Self-driving car technology is rapidly advancing. Tesla reports that its customers have driven more than 100 million miles with “autopilot,” which controls speed and steers the cars in traffic. The few accidents that it has reported quickly led to software upgrades to make sure similar accidents didn’t happen.
Volvo says its cars will have a similar autopilot technology next year, and promises fully self-driven cars–which it hopes will also be “fatality-free”–by 2020. It is about to begin conducting what it claims is the largest trial of self-driving cars to date; the tests will take place in China, England, and Sweden.
Uber is testing a self-driving car in Pittsburgh. The ride-sharing company just received a $3.5 billion infusion of cash from Saudi Arabia. Some people are unhappy that a country that won’t let women drive is investing in an American auto company, but maybe the Saudis see self-driving cars as a way to provide equal mobility for everyone.
General Motors has invested $500 million in Uber’s rival, Lyft, with a plan to create a national network of self-driving taxis. Ford has invested, which plans to make self-driving taxis in Singapore a reality by 2018. Why Singapore? Probably because the city-state is willing to change its driving rules to allow such vehicles.
The British government has tackled the liability problem by announcing that it will hold manufacturers, not owners, of driverless cars responsible for accidents. This will probably transfer the job of insuring cars from drivers to manufacturers; when you buy a self-driving car, the insurance will come with the price, at least for anything that happens when it is in self-driving mode.
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Some polls have found that many people don’t want self-driving cars. People often claim, erroneously, that Henry Ford once said, “If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” Steve Jobs did say something like that: “people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” No matter who said it, the point is that people are likely to quickly adapt self-driving cars once they are proven safe and people see the enormous benefits of not having to be alert behind the wheel at all times.
So self-driving cars are on their way. Not surprisingly, they are getting some negative press from rail transit advocates, who claim that self-driven cars are “an accident waiting to happen.” The article points to some fender-benders that some experimental self-driving cars were involved in; but, hey, it’s an experimental car, not something that is on sale to the public.
The article says that cities shouldn’t hesitate to build light rail just because self-driving cars are about to make transit completely obsolete. In fact, light rail is the accident waiting to happen. In 2012, light-rail trains killed 40 people in the process of carrying less than 2.5 billion passenger miles; that’s more than 16 fatalities per billion passenger miles.
In the same year, vehicles on urban roads and streets 7.7 people per billion vehicle miles, which at 1.67 persons per vehicle (see table 16) is less than five per billion passenger miles. The goal of Volvo and other self-driving car companies is to reduce that by 90 percent or more.
We can count on rail advocates dissing self-driving cars whenever they can. But they won’t be able to stop progress. At worst, they will temporarily hold some cities back in the nineteenth century.
Talk about an accident waiting to happen, look at the DC Street car. It is so close to the parallel parked cars that it WILL take somebody’s car door off, just a matter of time.
The Antiplanner wrote:
So self-driving cars are on their way. Not surprisingly, they are getting some negative press from rail transit advocates, who claim that self-driven cars are “an accident waiting to happen.” The article points to some fender-benders that some experimental self-driving cars were involved in; but, hey, it’s an experimental car, not something that is on sale to the public.
A rail transit advocate from Lincoln, Nebraska? Give me a break!
OFP2003 wrote:
Talk about an accident waiting to happen, look at the DC Street car. It is so close to the parallel parked cars that it WILL take somebody’s car door off, just a matter of time.
At least the D.C. streetcar is so slow that there will not be any serious injury.
If a D.C. streetcar lops off the door of a parked car with self-driving technology, then it will of course be blamed on said technology.
Fuck driverless cars….What’s the point of having a Ferrari or a McLaren if you cant drive it yourself
“What’s the point of having a Ferrari or a McLaren if you cant drive it yourself”
Because everyone drives a Ferrari or a McLaren.
Unless they can find a way for politicians to profit from driverless cars, it is going to be tough to get them allowed for use by the public.
Politicians will profit by giving “free” driverless cars to preferred constituents. “Free” meaning paid for by the rest of us. But that might not be bad…
The solution is to place all the money currently wasted on most mass transit into a fund for the “free” driverless cars. As the Antiplanner has often showed, it would cost less to give free cars to each rail transit passenger than it costs to build, operate and maintain the transit system itself.
So we’re calling light rail dangerous based on 40 fatalities in a year (a large portion of which were likely suicides)? Apparently the Antiplanner has never heard of the law of large numbers. If he had picked 2008 the light rail fatality rate would have been only 6.7 fatalities per billion passenger miles. Or if he really wanted to make light rail look bad why not pick 2000, where the rate appears to have been as high as 22?
The Antiplanner’s continual reliance on amateur hour statistics detracts from his many otherwise valid criticisms of light rail.
“If he had picked 2008 the light rail fatality rate would have been only 6.7 fatalities per billion passenger miles. Or if he really wanted to make light rail look bad why not pick 2000, where the rate appears to have been as high as 22?”
Speaking of amateur-hour statistics, you’re seriously advocating for cherry picking? Really?
http://www.ntdprogram.gov/ntdprogram/pubs/MonthlyData/S&STimeSeries-January2016-05012016.xls
Data for 2015-2016 PMT is copied from 2014, so I’ll ignore those years. 2002-2007 the classification of fatalities was different from 2008+
2008-2014 reported numbers for light rail:
14.6 fatalities per billion passenger miles.
A partial breakdown, open up the spreadsheet yourself for more:
3.2 suicides
0.4 passengers
2.7 “people waiting or leaving”
0.2 employees
1.0 cyclists
”
Speaking of amateur-hour statistics, you’re seriously advocating for cherry picking? Really?
” ~ Frank
Unfortunately, yes.