Google Says AVs Could Make Traffic And Congestion Worse
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Companies like Google and General Motors have touted autonomous vehicles as being the solution to traffic and congestion in major metropolitan areas, but they also run the risk of making it much worse.
That’s not according to any industry experts, city planners or politicians, but rather Google itself, which is currently planning to erect a $12 million connected neighbourhood in Toronto through its affiliate Sidewalk Labs.
Sidewalk Labs Proposal
According to Sidewalk Labs’ proposal for the new smart neighbourhood, which the company calls a “city within a city”, the majority of self-driving vehicles must not be self-owned, or they run the risk of amplifying traffic and congestion significantly.
“If self-driving vehicles are individually owned and free to roam the streets without a driver, then car ownership — and congestion — might soar,” the plan says. “But if self-driving vehicles are integrated into the urban environment and public transit network with thoughtful policies that encourage fleets of shared trips and people-first street designs, they can become part of a next-generation mobility system.”
That could mean that anywhere a large self-driving company expands, such as Sidewalk Labs plans to in Toronto or GM’s Cruise Automation in San Francisco, may be encouraged to make driving privately owned vehicles more expensive and more of a hassle in order to discourage those from driving into the city center and from personal car ownership.
A company like Google would have plenty of incentive to lobby for making personal car ownership more inconvenient in big cities. If it rolls out AVs in Toronto with the same amount of traffic congestion and the AVs offer no discernible benefit over a normal Uber ride, its presence in the city could be seen as a failure. Tech companies like Google would also stand to lose nothing from a downturn in sales of personally-owned cars.
Whilst a lot will change in the mobility sector in coming years, the rollout of autonomous vehicles is not happening as quickly as many in the tech and auto industry initially thought. Earlier this year, Ford CEO Jim Hackett acknowledged that many “overestimated the arrival of self-driving cars,” and admitted their true arrival is “way in the future.”
GM was hoping to catch up to Waymo and roll out a robotaxi service of sorts through its Cruise Automation subsidiary before the end of 2019, but it’s unclear if the automaker is still on track to meet that goal, with rumors swirling that the project is behind schedule.
Source: Automotive News Canada
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Google says a lot of things; but as the devil is in the details and what Google doesn’t say is that they’re working with China to develop AI systems that could be used in autonomous cars which means in 3-5 years, you could see autonomous cars that has a badge which says Google powered.
Makes sense to me. Presently, driver interaction is 1:1; what you do impacts what another driver does. There’s no coordination beyond you and the cars immediately around you. If you put your signal light on, you’re only communicating (visually) to those who can see the turn signal.
If an autonomous car can coordinate and communicate with others at 1:10 or 1:40 or more, suddenly the turn signal is a lot easier to see. Now scale it up from a turn signal to a route, then each car can plot and arrange their movements well in advance of each other without conflict….but only with each other, not with the cars that are manually driven.
Presently, you don’t know who you’re going to come across when you’re driving or the quality of their driving skills. You also don’t know if the other driver is driving aggressively or is ignorant of the rules of the road; that they might be more willing to break the law just to get somewhere faster or change their minds at the last second when it’s not safe to do so.
If you want to keep autonomous cars from happening, you’ll need a change in driver conduct that would require every driver to be courteous and efficient and not bend the rules to their own needs or drive in a dangerous manner.
Personally, I think that’s easier said than done.
One way to solve the issue: Change traffic laws so the human driver gets most of the blame in a collision with an AV, since the AV has no malice when “driving” and its systems attempts to prevent collisions.
Being from Toronto, I can tell you this will never work.
Even if we ignore the daunting logistics, one of the biggest cities in the world that is filled with almost exclusively with 1 and 2 lane streets, bad winters with construction filled summers, etc. The attitude is one against public transit. Many times downtown Toronto liberals have tried the “war on cars”, even going as far as to propose bans on cars or to minimize their use, and they lost each time from a united front of the conservative residential neighborhoods who drive their S-Classes on full display on the DVP + “limousine liberals” from the downtown core that want nothing more than to minimize access to downtown from people who can’t afford a car.
Regardless of what Google does, the private car side will always wins in this city, as it always has and always will.
It’s not even a left vs. right thing. It’s a “how many people can you safely get on the roads, and how efficiently can you move from point A to B on these roads.”
This is purely a numbers game, not an ideological one.
While your comment makes sense rationally, it also tells me you’re not from Toronto LOL because over here it is a (local) right vs left issue.
Really this is how Google and every other Silicon Valley company feel about the average person. “You’re stupid, so give up your independence so we can have our way”. Like people who fly around on private jets and then lecture commoners about their woodburning stove.
To place in context what Charlton Heston said, “I’ll give you my car when you take it from my cold, dead hands.”
A few weeks ago I wrote a 2400 word paper about autonomous taxis. My paper included the traffic congestion issue covered here. In the short term, autonomous vehicles will probably cause increased traffic congestion, but longer term, autonomous vehicles should end most traffic congestion via regulating ridesharing. I was fortunate to have my paper presented at:
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2019/07/autonomous-vehicles-destroy-dumbstralias-infrastructure-boom/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20MacroBusiness&utm_content=Daily%20MacroBusiness+CID_71a5a7c59b31dc8a751965867625e0dc&utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&utm_term=Autonomous%20vehicles%20destroy%20Dumbstralias%20infrastructure%20boom
This will make big cities bankrupt. People will all move to suburbs or rural just to have peace and rights to do as they please. AV vehicles are only going to work in area for them only in closed loop. For trips for some but not for most
Car ownership was never a legal right. Car ownership has always been a privilege, subject to licencing, insurance, permits, and demonstration of competency, as well as being subject to the observation of local traffic laws. This applies to everyone who owns a car, no matter if they live in a city or in the country.
I don’t think you’ve thought through how AV’s are going to bankrupt cites.
It is not possible to create an algorithm which is able to predict human behavior with any degree of certainty. Furthermore, software, firmware, and hardware all will eventually fail resulting in the loss of control regardless of how good the algorithm is claimed to be. The automobile is in the harshest environment to design any reliable system no matter the cost.