DOT Warns of Dystopian Future For Transportation

[DamianTV]

http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/02/04/2244211/dot-warns-of-dystopian-future-for-transportation


The U.S. Department of Transportation has issued a 300-page PDF outlining the grim future of transportation infrastructure in North America over the next thirty years, and inviting debate on the issue. The report presents a vision of 2045 with LA-style traffic jams in Nebraska, trains too full to pick up any more passengers and airports underwater due to climate change — all in a climate of chronic under-investment, even at levels needed to maintain existing transport infrastructure. Among possible solutions outlined are self-driving cars using vehicle-to-vehicle (V2I) crash-avoidance technologies, such as those currently in development by Google — and in fact transportation secretary Anthony Foxx was joined by Google CEO Eric Schmidt at the launch of DOT's "Beyond Traffic" initiative.

[tod evans]

Cut federal management and the associated pensions immediately.

This has nothing to do with under taxation and everything to do with overspending.

[DamianTV]

So when cars are all automatic and the power grid goes down for half a second, are there gonna be 10,000 car accidents per second?

[jbauer]

So when cars are all automatic and the power grid goes down for half a second, are there gonna be 10,000 car accidents per second?

I would guess that your car's "intelligence" runs off of the battery/alternator and that its radar vs GPS that avoids crashes. To be fair to this new idea, the cars don't have to preform perfectly. They just have to preform better than their human counterpart.

Now if a EMP hits I'd say all bets are off.