Monday 3 September 2012

Robocars will change everything, somehow or other

I've seen very little discussion in Britain about driverless cars (or, if you prefer, robocars), but plenty in the US (see this and this, for example). As this long article in the Economist says, the technology has come a long way in a relatively short time, and it seems inevitable that driverless cars will start grabbing sizeable market share at some point in the next ten or twenty years. As detailed in that article, the implications could be profound. Cars driven by machine promise to be significantly safer than the human-driven variety, mainly because they will have a better sense of their own surroundings and can be programmed to not take any stupid risks. In fact, some of the technology is already in use as 'driver assitance' add-ons for existing car models:
Volvo already sells a popular driver-assistance option called City Safety for around $2,000, for example. It slams on the brakes if a distance-measuring laser or camera detects a vehicle or pedestrian in the car’s path. City Safety can prevent collisions completely at speeds of up to 30kph (18mph), and at higher speeds it softens the impact.
The other reason that driverless cars will be safer is that many people will recoil at the very idea and demand draconian safety regulations to allow them on the street. For example, they could be programmed to drive below the prevailing speed limit on every street, and to have 'black box' devices recording camera,  sensor and movement data (the Economist says the latter is already a requirement for robocars in Nevada). Combine that with software that stops the car whenever a pedestrian steps in front of it and you would have a total revolution in city transport. Currently pedestrians and cyclists are afraid of cars because we don't know if they will stop for us, so we cede the streets to them. But if you knew that a car was not going too fast and would stop for you, what's to prevent you stepping out to cross the road in front of it? This is the kind of technology that would make the fantasised, pedestrian-ruled version of 'shared space' actually a reality.

Unfortunately, that's also the reason why all shared space schemes would probably be removed as quickly as possible. Nobody in a driverless car would want to sit there like a lemon while pedestrians merrily parade past in front of it. After all, if you clear the road of everything except other driveless cars these things will be able to go very fast. Roads that feature cyclists weaving in and out of traffic will be awful for robocars, while Dutch-style segregated lanes will be just peachy. So if the technology takes off, expect to suddenly see a lot of enthusiasm for roads that completely segregate cars from bikes and pedestrians.

Expect big changes in how we relate to cars too. Taxis might become either obsolete, if everyone owns their own robocar, or universal if nobody does (they just won't have taxi drivers). After all, taxis are expensive largely because they have to transport the taxi driver around the whole time even when there are no passengers. Eliminate that fairly hefty weight and they could become economical for everyday use, so why own your own?

The technology is likely to be transformative, in other words, but it's not completely clear in which direction (I haven't even mentioned the implications for inter-city transport, which are likely to be just as huge but more predictable). Maybe we will see cities sort themselves into two camps, one of which imposes speed limits on robocars and lets cyclists and pedestrians boss them around, while the other segregates uses, punitively cracks down on jaywalking and tries to speed as many cars through their streets as possible. The strange thing about driverless cars is that they seem like they could deliver almost every urban transport utopia you care to imagine, and some of the dystopias too. [Update: Speaking of which, by popular demand (two people on Twitter) here's Johnny Cab!

4 comments:

  1. No guesses as to which of these outcomes London will follow.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Interesting discussion Jim.

    Here's one other aspect that occurs to me, that tends one towards the "dystopic" end of the prediction scale (I always seem to see the worst possibilities ;)).

    Robocars, if they work, will be operable by anyone, including children, and including large numbers of adults who are unable for one reason or another to drive, including many disabled and visually-impaired, and those who just don't like driving. So this opens up the likelihood of a huge increase in cars on the road, fitted in more efficiently, because driven more accurately and carefully. And this suggests a massive increase in pollution and greenhouse gases, and increased pressure on urban space which could lead to less space for cyclists and pedestrians (depending on what politicians decide). Another consequence of course would be more obesity and ill-health.

    The dreadfulness of this scenario, of it becoming more open to people than ever before to never use their legs at all, from cradle to grave, may cause politicians to resist allowing robocars, or arbitrarily limit them in certain ways (to those who can justify the need for them perhaps).

    Another argument I've seen advanced on the net is that once the robocar has been achieved it will open up the way to flying cars. If so, then the streets will probably become runways.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Interesting discussion Jim.

    Here's one other aspect that occurs to me, that tends one towards the "dystopic" end of the prediction scale (I always seem to see the worst possibilities ;)).

    Robocars, if they work, will be operable by anyone, including children, and including large numbers of adults who are unable for one reason or another to drive, including many disabled and visually-impaired, and those who just don't like driving. So this opens up the likelihood of a huge increase in cars on the road, fitted in more efficiently, because driven more accurately and carefully. And this suggests a massive increase in pollution and greenhouse gases, and increased pressure on urban space which could lead to less space for cyclists and pedestrians (depending on what politicians decide). Another consequence of course would be more obesity and ill-health.

    The dreadfulness of this scenario, of it becoming more open to people than ever before to never use their legs at all, from cradle to grave, may cause politicians to resist allowing robocars, or arbitrarily limit them in certain ways (to those who can justify the need for them perhaps).

    Another argument I've seen advanced on the net is that once the robocar has been achieved it will open up the way to flying cars. If so, then the streets will probably become runways.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hmmm. I agree with David about the environmental thing of
    course (you know this really ought to be at the forefront of people’s minds but
    we can’t seem to get away from believing in the Jetsons future) but before that
    I’m doubtful that robocar thing would catch on in any case, no matter how
    clever the technology looks.



    My reason for thinking this is that the robocar scenario
    ignores one of the emotional functions of driving, that of providing a powerful
    sense of autonomy. I suspect that what lies behind the constant whinging about
    speed cameras and congestion and parking restrictions and whatnot is that
    driving provides a convincing illusion of mastery and expertise - something
    that might very well be lacking in one’s dull office-job. Of course many folks would
    say “oh, my car just functional for me - I’d love it if I
    could just be chauffeured around safely by a reliable computer driving system,
    I could do some useful work” but I’m not sure that if push came to shove they’d
    give up piloting their own car. I’m pretty anti-car myself, but even in my
    brief experience of owning a motor, I did get a buzz from driving it.


     

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