Worried about gridlock? Parking? Traffic from a newly proposed development? Climate change? Mass transit? Parking and excise tax revue to pay for schools and city services?
I’d like to invite you to an event this Friday morning from 9-10 a.m. hosted by the chamber that will explore how the inevitable arrival of autonomous vehicles will turn our world upside down, and not necessarily in good ways. Topics on the agenda include:
- How do Autonomous Vehicles Work? When will they be available?
- The Promises and Challenges of AVs
- Current Motor Vehicle Revenue Sources
- Trends: AV Budget Drivers
- Projected Economic Impacts: The Costs and Benefits of AVs
- Projected Fiscal Impacts: AVs and State Revenue Sources, AVs and Municipal Revenue Sources
- Lessons Learned: What we have learned along the way
- Recommendations: Policies that can help us benefit from AVs
Friday’s free program — at the Wells Park Auditorium at 85 Wells Ave — will also include a presentation about the economic benefits of cycling. More details and registration information can be found here.
Driverless cars will drastically improve our well-being. We will enjoy it. Don’t worry.
That’s a lot to pack in to an hour.
I think we are likely heading toward a future in which all transportation modes’ controls, infrastructures and operations will be coordinated, automated, and renewable-energy powered; all powered land, air and marine operations are autonomous; systems’ design, development, manufacture, distribution, operation and maintenance are industrially centralized; there is no private vehicle ownership, except for recreational and muscle-powered; and there will be little or no need for carbon-based propulsive energy support infrastructure.
I believe that driverless cars will improve highway capacity due to cooperation and more-optimized driving patterns; almost enough to offset the added traffic from empty driverless cars returning to where they came from.
I believe that driverless cars will make local and especially semi-urban traffic worse, as they drive conservatively and are confused by inconsistent markings & signage. weather, actual people directing traffic, etc. — and then either circle to find temporary parking or drive off empty to their next customer.
I believe that driverless cars will greatly improve safety, both for occupants and pedestrians/cyclists/other vehicles. However, this means they’ll be driving quite conservatively and will be very easy to cut off or otherwise take advantage of — by drivers as well as other road users.
I believe that driverless cars are coming and we’re going to have to get used to them. Whether they follow the path of Ford or Segway remains to be seen.
That’s an interesting thought Doug L – Boston driver’s bullying the timid autonomous drivers.
Way too much hype. The signal and image processing methods underlying these devices, while impressive, are not nearly reliable enough to address the liability issues that will arise when the first driverless car injures a pedestrian. My very educated guess here is that we will see this technology deployed in limited and controlled applications for quite a while with the streets of Newton and Boston not impacted in any major way for years to come. There are far more pressing transportation issues that should be occupying our (really your) time than this.
Let me throw a bit of cold water on this dream.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/have-selfdriving-cars-stopped-getting-better
If you want to know what’s going on in the kitchen, ask the cooks not the managers. IEEE magazine, and MIT technology review are 2 good places to look for some more realistic articles.
I’m a software engineer. Beyond that, I’m a scientific software engineer, and I’ve worked on FDA class III medical devices, including image guided surgery, and robotic patient positioning systems.
First of all, there’s absolutely no data that shows that driveless cars will be safer than humans. There’s also no data that flying cars will be less safe. There’s just no data. To make claims about safety for something that doesn’t yet exist ( except for research in limited areas) is just plain false.
Some details. The current sensor technologies are very weather sensitive. LIDAR works poorly in the rain. Current computer vision technologies and algorithms cannot deal well with weather, sun, and apparently white trucks crossing the road ( see Tesla ) . Any algorithm that relies tracking the painted lines on a highway fails in the first snowstorm.
What the law is vs what people actually do are not one and the same. During busy times, lines of cars roll through stop signs. If you don’t roll through, but instead brake, the car behind you will honk madly if they don’t hit you. Think of all the roads that you drive on that are marked 30mph but everyone goes 40. The driverless car is going to piss everyone off, especially in Boston. Then there’s the intersections where people use subtle clues about the other drivers body language to decide who goes first.
Regarding liability, there’s the old dilemma of does the car swerve out of the way of pedestrian if the only alternative is to smash into a tree, killing the passengers?
All of these technologies will make cars with drivers safer – when the weathe cooperates. But completely autonomous cars are a dream that I’m not sure w9nt end up being a nightmare. Safer? Show me the real world data.
These are links to presentations and other professional materials on this subject:
https://www.volpe.dot.gov/news/robin-chase-and-anthony-townsend-automated-vehicles-and-urban-mobility
https://www.volpe.dot.gov/event/autonomy-and-the-future-of-urban-mobility
https://www.volpe.dot.gov/our-work/infrastructure-systems-and-technology/advanced-vehicle-technology
https://www.volpe.dot.gov/news/how-effective-are-pedestrian-detection-systems-in-cars.
Overall, it seems to me there are sound reasons for optimism. (I apologize, but can’t resist reflecting that humans flying without the sun melting the wax in their wings was once considered preposterous.)
Funny, when I speak with people at the Volpe center they often worry about what Robin Chase calls the “hell” scenario (https://www.volpe.dot.gov/news/robin-chase-and-anthony-townsend-automated-vehicles-and-urban-mobility). In that world, vehicles drive around clogging the streets while waiting for their owners, and smaller robots clog sidewalks while they’re delivering goods. In that hell scenario, people are isolated because they leave their homes, jump right into a single-occupancy automated vehicle, travel extra-long distances while watching a movie, reading or working, then walk right into a destination. Or even worse, the destination comes to them, collapsing the commercial real estate market for retail and cocooning people in their own little worlds.
This change is going to be fast and we have an opportunity to try to put in some controls, or we can just let it evolve and see what happens. The auto revolution had both positive and negative impacts on our lives, do we want to leave this next revolution to chance?
@Chuck – I could very easily envision a different scenario. Car ownership is expensive. I could see it being economically feasible to set up a car sharing system where a company has a fleet of self-driving cars and parking set up in several locations (e.g., lots or garages in Newton, Brookline, Boston…) If I need to go to a doctor’s appt, I page a car which drives me to the appt then either goes to it’s next call or to the closest company parking area. No cruising, no using up parking (unless I go someplace like a grocery story and pay for it to wait in the parking lot), a lot fewer cars needed. Not that different in theory from Zipcar. My monthly cost would likely be a lot less than the cost of buying and maintaining a car, paying for downtown parking, and insurance.
I can picture what Meredith is saying – like a driverless Uber – and I think it would be heavily used.
But unlike Uber, they wouldn’t be cruising around looking for fares, clogging up the streets.
Exactly. The benefits of on-demand cars without many of the downsides associated with them. I think it would be a service that people could rely on.
Absolutely pointless speculation with no basis in the technical reality. The Volpe links were inconsequential comprised of (a) consultants and authors whose primary goals are to get more people to buy their books and pay for their speaking engagements and (b) an analysis of safety wins which ignores the fact that the systems they are analyzing do not exist! Spherical cows get one only so far.
UGGGH. I cringed when I read about the Wells Avenue program. Many of you will disagree with my reasoning, but here goes.
People fear the future. When contact lenses were invented there was concern that everyone would put them in their eyes and go blind, and there were calls for regulation. In the 1800’s the Luddites destroyed machinery because they thought that machinery causes unemployment. In 1800, 90% of us worked on farms. 200+ years later, technology has destroyed all of those nice farm jobs, but heck, we survived and life is pretty good!
The Luddite fallacy occurs over and over again. President Obama opined that ATMs put tellers out of jobs, and NPR “All things considered” has had episodes that claimed that technology is will cause everyone to become unemployed.
Cornelius Vanderbilt was often the richest man in the US during the 1800’s. Would you rather live his life or would you rather live the life of the average American today? Virtually, everyone to whom I pose this question says that they would rather be an average American today. Jeff Bezos is the richest person in the world today. When I ask people, “would you rather live Bezos’ life today, or live the life of an average person in 100 years?” the answer is less certain. People see the past with clarity, but they worry about the future, despite the fact that, on net, it keeps getting better. Seen this way, wealth inequality takes a back seat to a healthy economy that fosters innovation.
Politicians often make bad decisions when it comes to regulation. When it comes to technology, the downside of bad regulation is particularly harmful– it can stymie unknown future innovation. The downside is hard to predict when regulations are enacted. Our irrational fears give politicians fuel to make our children’s lives worse. Let’s try to show restraint. Repeat after me, “the future is going to be great. Bring it on!”
Jeffery: I’m trying to understand why you say you “cringed when [you] read about he Wells Avenue program.” Our program tomorrow is not in opposition to this but it is designed to help folks understand how our future is changing.
@meredith what you’re describing is a likely scenario. The question that most people in transportation ask is whether people will be in single-occupancy AVs or shared AVs. Likely it’s single occupancy, which could mean more isolation.
@jeffrey you’re not wrong, the lifestyle we live is lightyears ahead. But we also have to ask: at what cost? The lifestyle is what’s driving the rising sea levels and more extinctions. Nothing is without cost. We have to ask how to balance the benefits and cost.
Here in Newton the costs of climate change and battles associated with it play out every day. It’s at the core of the development debates around issues of density. Fear? Maybe. But not without precedent.
@Greg. I cringed because the program speakers are not engineers and entrepreneurs. They are policy people and from my quick googling, they are policy people who lobby the government. We don’t exactly know what the future is going to be like. If anyone does, please tell me where the Dow will close at the end of 2018.
The topics seem to focus on negative consequences. Maybe I am wrong, but they probably won’t talk about how quickly driverless cars will accelerate or whether they will have mini-bars and hors d’oeuvres. I want to live in the future before we regulate it. If we can drive around while sleeping, who cares if a city loses parking meter revenue? The government has an uncanny ability to tap revenue streams–I am not worried about the government running out of money.
@Chuck. I agree nothing is without cost. The future is hard to predict. 300 years ago, no one predicted that the industrial revolution would contribute to global warning. 300 years from now the world will be wonderful, but we will likely look back and say “we should have done x y and z differently.” Hindsight is 20/20.
Jeffrey: stop by tomorrow at 9 a.m. and join the conversation.
@Chuck – I spent my childhood riding public transit to school and never felt particularly connected to anyone on the bus unless I was riding home with friends – in which case, in the driverless care scenario we would certainly have chosen to share one for company. As an adult, I don’t see a whole lot of companionship happening on the T.
If there are price incentives to share, I’m sure a fair number of people will. If I’m not running late for a meeting, I’d have no problem having my ride to work take a little longer to make it more affordable. For that matter, if I’m waiting out front for my ride to show up, I’m more likely to see and neighbor and say hello than when I go straight from front door to car in driveway.
Unfortunately, it seems driverless cars have a ways to go as far as safety is concerned. California won’t let them on the roads yet. Arizona has allowed tests of driverless vehicles, and now it seems its safety is being called into question after running someone down without even stopping.
See https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1478.html for analysis of how far we have to go to quantify safety.
More reality: https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/19/self-driving-cars-are-on-the-road-to-nowhere/