Self-Driving Cars: A Coming Congestion Disaster? | Hacker News Reader

Self-Driving Cars: A Coming Congestion Disaster?

humantransit.org

31 pointsTiktaalik20 comments

I do not say this lightly -- this is a stupid, stupid concern.

Driverless cars will not circle for an hour unless their owners have free energy. If (and this is a big if) the typical driverless car is owned by a single party and not needed, the rational economic incentive will be to park it somewhere safe where it can't get into trouble and will be close by where you need it.

Let's imagine a thought experiment about our new $125,000 2019 self driving Tesla Model S, right after it drops me off in Mountain View. Do I send it out to circle through the peninsula, or do I tell it to park somewhere 'optimal' meaning some local optimum of close by, cheap and safe?

Even if it's my new $22,000 2022 self-driving Nissan Leaf, why risk road time, wear and tear and battery run-down? This just makes no sense as an issue that litigators need to get on top of.

In your thought experiment there is still a scenario where there is a car driving around driverless, if even for a short amount of time. That's a new increase in traffic beyond what we have now.

This is only the most extreme edge case and it's not worth focusing too much on. The scenarios examined in the KPMG study the blog post cited are more typical and more concerning.

That study finds that there will be a very significant increase in traffic due to people younger and older than current drivers that could never drive before now being able to drive.

It is a good thing that we are expanding access to transportation for people that had poor access before, but achieving this using autonomous vehicles will certainly increase the amount of cars on the road.

Congestion isn't what worries me about self-driving cars.

It's what police and governments will do once they're on the road. What are your rights as a passenger in a self-driving car? Does a govt official have the right to track the movements of a self-driving car in real time? Do they have the right to override your car's computer and order it to pull over? Can a badguy send a command to the car to make it do something bad, potentially causing harm to the passengers and to other vehicles? Oh, and let's not even think about what badguys could do with self-driving cars in terms of terrorism.

Nah, I'm not gung-ho about a future with these things all over the place.

Yah. I agrees with yoo.

I read the blog post, and all I can think is that I have never, ever, ever thought of using a self-driving car in the way proposed in the blog post. It does seem that fairly simple models for pricing road use (including just taxing vehicle fuel, if the self-driving car uses an engine that burns fuel) would be enough to respond to the hypothetical problem mentioned in the blog post.

Another option is a tax on miles driven, or perhaps a higher tax only on miles driven without any passengers. That way, one can ride wherever for free but when sending the car out by itself, it'd cost enough to discourage such behavior. In fact, this latter option is almost a given, IMO, not only to reduce congestion but also energy use (even if the cars are not running on fossil fuels). Some incentives for city parking garages to make them cheaper would also help. There's absolutely no need whatsoever for anyone to send their car back home just to get it parked when there's guaranteed parking within a couple of miles, only a few minutes away for the car.

Absolutely road pricing would solve the worst case scenario mentioned in the blog post, but the author raises a good point that we've had congestion problems for decades and we still aren't using comprehensive road pricing to solve our traffic problems. How bad do things have to get before we do?

It's deeply troubling to think that as traffic rises with the introduction of self driving cars, instead of bringing in road pricing, we may continue to rely on the same old approaches that are proven failures, such as road widening.

What if the car is electric? This fuel is really cheap and you can't tax it without taxing everything else.

If there's is shortage of parking spaces you won't even have to tell the car to circle the block while you shop. It will do the same by itself looking for parking spot.

Also if your wife starts work hour later then you do it's just common sense to send the car back so she can use it. Buying another one would be silly if power is cheap.

Easy enough to tax electricity used for charging cars. Simply require a separate electric meter for that use, and tax the power used.

It will happen anyway with or without self-driving cars, assuming electric vehicles replace gasoline-fueled ones. A big part of the retail price of gasoline is tax and some way will be found to make up for that. It hasn't happened yet because EVs are still a negligible fraction of vehicles on the road.

And what would prevent people from charging cars through the normal meter?

It's not uncommon now to use heating oil or vegetable oil in diesel engines because they are cheaper due to diesel fuel being taxed heavily.

You don't have to have the cars being "driverless taxis" to be more efficient in use of roads, there are lots of other options that might involve sharing cars with several neighbors, that the driverless feature makes much more feasible.

While there may be some people who use driverless cars less efficently than they use cars today, I have no doubt it would be more than balanced out by people who would be glad to save some money and don't need full ownership of a car.

I really don't see a scenario where cars are circling for hours in busy parts of the city. At the very least it could be smart enough to go wait somewhere out of the way. At least in US cities, people wouldn't tolerate that if it was significant enough to make a difference.

Agreed. With self-driven cars, you can imagine scenarios like hand-offs, where you ferry multiple passengers at a discounted rate over a common leg of a trip, and then they transfer to separate cars to go the last leg of their journey to their separate destinations, also possibly sharing with other passengers interested in only that leg, who might also be transferring onto new cars to get to their ultimate destination. You can basically specify your tolerance (100ft to 1mi) for walking and thus allow even steeper discounts and more travel options for the self-driving cars.

You can hit occupancy and distance-traveled efficiency with this that we've never come close to before, and if the pricing is sexy enough by comparison (and it should be), it's going to be the option most people use, because most people can barely pay their bills. They will still be saving time over waiting on bus transfers, which are incredibly slow by comparison.

The biggest cost in a vehicle is the depreciation that comes from both time and wear. Cars that serve as taxis wear out 10x faster than commute cars. Why would I want my car to wear out faster? (And electric cars wear on the battery, whereas gas has direct fuel cost.)

Also, when the car goes home to serve the family, that means the family owns only one car -- clearing out at least one parking space compared to two active cars.

Finally, if I go shopping today, I have to circle a number of times just to find parking. Driverless cars that know where spots are, and don't care about walking distance, can get of the road faster than that.

So... I'm sure we'll find new problems, but that seems unlikely to be one.

Why would you want to own your commute car? Much cheaper to rent it by the minute.

Seemed stupid, but I had to read, as I couldn't possible imagine what would the author come up with to justify how an automated "rule based" predictable system can cause more congestion that chaotic humans...

On that note, I think the author forgot to mention the noise disaster it will be when everyone sends their cars driving around the block at night while they sleep. (yay, some extra garage space)

What??

> Driverless taxis will not always be available on demand, especially in suburban and rural areas, so a legitimate fear of being stranded will make people in those areas prefer the security of having a car just for them.

Young people will b able to afford using driverless taxis a long time before they can afford to own their own vehicle. I think this will get people so used to the idea that when they do have the capital to be able to afford one, they will wonder why they should bother. This is already happening with Uber, so it's not theoretical, and driverless Uber journeys will be a _lot_ cheaper than now. Other criticisms, such as that taxis wear out faster are true, but apply equally to services such as Uber already. Take away the cost of the driver, and you've got a game changer.

Clearly some people will still want to own vehicles. I think that will always be true, but but you don't have to replace every singe car on the road with a driverless taxi to revolutionize our overall use of road transport.

Driverless cars have the unique ability to move without requiring an operator to be present. They could be allowed to park in regular spots, loading zones, tow-away spots, etc., for "free" if they provided a mechanism that enables anyone to tell it to screw off and find another place. A button on the side of the car for pedestrians and an rf receiver for people in vehicles.

I think there should probably be a tax leveraged against the owners for the increase in congestion and the reduction of the number of spots available to people without the device that tells driverless cars to scamper away, but I don't see the apocalyptic 'circling-the-block' scenario happening here. It would be cheaper for the owner to put the car into this non-imposing parking mode than the circling mode, so they would choose the former.

> A button on the side of the car for pedestrians

I could see kids pushing these things all day long

I bet after awhile it would be considered bad behavior to do that.

It's unlikely that most driverless cars will be SUVs. They'll be more like smart cars. Take a look on a busy New York City block. You might have 30 cars between intersections. But if those cars are small, driving bumper to bumper and door handle to door handle it would take up far less room. Similarly with parking. Driverless cars can double and triple park in parking garages with First In Last Out ordering.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com