Self-Driving Cars Are Still Cars–Which Means They Won't Improve Your Commute
newrepublic.com
newrepublic.com
* Driverless cars means safer cars.
* Driverless cars means independence for people who otherwise are restricted (elderly, kids, blind, etc).
* Driverless cars are more fuel efficient. Sure, they aren't as efficient as not driving, but, just like driving with cruise control is better than not, complete automation will be better.
* Driverless cars will enable more productive use of the commute time.
There are probably many more benefits as well.
The one thing the author probably gets correct is that this will increase traffic load on the roads, and it is questionable whether it will increase efficiency of roadway usage more than it increases traffic load, but I'm guessing it won't. I can imagine a case where I have a single car, driving me to work, then going back to take my wife, then back to the house to pick up kids, then back to pick up my wife, and so on. In other words, a lot of empty drive time. This would be mitigated by a taxi-like "call the nearest car".
My parents grew up in Bangladesh, my mom in a fairly large city and my dad in a village. When they moved to the suburbs of D.C., the biggest culture shock they encountered was the intense isolation of American suburban life. Even in rural Bangladesh, you'll encounter dozens of people in a typical day. But in the U.S., you have to go out of your way (i.e. drive) to see other people. You can go days without seeing anyone outside your immediate family unit.
Self-driving cars address certain problems with a car-based society, like congestion and safety, but they perpetuate the model of driving around in little steel bubbles where we don't interact with or even see other people. That's the biggest difference between a car-based lifestyle and a transit-based lifestyle.
And I totally agree - I think western suburban individualism/isolationism is a terrible idea, and horribly corrosive to peoples long term happiness and health.
You're certainly free to choose a high-density lifestyle for yourself if you prefer it.
Very little of our evolutionary history occured in high-density urban environments, so it seems extremely far-fetched (bordering on ridiculous) that it would somehow be "healthier" from a psychological perspective.
Oh wait.
That doesn't sound right at all does it?
No, it doesn't, but you're shifting the burden of proof. Antibiotics have been demonstrated to improve health. Someone who claims that some new stuff called an "antibiotic" improves health is expected to prove it, just as the burden of proof falls on the OP here to show that the "new stuff" of living in a city is actually healthier.
Urban life brings stress, high crime, bad education, pollution, traffic accidents, and many other factors that demonstrably either reduce the quality of life or endanger it outright. It's fun to live in the city if you're a young single, but not particularly "healthy". It's not at all good for children.
If you have some evidence that urban life is actually "healthy" in a psychological sense, let's see it. Do you have any?
Those people came there for jobs (i.e., survival). Now we don't have to do that, and the population is flowing the other way.
This is the main reason I am interested. I love taking the train to work because I can pull out a book, or my iPad. The experience is 100 times better than the stress of traffic.
The tube system in London, for example, is so quick and convenient I can't see the point of having a car there.
* alleviates parking issues because the car can be told to go park somewhere 1) less congested and 2) less expensive.
One of the problems in cities is the complete lack of temporary parking being consumed by all-day workers, especially those with handicap placards who are not handicapped. 95% of the time I see someone getting out of a car and hanging up the placard they are not disabled (ie, not in a wheelchair or seem to have any handicap at all).
The lack of parking around businesses is a huge problem. Around my office, where there are lots of restaurants and other businesses, most of the parking is taken all day by handicap placard using commuters. This means there are fewer parking spaces for people to park and shop. That decreases sales in the shops in this area. Bad for everyone.
Basically, I won't even shop in areas of restricted parking availability. It's not worth the 30+ minutes of hunting for parking.
Plus they could be connected to each other to effectively tailgate each other. The first car can tell the following cars to break at the same time.
Cars in congested areas can notify others coming up to lower their speed to ease congestion.
Where's the evidence for this?
perhaps if everyone on the road was in a driverless car, and they all communicated and prevented crashes. But that's not going to happen.
I hear this sentiment a lot. Having a higher percentage of cars following safe practices is safer even if those are cars aren't perfect and even if 100% of the cars aren't automated.
Can you tell me the logic (I've seen it many times in posts) that there won't be any safety benefits until all cars are automated (or until there aren't any manual drivers?).
I disagree that the benefit will be that discrete.
Why are Google and other companies trying to develop this technology if all it takes is a single fatal crash, and therefore a single lawsuit? It should be in their rational self-interest to avoid any contact with this technology. It would be lighting on money on fire.
This is not the strongest example, but automobile companies have ignored fatality inducing problems, yet the practice didn't end their business. There is likely enough profit in the pursuit to deal with such issues. These lawsuits are slow-moving enough that there would be room to maneuver.
The greatest threat, in my opinion, is over-reacting politicians passing laws due to a shock in public opinion on the safety of the cars. The shock could be legitimate, due to reckless implementation, or just due to an unpreventable accident.
There's also the vaccine industry. Some vaccinations result in severe adverse reactions in a handful of people. But the public health benefit is so vast that the government has stepped in to shield vaccine makers from the lawsuits.
The vaccine point suggests to me that it's not so black and white about if self-driving cars are doomed. If the public safety benefit of self-driving cars becomes so great, then maybe the government will be pressured to ensure they're here to stay. I think there will definitely need to be changes in the law to accommodate this tech, but it's not impossible.
In any case, I expect the incipient googlecars will have capacitive sensors on the steering wheel, requiring that your fingerprints are on the controls.
(that said, I don't think it makes the car itself physically safer, that is up to the manufacturer)
I'll take my chances thanks. Road deaths have been falling for years, despite the number of cars rising. More people die from accidental falls.
As a software developer, there's no way in hell I'd trust a car driven by software.
You're already trusting a car driven by software that could conceivably "be hacked" to hurt you. Algorithms already control things like antilock brakes, shifting, adjusting the suspension and deciding when to deploy the airbags. And assuming you have a cellphone, the NSA is already tracking your every move.
> More people die from accidental falls.
Source? The CDC appears to disagree with you. (my source: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/accidental-injury.htm )
Yes, the first driverless cars will have all sorts of blind spots, but they will gradually get better whereas human drivers won't. Software-based drivers can learn from accidents and near-accidents that almost any other software-based driver anywhere has had, whereas human drivers are largely limited to learning from their own vastly smaller range of experience. As a software developer you should be able to predict the eventual outcome: programs will eventually in most circumstances beat even the best human drivers just as they now beat even the best human chess players.
Yes, bugs are a real possibility, but compare the number of miles Google has driven and the number of accidents they've had with the general public, and it compares unbelievably well, especially for such a new technology.
Finally, the NSA doesn't need your car to track you. Between your phone, your license plate and your face, you would have a hard time going off grid.
However, regardless of how bad somebody is riding, when something goes wrong, the rider always loses. Also, something that may seem "dangerous and aggressive" to you may be the best way for a rider to get out of a dangerous situation. I use the acceleration and maneuverability of my bike to escape e.g. being boxed in by large trucks on the freeway. I'm just taking advantage of the escape hatch before something goes catastrophically wrong.
Is that confirmation bias as well?
Software glitches can be tested and fixed. Human errors cannot.
Also, as a cheeky sidenote, do you also refuse to use driverless trains, driverless elevators, driverless escalators and driverless theme park rides? :)
And even that is stretching the facts.
1. Owning a driverless car and leaving it parked would be a waste of money. Either rent out your car as an Uber taxi, or simply don't own a car, and use a driverless one as a cheap taxi to work. Long-term, if everyone had a driverless car and used it like this it leads to an 80% reduction in the number of cars required. Isn't that good for the world? (minus GM shareholders). That's some major congestion relief.
2. A lot of congestion is due to drivers screwing up. Bad lane changes, driving too close to each other, idling, etc. Google cars would smooth this out.
3. Easy to send the driverless car to the supercharger station to fill up while you're at work.
4. We get driverless buses too, right? Meaning cheaper buses, meaning more quantity demanded.
The author is correct though, in that a lower cost of usership will lead to a higher quantity demanded.
Some of my previous comments here:
http://vancouverdata.blogspot.ca/2012/08/googles-self-drivin...
If we don't get started on the first step, we'll never solve the second, or the third or the thirtieth.
He complains that Manhattan would be better if it was pedestrianised... really? Does he think that they're going to knock down buildings and remove the roads just so we can all have a chat in the street? And has he ever been on mass transit like trains or subways? I dunno about the rest of the world, but I can guarantee there's almost no "valuable, often spontaneous social interaction" going on in London. You sit/stand quietly, generally in some discomfort due to overcrowding or tiny seats, maybe talk to a friend (if there) but probably not. They're anything but sociable.
There's always some complaint that you can raise about any future technology project, but sometimes you just have to get it done using what you have. Those dense pedestrian friendly cities in Europe didn't get that way by design, they just couldn't be knocked down to expand the roads for cars, so they made do with narrow roads. Likewise, US car friendly cities aren't going anywhere, deal with what you've got.
On another note, he seems to be ignoring the growing trend in renewable power sources around the world. There is a big push in Europe to switch to cleaner energy sources, thus making electric cars a great idea. eg. Combine the solar panels of the Tesla charging stations with automated cars that can drive in and charge while you're at work and you've got a revolution in how we get around.
Not to mention that there are countries like France that have 75% nuclear power, thus making the electric car almost emission-free from the very start.
I still don't get it, but you can't say that Google isn't fulfilling a need. Its a catch-22: self driving cars are the right solution for America the way its designed now. And their adoption will entrench the design even more. The suburbs will get even sprawlier when people can commute an hour each way without actively driving. Its not what most futurists imagined that the world would look like, but it seems inevitable at this point. Urbanists can decry these trends, but who are we to judge people for living the way they want?
While living in cities like SF/NY, taking mass transit was a nightmare for me. Escalators were often not working. Elevators were either out of order, disgusting, or just plain slow. So I often just had to walk up stairs which was pretty painful for my shitty joints.
Then of course, there's stuff that affects most people. Some buses in downtown SF that just wouldn't show up. Or trains in NY which were packed to the brim on rush hour, extremely uncomfortable especially on summer days when specific cars don't have A/C. Or maybe shivering for half an hour in the station during winter. Or having to go uptown to go downtown because of construction. Or walking two miles between transfer points. Or maybe a subway line that just doesn't run during the weekend because fuck you.
What I went through is nothing like what people in war torn countries have to go through, so yeah, it's definitely first world problems and a lot of bitching. That being said, I'm so glad my years of work in SF and NY are over. Love the food and communities in those cities... plus biking in SF was helluvalot of a fun. That said, while it might not seem like a big deal, not having to climb several flights of stairs with bad joints or deal with transit uncertainty is a huge relief for me.
Combine that with the reduction in issues correlated with population density, like crime, pollution, traffic, noise, and homelessness, and it seems pretty obvious to me why a large portion of people will choose suburbia if given the chance.
It may be worth questioning what enables suburbia to exist as a feasible option, when it in many ways seems economically inefficient. One potential answer may be that government subsidy of roads leads to an inefficient allocation of resources.
That's what I had always assumed--suburbia existed because people got older and had kids, and needed the extra space, schools, etc. Then I got to Menlo Park, and saw that even young single people with good incomes preferred to commute from a single-family home in a suburb to a sprawling tech office park in another suburb to living in the city. That blew my mind.
The problem with suburbia is that its is a horrendously inefficient way to use resources in a planet that is getting more and more constrained by them. It is an unsustainable lifestyle.
Efficient, automated, probably electric, personalized transportation is going to enable my exurban lifestyle 45 minutes from Boston pretty much indefinitely. I'll have a lo-opex electric lawn mowing robot for my two acres of lawn, too.
Recall that the trend in the past decade in the US is that of reurbanization; youth are simply not interested in owning cars or suburban houses, and not just as a cultural statement, but because heating large homes and filling up gas tanks is becoming a proportionally larger expense as energy costs go up.
It is reasonable to assume that eventually we'll reach a plateau in that trend when renewables become competitive against all forms of fossil fuels, but reurbanization doesn't have to do so much with large cities as it does with residencies clustering around small city centers, like much of Western Europe.
That probably reflects what you are saying about the way Europe has developed. So while it may be the end of Chicago-like sprawl out across farmland that's 2 hours from the Loop, it mainly means that the focus will be on in-fill development in suburban residential areas. There is a huge amount of slack, even around older cities like Boston. Our commuter rail is getting a lot more riders but it has nothing like the schedule density of the Netherlands rail system. Some cities like Pittsburgh are coming back, but are still at half their peak population.
Also, city schools in America still suck. Private school is about US$20-30k per year (more in high-cost cities). That's worth about a $200,000 higher mortgage in a suburb with good schools.
Houston is a sprawl city. Chicago just happens to be plopped in the middle of some of the most naturally arable land on the continent. :)
This list of "densely" populated metro areas in the US includes the Detroit area, where Detroit proper has recently gone through population collapse.
It's two hours from Crystal Lake to the UofC campus. That's not even a "fringe" suburb any more. And yet, my point was, that Crystal Lake, much less Shaumberg, isn't going to empty out any time soon, even as hipsters fill up Wicker Park.
The matter in schooling is reflected by the district budgets, which are highly dependent on the tax base of its population (probably one of the biggest factors of inequalty in the US, but I digress), so as soon as you get wealthier people moving in and caring about teacher quality that will catch up. Gentrification also means that poor people end up moving out, so people with less opportunities will go to elsewhere (a huge topic by itself).
I think there are lots of people that believe they will need a car some of the time and end up doing their planning in the context of owning one. Cheap, on demand access can change that thought process.
1. http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-breakdown-of-where-taxi-far...
What does it matter if the guy in the front seat is twirling a steering wheel or not? His personal possession is still taking up a vast area of a public space - the city street. He's still driving 150 polluting miles for a meeting that could be held just as well electronically. He's still using way too much energy to transport just one person, whether the oil is burned in his car or in a power station somewhere else. And he's still sitting on his increasingly wide butt.
Google's self-driving cars will entrench one of the biggest problems with Western culture, not fix it. The answers are mass transit, active travel, smarter workplaces and better urban design, not the same old cars but with the ability to twirl the steering wheel themselves.
(and before the obvious rejoinder: I live in an English rural town with a population of 3,000. I don't own a car. It's possible right now; it'd be much, much easier if public transport and bike routes got the same investment lavished on motorists.)
"Driverless cars don't cure cancer. They're a complete failure."
Would you prefer to have autonomous cars, with their reduced incidence of accident/ability to reduce traffic through smarter driving, or not? Who cares if it doesn't solve every one of the world's problems?
And I'm a person who actually hates cars/suburbia/etc.
It's called the Nirvana Fallacy. Very common in our profession and in others where folk like us wind up.
But I don't see it. The seductive argument is "hey! Google's technology makes cars all right! We don't have to invest in public transport or bike lanes!". It's what's going on right now with electric cars here in the UK: the Government investment lavished on them is disproportionate to the pennies spent on cycle infrastructure.[1]
Self-driving cars are a great excuse for politicians not to make their cities as good as Groningen.[2] But maybe you're lucky enough to have better politicians than we do!
[1] https://www.bikebiz.com/news/read/cycling-gets-weak-mention-...
The implications of self-driving cars go well beyond simply cars "twirling the steering wheel themselves." From huge boosts in efficiency, to decreases in city congestion as people abandon the always exciting practice of circling the block for a parking space, to better traffic flow and decreases in traffic accidents to almost nil, self-driving cars are going to be revolutionary in ways that many can't even imagine.
What's more is that they won't be limited to just private vehicles. Autonomous taxis will combine door-to-door service with the Zipcar sharing model together and turn the current system on its head. The same goes for buses and even subways and trains, where the ability to run unimpeded 24/7 will make mass transit options that much more flexible and easier to expand. All of this while minimizing congestion on the roads.
While true during the time the car is transporting a person, self-driving-cars-as-a-service requires fewer cars in total, and need not be parked near the destination (or at all during high-use periods).
Many US cities came in to existence or experienced major growth during the age of the car. They are built for people with cars, and would be quite difficult to convert to an effective public transit system. Consider Jacksonville, FL as an example. It has a population of less than a million and it's sixty miles wide. It wouldn't be terribly hard to make a strong case for building new cities differently, but causing Jacksonville to have a usable local rail system would be considerably more expensive than deploying self-driving cars there.
[1]my theoretical commute. in reality, my commute is a ten minute bike ride along a riverbank.
Don't get me wrong, nothing beats the "live where you work principle" in terms of efficiency. it should be the primary choice for professions that this is possible. this principle would also do wonders for the financial and ethnic diversity of neighborhoods instead of the tossed salad we have today.
Driver less cars will have a huge impact on efficiency and safety as they become the norm. someone already mentioned driving efficiency, but as the safety record of these vehicles sky rockets, cars will become lighter as they won't need to be designed such rare high speed collisions. This will also greatly improve efficiency and shrink the carbon footprint.
If every single car is cruising at the same speed and distance between them, would our roads then be more or less congested? From the things I've read from German autobahn research seems to indicate that congestion should be less. On the other hand some roads here in Denmark seems to be design for less traffic that they currently carry and I doubt it would work if cars where forced to keep a fixed distance.
It would be interesting to get the reaction from the politicians, if some one like Google reported it's actually impossible to drive a certain road while following the recommended safety rules.
yes internal combustion engines are inefficient. yes mass transit offers superior energy consumption per passenger mile in many cases.
BUT
when cars are good enough at coordinating to make streetlights irrelevant, or park themselves, or self distribute among different routes to globally optimize road throughput, the carbon footprint will be substantially lower.
when the grid is cleaner which is happening every day, the point of electric cars being dirty is that much less valid.
cars are like packets. the cost per bit is higher, but the dynamacism compared to circuit switched systems is a GIANT feature. trains and buses lose their efficiency edge quickly as density lowers because of their inherent inflexibility.
even if my commute was to take the same amount of time, have the same carbon foot print and nothing else changed. The fact that I do something else besides play organ with my cars controls is a giant improvement. Maybe i will spend my new found free time coming up with explanations for why this luddite can't see the forest from the trees as @inmyunix astutely points out.
AND
the author is suggesting that limited reagent is roadways and that cars don't offer a solution to that. well, there are more creative solutions that can play nice with self driving cars, like time multiplexing roadways. a global system can decide that you may as well leave 20 minutes later because you will get there in the same amount of time and hence send a car to pick you up later. or more generally, just shifting the hours slightly so that instead of most commuters leaving at ~8 and ~5, its half ~7, ~4 and half ~8, ~5 etc. or even more granular.
These are difficult problems and there is no way a single solution should be expected to solve all problems. This is a step in the right direction, despite Ben Walsh's lack of vision.
Think about it, you've now gained X-minutes to and from work or where ever per day to focus on reading, chats, etc.
But you won't be the one driving. You won't have to deal with the stress of making those decisions and being constantly aware and hoping that some a-hole doesn't mess up and hurt you, or that you'll mess up and hurt someone else.
So, what's the problem meant to be?
> The notion that hundreds of thousands of Google car pods will glide through cities in humming packs just inches apart is deeply naive. Almost every major city in the U.S. contains the rebuttal to that idea, in the form of new freeways that ere supposed to relieve congestion and improve commute times.
Very few demands are uncapped, and I've not seen any evidence that the demand for transport is so.
So if car-commuting is as terrible as the article thinks it is, and mass transit is more pleasant, it can help with that.
personal, private transportation isn't going ANYWHERE.
Google isn't required, nor are they attempting, to reinvent propulsion mechanisms.
Because most people that live in cities don't need a car all the time. An awful lot of people can use mass transit most of the time, and then a car occasionally. Turn that occasional car usage into a cheap self-driving taxi and you save on a lot of parking space.
That visual comparison is flawed. Just read the comments.
Here you go, the same size group of people and the vehicles required to transport them. 69 people: 1 bus, 69 bikes, 60 cars.