> Self-driving cars are going trigger a new wave of automobile growth, at least in the US. They won't be dangerous, will run clean, be super convenient and unbelievably inexpensive to own and operate.
My guess is that you are wrong. At least what comes to driving in cities. As the (current) main problem of cars in cities is not accidents, emissions, lack of convenience or even cost. It is the massive amount of space one car takes[1]. And self driving tech is not going to do anything to solve that. If not the opposite, when empty cars are driving around looking for a parking spot.
I think it's going to be far worse than that. The economics of self driving cars are so biased toward taxi-like usage that the city streets won't just be filled with cars taking up a lot of space. They'll be filled with cars moving at a glacial pace because the streets are all gridlocked by pickups and dropoffs. Every street will look like an airport or elementary school pickup/dropoff zone.
And even where there aren't commuting clusters, the fact is that cars will actually obey the laws, meaning pedestrians will finally be free to cross at unmarked intersections, and cyclists will be able to share the lanes with cars.
Who's to say cities won't regulate how many of these cars can be on the road at any time? They already do this for taxis... And I believe some of them put limits on Uber and Lyft, too. Right?
This is done in Singapore. You can buy a car no problem but you need a certificate of entitlement to register and drive it. COE price fluctuates based on demand but has been over $50k USD (no mistake).
A small island nation. Traffic still gets pretty bad but it would probably be a lot worse without this policy.
I'd also like to point out skepticism to "unbelievably inexpensive to own". To operate, sure. But to own? The tech in these cars alone could easily be $100k. And there's no reason to think society will allow you to operate a car that's 99.999% safe when you could be operating a car that's proven to be 99.99999%. As time goes by, more 9s will keep accruing. And the extra 9s will keep the tech costing the same or more per car as time goes by.
Eventually they will be cheap. How much would you spend for a computer with the processing power of an iPhone in 1990? Thirty years from now that $100k tech package will be $500 and it will be orders of magnitude better.
When cars stop colliding with each other, safety standards can be relaxed. Get rid of heavy bumpers and structures added to withstand 50 mph offset crashes. The cars become very light weight which lets you decrease the size of the drivetrain and batteries. You end up with something closer to a fancy golf cart than a Camry and they will cost less than $10k.
Your 99.9999% argument doesn't sound right to me. In the US at least, we have a very high tolerance for danger when it comes to cars. We could eliminate thousands of deaths per year by simply limiting the top speed of all cars to 25 mph. But we don't because we are willing to accept the risk that comes along with 85 mph speeds (in Texas) for the convenience.
Would you also say we have a very high tolerance for danger when it comes to poisons and heights? Because your statement appears pretty hyperbolic to me when comparing some of the ways people die in the US.
> Would you also say we have a very high tolerance for danger when it comes to poisons and heights?
For poisons, absolutely. "Nearly all poisoning deaths in the United States are attributed to drugs" And we handle drug dangers very badly.
For heights, I don't know. Your link says falls which is not the same thing, especially when the elderly are involved. I couldn't find what fraction of those involved heights.
> When cars stop colliding with each other, safety standards can be relaxed. Get rid of heavy bumpers and structures added to withstand 50 mph offset crashes. The cars become very light weight which lets you decrease the size of the drivetrain and batteries. You end up with something closer to a fancy golf cart than a Camry and they will cost less than $10k.
A new Camry already most likely costs less than $10k to manufacture. Bumpers and frame aren’t expensive to manufacture, precision components are. The material and manufacturing savings you suggest would reduce the sticker price by $1-2k at best.
I totally agree with beefield, and like the idea of banning cars, however you're wrong about the tech cost. The only tech needed is a computer and some sensors, and computers aren't exactly expensive these days. The Tesla model S already has a fair amount of self-driving tech, and it costs well under $100k. Cameras aren't exactly expensive either; the big question mark is LIDAR, but some self-driving companies seem to be eschewing that in favor of pure-camera driving (though I really question if that's a good idea because LIDAR isn't affected by weather as much).
The bottom line is that the extra tech needed to make a car self-driving isn't very expensive, and the hardware costs are continually falling. The big problem is just software, which as we've seen with mobile phones, becomes very cheap when deployed en masse.
You have a point about the 9s, but given that our current (American) society places almost no emphasis on safety, and will happily let you drive around any piece-of-shit car you want in most places regardless of how unsafe it is, I have a very hard time believing society is suddenly going to demand 9-9s reliability from AutoCarOS.
It is the massive amount of space one car takes[1].
That is a legitimate concern, but the kind of photo you linked to that is often used in advocacy is horribly misleading.
In reality, if cyclists rode anything like that close together, there would be accidents all the time because no-one would be able to make turns or travel at different speeds. The general advice to drivers here in the UK is that you should allow as much space around a bike as you do when passing a car, and authorities have conducted public education campaigns on this and even prosecuted drivers for passing too close. From a safety point of view, that advice is clearly sensible, as passing too close to a cycle is quite dangerous, particularly at higher speeds. But you can't have it both ways by claiming cycling is safer and healthier with that sort of space allowance but also that cycling is as space-efficient as it appears stacking bikes up close together like that. In reality, a bike is much smaller than a car, but in terms of proportions, a bike plus adequate space around it is only a bit smaller than a car with adequate space around it.
Buses are similarly very misleading in that sort of photo. That is partly because unlike typical car journeys they follow circuitous routes that may be 2-3x as far and as slow to get a single passenger from (somewhere near) A to (somewhere near) B. It's also because unless you're looking at an area with very high population density or very high usage routes/times, most buses don't travel anything like fully loaded but still take up the extra space whether they have 50 passengers, 20 passengers or none at all. If you're going to show a full-size car for each individual travelling, as these photos invariably do, why do they always show a single bus at exactly its maximum capacity? If you showed both at average occupancy levels, the photo would look very different.
This is without getting into the traffic modelling where you find uniform traffic speeds are much more efficient, but while cars can achieve something close to that on clear roads, it is heavily disrupted by both relatively slow-moving cycles that you might not be able to overtake and stop-start buses that might block a traffic lane while allowing passengers on and off.
There are very practical questions to be asked about why we still drive around in vehicles with space for 4-5 people and luggage capacity for going on a two week holiday even if we're travelling alone and lightly loaded, but a lot of the anti-car arguments made by pro-cycle and particularly pro-bus advocates using the kind of photo linked above are rather disingenuous.
1. It seems to me that all the photos are of roughly "maximum congestion" of each vehicle type. So the cars are pictured as if they're stopped at a light or in heavy traffic, while if they we traveling at 50mph I'd hope for much, much more following distance. So yes, the bikes would have somewhat more distance between them if they were moving, but that seems fair to me, as the cars would too.
2. I don't want cars to pass me within a few feet. That doesn't mean I feel unsafe when riding within that same distance of other cyclists. The relative speed is much lower, the mass is much lower, etc. Similarly, I will happily ride much closer to an immobile object (e.g. a curb) than I would like someone to pass me at 40mph. So I think the space taken up by a moving bicycle is larger than the bike itself, sure, but absolutely no way is it anywhere close to the size of a car plus following distance plus safety buffer.
So yes, the bikes would have somewhat more distance between them if they were moving, but that seems fair to me, as the cars would too.
Right. But proportionately, that distance becomes much greater than the size of the vehicles themselves very quickly as speed increases, which makes the comparison based on vehicle size that we see in the photo almost entirely irrelevant in practice.
But everyday cycling around a city doesn't look anything like an organised mass bike ride. Not everyone is an experienced cyclist. There isn't a predetermined route and there are no marshals to direct the riders around it. Different riders will be going in all sorts of different directions. The roads probably won't be cleared of other traffic. Junctions and other traffic controls will be operating normally.
Cyclists car ride very closely together quite safely, as all kinds of mass rides show. Relative speeds are close to zero, and cyclists generally have much better spatial awareness than cars.
Cyclists car ride very closely together quite safely, as all kinds of mass rides show.
That is true to some extent with experienced cyclists following much the same route (which is the situation for most mass rides).
It is not true at all with a diverse variety of cyclist skill and experience while everyone is trying to get to different places.
cyclists generally have much better spatial awareness than cars.
Citation very much needed. As someone who has lived in and around a heavily cycling-friendly city for a very long time, I see little evidence to support this. Indeed, I can't remember the last time a motor vehicle randomly pulled out into the road right in front of me or swerved across my normal driving line without warning causing me to take avoiding action, while I'd measure instances of cyclists doing this sort of thing in units of infractions-per-week even infractions-per-day.
The photos of the cyclists and cars seem fairly analogous. Both are basically the vehicles sitting in gridlock, so very tightly packed. It's impossible for cars to move at any reasonable speed in that configuration. That said, the bikes photo might not be as crazy as it seems [1].
The advice about giving cyclists space only applies if you yourself are in a car. Cyclists can ride extremely close to other cyclists and remain totally safe. That photo of Copenhagen illustrates the point very clearly. This works if roads are cycle-first, which is a major rarity.
The bus complaint is valid, but not really relevant. Cars are only a problem in high traffic routes with a large need for passenger throughput. Buses on those routes tend to be well utilized. If you are living in a place that doesn't have that quantity of people passing through (more rural areas) then cars are totally fine. They likely shouldn't have used a full bus, and I acknowledge that this sort of photo isn't perfect, but the point they are trying to make is entirely valid.
The argument about uniform traffic speeds is mostly irrelevant for exactly the same reasons I listed above. With clear roads, there is no problem. The issue is that, in busy cities, clear roads are an impossibility, even in cities that were built with automobile traffic as the clear first priority for transportation.
In situations where car traffic is not a problem, it's not a problem! We can leave it alone. Automobiles are, and will remain for the foreseeable future, the only valid option for transit outside of urban areas.
The car free movement is fundamentally about cities (particularly city centers), where cars are inefficient, are expensive, are dangerous, use up in inordinate amount of space, and are a major contributor to pollution (which is a particularly large problem in such areas). In those sort of situations, there is simply a better way.
Cyclists can ride extremely close to other cyclists and remain totally safe.
No, they can't. The risk of a careless cyclist swerving across the path of another cyclist is little different to the risk of a careless cyclist swerving across the path of a motor vehicle, except that in the first case the innocent party is much more likely to be seriously hurt. The point of the official guidance to allow as much space when passing a cycle as when passing a car is because the cycle is more likely to be unstable, not because the overtaking car is.
Cars are only a problem in high traffic routes with a large need for passenger throughput. Buses on those routes tend to be well utilized.
Several decades of experience living in my current area suggest otherwise. For example, one significant problem is asymmetry: if you go one way on a journey by one mode of transport, you may well need to make a return trip later using the same mode of transport, but just because it's busy and there's a frequent and well-utilised bus service in one case, that is no guarantee of the same (or indeed any bus service at all) for the return trip. This can simultaneously result in both hugely wasteful journeys by almost-empty buses in some cases and impossible journeys due to inadequate bus service provision in others.
If you are living in a place that doesn't have that quantity of people passing through (more rural areas) then cars are totally fine.
But people living in rural areas often travel into or via nearby towns and cities. Indeed, it's entirely possible for the majority of congestion on the roads of a town or city to come from this source. Unless you provide adequate public transport alternatives for not just those travelling relatively short distances within that town or city but also those travelling into and/or out of the central area, you don't really offer a practical alternative to car journeys.
Likewise, people living in big cities need to travel outside the city sometimes. Unless there's reasonable public transport for their entire journey, including reaching any long-distance transport in their home city and getting around wherever they are visiting, again you're back to needing an alternative that can do the whole job, and if that means a car then you're driving it within your home city as well.
The issue is that, in busy cities, clear roads are an impossibility, even in cities that were built with automobile traffic as the clear first priority for transportation.
Again, that is not necessarily true. When you reach critical mass, it becomes true, but there is often a wide band with some degree of congestion but not approaching gridlock. Within that band, it is entirely possible for journeys to be significantly disrupted and therefore lengthened by the effects I mentioned. We see it almost every day in the city closest to me, for as much as an hour or two either side of peak periods, or during lesser peaks like weekend shopping or before and after some local event with a lot of visitors.
The car free movement is fundamentally about cities (particularly city centers), where cars are inefficient, are expensive, are dangerous, use up in inordinate amount of space, and are a major contributor to pollution (which is a particularly large problem in such areas). In those sort of situations, there is simply a better way.
Yes, mass transport is effective in scenarios where there is sufficient demand to make it worthwhile, and for local journeys within dense populations at peak times that may well be the case. I don't think anyone seriously disputes this.
The problem I have with a lot of the anti-car advocacy is that it treats transport networks as some sort of boolean system, either "congested" or "not congested", but in reality the degree of congestion tends to follow a much smoother curve with peaks at various times throughout the day. If you draw a straight horizontal line, across a chart of congestion against time of day, at the level where critical mass is reached and gridlock is inevitable, in many places there will be a lot of the time when the curve is below that line. At those times, alternative modes of transport may be less attractive in terms of potentially relevant criteria like efficiency, reliability/availability and environmental friendliness.
beefield: a self driving car doesn’t NEED to take up space in a crowded city. It can drive you to work, then you get out, then it can go drive itself to a less crowded area. Then when you’re ready to leave the office it can be there when you’re ready to go.
That sounds like more vehicle miles in downtown areas which are already severely congested. A large part of the problem is that cars are the least spatially-efficient form of transportation: having them drive more miles at peak times isn’t going to work unless we see huge improvements elsewhere, which seems unlikely.
What could be a more realistic option is electric velomobiles (a recumbent bike with an outer shell) which have a capacity of one person and a few bags. You get the benefit of weather protection and convenient speed while being extremely safe and space efficient.
I think there’s a lot of room in the e-bike space but don’t forget transit even if it’s not cool enough to get VCs interested. If the city planners do their jobs competently few things beat a bus in a priority lane for getting a large number of people around a city quickly with low to no CO2 emissions.
Couldn't part of that be "fixed" by sprawl? Get the density low enough then all you have to worry about are high capacity corridors across the city.
Right now I live in a suburb of Austin. I rarely go to downtown as all the places I go during the week (work, my kids' school, movie theater, grocery stores, restaurants, doctors) are out here as well and parking is plentiful.
This is what's been tried from about 1960 to now. It turns out to not be anything near sustainable financially, because the low density development doesn't provide enough tax revenue to pay for maintenance on the infrastructure. Once an inner-ring suburb needs to raise taxes to replace its water pipes, it starts emptying out to newer suburbs farther out that don't have to support legacy infrastructure and things like pensions. If you look at closer-in suburbs built 30 years ago, you'll see abandoned former Walmarts and Pizza Huts that followed the growth outwards once their buildings were fully depreciated. Austin might be slightly different because it's changing to fit the mold of an expensive coastal city from the inside out, but the pattern holds in other areas that aren't as trendy right now.
My guess is that you are wrong. At least what comes to driving in cities. As the (current) main problem of cars in cities is not accidents, emissions, lack of convenience or even cost. It is the massive amount of space one car takes[1]. And self driving tech is not going to do anything to solve that. If not the opposite, when empty cars are driving around looking for a parking spot.
[1] https://permaculturenews.org/images/bus_car_bike_compare.jpg