The technology of autonomous vehicles (AVs) is progressing rapidly, but have we really thought through how they'll work in reality?
In its report on AVs in Australia, Austroads (the association of Australasian road transport and traffic agencies) paints both positive and negative scenarios for the future.
The positive scenario suggests that AVs could reduce car ownership and use thanks to a fleet of shared and connected AVs. These AVs would roam the city, filling in gaps in the timetables and fixed routes of a superior and cheaper public transport network.
But for this scenario to work, AVs must be shared and not privately owned, and they must complement a robust public transport system that accommodates most trips. These mechanisms are either weak or nonexistent in most Australian cities, suggesting it's unlikely the arrival of AVs will reduce our dependence on private cars.
Shared autonomous cars should be as much fun as riding in the back of a New York cab.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday December 06 2018, @01:28PM (4 children)
> Shared autonomous cars should be as much fun as riding in the back of a New York cab.
New York Cabs are awful, a lot of that because of the advertising on the telescreen. Thank god for uber
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Thursday December 06 2018, @01:46PM (1 child)
I suspect they will be more fun. I am concerned that having a private vehicle with no driver will result in sex, drugs, and vandalism occurring in the vehicle.
But don't worry, I'm sure Waymo/Google will use machine learning to identify when the occupants are up to no good. Then bad stuff will happen? Perhaps you lose a deposit? Or worse: your Gmail account gets closed!
(Score: 4, Funny) by nitehawk214 on Thursday December 06 2018, @04:04PM
Or, put a camera in the car, publish online for fun and profit?
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday December 06 2018, @03:16PM
Maybe shared autonomous cars won't be like a new york cab.
Maybe they'll be more like a shared elevator car you ride up to the 40th floor.
Or maybe they'll be more like the ride you get into at Disney World. You get in mere seconds after the previous rider got out. Yet it's nice and clean and ready for you to use.
The people who rely on government handouts and refuse to work should be kicked out of congress.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday December 06 2018, @04:49PM
There. FTFY.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 06 2018, @01:43PM (1 child)
Shared autonomous cars will be about as nice as the operating company makes them.
Taxi cabs vary from 900,000 mile vinyl bathroom stalls to very nice relatively new limousines, and the differential cost of operation at those two service points isn't as high as most people think.
If autonomous cars are forced, or choose, to operate in a race to the bottom lowest possible price service model then they will indeed resemble typical large metro yellow cabs.
If autonomous cars are operated more like Uber, where riders can be selective about which cars they use based on previous levels of satisfaction, there's an incentive for much nicer, slightly more expensive, autonomous cars to be operated by owners who care enough to keep them clean, serviced, and maybe be a bit selective about who they allow to ride in them based on past experience.
Unlike Uber, your autonomous driver isn't likely to think that it's a great job to get a lot of sex in.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Thursday December 06 2018, @03:19PM
Shared autonomous cars probably know who is riding in them.
I'm sure if they have the technology to be able to drive, then they can also have technology that knows who vomited. Take the car out of service, sending it back to the mother ship for cleaning. And bill the credit card of the party responsible. And they probably agreed to this when they signed up for the app that pages the autonomous car.
Seems simple enough to ensure everyone has a clean car to ride in.
Also -- any accidentally left behind items might be recognized and identified before you get more than a couple steps away from the car. Or turned in to the mother ship before the next passenger can get in. Again billing you for this "lost and found" service.
The people who rely on government handouts and refuse to work should be kicked out of congress.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Thursday December 06 2018, @01:52PM (1 child)
The report seem somewhat limited, based on the abstract, since they have limited it to mainly look at the issues of infrastructure. One would think one of the main benefits would be better air quality (assuming the automated vehicles are not gas driven) and road safety, which are not infrastructure issues.
If "everyone" still needs a car and cars need to be on a road one would assume there really won't be any differences compared to now. That is unless apparently we start to ride-share, carpool or whatever. It's nice in theory and such, there are carpools here and now -- turns out they are really expensive to be a part of (think of it like time-sharing a condo, but instead it's a car -- you are just better off renting a car when needed or use public transportation). Are gas stations just going to disappear and get replaced by loading stations? No real benefits there then as far as infrastructure needs go since they are just going to change from one thing to another.
There are probably other societal issues that will have a larger impact, such as "do we all have to go to work everyday at about the same time", which is the current recipe for gridlock. Anyhow I would assume the largest benefits with autonomous (selfdriving) cars would be other factors beyond the infrastructure. Cause if everyone still has to be on the road all the time, or at about the same times then infrastructure needs probably isn't going to change all that much.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by darkfeline on Thursday December 06 2018, @10:50PM
If we assume that traffic load stays the same, but all of the drivers are now competent and don't crash, change lanes violently, tailgate, etc., that alone would yield a significant improvement.
Every week there's a wreck along my daily route, and I get tailgated constantly. I know some fellow assholes are going to chime in "You must be driving too slow". No, I don't need to do 70 MPH in a 55 MPH zone in the slowest lane, thank you very much. In fact, that causes a lot of traffic problems. If everyone went 60 instead, traffic jams would magically disappear in many cases.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qy6MrDcukk [youtube.com]
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Thursday December 06 2018, @01:59PM (3 children)
> and they must complement a robust public transport system that accommodates most trips
When are we going to stop hating on walking? Australia is a little friendlier to pedestrians. Has mild weather where most of the population lives. But they still worship the car.
The southern US is especially hostile to pedestrians. Sidewalks are missing in lots of places. Half the population behaves like only the low status, poverty stricken, mentally ill, and criminal would choose to walk. Bicyclists don't have it much better. Fences are everywhere, to keep all that riffraff from cutting through yards. Heaven forbid anyone walk from a neighborhood into a strip mall, no, got to have massive masonry fences, and force walkers to go all the way to the nearby major street and back, to get around the fence. If you actually climbed over the fence, it wouldn't get you there much faster, the way the buildings are laid out. Have to go around the end to get to the front. A few old strip malls actually have a passageway or two so a person can walk from the back to the front without having to go all the way around the end. High rises frequently have the stairs tucked away out of sight, and extremely ugly with bare concrete and exposed plumbing, because they are held in about the same regard as a utility closet. Then there are the bridges with zero room for pedestrians.
That reduces the value of public transportation. Not a lot of use to a bus stop when society has made it unnecessarily difficult to get to things. But then, only poor, brown people ride buses.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Hyperturtle on Thursday December 06 2018, @02:41PM (2 children)
I don't understand why anyone would think the number of automobiles would decrease if the pilots were removed.
I'd expect there to be even more of them. Get rid of the responsibility and liability of being licensed and insured to drive, and everyone will want one. Make the street cars electrified and have solar panels on windows and roofs of the tall urban buildings, and it can even go green at the same time.
Only people that love walking, or are sick of being stuck in the traffic of the future that turned out to be just as gridlocked as the traffic of the past, will be walking. I expect many people will happily watch advertisements in their enclosed bubble.
If you have not read the recent articles about how carmakers are envisioning the future of cars, they expect to have no windows and screens all throughout. If you want to see outside, you can watch a video feed. That sounds like a great way to guide unsuspecting people to their dooms, be it political, criminal, or just hacker anarchy.
We already have evidence that Tesla owners mentally autopilot their way to a premature demise even when surrounded by windows and the ability to see outside. Maybe that tech will get better and accidents like those will be an absolute rarity, but rider obliviousness will definitely will benefit anyone controlling the system. That entertainment system is going to play ads to a captive audience and you know there'll be no way to avoid it.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Thursday December 06 2018, @08:04PM (1 child)
Neither do I. I am just dumbstruck by the idea that AVs would reduce the amount of traffic WHY? Why would anyone think so? Many people now in buses and trains would switch to these things.
Even sharing of AVs (again WHY? - car sharing and AVs are orthogonal concepts) does not reduce traffic. It might reduce the number of vehicles in parking lots or on house driveways, but it would not reduce the number making journeys at any one time. In fact anything that might make cars cheaper (or greener) to run, as car sharing might in theory, run will increase traffic. I think of Jevons Paradox [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 06 2018, @09:21PM
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Barenflimski on Thursday December 06 2018, @05:45PM (1 child)
I hope that all of this autonomous vehicle talk truly gets people to rethink their relationship with roads and cars. Its fun to drive into the middle of nowhere. Its not fun to drive into the middle of the city.
Automobiles are one of the largest expenses people have, and also one of the largest headaches. Once people have traded in their cars, and are spending those thousands of dollars on Uber and Lyft AV's every year, maybe then they will realize that public transportation might not bet that bad.
Of course, we may see the opposite. Its very possible that we see one and two person cars, driven autonomously, be the only ones allowed on the road, so those big, heavy, SUV's can't crash into them and destroy the paper thin cars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 06 2018, @07:13PM
I can't relax when I am surrounded by human threats. I could get mugged or worse on public transportation.
I don't want to sit in some other person's vomit, piss, or shit.
I want my stuff with me. I may have strollers, snacks, a roll of paper towels, spare clothing, car seats, guns, diapers, hand washing supplies, bug repellent, sunscreen, and more. That's just the normal stuff to bring along, not even counting trip-specific cargo.
I might want to go places when public transportation workers are striking. I might want to go places at odd times, such as 3:00 AM.
BTW, SUVs are piddly little things. The 18-wheelers and dumptrucks aren't going away.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Friday December 07 2018, @10:45AM
A growing proportion of our current cars aren't privately owned: they're hired or leased instead.