Discussion : Your car could soon drive you to work back and forth.

[htc***]

Volvo's robotic SARTRE could chauffeurs you to work and back

Tailgating on the highway is a pretty dangerous thing and, in some cases, can be a ticketable offense. In the future, though, it could be a way to ease traffic congestion and to boost fuel mileage on highways. In this guise it's called platooning, something that we saw GM's crazy futuristic EN-V doing when we took it for a spin out in Vegas. Volvo is getting in on the game too, participating in the European Safe Road Trains for the Environment Project, or SARTRE. It's a research program looking into a standard way to have "trains" of autonomous cars that can follow each other on the highway. A professional leads the way and other cars communicate with each other, enabling the drivers in those following cars to simply kick back and read the paper if they like. This is a project that could be seen on the road in as few as 10 years, but we're thinking by then people might need to find something else to read.


http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/17/volvos-platooning-sartre-cars-drive-themselves-dabble-in-exist/


What do you think?

[Pokey]

1. $$$
2. in 10 years gas will be so expensive you won't see as many cars on the road - especially with only 1 person inside
3. $$$
4. "A professional leads the way..." and $$$

[htc***]

I really don't know about that. Our public transportations have not enough and the buses/trains are overcrowded during rush hours which are happen almost everywhere.

[PCLoadLetter]

I really hope this doesn't catch on. What happens when you break away from the train? What happens if you want to break away and there's another train directly beside you? or say there's a car without this technology ripping it down the highway when you break away but you can't see him because of the cars behind you.

Tailgating is one thing that REALLY ticks me off and this only promotes it. Cars will drive themselves one day (they can already parallel park themselves) but this in my opinion isn't the way it should be done. The system should leave a gap ahead for safety just in case the driver needs to take control and adjust speed accordingly to let traffic merge and keep a steady flow. If you want to take a train...take a TRAIN!

Also, there are way too many variables on the road that will be overlooked for any programmed system. With something like this, new variables will arise as well. By variables, I mean problems.