{"id":5588,"date":"2015-02-20T10:12:01","date_gmt":"2015-02-20T17:12:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=5588"},"modified":"2015-02-20T10:22:18","modified_gmt":"2015-02-20T17:22:18","slug":"where-will-driverless-cars-drive-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=5588","title":{"rendered":"Where will driverless cars drive us?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"robocars\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I have an\u00a0article<\/a> in Fortune<\/em> that looks at the hype surrounding autonomous cars. Here’s a bit from the piece\u00a0highlighting\u00a0recent research that calls into question some of the common\u00a0assumptions\u00a0about robotic vehicles:<\/p>\n

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At a car conference last September,\u00a0Steven\u00a0<\/span>Shladover, a research engineer at the University of California at Berkeley,\u00a0explained<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>that automotive automation presents far more daunting challenges than aircraft automation. Cars travel much closer together than planes do, they have less room to maneuver in emergencies, and drivers have to deal with a welter of earthly obstacles, from jaywalkers to work crews to potholes. Developing a driverless car, Shladover said, will be orders of magnitude harder than developing a pilotless airliner. It\u2019s going to be a long time, he cautioned, before we\u2019ll be able to curl up in the back seat while a robot drives us to work.<\/p>\n

Even if perfect automation remains beyond our reach, progress in automotive robotics will sprint forward. Top-end luxury cars are already highly automated, able to center themselves in a lane and adjust their speed to fit traffic conditions, and computers are set to take over many more driving tasks in the years ahead. As always, though, the road to the future will have many twists and forks. The choices that companies and designers make in automating cars will influence not only how we drive but how we live. As we learned in the last century, advances in personal-transportation technologies can have profound consequences for everything from housing to urban planning to energy policy.<\/p>\n

Consider safety. It\u2019s often assumed that automation will reduce traffic accidents, if not eliminate them entirely. But that\u2019s not necessarily the case. Research into human-computer interaction reveals that partial automation can actually make complex tasks like driving more dangerous. People relying on automation quickly become complacent, trusting the computer to perform flawlessly, and that raises the odds that they\u2019ll make mistakes when they have to reengage with the work, particularly in an emergency. A\u00a0study of drivers<\/span><\/a>\u00a0by U.K. scholars Neville Stanton and Mark Young found that while shifting routine driving chores to computers can reduce workload and stress, it also \u201clulls drivers into a false sense of security.\u201d They lose \u201csituational awareness,\u201d which can have tragic consequences when split-second reactions are required to avoid an accident.<\/p>\n

The risks will likely be magnified during the long transitional period when automobiles with varying degrees of automation share the road. Given that the average American passenger vehicle is more than 11 years old, there will be \u201cat least a several-decade-long period during which conventional and self-driving vehicles would need to interact,\u201d\u00a0report<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle of the University of Michigan\u2019s Transportation Research Institute. That becomes particularly problematic when you take into account driving\u2019s complex social psychology. When we change lanes, enter traffic, or execute other tricky maneuvers, we tend to make quick, intuitive decisions based on our experience of how other drivers act. But all those deeply learned assumptions may no longer apply when the other driver is a robot. Just the loss of eye contact between human drivers, Sivak and Schoettle warn, could introduce new and unexpected risks, particularly for drivers of older, less automated cars.<\/p>\n

Beyond the knotty technical questions are equally complicated social ones. Peter Norton, a transportation expert at the University of Virginia,\u00a0points out<\/span><\/a>\u00a0that the way autonomous vehicles are designed will have a profound influence on people\u2019s driving habits. If automation makes driving and parking easier, and in particular if it allows commuters to do other things while in their cars, it could end up encouraging people to drive more often or to commute over longer distances. Cities and suburbs would become even more congested, highway infrastructure would come under more stress, and investments in public transport might wither further. \u201cIf we rebuild the landscape for autonomous vehicles,\u201d Norton writes, \u201cwe may make it unsuitable for anything else \u2014 including walking.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the other hand, if we design autonomous vehicles as part of a thoughtful overhaul of the nation\u2019s transit systems, the new cars could play a part in reducing traffic, curtailing air pollution, and engendering more livable cities. It\u2019s a mistake, Norton argues, to view autonomous cars in isolation, and it\u2019s an even bigger mistake to assume that automotive automation will be a panacea for complex problems like traffic and safety. \u201cBefore we make autonomous cars the solution,\u201d he says, \u201cwe must formulate the problem correctly.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Image: US Department of Transportation.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have an\u00a0article in Fortune that looks at the hype surrounding autonomous cars. Here’s a bit from the piece\u00a0highlighting\u00a0recent research that calls into question some of the common\u00a0assumptions\u00a0about robotic vehicles: At a car conference last September,\u00a0Steven\u00a0Shladover, a research engineer at the University of California at Berkeley,\u00a0explained\u00a0that automotive automation presents far more daunting challenges than aircraft […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5588"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5593,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5588\/revisions\/5593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}