May 31st, 2016

This week we will talk city planning from an infrastructure side and the drives of US city Master Plans tied to making them International Economic Zones vs American citizens wanting to rebuild our US cities as US cosmopolitan structures.  The difference comes from having major anchor corporations being US-----and attracting people from around the world to come live in our US cities.  This is what Americans know to be cosmopolitan.  You are not PROVINCIAL BY SIMPLY WANTING TO KEEP NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY THROUGH CONTROL OF INFRASTRUCTURE AND YES, THOSE MAJOR CORPORATIONS ARE A CITY'S MAJOR INFRASTRUCTURE DESIGN.

These are the words I hear in cities like Baltimore having not experienced what cosmopolitan looks like from the last several decades of LA, San Fran, Chicago, and NYC.  NYC has these few decades already been lost to OLIGARCHS AND GLOBAL CORPORATIONS OF THE WORLD infrastructure and having a global cosmopolitan city in the US is not bad IF IT IS NOT CONTROLLING ALL PUBLIC POLICY AT THE NATIONAL, STATE, AND LOCAL LEVEL AS TODAY.  As with any societal transition the north and south have the same trends in infrastructure development.  Northern states have large citizen action fighting for control and seeing Wall Street and global corporations as a threat to civic participation of citizens and the southern states have citizens saying the same thing they did when local Chamber of Commerce businesses controlled their communities -----THEY KNOW BEST.  This is what I hear from a largely white conservative and Republican voter base in Baltimore.  I try to educate as to why an infrastructure design is bad for Baltimore and white main street voters always say----THEY KNOW BETTER.  Again there is a lack of educating on public policy and I am shouting to my Republican friends

WE NEED REPUBLICAN VOTERS TO EDUCATE ON PUBLIC POLICY AND STOP THINKING ANYTHING CORPORATIONS DO IS THE BEST THING.

I will segue into this discussion by continuing with our old friend RAND CORPORATION today and then look locally at structures being built.  RAND CO is the global NGO tied to global nation-building overseas and it is steeped in these few decades of Bush/Cheney Haliburton/Blackwater trillions of dollars of Department of Defense fraud where Federal funds were simply used to move money to global development firms to build infrastructure inside say Iraq or Afghanistan known to be shoddy, following no building or safety code, and built with products so low-grade as to assure not to last.  They of course charged the American people three times what it shout have cost creating massive profits for these military development firms.  I have discussed how Baltimore's development is the mirror of this third world development because Johns Hopkins is tied to Bush/Cheney/Haliburton/RAND CORP.  Baltimore taxpayers have for decades been used as an ATM for shoddy development having no intent of being permanent.


History and Mission
RAND CORPORATION---Our Mission and Values

Our History

On May 14, 1948, Project RAND—an organization formed immediately after World War II to connect military planning with research and development decisions—separated from the Douglas Aircraft Company of Santa Monica, California, and became an independent, nonprofit organization. Adopting its name from a contraction of the term research and development, the newly formed entity was dedicated to furthering and promoting scientific, educational, and charitable purposes for the public welfare and security of the United States.


Below you see one very critical element of infrastructure development surrounding our transportation.  I shout the intent to END PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION BY WALL STREET GLOBAL POLS and we are seeing what are future transit products being unleashed.  As this article states----we may not see a way towards this driverless-car technology but let's just install it and then spend a trillion dollars making it work because GLOBAL GOOGLE WANTS IT THAT WAY.
I have followed the public policy on these Google driverless cars and as with Consumer Protect Safety groups knowing there are numerous accidents and injuries occurring and never reported and when they are -----it seems other citizen-driven cars are the problem.  With any movement towards new infrastructure American citizens need to think beyond THIS IS COOL TECHNOLOGY.  To what societal benefit will this technology bring?  Since Wall Street is already laying down the premise that real citizen drivers are more dangerous then these driverless cars----we know that will be the driver in installing this technology whether the data is there or not.  SOCIAL BENEFIT ----DRIVERLESS CARS ARE SAFER SAY THE 1%.

Google driverless cars in accidents again, humans at fault — again
Marco della Cava, USA TODAY 12:13 p.m. EDT July 2, 2015(Photo: Google)


SAN FRANCISCO — Google's autonomous cars were once again involved in accidents while out mapping the streets of Mountain View, Calif. But in both instances, as with the dozen or so previous incidents over years of testing, humans in other vehicles were at fault, according to Google.
The search company released its latest autonomous-car monthly report Wednesday, detailing two accidents in which drivers rear-ended their driverless tech-equipped Lexus SUVs while stopped at a red light.
In one case, the offender hit Google's Lexus at around five miles an hour, and caused damage to the rear bumper. In another, the speed was even slower and there was no damage.

Although Google was for years reporting its accidents to the California Department of Motor Vehicles, it had not broadcast that data publicly. But after pressure from activist organizations such as the Consumer Watchdog's Privacy Project, it reversed its stance a month ago and created a website for a range of updates about its autonomous car project.
Self-driving cars continue to be the rage at both tech and automotive companies. Uber is busy building a stable of engineers lured away from robotics-focused Carnegie Mellon University, and Ford recently announced that it was moving its self-driving car efforts from a research project to a full-fledged engineering team.
This is the third time in a row Google's self-driving vehicle has been hit by inattentive humans. So far, Google cars have logged nearly 2 million miles around the Silicon Valley suburb of Mountain View, where Google is headquartered. A few weeks ago, Google began sending its custom-made self-driving car prototype on recon missions. It differs greatly from the heavily modified Lexus SUVs, and features seating for two and no trunk space.

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All Google cars must by law have drivers behind the wheel as a safety precaution. Typically, those drivers take control of the self-driving car only in instances in which unfamiliar traffic situations leave the car stymied.
"Given the time we're spending on busy streets, we'll inevitably be involved in collisions (because) sometimes it's impossible to overcome the realities of speed and distance," the report says. "In the six years of our project, we've been involved in 14 minor accidents during more than 1.8 million miles of autonomous and manual driving combined. Not once was the self-driving car the cause of the accident."

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It now becomes global NGOs turn to provide data to support this global corporate product and we can be assured future road construction will already be including these transit structures as in San Francisco.

Think of how all this takes every freedom of citizens to control where, how, when, why they drive somewhere.  It is complete authoritarian control of transit. When you have a vision of people as human capital simply needing to make their way to a workplace and not engaged in leisure or sight-seeing----you start building infrastructure that gives no choice and that starts by ending public transit while building structures like driverless cars.

RAND CORPORATION is tasked with looking for ways to make products work and it takes this approach of simply mainstreaming technology whether proven to have social value----AS WITH OUR CURRENT MEDICAL DEVICE, PHARMA, PROCEDURES released without first world standard clinical trial with the objective of using the general population to find any problems. THIS IS NOT SOCIAL VALUE----IT IS DRIVEN BY VALUE-ADDED PROFITS.

Whereas Consumer Product protection organizations drove data deciding when or if new technology trends provided quality and assurance for citizens-----now global corporate NGOs are working to create data to push these product trends.


Why It's Nearly Impossible to Prove Self-Driving Cars' Safety Without a New Approach


Gill Pratt, CEO of Toyota Research Institute, talks about developing autonomous cars during the 2016 CES trade show in Las Vegas, Nevada, January 5, 2016


Photo by Steve Marcus/Reuters
by Nidhi Kalra

Texas is at the bleeding edge of the coming autonomous vehicle revolution. Austin is one of only four cities in the United States chosen by Google to test its fleet of robot-driven Lexus SUVs and new prototype vehicles.

IT IS A FAR-RIGHT AUTHORITARIAN WEALTH AND POWER CONSTRUCT SO BUSH COUNTRY WOULD BE THE CHOICE.


When California proposed regulations that would limit the deployment of autonomous vehicles without human drivers also in the cockpit, some hailed it as a boon for Texas.
One day, it is hoped, autonomous vehicles will eliminate crashes, reduce congestion, and offer major environmental and land use benefits. But before this potential can be realized, people and policymakers in Texas and across the country face some very important questions. First, how safe should autonomous vehicles be before they are allowed on the roads for consumer and commercial use?
Waiting for autonomous vehicles to operate perfectly could miss the opportunity to reduce the risks that far-from-perfect human drivers pose. There are even arguments to be made for permitting driverless cars in some capacity even if they are not quite as safe as human drivers, not only because they offer many non-safety benefits, but because doing so may enable developers to improve them faster than they would otherwise, and thus save more lives overall.
Even as Texans debate this first question, they must also be able to answer a second: How can the safety of autonomous vehicles be adequately demonstrated? The most logical way is to test-drive autonomous vehicles in real traffic and observe their performance. Developers of autonomous vehicles rely on this approach to evaluate and improve their systems, as Google is doing in Texas. But how many miles of test-driving would be enough to satisfy policymakers and the public that driverless cars don't pose undue safety risks?


The safety of human drivers is a critical benchmark for comparing the safety of autonomous vehicles. And, even though the number of injuries and fatalities from human drivers is high, the rate of these failures is low in comparison with the number of miles that people drive. Americans drive nearly 3 trillion miles every year. The 2.3 million reported injuries in 2013 correspond to 77 reported injuries per 100 million miles. The 32,719 fatalities in 2013 correspond to 1.09 fatalities per 100 million miles.
For comparison, Google's autonomous vehicle fleet, which currently has about 55 vehicles, was test-driven approximately 1.3 million miles in autonomous mode and was involved in 11 crashes from 2009 to 2015, none of them fatal. A study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute found that Google's fleet might be safer than human drivers in terms of crashes with only property damage, but could not draw conclusions about the relative performance in terms of two critical metrics: injuries and fatalities. Given the fatality and injury rates, a million autonomously driven miles was simply not enough to make statistically significant comparisons.
We asked the next logical question: How many miles of driving would be enough to make statistically significant safety comparisons between autonomous vehicles and human drivers? We determined that autonomous vehicles would have to be test-driven hundreds of millions of miles and sometimes hundreds of billions of miles to confidently demonstrate their safety.


For example, suppose an autonomous vehicle fleet had a 20 percent lower fatality rate than human drivers. Proving this with 95 percent confidence would require driving 5 billion miles. That is literally astronomical — like driving to Neptune and back. Or, put another way, driving every mile of road in Texas nearly 16,000 times over. It would take a fleet of 100 vehicles driving 24/7 around 225 years to drive these miles. Test-driving to prove safety is an impossible proposition.
That doesn't mean we must wait decades (or longer) while developers test-drive these miles. Nor does it mean putting the kibosh on the industry. Instead, it means technology developers, third-party testers, and policymakers need to quickly come up with alternative and innovative methods of demonstrating safety. These could include virtual testing, mathematical analysis, and accelerated testing. Just as there is a race to develop autonomous vehicles, a parallel race to develop methods for testing autonomous vehicles is critical.
Yet, even with these methods, it may not be possible to establish with certainty the level of safety of autonomous vehicles. If uncertainty cannot be eliminated, can it be managed? Carefully planned pilot studies in controlled, well-designed environments could help. So could adaptive regulations designed from the outset to generate new knowledge by facilitating pilot studies and other forms of alternative testing. Establishing safety review boards could aid in evaluating these test results and guiding revised rulemaking.
Texans will be among the first to grapple with these new questions. And the answers will need to combine the science of reliability testing with the art of understanding and responding to the priorities of Texans. The country is watching.

Nidhi Kalra is a senior information scientist at the RAND Corporation, a codirector of RAND's Center for Decision Making under Uncertainty, and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School.


This commentary originally appeared on Dallas Morning News on April 28, 2016.

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The only discussion on this technology is----IS IT SAFE.  We have as a society had no discussion as to where these infrastructure policies lead.  RAND CORP et al will keep pushing that data telling us how traffic accidents have declined---how traffic control is now automated so citizens sit and wait to be told when they can head home---so travel becomes more and more like assembly line movement----there goes choice in yet another avenue of people's lives.

Executives having business meetings as they are moved from one location to another----that doesn't sound bad but where does main street citizens fall as owning a car becomes too expensive AND public transportation is no longer available?  Below you see although there has been no public voice on these matters----Google has been given the go-ahead and Federal funding is paying for the R and D and road infrastructure needed. 

THIS IS ONLY ONE PIECE OF THE SMART CITY GRID----THINK SMART METERS TIED TO WATER, ENERGY, AND WASTE WILL SOAK YOU WITH LOSS CHOICES ----WAIT UNTIL YOU JUST WANT TO GO SOMEWHERE OTHER THAN WORK.

Safety

Google expects public in driverless cars in 2 to 5 years

Published January 15, 2015
Associated Press

 (AP)

The head of self-driving cars for Google expects real people to be using them on public roads in two to five years.
Chris Urmson says the cars would still be test vehicles, and Google would collect data on how they interact with other vehicles and pedestrians.
Google is working on sensors to detect road signs and other vehicles, and software that analyzes all the data. The small, bulbous cars without steering wheels or pedals are being tested at a Google facility in California.
Urmson wouldn't give a date for putting driverless cars on roads en masse, saying that the system has to be safe enough to work properly.
He told reporters Wednesday at the Automotive News World Congress in Detroit that Google doesn't know yet how it will make money on the cars.

IF THE GOAL IS CONTAINED MOVEMENT OF HUMAN CAPITAL THEN PROFITEERING CAN STEP ASIDE ON THESE FEW OCCASIONS.

Urmson wants to reach the point where his test team no longer has to pilot the cars. "What we really need is to get to the point where we're learning about how people interact with it, how they are using it, and how can we best bring that to market as a product that people care for," he said.
Google Inc., which is based in Mountain View, California, may face state regulatory hurdles depending on where it chooses to test the cars in public. Under legislation that Google persuaded California lawmakers to pass in 2012, self-driving cars must have a steering wheel and pedals. Several other states have passed laws formally allowing autonomous cars on public roads without that restriction.
The company in December announced that it had a fully functioning prototype that's been driving on its test track. It hoped to see the cars on the road in northern California this year, but they would have to have safety drivers and temporary manual controls.
Google also confirmed that it has hired Roush Enterprises Inc., a Detroit-area company that designs and builds prototypes for the auto industry, to build 150 prototype Google autonomous cars.
Urmson said Google is making laser and other sensors for the cars smaller and less costly.
He predicted that the cars would fail at some point on public roads, but said Google's cars have been driven more than 700,000 miles on public roads without causing a crash.

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I have focused on the freedom of choice and ability of American people to travel outside their designated GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUS......but the immediate impact will again be low-wage jobs turning robotic. Citizens trying to keep their car ownership by making themselves cabs----UBER ---and taxi, bus, disability employees will all be displaced. A global VEOLA taking over all public transit in US cities deemed International Economic Zones ending strong middle-class jobs will of course by replaced by these robotics not far down the road. Remember that $15 an hour shouted for last year----well, these robotic cars will get that $15 an hour.
Please take time to educate on these issues unfolding with absolutely no public dialog and don't think just safety ----think how American citizens being pushed to third world poverty will not be owning cars.


SOCIAL BENEFIT SAYS RAND CORP-----it's all about public safety ----all those free-wheeling human capital thinking they have leisure and free will. 

DOING COOL THINGS THAT MATTER.

The Google Driverless Car: “A Cool Thing that Matters”


by Alexa Peseri25 Sunday Aug 2013
Posted by brownhcri


Abstract: Google is a company that prides itself on doing “cool things that matter.” One of the company’s most recent ventures is the development of a driverless car. This article explores the way in which the Google car operates, as well as the reasons for Google’s investment in such technology. Google’s vehicle is a robot-controlled Toyota Prius outfitted with several radar sensors, cameras, and laser range-finders to observe traffic. Refined software navigates routes by way of Google Maps. The car offers many potential safety benefits, has been thoroughly tested, and performed well on road tests of over 500,000 miles in length. If the car succeeds in more extensive tests, it will be feasible to reproduce and sell on the market. Although the driverless car has performed well thus far, more fine-tuning must still be done. Potential issues include accidental shut-off, flat tires, cyber security, and liability. However, these issues would be nearly outweighed by possible benefits. If proven safe, the driverless car would provide vast benefits to the automobile industry, and to consumers, in the areas of safety and time-management [1]

OH, REALLY?????

The Driverless Car: What is it, and how does it operate?


Picture a car driven with superhuman vision, instantaneous reflexes, and up-to-date knowledge of roads across the United States. You’re probably picturing something from The Bourne Identity or The Terminator. In fact, Google is developing a car that is almost exactly that. It’s called the Google Car and is driven by a robot. With radar sensors for eyes and ears, range finders for awareness of surrounding cars, and Google maps at its fingertips, the Google Car may come to redefine the American automobile. It could enhance the safety of roadways, provide a new driving experience, and even allow the handicapped to travel independently. The car has been thoroughly tested, and performed well on road tests of over 500,000 miles in length. If the last legal and technical hurdles can be overcome, the Google Car has the immense potential to revolutionize travel on the roadways of the world [1].
The most common model of a Google car takes the form of a robotically controlled Toyota Prius. The Toyota Prius is a fully hybrid electric mid-size hatchback, which uses a combination of gasoline and electric battery for power, thus reducing carbon emissions and improving mileage. The year that Google began work on the robot car, the Toyota Prius was ranked #1 most fuel-efficient mid-size car [2]. It has continued to perform well, and has maintained its top rating in 2013 [3]. In addition to Toyota, Audi and Lexus have also embraced the “hands off” approach, as they have also partnered with Google engineers to make self-driving versions of the Audi TT and Lexus RX450h [4]. Google has outfitted these otherwise traditional vehicles with several radar sensors, cameras, and laser range-finders to observe traffic. Advanced software analyzes this data and makes decisions that control every aspect of the car, from steering and navigation to acceleration and braking [1].
Currently, a human “driver” must still be present in the vehicle, with the ability to enable a manual override at any time [1]. A blind person is capable of overriding the car in this way, assuming the fault condition is not detected automatically. If done manually, the driver has to use an emergency stop button, although systems may vary, depending on the model of automobile [5]. Cars can also be overridden by external sources. A system similar to the type used by air-traffic-controllers could be adapted to monitor safety of autonomous vehicles. Employees working in call centers would be able to anticipate issues that drivers may encounter in their future travels. In relation to autonomous cars, such issues may include impending traffic jams, dead end roads, or changes in route due to construction zones. External monitoring is advantageous in that it introduces a level of perception that the average human driver could never have. In this way, potentially unsafe situations can be avoided, and the safety of the “hands off” driver, as well as the other drivers on the road, is greatly enhanced [6].
The question arises: how comfortable will drivers of autonomous vehicles be, knowing that someone else can control their cars? Cruise control is a comparable advancement in technology. Drivers initially resented their loss of control following the advent of cruise control, but were eventually placated by its efficiency and safety benefits. More recently, researchers have been studying acceptance of adaptive cruise control, which is a step beyond the generic one, in that the system adjusts speed as a function of distance to the car in front of it. Studies have shown that fuel savings and safety considerations seem to be the major motivators to accept adaptive cruise control [7]. “Adaptive cruise control can be seen as a transition to the self-serving car,” said Betram Malle, a professor of psychology in the Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences at Brown University. Another example is that of the seat belt, which was not universally accepted when first released. After the public realized the safety benefits of seatbelts, however, their use increased and was eventually made mandatory by law. Indeed, safety concerns can often prompt the general public to give up some sense of individual autonomy, and if extreme enough, lead to government intervention [6]. Perhaps the safety benefits of driverless cars will one day motivate the government to draft legislation that prohibits manual driving.


HELLO?????  THAT IS THE GOAL IS IT NOT???

Gary Marcus, a writer for The New Yorker, exclaimed, “Within two or three decades the difference between automated driving and human driving will be so great you may not be legally allowed to drive your own car” [8].

Inspiration for the Google Car:


The concept of a driverless car might seem like a novelty to many, but it has in fact existed for decades. A notable example is Mercedes-Benz’s robotic van, designed by Ernst Dickmanns and colleagues at the Bundeswehr University of Munich, in Munich, Germany. In the early 1980s Dickmanns’ team equipped a 5-ton Mercedes-Benz van with cameras and sensors, similar to the inputs in today’s driverless cars. These and other technologies made it possible for steering, acceleration, and breaking to be controlled via computer commands. Mercedes’ robot car, “VaMoRs,” drove entirely on its own in 1986 and reached speeds up to 96 km/h, or roughly 60 mph, the following year [9] Currently, Google, Bosch LLC., Continental, the Volkswagen Group, Volvo, Audi, Lexus, and others have made notable progress in the realm of autonomous vehicles [10].
Google began working on its first model of an autonomous vehicle after Sebastian Thrun, founder of Google’s Street View, won the Pentagon’s 2005 DARPA challenge with his driverless car named Stanley [11]. The DARPA challenge is a federally sponsored competition for autonomous vehicles. Initially founded with the purpose of developing technology for the military, it has since expanded to include vehicles for commercial use. The team leaders of winning vehicles from DARPA challenges in several recent years, as well as Anthony Levandowski, the man who built the first driverless motorcycle, are all working together on Google’s team [12].


Getting the Green Light:


Nevada was the first state to approve driverless cars on roadways in June 2011, which allowed Google to begin testing [4]. Florida was the next to follow suit, doing so in April of 2012 [13]. In September of 2012, Governor Jerry Brown of California signed legislation that created safety and performance regulations to test and operate driverless cars on state roads and highways [1]. State laws such as these have allowed Google to test its car thoroughly, and it has performed flawlessly on over 500,000 miles of road tests. The development team has driven cars on winding and traffic-heavy roads, such as the Golden Gate Bridge, as well as San Francisco’s infamously meandering Lombard Street [4]. The only Google Car accident recorded thus far was a minor fender-bender in 2011, which occurred while a human was manually operating the car [14].
In order for the Google Car to drive across the country, it will need the permission of all the states, or blanket permission from the federal government. Considering that the DARPA challenge is federally sponsored, the car will likely be given federal permission to be sold and driven across state-borders, contingent on its road-test performance. In 2012, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administrator, David Strickland, said, “The development of automated vehicles is a worthy goal” [15]. He explained that the federal government is beginning to look into the safety regulations that would be needed for a country in which driverless cars dominated roadways [15].


Leave It to the Robots:


In 2012, Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin stated, “Self-driving cars will be far safer than human-driven cars” [1]. Considering that human error is the cause of over ninety percent of automobile accidents, he may be correct. In addition to the Google Car’s finely tuned sense of direction and quick reflexes, it offers an escape from several common human distractions, such as text messaging, tiredness, and drunkenness [1]. Not only is the car safer, but it is also a more accessible mode of transport for the handicapped, especially the blind. The car has already been tested with a blind driver inside. Regarding his experience, Steve Mahan, who is blind, exclaimed, “Where this would change my life is to give me the independence and the flexibility, to go to the places I both want to go and need to go, when I need to do those things” [16]. As mentioned above, when operated by its internal technology, the autonomous car has kept a flawless driving record. The spread of driverless cars will create a positive feedback loop in which a greater number of such cars will result in fewer accidents, validating their safety, and subsequently increasing their popularity. This will lead to an increased number of Google driverless cars, other reliable driverless cars on roadways, and even fewer accidents. The overall result will produce a ripple effect, whereby all drivers, including those who manually operate their cars, will experience safer roadways.


Troubleshooting and Potential for Malfunction:


For all its promise, Google’s robot car is not perfect. Some potential issues revolve around accidental shut-off, flat tires, cyber security, and liability. Google’s current focus is on improving sensors and hardware failure support. Sergey Brin drew a parallel between air travel and driving—the technology in both driverless cars and airplanes may experience system failure. Unlike airplanes, however, the robot car eliminates the possibility of human operational error [17]. Currently though, air space is a more tractable domain for autonomy because it is highly controlled and regulated. The analogy between air and road travel is thus an abstract fit. Both modes of travel face the potential of exceptional errors, but these errors become magnified on public roads. Much of air travel is currently automated, with pilots and Air Traffic Controls to assist with actions such as landing, and to take care of and to prevent problems that might arise. In contrast, autonomy on public roads faces many computational problems regarding uncertainty in sensing and perception, predicting and reacting to what pedestrians and other cars might do, and other aforementioned issues. Therefore, autonomous cars are currently still far from achieving the one in ten million chances of fatal harm that have been achieved by the top 39 airlines [18]. As aforementioned, if a system similar to the type used by air-traffic-controllers could be created for driverless cars, many road and driving errors will be foreseen, eliminated, and overall, decreased.
Google’s engineering team is especially focused on preparing the car for rough conditions in which the cars may experience difficulties. For example, snow makes it difficult for the cars to “see” the lane markers and other cues needed to maintain safe positioning on the road. The team is working to equip the car for snowy terrain, construction signals, snow-covered roadways, temporary construction signals, and other tricky situations, such as detours, that many drivers encounter [19].
Another major obstacle is that of temporary changes in routes, due to construction and accidents. Such road changes may fail to be reflected in the car’s onboard “map,” causing the car to become lost [14] As mentioned above, however, humans working to monitor the driverless cars from afar would be able to foresee these road changes, and notify the cars and their respective drivers. In this case, the human driver can then switch to manual control. This issue is also being addressed is through a collective database. Google self-driving cars communicate with each other, which makes it only a matter of time before the change gets mapped, and cars no longer get lost. The more Google cars there are on the road, the quicker the issue will be fixed. Some may argue that this level of computer communication is sensitive to human hackers. “I think any system is vulnerable, at some level,” said Odest Jenkins, a Computer Science Professor at Brown University, whose research focuses on robot learning from demonstration, or Robot LfD. Such hacking has not been demonstrated yet, and if released onto the consumer market, driverless cars will be armed with software and humans to working to try to prevent such devastating interference [6].
Additional challenges may manifest themselves in the form of construction zones, accident zones, and situations involving human traffic directors [1]. Driverless cars have no issue interpreting traffic signals, speed limits, and proximity to other cars, but may have difficulty understanding a human directing traffic with hand signals. The cars may become confused when a human’s hand signals conflict with a traffic light or stop sign. To fix this, Google’s engineers are exploring ways to teach the car how to interpret a person’s hand signals, and when to obey those, rather than traffic lights. Indeed, several robotics programs across the country are working to hone a robot’s gesture and person recognition. One such program, unaffiliated with Google, exists at Brown University, where the Brown Robotics Group has partnered with i-Robot Corporation. Researchers from both places are working on enhancing gesture and person recognition [5] Various “robots,” in the form of cars as well as smaller-scale technologies, have been designed to recognize motions performed in different ways by many humans, but not with 100% accuracy. Hand signals may vary from person to person, traffic cop to traffic cop, making this is an essential obstacle to be overcome [5].


Costly Cars:


While the Google car and others like it may have mastered steep roadways, they also come with steep price tags. Approximately $150,000 in equipment is needed for each Google Car. That figure includes a $70,000 LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) system. LIDAR is the beam technology that equates to the car’s “eyes” on the road [19] Prior to the development of LIDAR technology, the highest performing driverless cars were said to operate autonomously for approximately ninety-nine percent of the time. Considering the many hours that an average individual drives in a year, the remaining one percent is actually somewhat significant. LIDAR’s hefty price tag thus comes with great innovation, because it increases autonomy of the vehicle from 99, up to 99.9 percent, by providing high definition, nearly three-dimensional information about the surrounding environment. The unit spins, while various lasers are emitted to collect distance-sensing data [6] Although very valuable, LIDAR systems make the car too expensive for most consumers, as well as for some of the companies trying to develop driverless cars. Several auto industry suppliers, as well as Chris Urmson, who has worked on the Google Car, have promised that reasonably priced LIDAR and other comparable technology systems are on their way [20] LIDAR systems are currently being manufactured on the scale of 100’s and 1000’s, but if this is increased to 100,000’s and greater, the cost will decrease through the economies of scale, and LIDAR will become cheaper [6]. Fortunately, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) values the potential safety benefits of driverless cars and has thus decided to invest in the accompanying technology. This will likely produce more cost-effective, and eventually, affordable systems, at least for the middle and upper socioeconomic classes [20].
Although Google’s car has received the most publicity, several other companies have been working to build driverless cars. Some of these companies have reduced input costs by choosing to outfit their cars with fewer lasers. Velodyne, the company contracting with Google and several other driverless car projects, has developed an HDL-64E system with 64 lasers, and an HDL-32E system, with 32 lasers. The latter is less precise, but still far more perceptive than humans. It is less expensive than the HDL-64E, and has been used successfully by a number of companies [21]. Continental is one such company, which has outfitted a VW Passat with more affordable technology. However, Continental’s car has only been tested on 10,000 miles of road, as compared to Google’s nearly 500,000 miles [20].
The issue of liability is one of the critical and unresolved questions about autonomous cars. If insurance companies realize how much more prone to error human drivers are than robots, they are likely to increase premiums on manually driven vehicles. As a result, those without automated cars may have higher premiums than those who do own automated cars [14] This could eventually create a problem of the haves and have-nots, in which members of lower economic class cannot afford the expensive autonomous cars, and will thus be unduly burdened with higher insurance premiums [5]. Premium adjustments such as this are consistent with other safety features that have lowered premiums, such as Anti-Lock-Braking-System, (ABS) brakes and air bags [22].


Robot Cars Displacing Human Driver Jobs:



If the technical, liability, and legal issues are all resolved, robot cars may soon take away chauffeurs’ jobs. Autonomous vehicle technology will eventually move beyond traditional SUVs and sedans, to trucks, buses, and agricultural vehicles, thus reducing and possibly eliminating the need for drivers of public transportation, school buses, and other means of transportation. Professor Jenkins explained that the military is likely to be the first to take advantage of autonomous cars, followed by “smart public transportation,” and ultimately consumer vehicles. There will most likely be a gradual phasing out of the demand for humans employed as drivers, in all sectors of automobile transportation [5]. While demand for human drivers will decrease after driverless cars permeate the world of public transportation, the need for manufacturers of autonomous vehicle inputs, as well as for people to monitor the cars and to invoke overrides, will increase. Driverless cars will likely create more jobs than they destroy [6].


The Road Ahead:


The development of the Google Car is certainly in line with the company’s overall mission—“help solve really big problems using technology” by “doing cool things that matter.” Automobile safety is a significant issue in today’s world; in 2010, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recorded upwards of 5.4 million police-reported motor vehicle crashes in the United States [23]. As mentioned above, over ninety percent of crashes, (4.86 million in 2010) are due to human error [1]. The Google Car has the potential to eliminate human error and drive us down a road with increased efficiency and security [12]. Google’s driverless car offers many potential safety benefits, has been thoroughly tested, and performed well on lengthy road tests. Currently, the car can flawlessly pick up its driver and passengers, commute to work, and run errands, all via highways and neighborhood streets. Eventually, the technology will likely evolve to handle a greater variety of situations. Ultimately, the Google Car may serve as a fully-automated and competent chauffeur [14]. Advancements to increase safety measures and hone person recognition abilities are under development. If realized, the driverless car is expected to permeate the market in a matter of decades, thus improving safety for all drivers.

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The next issue in Google's driverless cars is MONOPOLY. If you don't know of Google's control of global search engines and the ability of citizens to find resources are tied to how Google places them in pecking order. Then there is Global Green Corporation Google behind all the energy grid technology needed for global online corporations that is not AT ALL GREEN ENERGY. Now we have Google's driveless cars that are likely not to be a freeing to the American people as they promote.
The point is this----one global corporation is now branching into control of all sorts of industries and as a global player will have the revenue to push more and more and more national and regional businesses OUT OF BUSINESS. Here we see Clinton's global corporate neo-liberal partner Gore telling Europe---where pols still enforce ANTI-MONOPOLY LAWS TO THE PROTECTION OF THEIR CITIZENS----to stop being protectionist LUDDITES and allow ONE WORLD CONTROL OF THE ECONOMY.

Al Gore hits out at critics of Google growth


Google is in the early stages of growth and Twitter will justify its mooted large valuation, says Al Gore, the former US Vice President and an adviser to Google.180018Email
Former US vice-president Al Gore says search engine Google, like the internet, is in its early days. Photo: AP

By Amanda Andrews
1:06PM BST 01 Jun 2011


In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, Gore dismissed recent concerns about slowing growth at Google, saying the search giant may seem like it has "been here forever", but it actually in the early stages of growth.
"The fact that the internet is in its early days guarantees that Google is also in its early days. There is a lot more growth to come at Google."
Gore, who is also a partner of Facebook and Twitter investor Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, believes social media groups such as Twitter will live up to their large forecast valuations, even though some have not carved out clear business models.
"The Twitter business model is evolving rapidly and they do have a chance to monetise. The social media revolution is very real," he says. "And the markets are still buzzing after LinkedIn's IPO."
However, Gore says, TV is still the most important means of communication, with the internet constrained by poor connecivity and low bandwidth.

Gore said that the internet is still an inferior means of communication to TV, blaming poor connectivity and low broadband speeds in large parts of the developed world.
"The social media revolution is very real and in its early days. At some point in the future, the internet will become the prime means of communication in the world. But for now, TV dominates. In the US, people watch an average of five hours of TV a day. But the distributiuon of video is constrained by still evolving bandwidth."

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All of that GREEN ENERGY funding from Obama and Congress went to battery technology to create these products. As an environmentalist I know battery technology creates the most toxic of chemical waste so super-sizing this is the OPPOSITE OF GREEN ENERGY TECHNOLOGY. As critical is the costs of this battery technology. They always tell us costs will go down once mainstreamed but has Smart Phone costs really gone down---or up? As this article states the affluent able to afford this may find it liberating-----the 99% of people will be trapped with nothing but automated transit.

'In France, Renault sells the Zoe electric car, but leases the battery for a monthly fee. (It’s a strategy to lower the initial purchase price, while assuaging consumer concerns about expensive battery packs not lasting as long as advertised.) The battery rental scheme is not the problem. The issue, which Germany’s Der Spiegel revealed, is what happens if Zoe owners fall behind in their payments. In that case, Renault can remotely disable the battery pack, immobilizing the car.

This capability, while somewhat less intense than sending out the repo man, signals the end of driver autonomy, and the beginning of an age where all cars can have their core functions and onboard computer data accessed and manipulated by automakers, governments and hackers. (When the cloud enters the picture, so does the possibility of denial of service attacks.)'

People like me who follow public policy long term know from where these technologies rise-------Johns Hopkins has long studied the issue of MOVING THE POOR. They are of course the one's in Baltimore driving the end of public transportation so we know THAT is not their solution.
Why Google’s Driverless Car Is Evil
Posted on December 11, 2013
bradley berman
Contributing Writer


ReadWriteDrive is an ongoing series covering the future of transportation. In December, this series is presented by Buick Regal.
Google’s autonomous car is a media darling, often portrayed as a techno-marvel that will free the world’s commuters from the burden of operating motor vehicles. At the 2013 Los Angles Auto Show last month, Ron Medford, director of safety for self-driving cars for the search giant, described the robotic vehicle program by invoking the company’s “don’t be evil” credo:
We certainly hope that our friends in the auto industry [and others] don’t see us as anything but another way in which we’re trying to do good for the world.
By that, I assume Medford means safer driving and motorists able to reclaim hours lost to road tedium for more productive tasks. That well could be true.
But consider this: American drivers, by conservative estimates, spend an hour a day behind the wheel—just about the only time we don’t have our eyes glued to screens. If even a small portion of America’s 200,000 or so drivers are turned into online media consumers for that hour, with the Google car doing the driving and Google ads served up along the way, Google benefits big time.
Some people might have qualms about trusting sensors, radars, cloud-supplied road data, and onboard processing power. That doesn’t concern me so much. The margin of error for computers, I believe, is much lower than what results from human fallibility.  What does bother me is how Google, once it has us in its vehicles, will “optimize” our in-car experiences.



Next Turn: The Matrix

The company already knows a tremendous amount about our digital lives—web searches, media consumption, email content, purchasing behavior, social networks and physical location. That apparently isn’t enough to satisfy Google’s voracious appetite for our personal data.


In 2010, Google admitted that its Street View vehicles, equipped with camera, lasers and GPS to gather images of our neighborhoods—including couples leaving motels and protesters at abortion clinics—were intercepting emails, usernames, passwords and other data from private unprotected Wi-Fi networks. Google called the data collection a mistake, although a 2012 FCC report told a different story.
Now, with its self-driving program, Google is inviting us to step inside those cars powered by similar technology. We are being told how cool it will be to type our desired location into the self-driving car’s navigation system, take our foot off the brake and let go of the wheel.  What could go wrong? 

In effect, the Google’s vehicle technology car represents a shift from corporate control of the digital devices we carry to corporate control of the vehicles that carry us.


Remote Control

We already have evidence of how car companies keep tabs of our movements. In February 2013, when Tesla Motors got into a brouhaha with a New York Times reporter over the accuracy of his review, the company made its case by revealing data recorded in the vehicle’s computer system—GPS coordinates and vehicle functions that were communicated wirelessly to the company’s servers.
More recently, last month, after two of its Model S electric luxury sedans caught fire after running over road debris, the company pushed a software update to its user-driver base to raise the suspension of the vehicle during highway driving. Owners had no way to opt into (or out of) the change.
In France, Renault sells the Zoe electric car, but leases the battery for a monthly fee. (It’s a strategy to lower the initial purchase price, while assuaging consumer concerns about expensive battery packs not lasting as long as advertised.) The battery rental scheme is not the problem. The issue, which Germany’s Der Spiegel revealed, is what happens if Zoe owners fall behind in their payments. In that case, Renault can remotely disable the battery pack, immobilizing the car.
This capability, while somewhat less intense than sending out the repo man, signals the end of driver autonomy, and the beginning of an age where all cars can have their core functions and onboard computer data accessed and manipulated by automakers, governments and hackers. (When the cloud enters the picture, so does the possibility of denial of service attacks.)


What Would Big Brother Drive?

And what are we to make of the $250 million investment by Google Ventures in Uber, the ride-sharing service?  Imagine an entire fleet of Google autonomous cars that can be summoned by an Uber-like app, or even a simple Google search—much the way today we seamlessly call a business on the phone after finding its number in a search result. (Wait, that is pretty cool.)

I’m not suggesting that the Google driverless car is an intentionally nefarious plot. But it’s not hard to imagine the algorithm for the routing of its autonomous cars, when influenced by other Big Data that Google and others collect, will take us not on the quickest or safest route, but the one most profitable to the company. That’s only the most benign scenario for what could happen when we relinquish the steering wheel and how the routes we take to corporate-owned machines.

“We’re working hard on a technology that can be transformative,” said Medford, a former deputy administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Medford explained that Google wants its self-driving cars to be available not only to rich people, but to the general population. That means me and you. “Google has big ambitions,” he said.

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I can assure you these projections are conservative meaning Americans will be falling into these categories far-earlier than 2050. ONE WORLD data see transitioning the US to third world status done very quickly as this coming economic crash due to be long-term----expedites these figures.

The point for discussion on transportation for the American people is this----if human capital are going to live,eat, work, be schooled on their global corporate campus/global factory paid third world wages----will there be transportation options outside of moving an employee from one campus to another? AMERICANS MUST LOOK FURTHER THAN A DECADE TO KNOW HOW THESE INFRASTRUCTURE CHANGES WILL AFFECT SOCIETAL CONDITIONS. THIS WILL AFFECT TODAY'S YOUNG ADULTS---OUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN.


'From now until 2020, the projections show that the Struggling and Lower Mid groups will be the only ones to gain share, with the Struggling group growing by over 10%. The lower affluence groups will grow at the expense of all other groups. By 2050, the projections show that the Struggling group will have grown in size by nearly 70%, pulling households from all other affluence groups—particularly those in the middle'.

The United States in 2020 A Very Different Place

Consumer | 07-01-2009


Doug Anderson, SVP, Research & Development, The Nielsen Company

SUMMARY: While the World is struggling with the economic hard times of late, the future poses a new set of challenges that do not stem from arcane financial investments, but from simple demographics. An aging population, a declining birth rate, and growing ethnic diversity will change the face and the spending behavior of consumers in the U.S. Gaining share among population groups that most marketers do not reach today—older and ethnic consumers—will require shifts in focus, tactics, and products.


Economic hard times to come stem from simple demographics...

The recession of 2007–2009 has placed a great deal of strain on marketers and retailers of consumer products. Price and value have become more and more important, challenging marketers to rethink product and distribution. Everyone just wants things to get back to normal, but will they? While discretionary spending will return to moderate levels as markets rebound, the economy of the United States—as well as the rest of the more developed World—is well on the road to longer-term difficult times. The economic hard times to come do not stem from the misuse of arcane investment instruments that can take a degree in calculus to understand, but rather from simple demographics. The emerging marketplace will be very different than today, and filled with wide-ranging challenges.


Tectonic demographic shifts


Since the early 1970s, birth rates in the United States have been at least 40% lower than at the heights of the Baby Boom. When a falling birth rate is combined with a very large generation like the Baby Boom, the effect is a gradual aging of the population. The median age of the population increases as the large group grows older because there aren’t enough babies being added to balance them out. For much of the large group’s life cycle, they are typically a boon to the economy—especially when they reach their prime economic productivity years (usually from the early 40s into the middle 50s). However, as this large group continues to age, they stop being an economic asset and begin to become a burden—as the Baby Boom generation will become over the next several decades.


Aging populations place stress on an economy in two ways...

Aging populations place stress on an economy in two ways. First, if the generation is sufficiently large, retirement can lower the size of the labor force—particularly its most skilled and most experienced component—lowering overall economic productivity. Starting in the next two years until 2030, the number of persons who reach the retirement age of 66 will increase by over 100,000 each year throughout the Baby Boom retirement years. For many of the early years in that period, the number of persons who reach the age of 19 and enter the labor force will actually decline by more than 40,000 per year for the next decade.
The second impact of an aging population is perhaps larger—the costs incurred by society to care for a large number of retirees. Social Security will begin to run at a deficit in about eight years and will deplete its trust fund by 2041 unless changes are made now. At that point, money coming into the program would only cover about 70% of the money paid out each year. Medicare and Medicaid will deplete their trust funds in only about ten years and will be the largest component of all U.S. government spending by 2030.
Additionally, many private pension plans are currently under-funded, and given the current economic difficulties, may not have time to recover adding more people to the public dole. The Baby Boom generation has suffered a disproportionate share of the $11 trillion in lost market equity and $3 trillion in lost real estate value from the current recession and they will find it near impossible to retire and sustain their current standard of living—particularly the 38% who will be eligible to retire in the next ten years.
Future impacts
Nielsen created a set of long-term demographic and economic projections that model the potential impacts of the aging U.S. population. The projections make use of five groups of households (Struggling, Lower Mid, Upper Mid, Affluent and Wealthy), each accounting for 20% of total, using an income-to-poverty ratio.
Households in the Struggling group have incomes that are no more than 1.5 times the poverty threshold. For a single-person household under the age of 65, this equates to having a yearly income less than $15,732. For a six-person family with four children, this means having a yearly income less than $40,407. All together, the Struggling group has a median income of $12,201.


From now until 2020, the projections show that the Struggling and Lower Mid groups will be the only ones to gain share, with the Struggling group growing by over 10%. The lower affluence groups will grow at the expense of all other groups. By 2050, the projections show that the Struggling group will have grown in size by nearly 70%, pulling households from all other affluence groups—particularly those in the middle.


For families with children, the growth in Struggling households will be even stronger. By 2050, nearly one-third of all families are expected to fall within the Struggling group. In the same timeframe, nearly 40% of all households whose household head is over the age of 65 are expected to fall into the Struggling group.
The U.S. will experience very minor growth in per household spending...A shrinking pie
As the Baby Boom ages, and birth rates remain low, household sizes will decrease. Many aging Boomers will live alone or with one other person. The number of children per family will get smaller. Add in growth in the most economically-disadvantaged market segments, and pressures on per capita spending will be like nothing the U.S. has experienced in modern times. Between now and 2020, the U.S. will experience very minor growth in per household spending. But after that, spending on consumer products is expected to fall—and will continue to fall throughout the projection period in constant dollars.


Marketers in the U.S. and throughout the World are not accustomed to a shrinking pie, but rather are used to thriving marketplaces with robust spending growth. Broad marketplace growth enabled brands and categories to grow organically without increasing penetration or buying rate. In the near future— and for decades to come—this growth gravy train will be off the tracks. Growth will only come from increasing share against competition. The new consumer marketplace of the U.S. will bring new relevance to the phrase “share wars”.
Opportunity knocks
Over the next four decades, the old U.S. consumer mass marketplace will continue to split into distinct groups with very different product needs. By 2037, nearly one in three households will be headed by a person over the age of 65. Of these households, nearly three-quarters will be non-Hispanic white, nearly half will be single persons, and the majority of persons in the 65+ age range will be women. Despite their economic woes, the Baby Boom will still be a strong consumer market and will provide substantial opportunity for marketers willing to design and market products to an older consumer franchise.


By 2025, over half of all families with children will be multi-cultural...

On the other side of the divide will be America’s new families. Because birth rates are low, these new families will be smaller on average than those who have come before. However, their most distinguishing characteristic will be their ethnic and racial makeup. In only a few short years, by at least 2025, over half of all families with children will be multi-cultural. Less than half will be native born non-Hispanic white. Within this multicultural marketplace, Hispanics will be the largest group, but Asians, African and Caribbean blacks, and others will make up significant shares. Though also beset by economic woes, this group will provide substantial opportunity, but only for marketers who can navigate diverse cultures, tastes, and languages.


The future of the U.S. is a challenging one for marketers and retailers of consumer products. Gaining share among population groups that most marketers do not reach today will require shifts in focus, tactics, and products. Successfully reaching new markets like multi-cultural families offers a new set of opportunities. The breakdown of the mass market and the mass media that once served it, combined with certain economic difficulties, will make for challenging new times ahead.