Machines don’t look at Facebook while driving

Senior Planner Jo Rolfe assesses the advantages and disadvantages of driverless cars.

Like it or not, autonomous vehicles are already out on our roads. And they’re here to stay. But what does this mean for us as individuals, the way society functions - and our driving experience in the UK?

Every car built in the past 20 years has some form of computer driven decision -making system behind the wheel which has been put there to save us from ourselves.

Most people will be familiar with Traction control, ABS, adaptive cruise, brake assist; these are all systems that react to accidents before they happen. Yet, 43% of people say they don’t trust autonomous vehicles and 16% are ‘horrified’ by the idea (uSwitch research 2015).

Google has been testing its vehicles on public roads in California since 2010 and is in regular contact with Ford, Toyota and Volkswagen discussing different approaches for bringing the autonomous vehicle to market. Google say they plan to launch their autonomous vehicle by 2017.

Self-driving cars were one of the hottest topics at CES 2015. German car manufacturer Mercedes-Benz launched their new autonomous car describing it as “an autonomous pod-like vehicle designed to function as a communal living room on wheels”.

Meanwhile four British cities have been given the green light for autonomous vehicles trials. Oh yes. If you live in Greenwich, Bristol and Coventry expect to see autonomous vehicles out on British roads this summer.

Audi’s new autonomous car — the A7 — even drove itself the 500 miles from Palo Alto, California.

Finally, Chancellor George Osborne announced in his budget £100 million investment for UK autonomous car projects, saying he wants to make Britain a centre of excellence in driverless cars.

Unlike planes and trains, cars are currently completely unconnected. This makes them very inefficient as a mass transport solution. One of the reasons they’re inefficient is because more often than not, just one person travels in a car. However if you pack in extra passengers the car quickly becomes a much greener option. So the car ride-sharing model that to date we’ve all refused to adopt could become a reality when autonomous fleets of cars hit the road, as a direct result of the system’s connectivity. A large scale fleet of autonomous vehicles will see that there are 10 other people heading where you’re going at 10am, and will automatically recommend a bus to you as a more economical option than a car.

Another way in which they’re inefficient is in terms of the cost to the individual of running the car. Autonomous vehicle fleets would be modular systems that scale up and down their activity in response to consumer demand. The approach to pricing could be similar to how the airline industry currently prices flights. For example a trip from Surrey to Shoreditch in central London at 8am would be classed as a peak fare at 50p per minute whereas a journey from London to Edinburgh overnight on a Friday would cost less at 20p per minute. By being transparent about costs, the system would encourage people to consider how and when it is best to get from A to B.

What our roads will look like

Next let’s consider congestion on the roads — a big and growing problem. A new KPMG report analysing the impact that technology will have on motoring, states that “driverless cars will create value by reducing congestion as connected cars “talk” to each other to help prevent traffic jams”. So as we see congestion decrease, average speeds will increase and journey times will drop.

We will also see roads decrease in size because autonomous vehicles will be acutely aware of the other vehicles travelling around them and will be able to successfully navigate narrower lanes. This is related to another benefit — smaller and fewer car parking spaces. Autonomous vehicles will not only be able to park in tighter spaces but they will also require fewer of them. Currently most cars are used only for a fraction of the time, meaning they sit idle for majority of their lives, taking up valuable space in urban areas.

Uber is another brand that is super enthusiastic about the potential for driverless vehicles; declaring that it aims to transform the transportation landscape — entirely eliminating car ownership.

Travis Kalanick, the CEO and founder of Uber, said at a conference last year that he’d replace human Uber drivers with a fleet of self-driving cars in a second. “You’re not just paying for the car — you’re paying for the other dude in the car,” he said. “When there’s no other dude in the car, the cost of taking an Uber anywhere becomes cheaper than owning a vehicle.” That, he said, will “bring the cost below the cost of ownership for everybody, and then car ownership goes away.”

So, fewer vehicles in our towns and cities and those that are out and about will be able to travel away from urban areas when out of use, freeing up space that would otherwise be taken up by parking.

Of course there will always be a demand from society’s elite for privately owned autonomous vehicles. While these will not be more efficient from a cost perspective, they will be able to be hailed by the owner back into urban areas for a journey as and when required (meaning that we will still benefit from a more pleasant urban landscape through a reduction in the volume of cars).

The environmental benefits

The answer is yes for a number of reasons. The first is that autonomous vehicles will have low CO2 emissions because when vehicles travel together in fleets — slipstreaming — they can move in the wind shadow of another and in this way use less fuel (7% for only two trucks together).

Secondly, because car ownership will fall (due to the reasons stated earlier) there will be fewer vehicles on the roads and as the volume of vehicles decreases so will the co2 emissions.

It’s also possible that the large, ugly road signs that pollute our landscape would become obsolete as autonomous cars will have no need for them with their extensively detailed 3D maps.

The impact on our day to day lives

Yes, they will have a transformative effect on everyday life for many people. Did you know that the average driver in England spends 235 hours driving every year? This is the equivalent of six working weeks sat behind the wheel in traffic. With autonomous cars people will climb in, get comfortable and relax with a good film or go to sleep while the car takes charge of the driving. People will be able to request driverless cars with beds for overnight journeys to far flung destinations so they can sleep in their vehicle and arrive ready to go (rather like how we use trains and planes in todays world). Then for those restless souls who are the super achievers, driverless cars will mean they can start or continue their working day, dramatically increasing their productivity.

Driverless vehicles will also be of huge benefit for elderly and disabled people as they will be able to get from A to B unaided.

They will also be of huge advantage to ambulances as they will be able to travel at faster speeds unimpeded along busy highways as autonomous vehicles will react quicker than humans to their presence.

Imagine what a bonus an autonomous vehicle would be on holiday. Especially when you arrive in an unknown destination. The vehicle could act as a virtual tour guide, showing you the sights and sharing important facts with you.

However as I’m sure you had guessed, the disruptive effect that driverless vehicles are going to have on society will not all be positive. Consider the hundreds of thousands of bus, taxi and lorry drivers who will in time become jobless and relics of the twentieth century. And it’s not going to be just them. Like a doomed domino rally, as car ownership decreases numerous other industries will also become defunct : mechanics, car washes, parking, valets, body shops, rental companies, car insurance, car loans, and so on. Scary hey?

Safety on the roads

The Department for Transport (DfT) report ‘Pathway to Driverless Cars’ lists safety as a primary benefit of driverless cars. The report says “Human error is a factor in over 90 per cent of collisions. Failing to look properly, misjudging other road users’ movements, being distracted, careless or in too much of a hurry are the most common causes of collisions. Automated vehicles will not make these mistakes.” The fact is that machines don’t get distracted. Machines don’t check Facebook on their phone when they should be looking at the road. Machines don’t drink alcohol or do drugs. Of course many would say that travelling in such a compliant machine would be an incredibly dull experience and I think it’s hard to argue with that. However perhaps we can live with dull if the adoption of autonomous cars results in fewer road fatalities (1,713 people were killed in reported road traffic accidents in Great Britain in 2013).

If driving does indeed become a rather dull, unemotional experience then it’s entirely possible that driving manual cars could become an aspirational weekend leisure pursuit. As people become nostalgic for a visceral driving experience that engages all the senses we could also see beautiful old vintage cars like Aston Martin’s increase in value.

So, as manual cars start to be perceived as quaint relics of a bygone era; will we be able to say the same about long, uncomfortable car journeys with screaming kids in the backseat?

Dare is a New Digital Agency. Visit our website here.