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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: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @11:12AM (3 children)
Governments are dumb, but they are not that stupid.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @11:31AM (2 children)
Governments are not dumb when it comes to collecting taxes. That's about the only thing they are good for.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 12 2019, @02:33PM
Governments are not only good for collecting taxes.
They are good for:
* Wasting money (SLS)
* Lining politician's pockets
* Creating new, better, more streamlined revolving doors between industry and government
* Regulating things that don't need to be regulated
* Failing to regulate things that absolutely need to be regulated
* Keeping themselves in power
For some odd reason all scientific instruments searching for intelligent life are pointed away from Earth.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday March 12 2019, @04:58PM
Which is the European answer to that kind of problem : Sure, your car can drive itself around, but have you seen the price of gas ?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @11:31AM (17 children)
So, great 1st world science fiction, but it's not even reality. Self-driving cars don't drive places for no reason. They drive for same reason people drive places - to get somewhere. Once they get there, they don't drive back mindlessly. They drive back when someone needs them. This entire scenario is retarded anyway.
1. congestion happens by bad city planning - see Manila for example. Routes converging into one and lanes disappearing. That's how you get congestion.
2. cars drive to destination because of a purpose of the trip.
3. stingy owners would rent out their cars under Uber or whatever so others can use them, which means cars drive somewhere, not around.
4. Driving costs money. Parking costs less. Therefore the premise is stupid. When parking costs more than driving, then driving back and forth will happens. When parking becomes less expensive, more parking will happen. It's a regular economic problem and the only positive with self-driving cars is that overprices parking will disappear. And good riddance. Maybe instead of parking by the hour, these cars park by the second??
Driving round and round and round .... ok, Mr. Professor .... sounds like burning $5 of fuel to save $2 of parking fee ..... and imagine autonomous parking garage. You can cram more cars in there reducing the costs.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Nuke on Tuesday March 12 2019, @11:56AM (6 children)
You obviously have no idea what it costs to park in central London for example.
Overpriced parking will dissappear because empty SD cars will be sent back-and-forth to the suburbs to park. Hence more traffic.
EV fans tell us that elecricity for their cars is cheap. In the UK as the moment it is very cheap or even free. OTOH you won't find many places to park in UK towns and cities as cheap as $2. Your figures are fantasy, or maybe it's like that where you live?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @01:09PM (3 children)
yeah I think he's never paid to park his car in an urban environment during a weekday.
the last time I parked in Chicago, it was $38 for the day. it was $20 for a half day.
and I had to walk a few blocks anyway to reach my destination, because the parking lots closest to it were full--or cost over $50.
The real cheap parking gets filled before the sun even rises and well before my car is on the road.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday March 12 2019, @03:01PM (2 children)
Where I live the regular day-use $10/day lots all become $10/hour when there is a sporting event.
The self driving car pattern will be "Drop me off at my job/event, drive to the suburbs to find free/cheap parking. Failing that, just drive in circles for 6 hours, the gas/electricity used will be cheaper then parking downtown."
When 20k+ people want to be dropped off right at the front door of an event, and those 20k+ cars want to find a place to park; it will be gridlock.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Touché) by acid andy on Tuesday March 12 2019, @09:44PM (1 child)
If it's electric you'd better hope it finds somewhere to recharge itself, otherwise it'll be out of juice when you want to be driven home. That's why I think standardized battery packs that can be swapped in instantly are the way forward (although there are all sorts of issues with liability if a customer has a damaged / worn out one that the gas station swaps out, and I bet demand would exceed supply such that all the pre-charged ones would have been taken so you'd still have to sit and wait for hours).
"rancid randy has a dialogue with herself[...] Somebody help him!" -- Anonymous Coward.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday March 13 2019, @01:56AM
When parking is over $10, it also makes economic sense for a gasoline powered car to leave the city for parking. An electric car might go all the way home to charge.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @04:01PM (1 child)
So, how is that different from taking a taxi?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday March 12 2019, @05:09PM
1. Ownership. All other things, especially cost, are going to be similar.
2. The taxi leaves the city center less often, and serves more people for its footprint
3. Honking. Don't talk to me about AI until the automatic cars learn to lay on the horn the microsecond the light turns green.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @11:56AM (3 children)
Scifi stands for science fiction, not reality.
1. Congestion happens because there are too many vehicles.
2. You've never driven around the block to avoid paying for parking?
3. Stingy people rent their apartments on Airbnb all the time, yet none of them have 100% occupancy.
4. In some places parking is _far_ more expensive than cruising along.
But I appreciate the condescending hostility.
(Score: 4, Informative) by HiThere on Tuesday March 12 2019, @04:59PM (2 children)
Well...not entirely.
Congestion is not just too many vehicles, it's too many vehicles for the road design. The problem is, attempts to solve this have only resulted in increased travel, not, except temporarily, in decreased congestion. I used to work for a travel planning agency, and our rule of thumb was that "If you build a freeway, it will decrease congestion along that route for about 5 years.".
Congestion is cause by too many people wanting to be at the same place at the same time. Unfortunately, to resolve this you need not only a lot more roads, but a lot more parking. And both of those conflict with the use of space at the destination. This could be solved, or at least ameliorated, if each building was required to contain enough parking underneath it to hold the cars of everyone who might desire that as a destination. But that does horrendous things to the expenses.
In a way it's like blood circulation. Larger animals need to either devote more of their body to blood flow, increase blood pressure, or slow their metabolism. Elephants do all three, and are still near their limit. This makes me wonder about just how "hot blooded" the brontosaurus (or apatosaurus) was. It must have had a rather slow metabolism AND high blood pressure.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @06:21PM (1 child)
or make nice big drop off spots a few (6 to 8) blocks away from major venues or public transportation for times of higher congestion (football game) and allow door to door dropoff at times of lower congestion (Sunday morning film crew work)
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday March 13 2019, @03:39PM
Sorry, but with all those ameliorations in place the problem still exists. There are a very large number of people who won't use public transit. Often it's because there is no convenient access, but there are also other reasons. This makes it difficult on people like me who can't drive, but I live with it.
FWIW, several public rail transit lines have routes that just about ONLY go to "drop off points with a lot of parking". It helps. But it doesn't solve the problem.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 12 2019, @03:32PM
> 3. stingy owners would rent out their cars under Uber or whatever so others can use them, which means cars drive somewhere, not around.
The reason you are driving not using public transport is because you need aspects of convenience such as immediate availability. If your car is galavanting bod-knows-where with some stranger in it, you may be making a few dollars for your incovenience, but you no longer have an available vehicle.
And at precisely what points in the journey from where you hop off, to some client's destination(s), back to where you hop on again, is the trip a trip "somewhere", but not "driving around" - isn't "around" just a collection of "somewhere"s? (If not, which bit of "around" isn't "somewhere" - be specific, please.) In particular in the case where you've told your car to never leave you stranded for too long, as per the above point.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Informative) by Mykl on Tuesday March 12 2019, @09:56PM
Already there. While there are cheaper 'early bird' options, full day parking in Melbourne, Australia can cost around $60 USD per day. It is already cheaper to drive around the CBD all day than to park (notwithstanding the driver).
To further complicate matters, gridlock will actually make it less expensive to run a driverless electric vehicle, as it will be able to power down when stuck in traffic. If congestion tax is implemented on a per-entry basis, cars that pay to come in will want to stay in rather than driving out of the congestion zone and re-entering (thus paying the tax twice that day), further clogging the space.
OP is right - driverless cars could create a nightmare traffic scenario unless we are careful of unintended consequences.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @10:04PM (3 children)
Driving round and round and round .... ok, Mr. Professor .... sounds like burning $5 of fuel to save $2 of parking fee
First off, that's $5 of fuel per time period. Is parking really only $2 for that same time period? It wasn't when I lived in London, New York or Chicago. Maybe Bozeman Montana or Redfish Canada don't have that problem, but many major cities do.
Second, you've obviously never seen these shitty billboards driving around Chicago ("trucks" with nothing but a big blowing sign on the back, that pause and creep slowly through the intersection blocking your ability to cross with the light, all just so you can see their shitty ad and make note of a product never to buy). I imagine those will become even more economical, and plentiful, when they no longer have to hire drivers, and are paying electric rates to charge, rather than gasoline fuel rates.
This will come, and if you can burn a buck or two worth of electricity telling your car to circle the block while you shop, vs $20 to park for an hour or two, I imagine you'll opt to do the former. Especially if, with 1000 of your compatriots, you can create a traffic jam and not even have to burn $0.10 worth of juice.
Humans are selfish by nature, and made much more selfish by nurture (at least in the UK and US), so expecting anyone to act sensibly for the common good when they can save a buck, while once a reasonable expectation, is not reasonable anymore, and probably won't be again until this cycle of civilization is over (which probably won't be long given the events of the last couple of years--yes, Russia, we'll fucking take you with us if it's the last thing we do) and a few centuries of people re-learning to live with one another in reasonable cooperation rather than cutthroat competition are behind us. In other words, not in our lives, or the lives of any progeny we'll ever know, but I digress.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2019, @07:28AM
I imagine they will get vandalized. A lot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2019, @11:34AM
Then the car drives for 15 minutes to place where it's cheaper to park. Don't translate current problems with parking to parking problems for driverless cars. Unless you have a car with a chauffeur, of course. And your chauffeur can't find place to park while you get your nails done.
That's a people's problem not a technical problem having anything to do with driveless cars.
No, if I need to shop for an hour or two or three, the car would go park somewhere. The difference is that it would not have to park anywhere near to where I am. It could be 20 minutes away.
I know people are selfish. But that doesn't mean you can't solve these problems economically ahead of time. If you have congestion charge of $10/hr to drive in some areas, then for stingy people it will be cheaper to take public transport or to have their vehicles leave the area. Or come there on public transport and just have the car pick them up?? Major cities with congestion problems like London, have excellent public transit.
I'm a stingy person. My first instinct on saving money would be not to have a car in the first place and to rent the car on as-needed basis. Currently, this scenario is not possible as it's a pain in the ass to rent a car - you have to go to car rental place, fill out forms, drive back from there, then return the car there, get back home ... driverless cars make renting a car just like renting a taxi, minus the expenses of the driver. They make taxis less expensive. So why would I buy a car for $100k that drives itself when I can rent it for $5-10/hr?
If anything, driveless cars would make public transit obsolete outside of the core congestion zones. That saves city money. But congestion prices could make transit still viable in core. For example, if you come to Toronto, outside of Toronto you'll find giant parking lots next to Go Stations - public transit trains to go to and from Toronto core areas. I don't expect this to change in the future, except that the need for these parking lots would decrease as cars can drive back home.
But yes, this is bike shed discussion topic. The important is to get driveless cars working, not worry about hypotheticals. Like worrying about "what jobs will we have on Mars?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2019, @12:33PM
You would've had an upvote if you weren't spreading this stupid, tired propaganda. Gotta have a bogeyman though, right?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Farkus888 on Tuesday March 12 2019, @11:34AM (6 children)
This seems to assume that individuals will own their own autonomous cars. As a car nut, I own 3, even I assume most people will not own them. They will be owned by companies or collectives and shared.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Tuesday March 12 2019, @11:46AM (1 child)
How does that solve the problem ? It is part of the problem. There will be a lot of empty SD cars driving to their next pick-up point. A car with one owner will only be moving when the owner is in it, and is not part of the traffic when he is not in it.
Even if a car is in a collective, if the user thinks they will need it again soon they could hang on to it by sending it around empty. It's not like a taxi which has a grumpy impatient driver and costs far more to hire - unless the powers that be make SD cars cost as much as taxis in which case they will not be replacing conventional cars any time.
(Score: 2) by Farkus888 on Tuesday March 12 2019, @12:09PM
Because car as a service self driving cars will spend far less of their time parked, they will be off to the next customer. That means parking will be easier to find and cheaper, less demand, lowering the need to avoid it. Some street side parking could be repurposed as drive lanes making more room for the driving cars. Where I live downtown is a 10 minute drive away often with 5 minutes driving in circles looking for parking so this changes little in drive time. Other tech will change, vehicle to vehicle communications make denser parking and driving easier.
(Score: 2, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday March 12 2019, @01:33PM (1 child)
I'm a Germophobe. And I'm very rich. I say "no" to sharing a car with strangers. Unless I'm sharing it with some beautiful, and sexy strangers -- the ones I invited for a ride. And we're partying, or working together. Fun!
By the way, I can't wait for the Anonymous Vehicles. No more driver to pay!!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @06:25PM
if you don't like German cars, the Koreans and Americans are making good alternative options
(Score: 4, Insightful) by HiThere on Tuesday March 12 2019, @05:09PM
Sorry, but that doesn't solve the problem. It sounds like it should, but during a rush huge numbers of individual vehicles will be converging on the same spot, and they've got to be stored somewhere during the event awaiting the request to disperse the folk who gathered.
If you split rush hours, that addresses part of the congestion problem, but it's unlikely to provide enough time for one of the vehicles to return to the dispersed location and pick up another rider to carry into the collection spot. (I'm purposely not saying "city" and "suburbs", because this is a more general problem, that also deals with, e.g., sporting events.) So the vehicles that deliver the early arrivals need to reside somewhere awaiting the dispersal event.
A plausible scenario would be to construct huge parking structures a bit away from all reasonable destinations, and have these available cheaply. But that would work as well for individually owned vehicles as for corporately owned vehicles. The other plausible answer is public transit with multi-passenger vehicles (buses, trolleys, etc.), however these systems have repeatedly failed to attract sufficient investment in maintenance. I'm not sure that corporately owned sedan sized vehicles would fare any better if their main use was public transport.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ledow on Wednesday March 13 2019, @09:02AM
I can't think of a worse problem than millions of self-driving cars, bookable by anyone, able to be sent to any destination, on demand, for the cost of an Uber - and potentially used as automated couriers by hiring them to leave something in the boot.
Protests, company boycotting, villages wanting to slow traffic down that drives through them, neighbour disputes, terrorism, Amazon using them for every little parcel (who cares if they have to queue for an hour to get to your recipient?).
And you think that the companies that hire them out will be any better than the people who own them personally? They'll be having them circle the M25 around London constantly, and round all the airports, so that when people want to hire one, there's always one "nearby" - they'll stack them on residential roads overnight rather than worry about buying a commercial park to store them in. They'll program them to use up all the service-station spaces up to the maximum time allowed there, and then move on to the next one.
Anything that saves them money in the long-run (and with electric autonomous cars, you're looking at pennies to do such things).
Not to mention that they'll ensure it's many times more expensive to get anywhere and do anything, including lobbying for all roads to be autonomous and commercial, so that they have the market to themselves and you can't avoid them.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @11:34AM
You know all the statistics that say ten percent of the population own 90 percent of the wealth (or whatever it is)?
Well, where I live, 10 percent of my neighbors take up 90 percent of the parking spots.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nuke on Tuesday March 12 2019, @11:36AM (2 children)
I've been saying this for some time when the subject of SD cars comes up. The fact that they won't need car parks is touted as an advantage by the SD fans.
I'm not sure they will drive in circles, maybe that could be set up with some programming. More likely they will be sent off to the suburbs or countryside and recalled when needed, which will double traffic at a stroke. It will be hard to legislate against that because you can claim it is going for someone else to use, like kids to school or car-sharing (another Utopian aim of SD fans). And electricity for SD cars is free or subsidised (so no worries about fuel cost), and will always be (the EV fans tell us).
Add to that the additional SD cars due to people switching from public transport - which they only use now to city centres because of the limited and costly parking - and people currently unable to drive.
"Normal" open road pricing, while it will become necessary for all electric cars, won't be enough to deter this. The car parking fees in city centres is far higher than that. Steep congestion charges would be needed, and not just applied to IC vehicles as now.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday March 13 2019, @02:27AM
There probably will be SD cars circling office buildings like sharks right around pick up time to avoid being ticketed for standing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2019, @07:23AM
Isn't it great?
When someone on my side says something, I need to make sure it's actually true, or at least reasonable, before using it as a premise; such a nuisance. But if I catch some guy on the other side (no matter how dumb he is) saying something useful to my argument (no matter how absurd it is), I can always use that. I only need to cite the source with a "(those guys say)", an "(I am told)", or some such formula, and it's fair game.
After all, if you didn't wanna be proven wrong, you shouldn't have let that idiot agree with you.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Tuesday March 12 2019, @11:50AM (8 children)
This sounds just like climate change forecasts: We have a model, programmed with lots of assumptions, that leads to a catastrophe. Quick, we gotta do something!
In this specific case, the questionable assumption is that fully autonomous cars will be drop-in replacements for current cars. It's at least as likely that autonomous cars will lead to a huge decline in car ownership, as networks of Uber-like cars will be available on-call. In which case, traffic congestion will be reduced, not increased.
But even granted that questionable assumption, the individual car owner is presented with a simple trade-off: How much does it cost to operate a car vs. how much it costs to park. Operating cost will be at least $0.50/mile, and likely more like $1.00/mile. Driving around at - say - an average 20-30 miles per hour, all day long? Parking isn't anywhere near that expensive - that's bad assumption #2. As for deliberately creeping along at 1mph - that would get you fined today, no need for any special rules.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Nuke on Tuesday March 12 2019, @02:18PM (5 children)
So the success of a revolutionary technology hangs on the success of an unrelated social revolution? Your scenario only fits a metropolitan hipster life-style.
Believe me, people will still want to own their own cars, whether they are SD or not. A few bad experiences with cleaning up the previous users' vomit, shit, spilt beer and used condoms will see to that. Unlike a taxi or Uber, there will be no driver/owner to supervise or moderate what happens inside. For most users the interior of their car is personal space; I keep in my car some spare clothes, waterproofs, outdoor boots, spare glasses, emergency rations, photographic tripod, certain tools, camping stove and kettle, a 5 litre water container, some reference books ... I also keep it immaculately tidy.
There may well be a business in SD car sharing, just as there have always been taxi businesses, but it will remain a minority thing.
(Score: 2, Funny) by shrewdsheep on Tuesday March 12 2019, @03:25PM
So that your vehicle looks like this http://www.blog.solarhaven.org/BurroCart2ADJ.jpg [solarhaven.org]?
(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?
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @04:50PM
It's more like Quick, I gotta publish something sensational to advance my career otherwise I'm never going to be able to pay back my student loans!
It's kinda hilarious. Well, darkly hilarious. Pretty much all the complaints conservatives have about academia are caused by attempting to do science with a capitalist funding model.
Not that I ever expect it to change, not in my lifetime anyway. This 1k-2k year cusp of humanity has been really impressive all in all. A handful of humans for a brief decade or two were even living off-world (even if just in LEO). But there's really only so much that can be accomplished at each cusp.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by vux984 on Tuesday March 12 2019, @07:24PM
"It's at least as likely that autonomous cars will lead to a huge decline in car ownership, as networks of Uber-like cars will be available on-call."
Why is that "at least as likely"? actual uber is already on call; has it dramatically decreased car ownership and reduced congestion? Maybe a little... but its hardly a revolution going on. Why do you think making the car driverless would improve?
Here's another prediction -- making them driverless is going to result in the cleanliness dropping, motivating people to own their own. Just based on how rental cars frequently get returned.
So here's yet another prediction -- driverless cars will have uncomfortable easy to hose down plastic seats, be wheel-chair accessible, and smell of body odor, perfume, and air freshener. It'll be functional but scuffed and scratched and beat to shit. And it'll have cameras monitoring you, and they'll probably be broken or colored over with black marker and gum half the time. Someone will have tagged it with grafitti, someone else will have scrubbed that mostly off, only to have another layer of grafitti added. The plastic seats will have hearts carved in to them with profoundness like 'TJ was here' and 'fag'. And someone threw up in it "recently". Much like an old subway car.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday March 12 2019, @01:32PM
Easy fix!
We already have carjackers. The upper crust of the carjacking society will start stealing these unattended vehicles wandering the streets. We also already have vandalism. I can think of a lot of ways to vandalize an unattended car, creatively. And, if I'm not feeling terribly creative, I can always just blow it up. It's just full of batteries, which are fairly stable, unless and until they are destructively shorted out. So, some thug destroys the car, and the wrecker comes, gets it off the street, and the owner has to pay for the towing, plus a ticket for obstructing the roadway. I foresee great fun for some young men. The whole neighborhood may want to get together for a day out, destroying nuisance vehicles running through the 'hood.
I'm going to buy my defensive radar from Temu, just like Venezuela!
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday March 12 2019, @01:36PM (3 children)
Three problems with this scenario:
1) Minimum speed limits are a thing that exists. Often not posted and not enforced, but they can be if required. And they'll probably also be programmed into the cars in the first place.
2) If traffic is that congested, that means sending your car to drive around and around in circles is going to mean standing there waiting for it to get through the traffic when you're done. Might be easier to just park the damn thing. This could offer another alternative to dealing with the issue too -- more one-way streets, such that it can't just go around the block, it has to go further. Parking may be expensive, but people will also pay good money to not be standing around on the sidewalk bored. Hell, many times I've paid five bucks to park in a garage for half an hour rather than circle around the block looking for free street parking. Standing around on the sidewalk waiting for my car sounds like it would be even worse, and therefore provide a greater incentive to pay for the parking.
3) A lot of people propose using self-driving cars like a taxi/rideshare. So, if you own the car, you're rich enough to not care about paying for parking. If you DON'T own the car, it'll pick someone else up next door and take them wherever they're going, and when you're done you'll get the next empty car that's coming your way. Only way to keep it circling the block would be to keep spamming the call button, and after the third time that it arrives and you aren't there it'll probably interpret it as a DoS attack and deprioritize or ignore you.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Tuesday March 12 2019, @01:58PM (2 children)
Minumum speed limits are not enforcable because in most cities the traffic is stationary or moving slowly because of congestion. You can't drive faster than the cars in front. The UK Dept of Transport gives 14.8 mph as the average speed of traffic in London in the morning, and the average speed nationwide as only 23.6 mph. Shown here [thisismoney.co.uk]
The analysis in the article seemed to assume the SD cars would drive slowly deliberately, to save fuel, but it would not need to be deliberate in the UK or most European cities.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday March 12 2019, @02:23PM
That's already accounted for in the law, and they WOULD be enforceable in a situation like in TFS.
Here's an example of how such laws are typically written (this is from Maryland):
- https://law.justia.com/codes/maryland/2010/transportation/title-21/subtitle-8/21-804/ [justia.com]
So yeah, if there's a car in front of you, ramming into it in order to meet the minimum speed would not be considered "safe operation of the vehicle"...but "I'm waiting for someone" is still not a valid excuse for excessively slow speeds. The car in front of the line gets the ticket, and if it was happening repeatedly then the local government would probably be filing lawsuits or pressing charges against the manufacturer for intentionally programming the vehicle to violate the law.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Whoever on Tuesday March 12 2019, @02:52PM
I commute in one of my cars and do little other driving in it. Over half my commute is on freeways.
The average speed that my car has recorded over the past 10 months was (before I recently reset it) 22 mph.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday March 12 2019, @02:21PM (1 child)
Point may have been hit upon already, but are these cars going to miraculously refuel themselves? Or will they be equipped for a full day or driving around and fueled when going to or from destination? "We're sorry, but your car is not available. It ran out of electricity 4 miles away from you and was towed. Have a nice day!"
OTOH, one could build a car park on the city fringe that driverless cars could home to, find a spot, and park themselves until needed. If the rental was cheaper than the fuel then profit!
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @10:59PM
Maybe they'll be moving slowly enough that strapping solar panels to them will make sense.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday March 12 2019, @02:34PM (1 child)
I didn't read the entire paper but I'm surprised they just didn't propose a MASSIVE increase in cost via taxation for electricity. Making parking cheaper is apparently not an option either for some reason, such as building some giant underground garages -- your selfdriving cars drops you off and then goes underground to recharge and enter actual parking mode until summoned. But a massive tax increase sure would stop them from slow cruising the city all day long. Pump up the cost so much that parking fees appear cheap in comparison.
Still they also seem to not include one of the main perks of having your own car, convenience. If your car is stuck in Gridlock park cruising mode where it takes hours to break free (from the article) and you need your car now then you are stuck. Convenience of having a car just went to zero, that parking fee might actually have been worth it then.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday March 12 2019, @05:04PM
SD parking should be cheaper. So long as you get out before they park, the cars can park really close together because they won't need to open the doors. Give them enough intelligence to move out of the way of a car that needs to leave and you can park them with far less wasted space for lanes too.
200 million years is actually quite a long time.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2019, @04:24AM
Up to half [govtech.com] of cars in urban centers are already driving around looking for parking.
Cars with human drivers have to park near where they're going. Self-driving cars don't. They can leave the city center, go to a remote parking lot or just go home. We actually already do this, but only when circumstances make it favorable. At the airport, for example, where everyone goes to the same place and parking tends to be long-term, it's common to park in an off-site lot and take a shuttle bus the rest of the way. It's like that, except without the shuttle. And there are also park-and-rides or whatever transit lots are called near you, where you can park for free in the suburbs and take public transit into the city.
Sure, it would mean more total miles if cars drive home instead of parking - but not more congestion. The road going out of the city is clear in the morning, the road coming in is clear in the evening. Most of the new traffic would be on the clear roads, not the congested ones. Combine that with the reduction in the need for parking, repurposing of on-street parking, elimination of cars looking for parking, and self driving cars will reduce congestion, not increase it. The only aspect of self-driving cars that potentially leads to more congestion is that they might encourage people to drive rather than take public transit.
The whole "ownership vs. sharing" aspect is completely orthogonal. Self-driving cars make sharing a little cheaper because you don't need to pay the driver. That is definitely not going to stop anyone who wants a car from having one, and certainly not have much of an impact on traffic congestion.