And indeed, from a recent report, it seems that this will be the case, as it is stated that Being drunk or asleep at the wheel of a driverless cars to be made illegal, and goes on to say that the user in charge must also be in the driver’s seat and stay off their mobile phone. It then says, with a distinct whiff of curled lip:
Plans to forbid drunk back-up driving come amid concerns that the technology could encourage overindulgence. Researchers at Curtin University in Australia have suggested that the public safety benefits from driverless cars could be outweighed by more binge drinking if it becomes easier to get around while inebriated. In 2020, 37 per cent of respondents in a survey said that their alcohol use would be likely to increase if they had access to driverless cars.However, surely one of the main potential benefits of driverless cars is that they will extend mobility to people who are unable to drive themselves either through old age or medical conditions. It is also impossible to have driverless taxis – often suggested as one of the main applications – if there always needs to be a competent driver on board. If it was indeed true that driverless cars would need a capable driver on board at all times it would severely limit their usefulness, to the extent where it’s hard to see what the point would be.
I suspect this report arises from a misunderstanding of the concept of the technology. It has always been set out that progress towards automated cars will come in a number of levels, as shown in the graphic above. At Level 3, a driver may be called upon to take control in certain situations, but at Levels 4 and 5 they won’t. If an automated taxi can travel without a driver to its pick-up point, then surely it can carry a passenger who is incapable of driving, whether through age, infirmity or intoxication. And if a taxi can do it, why not your own driverless car?
It has always seemed to me, though, that this technology essentially represents a solution looking for a problem. And it’s pretty certain that the authorities will never allow it to be used to its full potential, as it would be so disruptive and undermine so many vested interests.
The purpose is to reduce potential for human error and therefore reduce road deaths, not for you to get drunk or sleep at the wheel.
ReplyDeleteHave you actually read the post?
DeleteBetter and more affordable public transport is the solution.
DeleteOscar
Driverless cars are one of those promised technologies that will likely never arrive. By that I mean true driverless cars. Driver assist is here already and to a limited extent where you have a wider environmental control you can run automated cars safely because there is in effect a track, like driverless metros.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn’t take a genius to work out why. Some parts of driving are simple. You could safely employ a computer to navigate the M60 ring road. What about a drive into Glossop? Off the A roads, onto the B roads, roads which are one lane, little more than a country track, with a tractor heading the opposite way and a lorry behind you? What are the set of decisions you make then? You end up winding your window down and asking someone to back up mate.
Level 5 will never happen.
The best it’ll get to is safe enough for straightforward clearly marked urban road conditions where you will need to stay alert.
The police will know easy pickings when they find it, so even if you have a safe simple journey, you might not want to take the gamble on a kip on the trip.
As a last point this tech comes with a future where the combustion engine is also redundant. That’s a future where car ownership is far lower than currently. The economics don’t support mass electric car ownership. We can see the political consequences of that today. People do not want to give up what has become a status symbol alongside a convenience.
Driverless taxi’s in urban environments may be coming. The reason Uber shareholders were so keen on subsiding rides was to get a monopoly on what they thought would emerge quicker than it is. But the taxi drivers are still here, the shareholders have run out of money, and the rides are no longer cheap.
Driverless cars are going to become one of them jokes like when a Tomorrow’s world clip surfaces promising something that never arrived.
Out of interest, I did the maths on my motor. I’d be better off getting rid and using taxi’s. WFH means a rusting metal box in a driveway most days. Owning a car seems conditioned somehow.
I agree with much of what cookie says. Been to a few business conferences on this. The likelihood is that an urban area, a regional leader who wants to flash his green credentials will allow driverless taxis in their jurisdiction. This might be London or some other major European city (possibly Copenhagen). I say allow driverless cars, but I think in reality it will mean banning cars driven by humans at the same time. This makes sense as the computers are safer, better drivers than humans. The model the car manufacturers are banking on is that no one owns a car, everyone uses on demand driverless cars, in other words a taxi service. As cookie says the capital investment in a car, especially an autonomous electric vehicle is such that the economics of owning a car just wont stack up.
DeleteOnce one city has adopted the model other cities will create a stampede of fast followers.
The people making the money will be the car leasing firms and the manufacturers.
There are many reasons why on-demand taxis or hire vehicles will never entirely replace private car ownership. One obvious one is that people need to personalise cars with things such as child seats and dog guards. Plus a car is there where and when you need it, but a taxi has to be summoned, which many take quite a while at busy times.
DeleteCookie is spot on as always. It's never going to happen.
DeleteIt would make Simon E's life much easier, though.
DeleteI think it might happen, but it will take a lot of political power to force it through. A lot of people are invested in their cars and love driving them, even on our congested and crumbling road network. If say 50% of main roads in city centres are reserved for autonomous electric vehicles, then how different is that to Tram Lines and Bus Lanes? As car ownership dies out, the 50% will slowly move to 100%. Its ULEZ on steroids.
DeleteULEZ is for the greater good.
DeleteOscar
@Cookie - if you only do local trips, and don't commute, using taxis may well prove more economical than owning a car. But as soon as you start making regular longer trips, the economics change. This is something that many older people may need to address.
DeleteBut it has to be remembered that your journey choices are dependent to a large extent on the means of transport available to you; they don't in general exist independently. Owning a car means that you incur a large fixed cost, but on top of that the marginal cost is relatively small. If you have a car, you may do a 5-mile round trip to collect a takeaway. But you wouldn't spend £20 on a taxi to do that; you'd spend £4 to have it delivered.
Likewise, if you have a bus pass, you will use buses for some trips that you wouldn't contemplate paying full fare for.
I'm not denying the utility of private transport. Just saying it's unclear at what retail cost it will operate. We have seen cars go from objects of the aristocracy, to middle class tools, to working class tools, to available to all. If electric car ownership cannot be mass market (through factors like the minerals required for battery production) as car ownership is now, who is going to be denied? The sixth form kids with parental gifts? The working class, or even the middle class?
DeleteThere will be political blowback but how effective? We have seen the nature of dignity at work be rolled back so middle class jobs are afforded dignity but working class jobs denied it, We have seen the blowback to this through populism with a clear divide in opinion based on class. As car ownership is reduced, how high up the social ladder will it go, and what will be the push back? Is it safe enough so long as the middle class keep their cars?
"There are many reasons why on-demand taxis or hire vehicles will never entirely replace private car ownership. One obvious one is that people need to personalise cars with things such as child seats and dog guards" and of course personalised number plates !
DeleteIt isn’t really going to happen, is it? This fully driven stuff. There needs to be somebody to take over should the circumstances demand it. External factors do sometimes come into play. If a drunken dullard can drive, then by extension of the logic a 3-year-old or cat could drive it. Well, they can’t.
ReplyDeleteA drunk, a cat or a child could never be responsible for a lump of metal whizzing along the king’s highway. Imagine a car skidding in ice and a drunk trying to act coherently. Keep your bas passes comrades. We don’t want this do we?
Me no unnerstan. So a driverless car is considered safe to travel the roads with no human on board, but put an inert human on board and it is not safe.
ReplyDeleteWhat about a sack of potatoes?
Is this the pinnacle of technology? We put a man on the moon for god's sake. What now. Wizzing a incoherent drunken man round the CAMRA pubs of Wigan and Leigh, for an special day out? We have this tech already. It's a little black and white icon on a smartphone with the word Uber. The more people use it the better the service will get.
DeleteActually Doonhammer that's the best illustration I've seen so far.
DeleteAn interesting area of speculation is how urban driverless taxis would work for drunk customers. Vehicle control and liability is not the only question. We’ve all seen innovative transport schemes in European cities work well in places with high social cohesion. Then laughed as they’ve transferred to Manchester and failed. Shared bicycle schemes that work in Amsterdam where people care about their community, and all end up in the canal when the scheme starts in Manchester.
ReplyDeleteWhat about lairy drunk behaviour of a type common in a UK taxi rank but uncommon in Europe? Customers that damage or soil an unmanned vehicle? The Jonny Cabs of Total Recall had an amusing answer I cannot see being legal. Automated inspection & penalty charging using cameras? The next customer rejecting a cab, asking for another and sending it back to the depot? All these things need thinking about.
But the problem I posed earlier of difficult rural environments posing a challenge a well designed and maintained urban environment doesn’t. A driverless train is controlled centrally rather than in the cab. What if driverless cars were not designed as individual decision-making programs but a network decision making program where you put your unit in the network and the network makes the decision. At that point you have the co-operation required to make decisions collectively and solve the 3 cars down a single country lane problem.
For network decision making you have to have an ultra reliable means of connecting the vehicle to the network. That works well for trains where there is good infrastructure in place and signals can be sent down the metals.
DeleteBut what would you use for cars. Mobile connectivity is patchy and i likely to be at its worst on the country lane with three cars
On the issue of potential vandalism to driverless vehicles, my friend works in the bus industry, and there was a perennial issue of people etching the glass on buses. This was partly fixed with the application of think vinyl layers, that could be peeled away.
ReplyDeleteThe problem now rarely occurs because of the smartphone. Bored kids are so engrossed in their phones that vandalism is greatly reduced.
Free WiFi anyone?