Specialists from the University of Glasgow believe self-driving cars “need to learn the language of cyclists”, with their research suggesting such improvements are necessary to help autonomous vehicles safely share the roads with those riding bicycles.
In a paper titled ‘Keep it Real: Investigating Driver-Cyclist Interaction in Real-World Traffic’, which will be published later in 2023 and was today reported by The Herald newspaper, researchers looked to unpick the relationship between cyclists and automated vehicles, saying there had been “comparatively little” research into how self-driving technology can keep cyclists safe.
Professor Stephen Brewster of the university’s School of Computing Science said there had been “a lot of research in recent years on building safety features into autonomous vehicles to help keep pedestrians safe”, something that needs to be repeated with cyclists.
> “These are completely safe autonomous vehicles”: Cyclist spots driverless car using cycle lane
“Cars and bikes share the same spaces on the roads, which can be dangerous – between 2015 and 2020, 84 per cent of fatal bike accidents involved a motor vehicle, and there were more than 11,000 collisions,” he said.
“There has been a lot of research in recent years on building safety features into autonomous vehicles to help keep pedestrians safe, but comparatively little on how automated vehicles can safely share the road with cyclists.
“That’s a cause for concern as automated vehicles become more commonplace on the roads. While pedestrians tend to meet automated vehicles in highly controlled situations like road crossings, cyclists ride alongside cars for prolonged periods and rely on two-way interactions with drivers to determine each other’s intentions.
“It’s a much more complicated set of behaviours, which makes it a big challenge for future generations of automated vehicles to tackle. Currently, self-driving cars offer very little direct feedback to cyclists to help them make critically important decisions like whether it’s safe to overtake or to switch lanes. Adding any guesswork to the delicate negotiations between car and bike has the potential to make the roads less safe.”
> Tesla car in Full Self-Driving Beta almost rams cyclist
Brewster’s team studied the ways drivers and cyclists directly and indirectly communicate in real-world situations. From the research they have formed recommendations for future generations of automated vehicles.
The researchers suggest the vehicles’ intentions could be displayed on their exteriors, for example displaying animations signalling intention to speed up, slow down, give way or manoeuvre.
At the other end of the relationship they suggest cyclists could wear ‘smart glasses’ communicating the vehicle’s intentions to them, for example when coloured LEDs on the car light up to signal right of way is up for negotiation a vibration could be sent to the glasses as a non-verbal message.
The paper’s co-author, Ammar Al-Taie, said he hopes the research will inform autonomous vehicle designers, encouraging them to develop “new ways that self-driving cars can work safely alongside cyclists by speaking their language”.
“Just like spoken languages, communication between cyclists and drivers varies from country to country. We’re very conscious that this paper focuses specifically on UK roads – any future developments will need to take into account the differences in drivers’ and cyclists’ interactions across the world.”
The research will be presented, at the ACM Conference on Human factors in Computing Systems, in Germany next week.
105 thoughts on “Researchers suggest cyclists could wear smart glasses to communicate with self-driving cars — automated vehicles “need to learn the language of cyclists””
Quote:
Presumably that would be except on anything made by Audi or BMW, since their indicators don’t ever seem to work…
Cool – so will the car companies be buying all the cyclists these smart glasses to enable them to ride safely on the roads made unsafe because of their ‘self-driving’ new vehicles? No, didn’t think so…
You forgot Mercedes.
You forgot Mercedes.
Well they can get bent with
Well they can get bent with that idea.
Who’s going to pay for these? The car companies? Unlikely
I don’t want to be invovled in a crash and told it’s my fault for not wearing my digital glasses.
Quote:
I’m betting that is because the likes of Musk, and other less ostentatiously evil car company CEOs, are hoping to get cyclists banned from roads, or their usage severely restricted, like their predecessors did with pedestrians when they invented the completely bullshit made-up concept of “jaywalking”.
Can I be the first, of many I
Can I be the first, of many I hope, to tell these incel Musk fanbois to ram their stupid cyclist-hating ideas where the sun don’t shine?
Will “the victim, who wasn’t
Will “the victim, who wasn’t wearing smart glasses…” become the new “the victim, who wasn’t wearing hiviz or a helmet…”?
“need to learn the language
“need to learn the language of cyclists”,
I can think of a few robust Anglo Saxon words !
Since when is “right of way”
Since when is “right of way” up for negotiation, either you have it or you don’t, this sounds like they want autonomous vehicles to be able to ignore the highway code in the same way regular drivers do. So much for them being safer!
Backladder wrote:
For starters, it’s “priority” rather than “right of way” (which is to do with rights to cross privately owned land).
If they’ve forgotten to allow for being on the same roads as cyclists, I wonder when they’ll remember to allow for horses, scooters, mobility vehicles etc.
I’m not convinced that they
I’m not convinced that they mean priority, if a cyclist or pedestrian proceeds when they don’t have priority is it ok to run them down? The autonomous vehicle should be programmed to stop in that case regardless of priority.
Backladder wrote:
If 2 vehicles approach a road narrowing like this at the same time, who goes first?
With humans, usually there will be some communication (flashing of headlights, hand gesture, indicators) to say “you go first”.
Tom_77 wrote:
That’s similar to how locks are used in software.
In this case, there’s two vehicles trying to use the same resource (narrowed road), so one solution would be for both vehicles to stop as neither has priority. Then, they wait a random time and attempt to claim the resource by starting to move slowly forwards if the other vehicle isn’t moving towards it. If both start moving simultaneously, then both stop and wait a random time before trying again.
Smart glasses seem a bit of a
Smart glasses seem a bit of a silly idea but building a wireless signal, which autonomous vehicles could detect, into a bike light or similar would be fairly easy.
Given that the entire purpose of running rear lights is to increase your visibility to others there would be no significant added burden to cyclists.
Except for the waste of all
Except for the waste of all existing rear lights which will not have that benefit.
All lights will be replaced
All lights will be replaced at some point, no need for any to be wasted.
Just run the risk of being
Just run the risk of being run over by an AV until your existing light dies?
If this were to ever become
If this were to ever become ‘a thing’ I imagine we’d have plenty of warning.
Given that the current market leaders in autonomy aren’t relying on this sort of thing at all I doubt it will be required anytime soon.
We surveyed a whole load of
We surveyed a whole load of cyclists in another paper to find out thoughts about technology use. One thing was that almost everyone carried their phone when riding, so you could potentially use that for communicating with other vehicles. But, as above we dont want to rely on that. The AV should have the tech required to be safe around riders.
Neither Cruise nor Waymo rely
Neither Cruise nor Waymo rely on communication from bicycles to spot them so I’d anticipate such a feature being an adjunct to the main autonomous system.
Akin to a daytime running light, not vital but well worth considering.
Some form of passive (doesnt
Some form of passive (doesnt need battery, fit and forget) transponder fitted to a bike could work. Something the size of an airtag, doesnt need long range. Like Rich_cb says something additional to help the AV identify the hazard rather than to be relied on.
NickSprink wrote:
How about something that could reflect visible light rays and then the AV could use its ‘eyes’ to ‘see’ the cyclist?
Hi all, this was a bit of
Hi all, this was a bit of work one of my PhD students and I did. Super happy to get it featured on road.cc as I’m a regular reader! When we looked, there isnt much work out there about how cyclists and drivers currently communicate, so we thought we would find out. The aim is that when automated vehicles come on the road they can fit in to traffic in a safe way. When there is no driver who you can look in the eye any more, we need to know what the AV is going to do and to know that it will understand our road behaviour. One way proposed to do that is for an AV to have displays on the outside that might communicate its intent, or that it has detected your presence. This paper is our first step in understanding how the communication happens now in real life situations.
Hi Steve
Hi Steve
I’m glad someone is looking at how autonomous cars are to communicate their intentions, not just to cyclists but to human drivers as well.
Driving or riding in any town requires subtle co-operation using visual cues including road speed, change of speed, steering angle, road position, hand signals, head movement etc. Also where possible helping other users like LGVs, buses and preventing deadlock with oncoming traffic e.g. outside schools.
Are we only now thinking about how an autonomous car might conduct this dance? Is there a plan, or will it be the usual mantra responsible for SUVs – ‘Sell it and stuff other road users’ ?
And for goodness sake, smart glasses are a non-starter. Do you really expect pedestrians, horse riders and young kids on bikes to use them?
I’d love to believe that our government with its excellent record of informed decsion-making (/s) will ban autonomous cars from towns and cities until workable answers are found.
hi jaysa – the communication
hi jaysa – the communication is really interesting and often subtle. AVs need to understand the dance to fit in to human traffic. Right now, most work has looked at AVs and pedestrians at crossings. That is relatively easy compared to bikes, escooters, … As i ride everyday, I wanted to make sure we cyclists werent forgotten about.
The smart glasses are one example that got picked up in the artice. To be clear, we dont expect riders to have anything; should be all on the AVs. But if you do have some tech, you could use it if it helps you. Might be a bike computer or a phone mounted on the handle bars. In some futures, augmented reality displays are predicted to be as common as phones, so we wanted to think how they might be used too.
Congratulations on getting
Congratulations on getting your paper published, I know how much work goes in to that kind of thing.
The eyes of the driver mean
The eyes of the driver mean nothing.
It’s the wheels you look at.
Actually, it really depends
Actually, it really depends on the traffic scenario as to where people look. We got a bunch of cyclists to ride wearing eyetracking glasses so we could see where they looked. In controlled intersections they hardly looked at other vehicles at all, just the traffic lights. In bottleneck scenarios they stared straight into the eyes of the driver approaching them! There were loads of different behaviours that we saw.
My bicycles already carry
My bicycles already carry visual light reflectors for the benefit of my visibility to other road users. If the AV manufacturers agreed a standard and made them freely available I could be persuaded to attach a discreet lidar / radar or other unpowered device which increases my visibility to the AV.
Ideally I expect that no AV system will be licensed for use on our roads until it meets stringent safety standards with respect to pedestrians, cyclists, horse riders and other vulnerable road users. However, I am generally supportive of the technology and appreciate that nothing arrives in a fully mature state.
A bit like sailing boats
A bit like sailing boats having a radar reflector fitted to the mast. But if a 10,000kg yacht needs a radar reflector the size of a 2 litre bottle, what would 100kg of bike and rider need?
Probably because it’s been
Probably because it’s been drummed into cyclists to make eye contact.
Pretty much it’s a fallicy.
There are many on this site who can tell stories of making eye contact in an instant before being run over.
Or the motorist “looking right through them”
The wheels will tell you so much more, where the car is going, if it’s moving.
There is one reason to make eye contact, it’s so that if they do run you down and kill you, they will have something to remember when the wake up from their nightmares.
As there are at least 5
As there are at least 5 different types of EV charging cable, are cyclists going to have to wear a different set of glasses per car manufacturer?
Once we work out what might
Once we work out what might need to be communicated, and now to do it best, then we would make that open. Then we could make apps for phones/bike computers/headsets. There are some very early stage ISO standards emerging, so we should try and get it in there. So, hopefully avoid your issue!
* of course, stuff that the cyclist might use should be optional. The AV should be safe if the rider has no tech at all.
My point was that there is no
My point was that there is no one “standard” charge cable connector for an EV … which let’s face it is essential a couple of bits of wire.
How are you going to get *all* the existing vehicle and *all* the future manufacturers to agree on how the technology will interface, use, information provided and cost?
As a potential false equivalence, the SMART meter roll out turned in to a fiasco because 3 suppliers couldn’t agree on data and protocol… how are you going to get vehicle manufacturers to agree?
SteeveB wrote:
should be easy, after all we have managed a single standard for bottom brackets and that’s much more complex
/sarcasm.
“* of course, stuff that the
“* of course, stuff that the cyclist might use should be optional.”
Of course it should. Just as now nobody ever gets shouted at/publicly condemned/judged for contributory negligence for not wearing hi vis or a helmet. Oh wait..
Oldfatgit wrote:
I assume there would be an app for that.
Jetmans Dad wrote:
I assume there would be an app for that. — Oldfatgit
I read somewhere that if you wanted to make sure you had the app to be able to park a car anywhere in the UK, you’d now need something like 38 different apps.
Or… hear me out… we
Or… hear me out… we should just enforce better driving standards that don’t kill or maim people in large numbers.
Sorry, now I’ve read that back to myself I realise how ridiculous it sounds. Crack on with the technology glasses lads!
ChrisB200SX wrote:
Did you miss the part where this is about autonomous vehicles … i.e. not being driven by a human?
Jetmans Dad wrote:
Are all motorvehicles driverless now? That’s a big change since last week. Not sure how my two cars are going to drive themselves though?
ChrisB200SX wrote:
No … I get that. But the proposal to have cyclists wearing smartspecs is specifically to aid interaction between cyclists and driverless vehicles and has nothing to do with how we currently enforce (or don’t) driving standards.
Frankly, as I have to wear glasses all the time anyway, if wearing a pair of smart glasses helps provide the data to make it safer for me and future riders to travel around driverless cars then bring it on.
Jetmans Dad wrote:
Somehow, the point is still sailing over your head.
Perhaps we should put the onus on the vehicles that are causing the harm?
AI usually gets trained by
AI usually gets trained by example. Hence the problem. No source data.
Individual motorized
Individual motorized transport is an inefficient waste of public space, valuable ressources and energy, and we have to get rid of it asap. Does any of that change with autonomous cars? No.
Autonomous cars would make
Autonomous cars would make ride sharing far easier so… Yes.
Rich_cb wrote:
Why?
The vehicles will be easily
The vehicles will be easily subdivided to give the privacy of a private car along with the door to door convenience.
All at a fraction of the cost.
Have a look at the Cruise Origin vehicle, that’s where we’re heading imminently, it’s designed around ride sharing and is being launched in the next few weeks.
Rich_cb wrote:
I have just looked at the Cruise Origin. I don’t see the privacy you are lauding.
Steve K wrote:
I have just looked at the Cruise Origin. I don’t see the privacy you are lauding. — Rich_cb
Nor me…
https://topelectricsuv.com/news/cruise/cruise-origin-latest/
You can’t see how that space
You can’t see how that space could be subdivided easily to provide private space?
Rich_cb wrote:
Yes, but it would be pretty claustrophobic…
It depends on your frame of
It depends on your frame of reference I suppose. Relative to the ‘personal space’ you get on most public transport at rush hour it would be positively luxurious.
It looks like a bus…
It looks like a bus…
I said the vehicles will be
I said the vehicles will be “easily subdivided”.
It’s pretty obvious that the space could be easily subdivided.
Quite, this is existing
Quite, this is existing technology.
Rich_cb wrote:
So could a bus? Why does taking out the driver’s seat make such a massive difference? And if it’s so obviously the way forward, why hasn’t the actual example that you put forward done it?
That you would choose to
That you would choose to believe the unfounded publicity of the manufacturers comes as no surprise.
I’m just looking at the
I’m just looking at the economics.
Autonomous vehicles will give people the option of door to door transport in privacy at a fraction of the cost of a private vehicle. The vehicles being built right now will be easily subdivided into compartments allowing all of the above at an even lower cost.
Why wouldn’t people use that service?
If we’re not to believe ‘unfounded’ predictions then please share the evidence you’re basing your predictions on?
Rich_cb wrote:
(Many) people don’t really like sharing.
If you had your own private
If you had your own private door and space within a lot of that opposition to ride sharing would likely disappear.
Own door? Given vehicles seem
Own door? Given vehicles seem to be getting bigger sounds like self-driving apartments would be the way to go. Everyone’s got problems with their WiFi? Just send the flats across town! Town centres would be delighted by sudden surges in passing trade. People could do “appartment-pool karaoke” videos with a real choir! I’m sure some would find it as enjoyable as a cruise ship. Better than Windows Spotlight! “oh look, it’s Bognor Regis out there! I think I’ll have an afternoon out.”
Should be easy politically, just establish a supporter or two in every apparent block – hey presto, you can get the vote out!
Rich_cb wrote:
Are you trying to re-invent trains?
They are more of a
They are more of a reinvention of buses.
I think of autonomous cars like miniature buses without fixed time tables or routes.
If we can get average car occupancy to 2(!) then we can almost halve the number of cars on our roads. Add to that the huge amount of street space freed up from a lack of parked vehicles and you have a far more pleasant environment.
Rich_cb wrote:
Maybe we could call them minibuses.
I was thinking smaller than
I was thinking smaller than that so maybe microbuses would be more accurate?
Jeepney / Songthaew?
Jeepney / Songthaew?
(I suspect the current ones aren’t exactly “green transport” – unless they’re painted that way…)
Rich_cb wrote:
That would certainly be a major benefit. Depending on what governments subsidised / prioritise I guess we’ll initially see a mixture of a few of these things – possibly at the “luxury / novelty” end / maybe in the biggest and densest urban areas, a continuation of the likes of Uber and maybe a growth in car share schemes – where you get your “own” car. People are currently accustomed to that. (These are well established in some places).
OTOH I’m not certain we’ll see much change in the UK driving environment at all any time soon.
The three leading cities
The three leading cities for autonomous vehicles (outside of China) are all in the US which is about as car centric a culture as you can get.
I would be very surprised if they weren’t a common sight in UK cities by the end of this decade.
I expect they’ll initially displace taxis, then buses and second cars and eventually almost all passenger vehicles.
I can’t disagree with your
I can’t disagree with your final paragraph, but I just don’t see why self-driving vehicles will suddenly make sharing attractive (but that may just be my lack of imagination).
I can see cases where the reverse might happen. Going out for some drinks? No need for one person to be the designated driver and give everyone else a lift; you can all arrive in your own self-driving vehicle.
Steve K wrote:
If AVs become commonplace, then I think it’ll lead to increased traffic. Not only will there be the journeys that people currently make, but there’ll be the journeys for the vehicles to get to and from the people and charging points.
We will all be locked down in
We will all be locked down in 15 minute neighbour cells by then – no need for any vehicles!
It will be a lot cheaper to
It will be a lot cheaper to share and, if you have a private compartment, there will be almost no downside to sharing.
In that situation I can’t see why sharing wouldn’t flourish.
In your example that may lead to an increased number of cars but each group member could share part or all of their journeys to the pub and back with people heading in the same direction so overall there’d still be a decrease compared to the status quo.
Rich_cb wrote:
If we’re going to have private compartments, then wouldn’t it be better to split apart the vehicle so that it takes up less space? It’d also allow the compartments to travel in different directions. Maybe the ideal solution would be a vehicle per person?
hawkinspeter wrote:
I’ve just realised that the picture shows some high body-fat people, so maybe a better bet would be to include an exercise device so that people can exercise whilst being transported somewhere?
Now, all we have to do is come up with a design of a cheap vehicle that can transport a person wherever they want to go and also provides them with some healthy exercise whilst doing it. Ideally it’d be a vehicle that doesn’t pollute as well.
You might be on to something
You might be on to something there!
Maybe a vehicle, I don’t know
Maybe a vehicle, I don’t know, powered by its passenger?
KDee wrote:
Is such a thing even possible?
There may be some scope for
There may be some scope for single person vehicles but it will always be considerably cheaper to share a vehicle so I think most people will opt for that with private compartment etc.
Rich_cb wrote:
So, what we need are vehicles that can carry a large number of people at the same time for the ultimate in cheap transport. Maybe have a fleet of such vehicles that travel common, busy routes and pick-up/drop-off people at known points. To make it even more efficient, we could designate specific lanes for those shared vehicles so that they don’t get held up so much by the non-shared vehicles.
I’m guessing you’re being
I’m guessing you’re being facetious but if not you’re not really comparing like for like.
A bus isn’t a door to door service. You don’t have any privacy either. With an autonomous car you get 90% of the environmental and cost benefit of a bus with none of the downsides.
Rich_cb wrote:
Yes, I was being facetious.
I’m not convinced about the environmental/cost benefit of having an extremely heavy (batteries innit?) vehicle traversing all the minor roads in an attempt to drop people off at their front doors. It’d be better to keep the heavy shared EV on the main roads and have people walk from their LTN to the heavy, shared EV-stop.
Ultimately, if we stick with car shaped vehicles then we’ll continue to experience car shaped problems such as congestion and increased pollution (tyres and brakes) due to the extra weight of EVs. What we should be doing is getting as many journeys as possible onto e-scooters, bikes (electric or acoustic) and shoes. By using a smaller vehicle, the batteries can be vastly reduced and of course, a large part of EV batteries are used to carry the EV batteries around.
Congestion can be solved by
Congestion can be solved by increasing occupancy and all the other problems you mention will be decreased as well. Brake pad usage in an autonomous EV should be minimal as all planned deceleration can be done using regenerative braking.
It will be politically impossible to get most people to abandon their cars in favour of walking to the bus stop to take a crowded bus in the general direction of their destination and then walk some more.
That option already exists and the vast majority of people choose not to take it.
Small shared autonomous public transport brings almost all of the benefits of large buses but without the barriers that dissuade people from using large buses.
The latest EV batteries announced have nearly double the energy density of the current market leaders so EV weight should drop significantly by the time these vehicles are commonplace in the UK.
Rich_cb wrote:
However, if you’re aiming to use AVs for door-to-door trips, then that’s going to cause congestion as you have a large shared vehicle going down smaller streets, stopping for a while and then moving on.
I’m not convinced that having a driverless bus really changes the geometry of the streets and vehicles.
EV batteries may get better, but there’s going to be a major problem with trying to get enough lithium to replace all the ICE vehicles. The better solution is to scale down the vehicles so that they don’t need to use so many batteries – that can and is being done currently.
They’ve also developed
They’ve also developed lithium free batteries (using sodium instead) so that also shouldn’t hold us back. As people get used to EVs I do think a market will develop for smaller batteries but currently people want as big a range as possible.
Dropping people at their doors will be no different to how the roads are used now with the exception that there won’t be anywhere near as many parked cars so congestion on residential streets will be dramatically improved.
Rich_cb wrote:
There’s a lot of work to be done with sodium-ion batteries in terms of energy density, so it seems unlikely that lithium-ion will be replaced any time soon.
Getting rid of all the parked vehicles would certainly be great, but it relies on people not wanting to own their own transport.
Sodium ion is where LFP was
Sodium ion is where LFP was just a few years ago so it’s certainly not implausible that it will achieve the required density to be the sole battery in an EV. Even with the lower density it has useful enough characteristics to be used alongside Li-ion which would still reduce the overall amount of lithium required.
I honestly think that once autonomous cars are widely available private car ownership will plummet. The average car only does 6000 miles a year, at the bottom end of that bell curve there are a huge number of cars which barely move, they’ll be first to go.
Rich_cb wrote:
sounded low to me so I did some google fu, and first result was this
which of course left me no wiser but it gets better still
all from the same page, baffling.
another source gave the following
which I found a little more credible
The latest MOT data is for
The latest MOT data is for 2021 and shows significantly less than 6000 on average.
Given that 2021 was still COVIDed slightly, it seems reasonable to use 6000.
Rich_cb wrote:
highly desireable, but of course the real reason why residential streets have become so congested with parked cars, is that adults are no longer able to afford to leave the family home, cost of housing is the biggest problem we have, it affects many other things.
but the landowning classes benefit, so I doubt much will change. And of course if anyone want to byuild new houses, the boomers are out with their banners “save our village” Maybe I’ll get some made up “no houses for our grandchildren” and put them up next to them.
So who is buying the houses
So who is buying the houses then?
Genuine question – at least round me in Edinburgh there’s a major expansion going on – both driven by council and also lots of private developments. (Another concern is – we’re building on former industrial (good) / farming (hmm) sites here – but what jobs are these people going to do? We also don’t appear to be building new amenities or even cycle paths…)
Rich_cb wrote:
What is it about driverless vehicles that makes this suddenly such a great option compared with sharing a cab?
Steve K wrote:
With AVs, we can maybe rethink what kind of form factor is best for transport.
Traditional cabs are designed around needing to have a driver and so it makes sense to try to transport multiple people with using only one driver. Autonomous cabs shouldn’t need to replicate that design, so I think that single person vehicles will become popular as certainly there’s a lot of single occupancy cars on the roads.
There’s also the ownership of the vehicles to consider. If people are going to purchase and own a vehicle, then it makes sense to consider the maximum number of people you want to transport, even if that’s a rare occurrence. If you’re hiring a vehicle on a single trip basis, then you just want the minimum size available.
The cost and the privacy
The cost and the privacy/safety of your own compartment.
Most people often share taxis with friends, most don’t do so with strangers. In most cities you’ll often be traveling in the same direction as large numbers of other people so there is scope to reduce both costs and congestion significantly.
Rich_cb wrote:
Is anyone actually designing/producing these individually compartmentalised vehicles you envisage?
The first commercial
The first commercial operation of a bespoke driverless taxi will begin later this year.
Both Cruise and Zoox have gone for a very similar design which can easily be compartmentalised.
I imagine they’ll start with one space and then as the commercial operation increases they’ll compartmentalise to maximise revenue per car.
Rich_cb wrote:
an incredible amount of heavy lifting there for the superhero letters I and F
It’s a huge leap I’d agree
It’s a huge leap I’d agree but I actually think it’s achievable.
The difference on our streets would be profound.
Rich_cb wrote:
maybe the biggest improvement in our street from autonomous shared cars would be the removal of on street parking. If you don’t have somewhere on your own property to store a car, then self driving share cars are your solution.
Allowing all the space annexed by drivers for long term storage to be used for either imrpoved pedestrian environment or less restricted thoroughfare would be great.
It would be transformational.
It would be transformational. I suspect that when/if widespread on street parking disappears it will be a bit like the indoor smoking ban, we’ll wonder why on earth we put up with it previously.
Rich_cb wrote:
Car sharing has great potential, even more for fully autonomous ones since the user bad driving risk is eliminated. But there are two very important reason that they will need lots of time to succeed.
The first is cost. A twenty year old car can work perfectly with a little care and you can purchase it used for very little money. Regarding car sharing running costs, I have seen examples of scooter sharing services that their running cost per mile is comparable to that of a car (excluding purchase cost/tax/insurance). If you scale it up to car scale, I believe it will be very expensive. This can only be “solved” if the car tax is raised so much that some will think twice before having a private car. But this is not a proper solution.
The second problem is that people like their stuff. Some people including me like to have their own bicycle, either because of special customizing either of sentimental value. The Dutch having shitty bicycle for commuting that don’t care if stolen despite their wealth. This shows that this can be overcomed, but for me it seems a little difficult. The same applies to cars.
I think the Dutch example is
I think the Dutch example is good.
People often use their transport as a status symbol or extension of their personality but, given the right circumstances, will opt for something entirely practical.
I think autonomous cars will fall into this category, people will originally use them instead of taxis, then they’ll ditch their second cars and use them as back up to their main vehicle, then they’ll transition away from private vehicles altogether.
Owning a car is so expensive for most people they’ll prefer to spend their money elsewhere once they have an alternative.
This “Dutch example” isn’t
This “Dutch example” isn’t 100% correct. I have a nice shiny new commuter bike, but also have my “beer fiets”. A real heap of shit that I won’t worry about if I can’t remember where I left it.
Rich_cb wrote:
I think a lot of people are in denial about how much running their car really costs them.
marmotte27 wrote:
Depends on how big the vehicle is. Mopeds can be quite efficient, though they can spew out a bit of pollution. The trick is to use the maximum percentage of the energy to move the person and minimise the energy to move the motor and vehicle. That’s why I think e-scooters are a great solution for short trips around cities.
I think there’s yet again a
I think there’s yet again a urban / low density divide here and I’m not sure about the latter so I’ll ignore that*. But for urban areas I think there’s a great potential for synergy between the development of infra for mass cycling and e-scooters. I suspect infra holds these back in the UK. That would certainly be fixed by Dutch-quality infra with smooth pothole-free surfaces and fewer sudden kerbs to negociate.
In fact I wonder whether bikes will end up remaining a minor fraction of transport in UK urban areas? E-scooters have the comfort / convenience (just stand there), I think are relatively cheap to power and fix some other private transport issues. Security (just carry it), transporting the transport (just push / carry it), storage (minimal). And maintenance would seem a positive also – they’ve not got many parts which stick out and I imagine like Dutch bikes and cars if they don’t work you just take them to a shop (carry them)!
I’m not a huge fan of them – I think bikes are healthier and more sustainable. I’ve seen the odd problematic interactions with pedestrians in the UK. I’m not sure what the safety looks like especially if there are large numbers. But it’s quite easy to imagine shorter urban journeys being dominated by this mode – if there are flat surfaces not shared with large motor vehicles.
* Part of the issue is that cars accellerated the centralisation of jobs and amenities. We’ve also fixed it for some to have the best of both e.g. reside in the quiet countryside but be hypermobile and access the amenities and money in the cities.