Transportation reality, of course, has not worked out that way. But the concept, called automated highway systems, or AHS, is gaining new momentum. Its proponents say computers could take over the steering wheel as early as 2015, and Washington is spending $160 million to study, the idea. “The automated highway system is not a pipe dream any more than the construction of our inter-state-freeway system was after the second world war,” says Mike Doble, a technology manager for Buick. “It’s for real.”
While the Japanese and Europeans are also studying AHS, the leading U.S. player is an alliance of high-tech and automobile companies called the National Automated Highway System Consortium (NAHSC). In 1991 it won a government contract to develop a prototype by 2002. This August the consortium will demonstrate its progress on a seven-mile stretch of 1-15 in San Diego. The demo will highlight AHS concepts such as platooning (automated cars moving in packs) and free-agent control (individual cars operating autonomously).
Researchers are still divided over the best way to achieve AHS. In one system being developed by GM and UC, Berkeley, sensors on the front and back of a car follow magnets buried in the highway. Honda is working on a video system in which three cameras near the car’s rearview mirror monitor different segments of the road ahead and feed images to on-board computers that control steering, acceleration and braking. The two approaches aren’t mutually exclusive: urban and rural highways may require separate systems.
Many AHS components are already being built into today’s tech-loaded automobiles. Satellite-linked navigational computers provide directions to drivers of many luxury and rental ears, while “E-Z Pass” systems in about half a dozen states identify cars at tollbooths and debit drivers’ accounts. In the next few years even more AHS technology will hit the streets. Adaptive cruise control will adjust your car’s speed to keep it moving with the flow of traffic. Lane detectors will sound an alarm if the car starts to drift. The incremental introduction of features “will allow consumers to build their trust of these new technologies over time,” says Steven Shladover of Berkeley.
But will the average American lead-foot ever willingly take a back seat to a computer chauffeur? Manning the wheel is as essential to the American ethos as eating hot dogs at baseball games. And folks annoyed at the impersonality of voice mail may well balk at tossing their car keys to another stack of circuit boards. David Bernstein, a professor of civil engineering at Princeton, wonders if “public acceptance might be virtually impossible to get.”
Of course, a more immediate concern is making the technology work. Engineers still need to figure out how to design software capable of safely controlling something as unpredictable as traffic (if the computer crashes, do the cars?). Other challenges will be to pack the technology into cars at an affordable price, and to decide which level of government win foot the bill for highway upgrades. There’s also the question on the mind of every liability lawyer reading this article: in an intelligent car crashes on an automated highway, whom do you sue? That’s at least one roadblock the prognosticators of 1989 could not have foreseen.
