and contributing to society. Not to mention, you save a 0:19:06.160 --> 0:19:09.360 lot of money and property in the process of reducing accidents. 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:12.959 So the goal was clear. How to get to the 0:19:13.000 --> 0:19:17.240 goal was the matter of debate. That debate largely ended 0:19:17.680 --> 0:19:23.760 in why, well, I mean, ultimately the easy answer is 0:19:23.800 --> 0:19:26.560 the money fell out. So in part the issue was 0:19:26.600 --> 0:19:29.640 that all those stakeholders were in fact having trouble agreeing 0:19:29.720 --> 0:19:32.439 upon the right approach and the components that would have 0:19:32.520 --> 0:19:35.520 to go into an automated highway as well as into 0:19:36.080 --> 0:19:40.439 the vehicles that would be compatible with such highways. You know, 0:19:40.480 --> 0:19:42.439 the whole goal was to build consensus, but over the 0:19:42.520 --> 0:19:45.400 years that just became impossible to do. You had too 0:19:45.400 --> 0:19:49.560 many different voices with different agendas, and there was no 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:54.520 common ground to really solidify a path forward. So nothing 0:19:54.600 --> 0:19:58.440 was happening, and since the consortium was making very little headway, 0:19:58.560 --> 0:20:01.560 it was pretty hard to justify continuing to fund it. 0:20:02.119 --> 0:20:05.320 So in nineties seven, the US government passed another act. 0:20:05.400 --> 0:20:08.440 This one was the T twenty one Act t E 0:20:08.680 --> 0:20:12.800 A one, and that pulled financial support from the Automated 0:20:12.840 --> 0:20:16.200 Highway Research programs to put it in other areas. The 0:20:16.400 --> 0:20:18.760 d O T essentially made the decision to focus more 0:20:18.800 --> 0:20:23.640 on safety oriented technologies like the aforementioned lane detection technologies, 0:20:24.000 --> 0:20:26.560 and essentially what the government was leaning toward was where 0:20:26.560 --> 0:20:29.920 the automotive industry was already headed, which would mean you 0:20:29.960 --> 0:20:35.280 would have these independent autonomous vehicles or increasingly autonomous vehicles 0:20:35.680 --> 0:20:39.679 that would navigate within an environment rather than an intelligent 0:20:39.960 --> 0:20:44.600 environment that would guide vehicles to their respective destinations. Now, 0:20:45.040 --> 0:20:48.000 some say the technologies we're seeing evolving vehicles in general 0:20:48.040 --> 0:20:51.960 and autonomous vehicles in particular, could be a stepping stone 0:20:52.040 --> 0:20:55.960 toward automated highways in the future. I'll talk more about 0:20:56.040 --> 0:21:09.240 that after we take this quick break. So could autonomous 0:21:09.359 --> 0:21:15.320 vehicles be a step toward intelligent highways? You know, maybe 0:21:15.400 --> 0:21:19.880 we will see autonomous vehicle technologies converge with intelligent highways 0:21:20.480 --> 0:21:23.679 and that the true future of motoring will be a 0:21:23.720 --> 0:21:29.240 combination of both intelligent infrastructure and intelligent vehicles working together. 0:21:30.040 --> 0:21:34.080 You could imagine, you know, highways that are able to 0:21:35.160 --> 0:21:40.879 meter traffic onto them with autonomous cars so that there 0:21:40.920 --> 0:21:44.840 are no bottlenecks on entrances and exits to the highway 0:21:44.840 --> 0:21:48.560 for example. Right, that's a possibility. However, for all of 0:21:48.560 --> 0:21:51.119 that to work out, we again have to create an 0:21:51.160 --> 0:21:55.760 agree upon standards that work across all parties, all the 0:21:56.600 --> 0:22:00.720 intelligent highway systems whenever we would design and implement those, 0:22:01.560 --> 0:22:04.840 and all the different vehicles, or else you have cars 0:22:04.880 --> 0:22:08.000 that won't know how to talk to highways, or cars 0:22:08.000 --> 0:22:09.640 that don't know how to talk to each other, and 0:22:09.720 --> 0:22:13.800 so on, and you just end up again with individual 0:22:13.840 --> 0:22:19.720 smart vehicles and the same effect of an overall dumb system. Also, 0:22:20.240 --> 0:22:23.360 we have to consider some of the massive challenges that 0:22:23.400 --> 0:22:27.840 come along with building and implementing an automated highway system. So, 0:22:27.920 --> 0:22:32.760 first of all, doing so would require massive investment in infrastructure. 0:22:33.400 --> 0:22:36.080 That is always a tough thing to get going in 0:22:36.119 --> 0:22:38.840 the United States for multiple reasons. Like we did see 0:22:38.960 --> 0:22:44.040 a national infrastructure bill this year, but it did not 0:22:44.119 --> 0:22:46.919 go easily, and it turns out like folks are not 0:22:47.000 --> 0:22:50.320 super jazzed about having to pay more in taxes, which 0:22:50.400 --> 0:22:54.720 is kind of understandable. Um, And without massive investment, it 0:22:54.760 --> 0:22:58.480 would not be possible to build out a smart infrastructure, 0:22:59.200 --> 0:23:02.840 even if we had had one that was designed and 0:23:02.880 --> 0:23:05.760 ready to go and everyone had agreed upon this is 0:23:05.800 --> 0:23:08.040 the right approach. Even if that were the case, and 0:23:08.119 --> 0:23:11.320 it's not, it would still be really hard to sell 0:23:11.440 --> 0:23:14.480 that to the American public and say this is worth 0:23:14.520 --> 0:23:17.000 paying for. So that's one hurdle just getting the money 0:23:17.080 --> 0:23:22.160 to pay for the rollout of such a system, let 0:23:22.200 --> 0:23:26.240 alone the continued maintenance and operation of that system. Also 0:23:26.280 --> 0:23:28.679 building out that kind of a system would take a 0:23:28.880 --> 0:23:31.760 huge amount of time. You get into a lot of 0:23:31.800 --> 0:23:34.119 real world issues with this one. I mean, like like 0:23:34.200 --> 0:23:38.560 finding the right contractors to do the work is it's 0:23:38.640 --> 0:23:40.560 kind of a boring thing to talk about, but it's 0:23:40.760 --> 0:23:44.000 realistically one of the big challenges. I mean, hopefully the 0:23:44.400 --> 0:23:47.120 government ends up finding contractors who don't end up having 0:23:47.160 --> 0:23:49.960 suspicious links to the people who hold the purse strings, 0:23:50.520 --> 0:23:53.600 because that happens all the time and it's never good. 0:23:54.280 --> 0:23:57.679 Um do. You also have to deal with unexpected problems 0:23:57.760 --> 0:24:01.359 as you're deploying systems. This happens in any system, doesn't 0:24:01.359 --> 0:24:05.359 matter how big or how complicated it is. It will happen, 0:24:05.359 --> 0:24:09.760 and with something this huge, it will happen a lot. Uh. Also, 0:24:09.880 --> 0:24:11.720 just building out the system so it reaches all the 0:24:11.760 --> 0:24:15.560 areas necessary. I mean, the broadband initiatives in this country 0:24:15.680 --> 0:24:21.960 show that's very easy to underserve or even not serve 0:24:22.080 --> 0:24:26.879 at all certain regions. That would be a huge disadvantage 0:24:26.880 --> 0:24:29.080 to people who live, in work in those regions. So 0:24:30.200 --> 0:24:34.200 this is a ton of work, and it's it's again, 0:24:34.240 --> 0:24:37.239 it's not impossible, but it is very hard, and the 0:24:37.280 --> 0:24:40.280 harder it is, the less likely we're going to see 0:24:40.280 --> 0:24:44.200 it happen. The actual technical requirements would be pretty darn 0:24:44.320 --> 0:24:48.560 daunting too. You would need a system capable of detecting, controlling, 0:24:48.880 --> 0:24:52.879 and coordinating every vehicle on the road, and the system 0:24:52.920 --> 0:24:58.120 would have to have an exceptionally high reliability factor because Obviously, 0:24:58.200 --> 0:25:01.199 mistakes could lead to accidents, which could mean loss of 0:25:01.240 --> 0:25:06.040 property and obviously much much worse. In some ways, the 0:25:06.160 --> 0:25:10.520 system could be simpler than what you see with autonomous vehicles, 0:25:10.560 --> 0:25:13.040 at least as long as you know conditions are normal. 0:25:13.520 --> 0:25:16.520 But then we all know that driving conditions are paradoxically 0:25:16.880 --> 0:25:20.119 rarely normal. All it takes is an animal running across 0:25:20.160 --> 0:25:24.240 the lane of traffic or pop up heavy thunderstorm to 0:25:24.280 --> 0:25:29.120 turn a normal drive into a dangerous one, and automated 0:25:29.160 --> 0:25:31.239 highway system would need to be able to detect and 0:25:31.280 --> 0:25:33.720 cope with these sort of things in a safe and 0:25:33.800 --> 0:25:39.040 reliable way that wouldn't affect the overall system operations. Right, So, 0:25:39.119 --> 0:25:41.919 let's say you've got a big old pop up thunderstorm 0:25:41.960 --> 0:25:44.800 along one stretch of highway. While you would have to 0:25:44.800 --> 0:25:49.479 have the highway deal with this all down the pathway 0:25:49.520 --> 0:25:53.040 of the road so that you didn't have congestion and 0:25:53.080 --> 0:25:56.560 traffic jams, because while the vehicles moving through the very 0:25:56.560 --> 0:25:59.560 heavy storm might have to reduce their speed, that means well, 0:26:00.040 --> 0:26:02.600 three miles back where there is no rain, you're gonna 0:26:02.600 --> 0:26:04.000 have to deal with that too. You're gonna have to 0:26:04.000 --> 0:26:07.840 reduce speed there or else you're going to start encountering 0:26:07.840 --> 0:26:11.400 traffic congestions, so like, these are really complicated systems. Right, 0:26:12.920 --> 0:26:16.560