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Stingy driverless cars will clog future streets instead of parking
It's a nightmarish vision of San Francisco's future, like something out of science fiction: streets full of driverless cars, crawling along implacably but at a snail's pace, snarling traffic and bringing the city to a standstill from the iconic Ferry Building to Union Square.
But according to Adam Millard-Ball, associate professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, this scenario could come to pass simply as a result of rational behavior on the part of autonomous vehicle owners. Congestion pricing that imposes a fee or tax for driving in the downtown core could help prevent this future, but cities need to act fast, before self-driving cars are common, he argues.
Those conclusions emerge from an analysis published in the journal Transport Policy, in which Millard-Ball used game theory and a computer model of San Francisco traffic patterns to explore the effects of autonomous vehicles on parking. He found that the gridlock happens because self-driving cars don't need to park near a rider's destination – in fact, they don't need to park at all.
The autonomous vehicle parking problem (DOI: 10.1016/j.tranpol.2019.01.003) (DX)
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Tuesday March 12 2019, @03:58PM (3 children)
You ask that, like you think it's ridiculous, but you're wrong. A revolutionary technology like this causes societal change. They go hand-in-hand.
Consider the original introduction of the automobile. They tended to scare horses, so initially there were extreme restrictions. Now, one could have said: this is just a dead-end technology, because horses dominate and no one wants to give up their horse for a noisy machine. Instead, for sheer convenience, people gave up their horses - revolutionizing personal transportation.
Full self-driving cars will also cause a societal revolution. Why are (some) people so attached to their cars? Largely, because they are in control and enjoy the driving experience. Take that away, and the vehicle becomes just transportation. Less attachment to the vehicle will mean more people happy to just hail a ride.
So, back to your comment: the success of a revolutionary technology does go hand-in-hand with a social revolution. But the two are not unrelated - they are inextricably linked, each feeding back onto the other.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday March 12 2019, @05:18PM (2 children)
Sorry, but it had long been known that horses had to be replaced *somehow*, and most people couldn't afford the upkeep on one. But if the horse hadn't been replaced there were estimates that the streets of New York city would be a mile deep in horse shit by the time the population had doubled. It's not clear what the equivalent current problem is. Electric cars doesn't imply publicly owned cars become dominant. It's not clear to me why smart cars would change that. It would probably mean that car rental became much more feasible. (If the car can come to you itself, and return on its own, then rental is useful in a lot more situations.) But there's a big difference between "more people are able to do well without owning a personal car" and "few enough people will own a personal car that it will become unusual". E.g., if cars were self-driving, I might rent a car occasionally. I don't drive, and wouldn't want to own one. But that's an edge case. I see no sign that it would become dominant.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by optotronic on Wednesday March 13 2019, @02:29AM (1 child)
You can argue about the relative importance of these versus streets filled with manure, but:
1) Global climate change: electric vehicles have the potential to significantly (?) contribute to the solution
2) Inability of drivers to pay attention to driving vs. their smart phones: self driving cars could fix this
(Score: 4, Insightful) by vux984 on Wednesday March 13 2019, @03:58AM
#1 is orthogonal to the question. People will shift to electric regardless. There is no reason to think that simply becoming electric is going to motivate people not to own one. Self-driving tech is the hypothesis that has been raised that will reduce ownership.. but that has really nothing to do with electric, or with global warming.
#2 Am I really going to stop owning a car and hail one simply so i can look at my smartphone instead? And why wouldn't i still own one? Then i can look at my smartphone in clean, well maintained, luxury... instead of a smelly beat up 'fleet' car?