Hey Guy, You Can Solve These Driverless Car Problems
This one goes out to all my armchair quarterbacks who sling complaints across the interwaves, yet never show up to a city meeting to put their opinions on trial. You’ve got a bigger role than that of a troll, my fellow citizen; it’s time you started participating in the future of transportation.
While the technology in self-driving vehicles is rightfully beyond the skill set of Joe The Plumber, the impact of such technology is vast and infinite — which means there are plenty of practical areas for folks like you and me to make our mark. Sit on the sidelines if you like, but just know that these changes are coming right up your driveway, toward your doorstep, and into your home. If you have a perspective to share, a solution to propose, or sure, merely a fist to shake… well, you should get on that horse. To help get your juices flowing in a productive and respectful manner, below are some of the more practical issues facing the future of transportation, a.k.a. autonomous car problems for the rest of us.
1. Distinguishing An AV From A Traditional Vehicle
The lowest-hanging fruit for most of us are the issues that require the least imagination to grasp, because most people have shit for imagination. Unfortunately, that often means they create shit solutions, because they can’t see beyond the immediate problem. Let’s try to avoid that today, eh?
It may be difficult to envision a world devoid of human drivers, but we’ve probably still got 15–20 years of mingling humans and robots on the road before the end game hits. So, during this transition period, how will we distinguish a robot pilot from a human one? This is especially useful to solve over the next few years of motoring, as manufacturers like Tesla attempt to hand us the keys to a car that could, at any time, be piloted by either party. Or to complicate it further, deciphering just what kind of intelligence a car has… for instance, knowing it can self-park, but can’t brake for obstacles:
Human drivers and pedestrians need to know when their actions or gestures will work, and when they won’t. You probably don’t want to teach your kids that it’s “sometimes” okay to run out into the road after their soccer ball, nor do you want to speed away from rear-ending a car in traffic only to find later that its robo-pilot transferred video of your behavior to police and insurance agencies. Because you know, rear-ending people isn’t the problem. Getting caught is.
It could also be viewed as an extension of the issue in identifying an electric vehicle, as the lack of engine sounds made such cars problematic for pedestrian interaction. Though… there’s been very little done to solve that problem over the past decade, so it looks like we’re off to a good start.
What solutions can you imagine? When is it useful to distinguish the vehicles, and when, if at all, is it harmful? Is there an argument to be made that people should respect the danger of a moving vehicle at all times, and not be made aware at all when the driver is a software program?
Or, should the solution be more old-school — physical markings, something tactile. You’d have to consider the problems of trying to keep up with the changes of a digital world from the confines of a physical one. Often, these solutions look silly in retrospect.
Personally, I really like the idea of further pillaging from the aftermarket community and turning on a green underglow whenever a car is being controlled by a bot. My only concern is how long the drive-thru at Taco Bell will get, because you can’t have underglow and not be eating at Taco Bell. It’s illegal.
2. Isolating Passengers
As a New Yorker, I’m sworn to uphold the social contract which strictly forbids human interaction when using mass transit. But, I can appreciate that in New York, everyone hates everyone, and a subway car is an easy place to disappear.
Contrast this with UberPOOL, where your warm, quiet, intimate backseat is abruptly violated by a new rider who may or may not be invading your personal space depending on how much of a dick he is. Side note: re-read that paragraph and give me a gold star for maintaining the sexual innuendo.
Now, let’s make the situation even worse: there’s no Uber employee in a driverless car, so you can’t rationalize your self-prescribed Avoidant Personality Disorder through the driver’s obligation to interact with passengers. It’s just you and new guy, swapping body heat and probably body smells.
Ridesharing is certainly one of the more interesting elements of the autonomous transportation future, as it tugs at many of the economic and emotional factors fueling the transportation choices we make.
If we didn’t care about our privacy, and we weren’t so attached to the solitude our cars afford us, then the answer would be easy, and follow the liberals’ agenda of stuffing as many humans as possible into a moving box. The potential for increased transportation efficiency is astounding when you take the luxury of solitude out of the mix.
But, we like our solitude. I like my solitude. And if anyone’s planning on using autonomous transportation to get work done, or sleep, or not have to listen to someone else yell into their phone about how classy they are, then we’ll need a way to isolate passengers.
Don’t just think about it from an interpersonal angle though. Consider how your placement of passengers relative to the rest of the vehicle affects ingress and egress, which in turn affects the efficiency of the trip. Perhaps it’s more expensive to give everyone their own entry point and personal compartment, but… if those compartments can be modular, linking up to other compartments in order to form a mass vehicle, then you’ve got a transit model that never needs to make “stops” — all the delays caused by the need for a human to physically get in or out of the vehicle occur independently at that passenger’s personal first/last mile terminations. You get a pod, and you get a pod… everybody gets a pod.
Or not? Perhaps the trip efficiency isn’t worth the waste, or more practically, isn’t worth the waste all the time. Maybe the well-travelled thoroughfare in your city only operates large mass-passenger vehicles, since those trips are short and predictable in their paths. Just remember, whatever you build, it now has to address the “unlicensed 30%” — the rough percentage of our population who, for all manner of reason, are often forgotten or compromised by traditional cars. In a future of shared vehicles, those folks will be stepping in as you’re stepping out.
By the way, if you have some thoughts around how to design an efficient means of passenger isolation, you should most definitely sign up for Local Motors’ community of problem solvers:
3. Street Repurposing
Intersections pose the biggest challenge for self-driving vehicles, but your everyday residential street might pose the greatest opportunity.
Below is a view of my block. It reflects, from green to red, how “usable” the street is to the people living on it — that is to say, how much a given portion of it can be used for any purpose at any time, without fear of injury, property damage, etc. The unsurprising reality is that most of it is virtually unusable to residents. It’s just the place where cars live. It’s no news flash — we designed most of America’s neighborhoods around cars.
Now, consider the autonomous future: virtually no parked cars, no private driveways or garages required for them, no halo of danger surrounding the parked cars as someone else’s valuable property, fewer cars/trips in general leading to a less-busy street, and a fleet of drivers who are constantly at attention and pose no threat to pedestrians.
What you have here is enough space to build another row of homes. Or playgrounds, or gardens, or cafes, or work stations, or petting zoos, or Slip’N’Slides, or moon bounces, or just a very, very large sign that says, “Thanks for all the space! Love, Sign”.
What will we put here? What will we do with such an increase of usable land that it may go down in U.S. history ahead of the Louisiana Purchase?
You tell me, cowboy. It’s a new frontier.
