The H-1B visa program, which permits US companies to employ foreign workers, is facing criticism from both the American labor force and legislators. A Republican congresswoman has advocated for a complete prohibition of the H-1B temporary visa program, according to Newsweek.The H-1B visa program
Remember When the Information Superhighway Was a Metaphor?
Ask a futurist about self-driving cars, and you'll hear an exciting story: traffic that flows like clockwork, pedestrians stepping into the street without fear, and collisions so rare they make the news. That story will probably come true, eventually. But to get there, we will have to pass through a long stretch—perhaps lasting decades—with road conditions worse than they are today. The outcome will be a future so much better than today's that human driving won't seem outdated; it will seem unthinkable.
For now, as San Francisco learned, even good conditions can produce strange gridlock. Last year a Waymo robo-taxi sat motionless behind a double-parked delivery van. Any human driver would have nudged forward, checked for oncoming cars and slipped past. The Waymo began to do that but encountered another Waymo coming the other way. Each stopped to let the other proceed. Neither did. Behind them drivers honked, and more Waymos arrived, which also waited. Finally, after about four minutes, the second Waymo crept free, ending the gridlock.
That standoff captures the challenge of automated-driving technology. The result won't be the mayhem and catastrophe that many fear when they think of driverless cars, but rather a pervasive drag: slower flow, more near-misses and a growing sense that nobody is in charge.
As yet only a tiny percentage of cars drive themselves. Waymo provides more than 250,000 rides a week in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin, Texas. Meanwhile, according to American Automobile Association, 73 million Americans were projected to travel by car for Thanksgiving this year. When an autonomous vehicle behaves oddly, it blends into the general oddities of human driving. That will change when automation reaches critical mass.
Imagine a busy intersection. A Tesla, running with a human in the seat but operating with self-driving “Hurry” mode, is stuck behind a cautious Waymo. Meanwhile, a human driver is edging out of a parking lot, trying to see beyond a parked delivery van. Each driver—human, algorithmic and combination—operates on different assumptions. The human negotiates with gestures. The Waymo waits for certainty. The Tesla pushes forward impatiently, while its occupant wonders whether to take control.
Once automation makes up roughly half of traffic, no single behavioral rule book will govern the road. Some cars will brake when they encounter ambiguities, while others barrel ahead. Some will surrender the right-of-way, while others will assert it. Worse, people will learn to take advantage of the machines' abundance of caution, knowing that the robo-car they cut in front of will yield. Such opportunists will introduce inefficiency into the flow of traffic, and thousands of them—each driver trying to shave a few seconds off his trip—will slow everything down.
Automakers will still sell cars to those who want to drive themselves, while tech firms such as Waymo and Zoox with their robo-taxi fleets will sell rides instead of cars. Private ownership appeals to those who prize flexibility and control; ride-sharing suits those who want convenience without the costs of ownership. Each model serves distinct preferences that won't disappear. A messy mix of the two will be durable enough to define an era.
The question is how to manage and shorten this mixed-traffic future. Here are three ways we might do this.
The first strategy is acceleration: designating specific districts for rapid adoption and push automation to dominance quickly there. A city might license robo-taxi fleets aggressively within certain zones, while surrounding areas remain mostly human-driven. This would get the selected areas through the troublesome middle phase quickly, but the pains and benefits would be concentrated in specific neighborhoods.
The second plan is containment: keeping automation below the chaos threshold until infrastructure and regulation are ready. Cities could use permits or fees to slow deployment, preserving human norms while systems mature. This would maintain stability and provide time to upgrade urban infrastructure to meet the challenge of driving automation but delay the benefits that driving automation offers.
The third is segregation: dedicating lanes, corridors and even certain hours to automated vehicles. Autonomous vehicle-only lanes during rush hour could let machine drivers coordinate without human interference. This would prevent the most dangerous interactions through clean separation. But it would require substantial infrastructure investment—more than most cities or states will want to pay.
The good news is that we've navigated similar complexities before. The electrical grid mixes coal, natural gas and wind. Air-traffic control manages prop planes and jets. The roads of the future will be a similar patchwork, with automation dominant but human drivers never fully disappearing.
All three options are complex and require public debate. But automated driving is speeding toward us. The popular imagination assumes a clean break—one day humans drive and the next only robots do. Reality will be messier.
Mr. Miller is a co-author of “The End of Driving” and author of the weekly newsletter Changing Lanes.
Get 360° coverage—from daily headlines
to 100 year archives.
Source: HindustanTimes
Related Posts: This ChatGPT-4o prompt helps you ask right questions to get best answers Here's Why Flight Attendants Ask You To Keep Window Shades Open During Landing You can now ask Google to handle your event bookings Exciting results from blood test for 50 cancers Extremely exciting Paresh Rawal Reveals Exciting Update On Hera Pheri 3 Madison Beer shares exciting music update as Justin Herbert makes injury return Paresh Rawal Reveals Exciting Update On Hera Pheri 3 Five exciting match-ups to watch out for in India vs Pakistan showdown India, an exciting market for tech, AI
The H-1B visa program, which permits US companies to employ foreign workers, is facing criticism from both the American labor force and legislators. A Republican congresswoman has advocated for a complete prohibition of the H-1B temporary visa program, according to Newsweek.The H-1B visa program
2 months ago
