Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: And how the tech are you? You know, we've been
Speaker 1: talking about driverless cars for quite a few years now,
Speaker 1: Even on this show and in previous episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: I've talked about the various levels of autonomy, which range
Speaker 1: from zero, which means the vehicle in question really has
Speaker 1: no driver assist features at all, and the human behind
Speaker 1: the wheel is responsible for everything, you know, barring some
Speaker 1: sort of mechanical issue at any rate, and then you
Speaker 1: go all the way up to level five autonomy, which
Speaker 1: is a car that's so smart you could enroll it
Speaker 1: in Harvard. No. But seriously, a level five autonomous vehicle
Speaker 1: would have no need for human accessible controls. It would
Speaker 1: just transport people and our cargo wherever, under any driving conditions,
Speaker 1: at any time of day or night. Where currently hovering
Speaker 1: around levels two and three at the moment, mostly there
Speaker 1: are pushes to get to level four, but as it
Speaker 1: has turned out, the technology necessary to create truly autonomous
Speaker 1: vehicles that can operate anywhere at any time is harder
Speaker 1: than some of us myself included, initially thought and most
Speaker 1: of our discussions about driverless cars treat the vehicles as
Speaker 1: you know, self contained computing systems that just happened to
Speaker 1: be on the go. So by that, I mean the
Speaker 1: car mostly is relying on its own sensors to understand
Speaker 1: what is going on around it. The car's decision making
Speaker 1: systems are fully contained within the vehicle itself. And you
Speaker 1: can think of a highway filled with those types of
Speaker 1: autonomous vehicles being kind of similar to a room filled
Speaker 1: with computers that are not connected to each other, so
Speaker 1: they are not network. They're all individ jewel computers. Each
Speaker 1: machine is sophisticated and it's capable, but it's also independent
Speaker 1: of all the others. Other visions of a driverless future
Speaker 1: involved cars that can communicate with one another directly or
Speaker 1: even potentially with roads and infrastructure. These cars would depend
Speaker 1: not just on their own sensors, but those are the
Speaker 1: vehicles around it. They would remain in constant communication to
Speaker 1: provide the smoothest, safest, and most efficient ride from point
Speaker 1: A to point B, so they would be kind of
Speaker 1: part of a mesh network. And to get to that future,
Speaker 1: we would need to agree upon a standardized protocol for
Speaker 1: these cars to follow. Otherwise you could have a world
Speaker 1: where Toyotas wouldn't talk to Fords, they would only talk
Speaker 1: to other Toyota's, and that kind of thing. That would
Speaker 1: be a nightmare, that would not be helpful. Anyway, That's
Speaker 1: not the direction that most companies are going in right now,
Speaker 1: though I suspect some companies that are more focusing on
Speaker 1: creating autonomous transportation vehicles for stuff like cargo, or at
Speaker 1: least looking at this from a fleetwide perspective that could
Speaker 1: serve a similar purpose, but specifically for this particular you know,
Speaker 1: business model. But today I wanted to talk about a
Speaker 1: slightly different approach. Uh And I've talked about this a
Speaker 1: little bit in the past when I've talked about autonomous cars.
Speaker 1: So this one has had several different incarnations over the years,
Speaker 1: and it's it's a cool idea on the surface, but
Speaker 1: it's probably the least practical for driver lest vehicles or
Speaker 1: autonomous vehicles insofar as the amount of work we would
Speaker 1: need to do on an infrastructure level and the amount
Speaker 1: of consensus we would have to have across all parties
Speaker 1: in the space but this is the concept of the
Speaker 1: automated highway system. With this kind of system, you would
Speaker 1: have embedded networks that are along or under or above highways,
Speaker 1: and these systems would provide guidance to the vehicles on
Speaker 1: the road, perhaps even to the extent of controlling all
Speaker 1: the vehicles on the road. So and that kind of
Speaker 1: a system, the road would be the one doing the driving.
Speaker 1: In other words, it would send commands to all the
Speaker 1: vehicles traveling on the lanes, which would follow those commands.
Speaker 1: And it would be kind of like an automated air
Speaker 1: traffic control system, with the automated highway guiding vehicles on
Speaker 1: and off the highway seamlessly in a way to avoid
Speaker 1: traffic congestion and to avoid accidents. And it's a neat idea.
Speaker 1: It's just I won't I won't say impossible, but about
Speaker 1: as close to impossible as you can get without it
Speaker 1: being impossible to do. But that doesn't mean that folks
Speaker 1: haven't tried. The idea itself is actually coming up on
Speaker 1: being a century old. I mean, okay, we still have
Speaker 1: seventeen years to go, and yees, seventeen years for for
Speaker 1: many of you will seem like a really long time.
Speaker 1: But the older I get, the less the less long.
Speaker 1: Seventeen years sounds to me, but we are getting close
Speaker 1: to a century of following alone this idea. So back
Speaker 1: in nine GM sponsored a pavilion at the World's Fair
Speaker 1: in New York. I've talked about this in past Tech
Speaker 1: Stuff episodes too, but it's one of my favorite historical
Speaker 1: examples of futuristic thinking. So GM had a pavilion that
Speaker 1: was called the Highways and Horizons Pavilion, and the centerpiece
Speaker 1: of this pavilion was an exhibit called Futurama. Bum bum
Speaker 1: bum bum bum. That's all I can hum of that
Speaker 1: before I get a d m C A strike. Anyway, Futurama,
Speaker 1: in this case was this massive model of what a
Speaker 1: landscape of the future could look like, and it included,
Speaker 1: you know, city scapes and rural areas, included farms and
Speaker 1: hydro electric facilities like it was expansive. It was huge
Speaker 1: and incredible and included some moving components to A theatrical
Speaker 1: designer named Norman Bell get Is masterminded this exhibit and
Speaker 1: get his he was a real forward thinker. You can
Speaker 1: actually watch a full film that details the Futurama model
Speaker 1: on YouTube. It's about five minutes long. And you can
Speaker 1: even tell that this film inspired lots of later attractions,
Speaker 1: particularly the ones that opened with the debut of EPCOT
Speaker 1: way back when at Walt Disney World. If you've ever
Speaker 1: been on any of those old EPCOT rides, or you
Speaker 1: watched videos of those old epp cut rides, they owe
Speaker 1: a lot to this particular film of the Futurama exhibit
Speaker 1: from way back in. Anyway, the film covers a lot
Speaker 1: of different bits, but the part we're interested in is
Speaker 1: this idea of automated highways. Now, keep in mind this,
Speaker 1: this blue sky automated highway concept came at a time
Speaker 1: when highways themselves, we're really new. In the United States,
Speaker 1: the US was in the process of laying out highways
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty nine to connect major cities together, even
Speaker 1: as get as his exhibit suggested a revolutionary approach. Also,
Speaker 1: I want to add a note here. While the view
Speaker 1: of the future was very forward thinking, if you watch
Speaker 1: this film, you're like, wow, this was, you know, really imaginative,
Speaker 1: the social concepts definitely were not forward thinking. The film.
Speaker 1: Um that's about the Futurama exhibit. It pretty much outright
Speaker 1: says that men are behind all the progress. It just
Speaker 1: uses men as the default, and clearly that ignores the
Speaker 1: fact that countless others besides men made significant contributions up
Speaker 1: to ninety nine and and since and uh yeah, I
Speaker 1: just want to call that out because you know we should.
Speaker 1: So it's It's certainly not a perfect film by any
Speaker 1: stretch of the imagination. However, the exhibit gives us a
Speaker 1: view of the far off future of nineteen sixty. Keep
Speaker 1: in mind that was twenty years away when this exhibit
Speaker 1: was being shown, and the motorways in this exhibit allow
Speaker 1: cars to travel at designated speeds. The accompanying film says
Speaker 1: that those speeds are fifty miles per hour and they
Speaker 1: will maintain proper distance from other cars through quote unquote
Speaker 1: radio control. So presumably the motorway itself is the transmitter
Speaker 1: and the cars are receivers. Alternatively, the cars could be
Speaker 1: both transmitters and receivers and be communicating with each other.
Speaker 1: It's not entirely clear. Now, you could argue that the
Speaker 1: nine exhibit was marketing and it was just overly optimistic
Speaker 1: projections about the future for the purposes of marketing for GM,
Speaker 1: And I think you would have a pretty solid argument
Speaker 1: if you said that, I'm not or anyone involved really
Speaker 1: believed that this particular vision of the future was what
Speaker 1: was going to happen by nineteen sixty. But then it's
Speaker 1: always hard to protect the future, even if it's just
Speaker 1: a short ways out. Also, the US of nineteen nine
Speaker 1: was entering into very uncertain territory. It was recovering from
Speaker 1: the Great Depression, which was finally coming to an end
Speaker 1: after a decade of economic turmoil, and the US had
Speaker 1: not yet entered into World War Two, And obviously the
Speaker 1: experience of World War Two would affect the American point
Speaker 1: of view significantly. It would really boost xenophobia for one thing.
Speaker 1: But let's skip on ahead while get us his vision
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty did not manifest in reality. We did
Speaker 1: not get these automated highways by nineteen sixty. There were
Speaker 1: folks who were working on the concept of automated highways,
Speaker 1: at least researching ways where perhaps it could be possible,
Speaker 1: and that was mostly focusing on mechanical systems and radio
Speaker 1: control systems. And over time, as computers began to evolve
Speaker 1: and become more commonplace, there was a transition toward looking
Speaker 1: at computer controlled systems, the hope that maybe a computer
Speaker 1: would be sophisticated enough to handle the complex operations that
Speaker 1: would be required to have a truly automated highway system.
Speaker 1: But computers themselves were really large and limited early on.
Speaker 1: As they evolved, there was also another big shift, and
Speaker 1: I'll talk about that after we come back from this
Speaker 1: quick break. Okay, before the break, I was talking about
Speaker 1: how as computer systems were starting to get more sophisticated
Speaker 1: and smaller, mentorization being a big part of this, we
Speaker 1: started to see a shift, and that shift would end
Speaker 1: up being a really significant one as far as the
Speaker 1: concept and plausibility of automated highway systems are concerned. And
Speaker 1: that was that car companies were starting to design and
Speaker 1: integrate driver's safety features in vehicles, and these features bordered
Speaker 1: or sometimes overlapped the autonomous car concept. So, for example,
Speaker 1: cruise control. The actual idea of cruise control is almost
Speaker 1: as old as the car itself. It's essentially a way
Speaker 1: of having a car maintain a set speed. In some cases,
Speaker 1: it was a set speed that the driver couldn't choose,
Speaker 1: like it was either full throttle or not. But then
Speaker 1: later you had more sophisticated systems that let you set
Speaker 1: cruise control at a speed of your choosing, and your
Speaker 1: vehicle would just maintain that speed. Now, that was just
Speaker 1: one tiny step toward creating systems that would augment a
Speaker 1: driver's ability to navigate the roads safely and more over,
Speaker 1: service kind of building block toward autonomous cars. Obviously, a
Speaker 1: lot more systems would be needed in order to even
Speaker 1: remotely consider a car to be autonomous, but these were
Speaker 1: the steps that we're leading in that direction, and we
Speaker 1: would see that trend continue over time. Cars would get
Speaker 1: more systems that would make them safer and be able
Speaker 1: to take over certain operations. You know, cars would get
Speaker 1: integrated cameras, which would help when you're backing out of
Speaker 1: the space for example. They'd get collision sensors, they get
Speaker 1: lane detection sensors, and much more so. The cars were
Speaker 1: evolving into smart machines that could operate on essentially a
Speaker 1: dumb network. Right. You can think of the roads and
Speaker 1: highway systems as a network, and the network itself is
Speaker 1: fairly robust. I mean, if you drive in Atlanta, you
Speaker 1: might question that with all the potholes, but you get
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. It's a robust system, but it's dumb.
Speaker 1: It does not have any real intelligent components itself. And
Speaker 1: the cars became the smart art components, smart devices that
Speaker 1: could navigate dumb systems. Meanwhile, in research organizations such as
Speaker 1: the Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways or PATH, which
Speaker 1: originated out of the University of California, you had researchers
Speaker 1: who were looking into various approaches for autonomous driving, which
Speaker 1: included auto highway technologies. So not just you know, how
Speaker 1: can we make an autonomous car, but would it be
Speaker 1: possible to make a highway system that itself was intelligent
Speaker 1: and remove the requirement of having intelligent vehicles instead. Now,
Speaker 1: this was in the nineteen eighties, and it started to
Speaker 1: take up some momentum because you know, in the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties we certainly were miles, no pun intended miles away
Speaker 1: from the technologies that would allow a truly autonomous vehicle.
Speaker 1: So by n things got shifted into a higher gear.
Speaker 1: To use another pun, I'm just gonna keep doing those
Speaker 1: I guess I don't to, I honestly don't. But the
Speaker 1: US government passed the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act or
Speaker 1: is T and that's often a question we ask here
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, Georgia, when someone hands us a drink, we
Speaker 1: point to and say, is t anyway? This Act laid
Speaker 1: the groundwork for early testing of automated vehicles and roadways.
Speaker 1: So the U. S Department of Transportation would then create
Speaker 1: the National Automated Highway System Research Program or in a
Speaker 1: h s RP. This program's main purpose was to establish
Speaker 1: specifications for an automated highway system. Again, because with so
Speaker 1: many different players in the space, like all the different
Speaker 1: law agencies across you know, federal and state and regional systems.
Speaker 1: You have all the different car companies that are involved,
Speaker 1: Like there are a lot of different players who are
Speaker 1: uh deeply concerned with things like highway technologies. You have
Speaker 1: to establish standards so that there is interoperability between the
Speaker 1: system and all the vehicles. Right. Again, if you have
Speaker 1: a system that only communicates with one type of vehicle,
Speaker 1: then it's not really a good system, right for anything
Speaker 1: other than that vehicle, it's a terrible system, or it
Speaker 1: might as well not exist. In the Department of Transportation
Speaker 1: created the National Automated Highway System Consortium, So this was
Speaker 1: kind of a think tank that was made up of
Speaker 1: more around like a hundred different members across nine major categories.
Speaker 1: Those categories included things like research organizations, government agencies again
Speaker 1: at different levels like federal, state, and local. It included
Speaker 1: academic organizations like the University of California, and of course
Speaker 1: representatives from the transportation industry. So the hope was that
Speaker 1: by including all of these groups in the conversation that
Speaker 1: everyone would be able to arrive at a consensus that
Speaker 1: would make the most viable, efficient, safe, and practical solution
Speaker 1: for automated highways. Um also hopefully most affordable, because you
Speaker 1: would ultimately be turning to the US taxpayer to foot
Speaker 1: the bill for these kind of things. And I think
Speaker 1: that was a wise move in some ways, because it's
Speaker 1: always good to get stakeholders involved. One just to make
Speaker 1: sure that the solutions you are designing actually solve real
Speaker 1: world problems. There are a lot of times where we
Speaker 1: talk about an approach or a technology and we refer
Speaker 1: to it as a solution that's looking for a problem.
Speaker 1: That's not ideal. Right, if you are if you have
Speaker 1: identified what the problem is, then you can work to
Speaker 1: solve it, but you have to make sure that your
Speaker 1: solution actually does address the problem them. That's one reason
Speaker 1: why you want to have lots of different stakeholders there.
Speaker 1: You also want to have buy in across the entire
Speaker 1: industry or else Again, interoperability becomes a problem. However, when
Speaker 1: you include all these different voices, there's always the danger
Speaker 1: that projects descend into a designed by committee approach where
Speaker 1: it feels like all the really progressive concepts have been
Speaker 1: sanded down until they aren't really interesting anymore, or worse,
Speaker 1: you fail to find any common ground and nothing gets done.
Speaker 1: So between and researchers poured some serious effort into conceptualizing
Speaker 1: and automated highway system. So the benefits of such a system,
Speaker 1: if it worked, were obvious on the surface. Like, everyone
Speaker 1: could agree this is a good idea insofar as what
Speaker 1: the goal is because you would reduce traffic congestion, which
Speaker 1: would improve traveled times. It would also reduce fuel consumptions
Speaker 1: that was an added benefit, and it would improve the
Speaker 1: quality of life from motorists across the nation. They'd be
Speaker 1: spending less time in transit and more time doing whatever
Speaker 1: it was they wanted to do. So like, those are
Speaker 1: pretty obvious benefits of such a system. The reduction of
Speaker 1: accidents would also be incredibly important. It could save tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of lives every year. It is impossible to
Speaker 1: overstate how important that is. The impact of deaths due
Speaker 1: to traffic accidents is gargantuane. There's the personal impact on
Speaker 1: all the friends and family of the people who are lost,
Speaker 1: there's the financial impact. There's the societal impact. You know,
Speaker 1: we no longer have those people contributing to society. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one of those things where not only is it
Speaker 1: great just the idea of saving these lives, we all
Speaker 1: stand to benefit from that, right, we all stand to
Speaker 1: benefit from the fact that these people are still around
Speaker 1: and contributing to society. Not to mention, you save a
Speaker 1: lot of money and property in the process of reducing accidents.
Speaker 1: So the goal was clear. How to get to the
Speaker 1: goal was the matter of debate. That debate largely ended
Speaker 1: in why, well, I mean, ultimately the easy answer is
Speaker 1: the money fell out. So in part the issue was
Speaker 1: that all those stakeholders were in fact having trouble agreeing
Speaker 1: upon the right approach and the components that would have
Speaker 1: to go into an automated highway as well as into
Speaker 1: the vehicles that would be compatible with such highways. You know,
Speaker 1: the whole goal was to build consensus, but over the
Speaker 1: years that just became impossible to do. You had too
Speaker 1: many different voices with different agendas, and there was no
Speaker 1: common ground to really solidify a path forward. So nothing
Speaker 1: was happening, and since the consortium was making very little headway,
Speaker 1: it was pretty hard to justify continuing to fund it.
Speaker 1: So in nineties seven, the US government passed another act.
Speaker 1: This one was the T twenty one Act t E
Speaker 1: A one, and that pulled financial support from the Automated
Speaker 1: Highway Research programs to put it in other areas. The
Speaker 1: d O T essentially made the decision to focus more
Speaker 1: on safety oriented technologies like the aforementioned lane detection technologies,
Speaker 1: and essentially what the government was leaning toward was where
Speaker 1: the automotive industry was already headed, which would mean you
Speaker 1: would have these independent autonomous vehicles or increasingly autonomous vehicles
Speaker 1: that would navigate within an environment rather than an intelligent
Speaker 1: environment that would guide vehicles to their respective destinations. Now,
Speaker 1: some say the technologies we're seeing evolving vehicles in general
Speaker 1: and autonomous vehicles in particular, could be a stepping stone
Speaker 1: toward automated highways in the future. I'll talk more about
Speaker 1: that after we take this quick break. So could autonomous
Speaker 1: vehicles be a step toward intelligent highways? You know, maybe
Speaker 1: we will see autonomous vehicle technologies converge with intelligent highways
Speaker 1: and that the true future of motoring will be a
Speaker 1: combination of both intelligent infrastructure and intelligent vehicles working together.
Speaker 1: You could imagine, you know, highways that are able to
Speaker 1: meter traffic onto them with autonomous cars so that there
Speaker 1: are no bottlenecks on entrances and exits to the highway
Speaker 1: for example. Right, that's a possibility. However, for all of
Speaker 1: that to work out, we again have to create an
Speaker 1: agree upon standards that work across all parties, all the
Speaker 1: intelligent highway systems whenever we would design and implement those,
Speaker 1: and all the different vehicles, or else you have cars
Speaker 1: that won't know how to talk to highways, or cars
Speaker 1: that don't know how to talk to each other, and
Speaker 1: so on, and you just end up again with individual
Speaker 1: smart vehicles and the same effect of an overall dumb system. Also,
Speaker 1: we have to consider some of the massive challenges that
Speaker 1: come along with building and implementing an automated highway system. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, doing so would require massive investment in infrastructure.
Speaker 1: That is always a tough thing to get going in
Speaker 1: the United States for multiple reasons. Like we did see
Speaker 1: a national infrastructure bill this year, but it did not
Speaker 1: go easily, and it turns out like folks are not
Speaker 1: super jazzed about having to pay more in taxes, which
Speaker 1: is kind of understandable. Um, And without massive investment, it
Speaker 1: would not be possible to build out a smart infrastructure,
Speaker 1: even if we had had one that was designed and
Speaker 1: ready to go and everyone had agreed upon this is
Speaker 1: the right approach. Even if that were the case, and
Speaker 1: it's not, it would still be really hard to sell
Speaker 1: that to the American public and say this is worth
Speaker 1: paying for. So that's one hurdle just getting the money
Speaker 1: to pay for the rollout of such a system, let
Speaker 1: alone the continued maintenance and operation of that system. Also
Speaker 1: building out that kind of a system would take a
Speaker 1: huge amount of time. You get into a lot of
Speaker 1: real world issues with this one. I mean, like like
Speaker 1: finding the right contractors to do the work is it's
Speaker 1: kind of a boring thing to talk about, but it's
Speaker 1: realistically one of the big challenges. I mean, hopefully the
Speaker 1: government ends up finding contractors who don't end up having
Speaker 1: suspicious links to the people who hold the purse strings,
Speaker 1: because that happens all the time and it's never good.
Speaker 1: Um do. You also have to deal with unexpected problems
Speaker 1: as you're deploying systems. This happens in any system, doesn't
Speaker 1: matter how big or how complicated it is. It will happen,
Speaker 1: and with something this huge, it will happen a lot. Uh. Also,
Speaker 1: just building out the system so it reaches all the
Speaker 1: areas necessary. I mean, the broadband initiatives in this country
Speaker 1: show that's very easy to underserve or even not serve
Speaker 1: at all certain regions. That would be a huge disadvantage
Speaker 1: to people who live, in work in those regions. So
Speaker 1: this is a ton of work, and it's it's again,
Speaker 1: it's not impossible, but it is very hard, and the
Speaker 1: harder it is, the less likely we're going to see
Speaker 1: it happen. The actual technical requirements would be pretty darn
Speaker 1: daunting too. You would need a system capable of detecting, controlling,
Speaker 1: and coordinating every vehicle on the road, and the system
Speaker 1: would have to have an exceptionally high reliability factor because Obviously,
Speaker 1: mistakes could lead to accidents, which could mean loss of
Speaker 1: property and obviously much much worse. In some ways, the
Speaker 1: system could be simpler than what you see with autonomous vehicles,
Speaker 1: at least as long as you know conditions are normal.
Speaker 1: But then we all know that driving conditions are paradoxically
Speaker 1: rarely normal. All it takes is an animal running across
Speaker 1: the lane of traffic or pop up heavy thunderstorm to
Speaker 1: turn a normal drive into a dangerous one, and automated
Speaker 1: highway system would need to be able to detect and
Speaker 1: cope with these sort of things in a safe and
Speaker 1: reliable way that wouldn't affect the overall system operations. Right, So,
Speaker 1: let's say you've got a big old pop up thunderstorm
Speaker 1: along one stretch of highway. While you would have to
Speaker 1: have the highway deal with this all down the pathway
Speaker 1: of the road so that you didn't have congestion and
Speaker 1: traffic jams, because while the vehicles moving through the very
Speaker 1: heavy storm might have to reduce their speed, that means well,
Speaker 1: three miles back where there is no rain, you're gonna
Speaker 1: have to deal with that too. You're gonna have to
Speaker 1: reduce speed there or else you're going to start encountering
Speaker 1: traffic congestions, so like, these are really complicated systems. Right,
Speaker 1: then there are privacy concerns. So presumably an automated highway
Speaker 1: system would have to differentiate against all the different vehicles
Speaker 1: traveling on the lanes. Right. If you didn't differentiate all
Speaker 1: the vehicles, that would be disastrous because you wouldn't know
Speaker 1: that vehicle one and vehicle two are in fact two
Speaker 1: different vehicles. So maybe the system would assign a unique
Speaker 1: identifier to each vehicle as it entered the highway. Maybe
Speaker 1: manufacturers would include a unique identifier within a car's systems itself,
Speaker 1: and the highway would detect that. But either way, the
Speaker 1: highway will quote unquote no where each car is going
Speaker 1: when it got on the highway, when it got off
Speaker 1: the highway. That means that each and every driver on
Speaker 1: that highway, at least every driver who has a compatible system.
Speaker 1: More on that in a second, will be tracked as
Speaker 1: long as they are on that highway. That is a
Speaker 1: major privacy concern, So that's another issue that has to
Speaker 1: be solved. Then that brings us to the other big hurdle,
Speaker 1: which is adoption. By that I mean cars won't magically
Speaker 1: be able to communicate with an automatic highway system. Let's
Speaker 1: let's imagine that you know, we've designed and built out
Speaker 1: an incredible intelligent highway system. Uh down this one particular highway. Well,
Speaker 1: you have to have cars that can interact with that system, right,
Speaker 1: I mean there's no there's no magical connection there. So
Speaker 1: the cars themselves have to have required systems in order
Speaker 1: to interoperate with the highways. Now, if you had taken
Speaker 1: a very collaborative approach along with like car manufacturing companies
Speaker 1: and you worked with them, well, potentially those car manufacturers
Speaker 1: might have started to include compatible systems in their vehicles
Speaker 1: in the years leading up to the deployment of the
Speaker 1: intelligent system on the highway. So in other words, maybe
Speaker 1: you've got two or three years worth of vehicle models
Speaker 1: that already have those systems in place. They just you know,
Speaker 1: weren't connecting to anything until the highway was ready to go.
Speaker 1: That would help a little bit, right, People who had
Speaker 1: newer cars would be able to interact with this intelligent highway.
Speaker 1: But it's not like you're going to convince every single
Speaker 1: person to trade in their vehicle for a new one,
Speaker 1: and that means you're automated highway system will still have
Speaker 1: human operated vehicles on it. It will only be communicating
Speaker 1: with certain cars on the highway, and everybody else will
Speaker 1: still be regular or humans driving on on the roads.
Speaker 1: That adds in uncertainty, right, That's an uncontrolled variable in
Speaker 1: the system. So even if the system is working flawlessly,
Speaker 1: these uncontrolled variables can cause problems. That's very dangerous and
Speaker 1: there's not really an easy solution to that. In fact,
Speaker 1: you know, even if you have a system that works,
Speaker 1: what you're likely going to see is that the only
Speaker 1: the people who are buying the most expensive cars will
Speaker 1: initially be able to interact with it, which will create
Speaker 1: haves and have nuts on the highway. And that doesn't
Speaker 1: sound like it's a really good system either. Now, one
Speaker 1: way you could potentially get around this, it's not a
Speaker 1: practical solution, but it's it's kind of like a pie
Speaker 1: in the sky sort of solution, is to incorporate something
Speaker 1: similar to one of the many variations we've seen on
Speaker 1: the hyper loop concept, namely the sled. So one of
Speaker 1: Elon Musk's hyper loop concepts involved driving your vehicle onto
Speaker 1: a sled that in turn could navigate through the hyper
Speaker 1: loop system. So with this concept, drivers would drive up
Speaker 1: and park their car or other vehicle on a sled,
Speaker 1: and the sled would then navigate onto a track of
Speaker 1: some sort like a highway, So the car remains parked,
Speaker 1: but the sleds zooms off to the destination, where upon
Speaker 1: the driver then pulls off of the sled in their
Speaker 1: their vehicle and they drive the last mile or whatever.
Speaker 1: An automated highway system that used something similar to this
Speaker 1: could get around the fact that not all the vehicles
Speaker 1: on the road are compatible with the system. In fact,
Speaker 1: none of the vehicles would need to be compatible. It's
Speaker 1: the sleds that are compatible, not the vehicles. But in
Speaker 1: order to do that, you would have to build out
Speaker 1: these sled based highway systems like you'd essentially have to
Speaker 1: recreate all the highways that exist or slowly convert them
Speaker 1: over while also allowing for traditional traffic to pass through them.
Speaker 1: That is why it doesn't sound like a practical solution
Speaker 1: to me. It just sounds like it's too big of
Speaker 1: a problem to tackle. Even with an idealized implementation, you
Speaker 1: still have concerns. The concept covers highways but not other
Speaker 1: types of roads, which means whenever you're not on the highway,
Speaker 1: the vehicle will presumably be under human control. If it's
Speaker 1: an autonomous vehicle, well then the question is, well, why
Speaker 1: do we need an automated highway? If all the vehicles
Speaker 1: are autonomous anyway, then we don't need the automated highway.
Speaker 1: If the vehicle isn't autonomous, well then you still have issues.
Speaker 1: When you're talking about entrances and exits to the highway,
Speaker 1: those could become bottlenecks and congestion points. Sure, traffic along
Speaker 1: the highway itself is smooth, but getting onto the highway
Speaker 1: or getting off the highway, that could be a very
Speaker 1: different situation. So it could create a new kind of headache.
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of other issues as well.
Speaker 1: I think people are more in favor of car companies
Speaker 1: doing all the R and D work and the implementation
Speaker 1: of technologies to make cars smarter and safer. Then it's
Speaker 1: just up to the individual customer to decide if they
Speaker 1: want to pay for a vehicle that has those features,
Speaker 1: instead of collectively supporting a national effort to transform the
Speaker 1: actual highway system. Like when you leave it up to
Speaker 1: the individual, it's more palatable to people in the United States,
Speaker 1: because here in the US there's always been more of
Speaker 1: an inclination toward supporting individual freedom over buying into a
Speaker 1: larger program that, if it works, could benefit everyone. That's
Speaker 1: not a judgment on my part. I mean it kind
Speaker 1: of is a little bit, because you know, I do
Speaker 1: tend toward the more um collaborative spectrum. But we have
Speaker 1: plenty of examples of government projects that failed somewhere along
Speaker 1: the way, So I wouldn't say that the inclination toward
Speaker 1: individual freedom is entirely selfish. I think part of it
Speaker 1: is somewhat practical, simply because there are these examples of
Speaker 1: big government programs that failed which show a massive sunk cost,
Speaker 1: and it's possible that on made highways could be in
Speaker 1: that category. So yeah, I think that's important to to
Speaker 1: point out. Now there has really been a shift more
Speaker 1: towards the concept of intelligent highways, which is sort of
Speaker 1: it's really just a horse of a different color. It's
Speaker 1: the same same animal, just as a different name. The
Speaker 1: intelligent highways largely talk about embedded technology along highways that
Speaker 1: can communicate and interact on at least some level with
Speaker 1: the vehicles that are traveling along the highways. In some
Speaker 1: cases we're talking about things like a dedicated lane for
Speaker 1: autonomous vehicles, But again, the still brings up the challenge
Speaker 1: of having to create a standard that everyone agrees to
Speaker 1: play by so that the technologies are compatible. Otherwise it
Speaker 1: ends up working for just a tiny slice of the
Speaker 1: population and represents a massive, uh inefficient approach to trying
Speaker 1: to solve a very difficult problem. So I find the
Speaker 1: idea of the automated highway system really attractive from the
Speaker 1: end result, But the problem is getting to the end
Speaker 1: result requires so many different pieces falling into place that
Speaker 1: it is, like I said, close to impossible. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: if you had buy in everywhere, then maybe, like I think,
Speaker 1: if we lived in a very different world, which would
Speaker 1: not necessarily be a world I'd want to live in,
Speaker 1: but if we lived in a very different world where
Speaker 1: you had state run everything like state essentially you're talking
Speaker 1: about like a truly socialist or maybe even communist kind
Speaker 1: of society, then you could have a system where everything
Speaker 1: works together. But we've seen pure socialist and communist societies
Speaker 1: that you know, when you throw people into a system,
Speaker 1: it doesn't work as perfectly as the concept necessarily made
Speaker 1: it out to be, so I don't think it's practical.
Speaker 1: I wish that it were, because I definitely see issues
Speaker 1: with the way we are going. We're relying on the
Speaker 1: smart vehicle and the dumb infrastructure. I see problems with
Speaker 1: that as well. It's not like all the problems disappear.
Speaker 1: It's just that they become a little more manageable, a
Speaker 1: little more contained than we see when we try to
Speaker 1: address the overall system. So there's no perfect approach I
Speaker 1: don't think. I do think that while I would love
Speaker 1: to see a more integrated system that allows for rich
Speaker 1: communication between the infrastructure and vehicles, because I think that
Speaker 1: that would greatly boost effectiveness, I don't see it as
Speaker 1: being something that we can realistically expect any time in
Speaker 1: the foreseeable future. Still, maybe that vision from way back
Speaker 1: in ninety nine, maybe it's still on the horizon, just
Speaker 1: like the pavilion was called. Maybe that horizon is still there.
Speaker 1: Maybe we're still headed toward it. It's just that our
Speaker 1: road is a little more long and winding than we
Speaker 1: first anticipated. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you
Speaker 1: have suggestions for future topics, please reach out to me.
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