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Today's drivers must give up hours of their day to the daily driveback and forth from work. Tomorrow's self-driving car owners can settle back in the comfort of their ride to get a starton work emails, browse the news headlines or catch up on a favoriteTV show — all without worrying about getting lost, switchinglanes on the highway or squeezing into tiny parking spaces. "These kinds of systems will be to the point where you canflip a switch and they'll be fully autonomous," Stone toldInnovationNewsDaily. "Many cars can already park themselvesand have active cruise control." Goodbye to red lights Traffic lights may go extinct once self-driving cars rule the road.Tomorrow's self-driving cars could "talk" wirelesslyusing an automated system that calculates the paths for cars tomake turns or whiz through intersections without stopping. Such intersections could shrink average road delays by as much as100 times in the most extreme circumstances, Stone said. He and hiscolleagues previously created a simulation showing cars streamingpast one another at an intersection with only the slightestslowdowns in speed — a somewhat terrifying sight for today'sdrivers. But such changes would only be possible once everyone ownsa self-driving car. "We found that most benefits of autonomous intersections don'treally kick in until most cars on road are autonomous [a 90 percentpenetration level]," Stone explained. "But at every pointalong the way, we found small benefits for people with autonomouscars." Save on gas money Early adopters of self-driving cars may find themselves stoppingless often to fill up on gas (or recharge the batteries of electricor hybrid plug-in cars). That's because a self-driving car couldquickly and precisely calculate how much to step on the gas pedalor when to begin braking before a stop sign. "You can imagine the ability of cars to accelerate ordecelerate a lot more smoothly on our current roadways, so thatthey reduce fuel usage and emissions," Stone said. Some penny-pinching drivers already practice "hypermiling" techniques to avoid wasting fuel with excessive acceleration or braking. Butself-driving cars could automatically spread such energy-savinghabits to everyone. Safer commutes People on today's roads face a gauntlet of distracted drivers,drunk drivers or sleepy drivers. Self-driving cars could go a longway toward eliminating such dangers by taking over control fromaddled, error-prone human drivers — especially if self-driving cars talk to each other to discuss road or traffic conditions. The rise of self-driving cars could also reduce number of crashesand deaths among vehicle drivers and passengers. About 33,000people die on U.S. roads each year, according to a AAA studyconducted by Cambridge Systematics in 2011. Total U.S. crashestacked on the added financial cost of almost $300 billion annually. Shared cars for everyone Self-driving cars may end up cementing the dream of private carownership, but they could also give a boost to car-sharing amongthose who don't own cars — a hybrid of car-rental programssuch as Zipcar and automated roving taxis. That would allow evenpeople who don't own cars to join in on the newly improved work commute of the 21st century. Such car-sharing could make more efficient use of cars that wouldotherwise sit idly in parking lots during the day. The cars couldalso come directly to a person's home for pickup, as opposed torequiring people to walk to the nearest car-share parking lot. "You don't need so many cars parked and taking up space whenthey could be driving off on their own to be reused," Stonesaid. This story was provided by InnovationNewsDaily , a sister site to TechNewsDaily. You can follow InnovationNewsDaily Senior Writer Jeremy Hsu on Twitter @ ScienceHsu . Follow InnovationNewsDaily on Twitter @ News_Innovation , or on Facebook . I am an expert from yarndyed-fabric.com, while we provides the quality product, such as Special Finish Fabric , Melange Fabric Manufacturer, Melange Fabric,and more.
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