Google has been turning heads on a global scale with its driverless car fleet powered by Google Chauffeur. The massive project, led by Google engineer, Sabastian Thrun, co-inventor of Google Street View, is expected to harken in a whole new transportation paradigm that will revolutionize the way we get from point A to point B.
Tech developers are often quick to don rose colored glasses – it’s their job they are dreamers, but it’s up to the public to separate the fluff from fact; dream from reality. So what is the true picture of self-driving vehicles and what are the ethical, legal and logistical challenges this disruptive technology faces in real world implementation?
There are many pros to the emerging technology and Google is more than willing to tout these benefits to the media. Among those advantages are the ideas of safety and efficiency. According to statistics, 81% of motor vehicle accidents are attributed to human error and approximately 33,000 people die a year in the U.S. alone due to MVAs which cost more than $100.0 billion in damages. Having self-driven cars would take out the human component and place a computer behind the wheel. A computer won’t be distracted by an incoming text, fixing its hair in the mirror or lost in an argument. It will always be watching the road. But just how vigilant is it?
Google has reported that its driverless pilot fleet in Florida, Nevada, Michigan and California, the only states so far that allow driverless vehicles on the road, has clocked over 1 million miles, roughly equal to 75 years of typical U.S. adult driving. In that incident-free time, the vehicles had encountered 200,000 stop signs, 600,000 traffic lights and 180 million other vehicles.
Of course when called to the carpet, Sergei Brin admitted to 12 accidents involving the driverless cars, but he was quick to assure the media that all of those mishaps were the fault of other drivers or when the driverless vehicle had been taken over by a human operator.
This autonomous freedom will give the driver the hitherto unknown ability to relax, read a book, complete the spreadsheet they should have finished last night or conduct a meeting while still on the highway, adding to the quality of time on the road, not to mention the increase in worker productivity.
Efficiency is the next bonus expected to hit when we surrender our control to the driving equivalent of Hal 9000. According to reports released by such entities as Texas Transportation Institute, Americans spend 38 hours a year snarled in overly congested roadways, wasting 1.9 billion gallons of gas. Extrapolating from that, the cost of this time lost in the U.S. has been tabulated at $124.0 billion a year. And according to these sources, without significant action to alleviate the problem, congestion will only grow worse with time lost growing to the point where these jams could cost $184.0 billion annually by 2030.
Computers chauffeurs would communicate with not only other driverless vehicles weeding their way through rush hour traffic but they will also interact with road-based sensor arrays to determine which is actually the fastest route in real time; all the while matching vehicle speeds and distances to keep things moving with a relative ease that will help minimize the highway parking lot experience, its apparent economic cost and the inevitable road rage that ensues.
Now that we mentioned fuel, there has been great concern of late on the world stage regarding the usage of finite natural resources such as oil and gas. Even with the estimated 1.64 trillion barrels of oil and 7.02 quadrillion cf of gas thought to be in reserves as of 2013, our consumption of these items shows no bounds and with over 90.0 million barrels of oil being used up every day, we have a 50-year lifespan with that resource. Driverless cars might provide a solution as most would likely operate on hybrid technologies if not fully electric drive systems, vastly reducing the need for fossil fuels and as a result helping to protect our environment for future generations.
There is social advantage to the self-driving vehicle revolution as well which Sergei Brin, co-founder of Google, summed up with, “This has the power to change lives. Too many people are underserved by the current transport system. They are blind, or too young to drive, or too old, or intoxicated." Although I think the excuse to get hammered out of your tree because you don’t have to drive, isn’t really solving a societal ill.
Despite that, these are some pretty compelling arguments to bring the whole system online. Google has pushed ahead with a self-driving prototype sans steering wheel and pedal, and expects to start introducing it to the public by 2020. Interest is gaining traction worldwide with the United Kingdom eager to be on the leading edge of autonomous driving. In fact, Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osbourne, has announced a planned £100 million investment in driverless cars in the country’s 2015 budget.
However, before we ‘knight’ this technology we must consider the remaining edge of the sword as well as some of the fallacies being purported as fact.
First off, let’s touch on the idea of safety. The concept of automating the driving experience holds its own inherent issues. Sure the Google fleet has travelled 75 years-worth of driving, but under limited conditions and environments. It is well known that adverse weather conditions can knock out the rooftop sensors as well as these driverless vehicles being unable to read snow covered roads, never mind understand other analog traffic signals such as manual traffic direction by police and/or road crews.
Another safety factor to consider is the ‘blue screen of death’. If networks go down, which they have done, (Remember the multiple Skytrain outages due to software issues) what happens to cars in mid-flight? Also a system malfunction which causes one vehicle to plow into another at 45 km/hr would be far more dangerous to passengers as they would have no idea the accident was taking place and wouldn’t prepare for the impact because they were playing pinochle instead of watching the road. Driverless cars will not be immune from accidents, despite what Google wants you to believe.
While we are going on about accidents, what about culpability? Who’s responsible in a driverless vehicle accident? Is it the driver? The auto manufacturer? The software developer? The cloud service provider? The GPS network provider? No precedent has been set and as far as I can see, no one at Google is talking about it either. Then there’s ethics. If there is an accident between a vehicle and pedestrian/cyclist or even another vehicle, how does the computer determine who is saved? If a pregnant woman slipped on ice into the path of an oncoming self-driving vehicle, would the computer swerve to avoid killing the woman and her unborn child if there was a chance the vehicle could hit a telephone pole that would possibly injure/kill the driver? Again no one is actively discussing this.
Now that we’re talking tech, let’s discuss data. In order to do its job, you’re driverless car will have a lot of information on you. Hackers can gain access to that info. They will know where you go, how long you spend there, and/or whether you are at home. They could even control your car remotely, they’ve already done it with less tech-dependent vehicles by shutting them off while in motion. Don’t think this will happen to these newer vehicles? Information security experts have openly admitted that hackers can gain access to pretty well anything; the best they can do is minimize the damage a hacker can do once they enter the system. You may want to think about the fact that your location data will probably be shared as either a function of the system or as an alternative revenue stream for manufactures of the driverless fleet.
As a transportation disruptor, self-driving vehicles will decimate whole industries in regards to employment. Uber is already threatening to take the taxi cab space and thrash it into non-existence, but its model doesn’t replace drivers, it just eliminates the middle man in the equation, allowing drivers to earn far more than their indentured counterparts. Google’s cars would eliminate the need for the driver as well, leaving not only the 233,000 American taxi drivers out of work, but all those driving for Uber as well. You may think that Uber would never do that, but they have been furiously working on a driverless scenario as well. Then there are the truck drivers that haul cargo around the country; once this tech proves out, shipping companies will be lining up for this service making the estimated 3.5 million professional truck drivers hit the bread line. That’s a lot of unemployment, where are these individuals going to find other work in our increasing tight economy?
Alright, let’s bring this down to a more emotional level. What about the enjoyment of driving? Not to mention that the art of driving will most likely fade as a result of the modernity facilitated by the driverless vehicle. I know quite a few people who get a thrill out of driving on a road trip or even around the city. These new cars will be thrill-less in the eyes of these individuals.
There will also be a physical knock-on effect. Motion sickness is expected to increase as we eliminate the driver. Motion sickness is caused by a perceptual disconnect between the inner ear and your eyes when it comes to being in motion. If your inner ear is convinced you’re moving and your eyes are consuming a movie or reading a book, you may get nauseous because your eyes will not be watching the road and not being constantly reminded you are moving.
Okay, now the fallacy. Driverless vehicles will significantly reduce our ever-building traffic congestion. The smooth start up and deceleration of these self-driving vehicles, meant to emulate the rail experience in order to keep from bouncing passengers about in transit, actually created more congestion then vehicles driven by humans. The tests were exhaustive and followed 16 different scenarios against a control group – each time the result was the same. Imagine being behind a semi hauling cargo at a light. The tractor/trailer takes its time accelerating through the intersection, leaving cars trapped at the light. This is the same as being behind a driverless car.
Everything I’ve said will hinder the speedy adoption of the self-driving vehicle but won't stop it from becoming the societal norm in the next 30 years. However, no amount of glad-handing should force us to ignore these negative points and challenges. Now more than ever, we need to utilize a wisdom that isn’t seen very often when it comes to tech companies discussing the wonders of tomorrow in a driverless car market expected to be worth $87 billion by 2030.