Thoughts on Interconnected, Autonomous Vehicles: Part 5 - "Is it true?"

You might as well be riding on a bus.

Hmm, jus' gonna try an' clarify a point I forgot I made.

Thinka the internet.

Traffic whips an' zips, an' we are all in a loop, all connected.

But there are plenty still offline, with no email or even YouTube.

But their outtaloopness don't interfere with the rest of us, an' if we need 'em, or need to show 'em stuff, the arcane machinations of pre-internet discourse an' tech prevail.

Problem with an in-the-loop network of vehicles is, the people outta the loop have more impact on the the loop than the offliners have on those online.

Cos the loop is the roads an the rails.

That was kinda all I was sayin'.

But all is not lost.

Thing about offliners is, we got no idea of who is outside the loop.

Mebbe there is some guy downstairs who eschews the internet cos he is a guru beatnik (an' I think I know who he is).

He is not connected, it does not matter to the rest of us that he is not connected, an' we have no way of knowin' that he is not connected.

Suzanne's big ole truck screamin' down the highway (an' I figure she is worth a kickass road movie if you're lissnin', Tarantino) is diffrent.

She is not connected to the loop but she is usin' its infrastructure an' is visible to the system

So we can account for her movements as she burns along, swingin' her elephant gun.

Up ahead, we see the guy from the previous thread who crashed or is hurt (I don't remember), an' his vehicle is alertin' Skynet to his predicament.

Suzanne is best placed to help here, but Skynet can't reach her, even though it sees she is there, so the alert passes to the next available vehicle: the curvaceous pink orb glidin' along in Suzannne's slipstream.

This vehicle has Claude in it, enjoyin' a sandwich as he takes in the view, an' he follows the alert, neatly shimmies round Suzanne, an' fixes up Problem Guy.

Fearo's points are all good ones. Gonna be interestin' to see how an interconnected network is viewed — a summation of MINEs or a unity of OURs.

I am gonna grab a glassa water now.

It is my water, in my glass, gonna sploosh into my stomach.

But also, it kinda ain't.

It is jus' a gloop of stuff I siphon from a network connected to loadsa people.

It is a finite amount, it passes throuh me an' out, an' back into the system.

Figure I am never gonna get the same glassa water back, but such is the fickle nature of fluid.

But you gotta figure we could tap vehicles in a similar way if we had an OURs model.

People still gonna be free to stock up their refrigerators with bottled water, if you follow the analogy — which I don't, because my refrigerator is fulla beer an' weirdo cheese right now.

When I lived in San Diego in the early 1990s, California was already testing "networked" cars. There were 5 or 6 cars very closely "packed" driving down a lane of there own. The cars had drivers in case they were needed, but when self-driving. At that time, there we no accidents, maybe there were later.


They were so tight they are drafting like race cars, which allowed them to go faster using less gas. Since networked cars will allow people to travel faster because they have "computer reaction speed", and knowing a bit of human nature, I'll bet many people will want to go faster with a networked car than a slow poke human driven car.


As it is now, it takes about a second per car for every car at a stop light to simply begin to simply stop. Connected cars can all start immediately at the same time. This means if there's 12 rows of cars it will be the same as having the same effect as having 12 extra seconds of the traffic light being green, without the extra time.


It also means cars can travel on the highways, taking turns being the "lead" car, being the "trail blazer", letting the cars behind use much less gas/electricity while maintaining speed.


Here's an example of the power of drafting and why drivers draft in auto races:






Also consider how self driving cars can benefit:
Blind people
People in wheel chairs
Old folks
Young folks
People that drink/smoke


Also, I can't remember the exact numbers, but I recently came across something interesting. People without a Driver License are now something like 63%. In the 1980s it was something like 85%. The biggest reason given is people don't want to be in debt as well as driving services like Uber and Lyft.


As an ex cab driver, I know about 60% of the total cost of your ride goes to driver in the form of the fare and tips. Uber is spending a lot of money on research of self driving cars. If Uber can cut costs by 50% by not having to pay drivers, as well as getting better mileage by being able to safely draft, either using gas or electricity, it could become very expensive to own a car.

The latest cars, stuffed with technology that collects driving data and makes keys obsolete, are far “smarter” than older vehicles. However, all those features come at a cost when it comes to how easily hackers can infiltrate car computer systems.

Security researchers from the University of Washington and the University of California, San Diego took to the stage at a conference on Tuesday to describe how they were able to remotely break into vehicle electronics through an array of security holes. Speaking at the Enigma Security Conference in San Francisco, they discussed how cars have evolved over the years into computers on wheels that crafty hackers can penetrate under the right circumstances.

One particularly sensitive entry point for hacking is the legally required OBD II port, which is basically “the Ethernet jack for your car,” said Stefan Savage, a University of California, San Diego professor of computer science and engineering. It is typically located below the dashboard on the driver’s side.

This port acts as the car’s command center that connects to all of the different computers systems, said Savage. Mechanics often plug directly into this port to retrieve diagnostics for the car’s emissions, mileage, and engine errors.

However, hackers who directly connect their laptops to the port through an intermediary device can basically plug into car’s control system and “have access to everything,” said Savage. “Once you get inside this network, all bets are off,” he said.



Security Experts Say That Hacking Cars Is Easy