Chapter 356 Social Experiment
Chapter 356 Social Experiment
After walking around the center of the climate summit venue for half a day, Gao Wen, Fan and others felt a little hungry. Instead of eating at the fast food restaurant at the venue, they went to Panyu District in Yangcheng to eat.
A group of people came out of the venue.
Gao Wen Fan, who had been traveling in Seris for more than half a month, skillfully picked up the tourist's mobile phone and directly ordered a driverless car.
Then they came to an outdoor elevator on the side of the road and took it up to the second-floor highway area.
Coming to the second-floor road, it is completely different from the ground road on the first floor and has a sense of orderly beauty.
Because Guangzhou's entire second-layer road system currently only allows self-driving cars to drive on it, cars driven by other natural persons are not allowed to drive on the second-layer roads.
Not a moment.
An electric Dongfeng car was parked on the side of the road. A line of text appeared on the window glass facing the road, in both Chinese and English.
[Hello, passenger with license plate number 6857! Smart Car—Yangcheng No. 4425 is at your service...]
"The car has arrived." Gao Wen opened the passenger door.
The other two friends also opened the back door and sat in the back seats one by one.
One of the younger ones, Quill Snyder, looked at the empty driver's seat and suddenly became nervous: "Gulu...Gawain, is this a self-driving car?"
"?" Turning his head to look at the tense Quill Schneider, Gawain smiled and comforted him, "Schneider, don't worry. This road only allows self-driving cars to be on the road. There is no need to worry about safety."
"Only self-driving cars are allowed on the road here?" Quill Snyder was very surprised.
The other mature Peter was relatively calm because he had used this special driverless taxi in Guangzhou before.
"That's right. To avoid traffic accidents, only self-driving cars are allowed to drive on the second-floor roads in Guangzhou."
Several people fastened their seat belts and the car had already planned its route.
Quill Snyder looked through the car window at the elevated two-story highway. There were no dividing railings or flower beds in the middle of the highway.
Instead, the sidewalks on both sides have been reduced in size and equipped with fully enclosed fences, making it impossible for pedestrians to cross the fences and enter the motor vehicle area of the highway.
Just now, they were in the waiting area on the sidewalk, which was equipped with security gates similar to those in the subway to prevent pedestrians from entering at will.
Then, Quill Snyder discovered another difference from the ground road, that is, there were no traffic lights on this road.
All vehicles are uniformly coordinated through the supercomputer in the background. There is no such thing as overtaking on a curve, cutting in mid-road, sudden lane changing, or sudden braking.
Therefore, on this kind of road, traffic lights are obviously a very redundant thing.
When arriving at the intersection, the system will actively make the most reasonable adjustments based on the traffic volume of each section of the road, so that the automobile transportation flow in the entire highway system can reach an ideal maximum.
"Schneider, don't worry..."
After hearing what Peter said, Quill Snyder scratched his head and replied, "Haha, I'm not too worried now. If all the cars on this road are self-driving, it will be safer."
Gao Wen opened a bottle of coffee and took a sip: "Well, the pilot project conducted by Seris in Yangcheng is actually a social experiment."
"I'm quite optimistic about this type of autonomous driving." Peter also came to Seris in advance, so he took more than a dozen online ride-hailing cars and driverless taxis in the past half month:
"During my time in Guangzhou, I took about a dozen taxis, half of which were driverless taxis and the other half were manned taxis. Personally, I felt that driverless taxis were much better than manned taxis in terms of speed and stability."
"Oh? Are you sure?" Quill Snyder didn't expect his friend to come to such a conclusion.
Quill Schneider explained with a smile: "The premise is that it is on a dedicated unmanned highway. If it is on a manned highway on the ground, I don't think unmanned taxis can be absolutely safe."
"That's right, dedicated unmanned roads are very important." Gao Wen in the front row agreed.
Unmanned roads and self-driving cars are the core elements driving the vigorous development of self-driving cars. This has become a consensus in Seris and even the entire Asian community.
Because many automobile companies have been developing various types of self-driving cars before, and they have been exaggerating them in various PPTs, as if self-driving cars can immediately replace humans and leave everyone far behind on the road.
Once these cars actually hit the road, all sorts of problems and accidents emerged, triggering the controversial issue of who was responsible for the accidents.
After all, if an autonomous vehicle has an accident, who is primarily responsible, the passenger or the owner, or the car company? This is a very troublesome question.
Now there is a unified regulation that if a traffic accident occurs involving all cars using autonomous driving functions, the car manufacturer or the autonomous driving operator will be the first party responsible for the accident.
For example, the driverless taxi that Gao Wen and others are riding in belongs to the Yangcheng No. 1 Taxi Company. Its manufacturing company is Dongfeng Motor Group, and its unified operator is the Yangcheng Unmanned Traffic Management Company.
If a traffic accident occurs, excluding intentional damage by non-passengers, the first responsible party is the Yangcheng Unmanned Traffic Management Company, the second responsible party is the Yangcheng First Taxi Company, and the third responsible party is Dongfeng Motor Group.
This is a responsibility fixed through contracts and insurance agreements.
If a private car has a traffic accident on an autonomous driving type highway, the classification of the accident is similar.
Now all automobile manufacturers are required to unify their autonomous driving systems and are not allowed to develop closed autonomous driving systems.
Because for all cars that can travel on the autonomous driving highway, their autonomous driving functions will be taken over by the local unmanned traffic management company the moment they enter the autonomous driving highway, rather than letting the car companies' background programs act independently.
If this cannot be done, the cars produced by the car manufacturer will not be able to be driven on autonomous driving highways.
Currently, there are 12 pilot cities in Serbia that are testing self-driving cars and self-driving roads. If the tests go well, the standards derived from these tests will become the internal unified standards of the Asian Union in the future.
Faced with this situation, major automobile companies have no choice but to compromise.
If we still insist on a closed autonomous driving system, then in the future, the second-layer roads in various cities will most likely not allow this type of car to be on the road. For a car company, this almost means being directly eliminated from this market, so it has to accept it even if it doesn't want to.
In fact, this mode is also a helpless choice.
Although the Asian consortium's semiconductor technology is already leading the world, there is still no way to break through the limitations of traditional silicon-based chips. Therefore, there is an upper limit to chip computing power. Coupled with cost issues, the current autonomous driving mode is more suitable.
Because closed autonomous driving roads can minimize the computing power requirements for on-board computers during autonomous driving, and reduce the accuracy and number of on-board radars.
Many car companies now do not install high-precision on-board radars at all because there is no need. After all, on an autonomous driving highway, the car only needs to continuously transmit high-precision positioning signals, and the system can use the car model data that has been recorded to accurately determine the safe position of the car during driving.
Therefore, three sets of relevant positioning equipment must be prepared, one set for use, one set for backup, and one set for emergency.
Gao Wen looked at the endless stream of cars outside the car window and shook his head helplessly: "It is highly likely that there is no way to have such a route in Europe."
"Haha." Quill Snyder laughed bitterly, "You are making it difficult for them to build a separate autonomous driving highway."
"Let's not talk about Europe anymore. I'm immigrating to Australia next month anyway." Gao Wen felt really disappointed with his hometown.
Peter asked curiously, "Does Seris really plan to fully promote this second-level autonomous driving highway?"
Gawain nodded slightly: "I have talked to a few Seris people I know, and they think this possibility is very high."
"Why? They should have more roads now, right? Expanding the second floor of the autonomous driving highway would be a waste of resources, right?" Quill Snyder asked, rubbing his eyes.
“It should be related to their comprehensive urbanization.”
Hearing Gao Wen's answer, Quill Snyder raised his eyebrows: "Full-scale urbanization? What is this?"
"Seris, or the Asian Union, plans to achieve full urbanization within ten years, allowing everyone to live in cities and reduce the waste of land resources."
"This..." Quill Snyder didn't know how to evaluate this plan.
As environmental and climate scholars, all three knew that big cities were not ideal living spaces.
In particular, Quill Snyder, who had visited America, knew that America's big cities were the centers of life for the poor, while the middle class and the rich lived in suburbs and small towns.
Gawain turned around and said, "I know you've been to America, Schneider, but I think there are obvious differences between the cities of America and Seris."
"I don't deny that." Quill Snyder has also witnessed the level of urban construction in Seris and the Asian Federation in the past few days. Compared with the cities in Europe and the United States, it is definitely much better.
Peter looked at Gawain and said, "So, the Seres are planning to use self-driving roads to ease future urban traffic congestion?"
"Ah."
Peter raised his glasses and said, "I have a question. Will the appearance of a two-story road affect the lighting of the second- and third-story buildings along the way?"
Gao Wen gave his own opinions based on what he had seen and heard in the past few days:
"In fact, they probably won't consider the lighting issue you're worried about as a problem, because the scale of solar power generation in the Asian Union will become larger and larger in the future, and their residents' electricity is very cheap and abundant. I visited Dr. Jiang's hometown, and their new residential buildings all have uniform simulated sunlight areas."
"Indoor simulated sunlight area? Isn't this too luxurious?" Quill Snyder also became envious.
Although they are all Europeans, there are huge differences among Europeans.
For example, the living standards in Northern Europe, Western Europe, and Southern Europe and Eastern Europe can basically be divided into three levels.
Among them, ordinary people in Northern Europe have the best living standards, but the climate is a bit bad.
Then there are ordinary people in Western Europe. Their living standards are decent, but they certainly don’t have the luxury of having their own sunroom in a residential building in the city.
The living standards of ordinary people in Eastern and Southern Europe are relatively poor, with monthly incomes of just over 1,000 Euros. After deducting daily expenses, there is basically no surplus.
Gawain, Quill Schneider and the other two are Dutch, and their families are middle class, so their living standards are pretty good, basically on par with ordinary people in Northern Europe.
Gawain smiled and turned around and said, "It's understandable that you consider the current Seres to be a strengthened version of the Nordic people."
“I’m really envious!”
"Those Nordic guys are really extravagant. I heard they use several thousand kilowatt-hours of electricity a month in winter."
Gawain made a cold joke: "There's no point in being envious. They have a lot of land and a small population, and they also have a lot of resources. In the Netherlands, besides the red-light district, do we have any other advantageous industries?"
"Haha, you Australian guy, you change your mind so quickly!" Peter laughed heartily.
The big city problems discussed by several people are indeed not difficult to solve for the Asian Union.
As long as there is enough energy, many of the current problems will not be problems.
For example, the lighting of low-rise buildings, the air quality in the city center, various urban domestic wastes, urban transportation, etc., these can all be solved through various technical means.
Not enough light? Build a sunroom indoors to let in artificial sunlight.
Bad air quality? Sunrooms can be used to grow a variety of green plants. Together with the sky gardens on the roofs, the various green belts and ecological parks planned in the city center, and the use of strict air pollution treatment equipment, the city's air quality can be basically guaranteed.
Domestic waste? There is no domestic waste at all now. All kinds of domestic garbage and industrial and domestic sewage can be recycled and reused through technology to maximize the utilization of resources.
Traffic congestion? Then build subways and two-story roads. If the second floor is not enough, build three or four floors.
In fact, the traffic congestion in Guangzhou has been greatly alleviated as 15 second-level highways have been put into operation.
After many people found that taxis, self-driving private cars and self-driving buses on the second-layer roads were more convenient and efficient, a large number of office workers shifted their daily commuting to the second-layer roads, which greatly reduced the congestion on the ground roads.
With the construction of other second-tier highways in Guangzhou in the future, it is estimated that the local traffic congestion problem will be reduced to an acceptable level.
What's more, although Seres has decided to promote comprehensive urbanization, it is not a mindless urbanization towards Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, but rather a concentrated urbanization by selecting suitable areas in each region.
The population of each urban agglomeration is about 500 million. If cities with this amount of population are divided into more than a dozen urban areas with intervals of more than a few kilometers, they will not be too crowded.
Moreover, the construction technology of integrated high-rise buildings has become very mature, and many old residential buildings are ready for a second upgrade.
By renovating old, dilapidated and small urban residential buildings, we can not only improve the living conditions of residents in old cities, but also obtain more underground and high-rise spaces, greatly increasing the three-dimensional space area of the city.
(End of this chapter)