Automated transportation

One of the areas I worked on during my professional career was automation of transportation systems. In the 80s, the possibilities of introducing electronics in cars to provide situation awareness and communication were increasing. Cell phones were making it possible for connecting car drivers to the rest of the world. The Global Positioning Satellite System (GPS) developed by the military was finally available for civilian use. That allowed cars to know their locations with respect to an electronic map. Pretty soon, routing algorithms were introduced to take one from point A to point B. Heady times.

 

We predicted that the days of self-driving cars were just around the corner. Now, finally, many decades later that is becoming true. A ride in a self-driving car such as Waymo demonstrates that you don’t need a driver to navigate through streets of a city, even as complex as Los Angeles. If this technology gets widely used, the impact on individual transportation will be tremendous. 

 

One can imagine a world where private ownership of cars become history. There will be no need for parking lots and the efficiency of the overall transportation system would increase a great deal. There will be no need to have a vehicle sitting in your driveway or a parking lot for most of the day if a ride is available anytime from anywhere.

 

I mentioned this in an earlier Blog Post ((Confluence of tipping points, 1 August 2023). Although the availability of vehicles like Waymo will increase people’s confidence in self-driving cars, there will be still some barriers that will need to be overcome. 

 

One barrier is the prestige that some people assign to owning expensive cars. Cars have been status symbols for a long time. There will be fewer reasons to own a prestigious vehicle if it is not used to make people take notice and envy your wealth. Unlike a house (another way of making people jealous), a car goes everywhere, and can be seen by others. People seeing you alighting from an automated Waymo just does not create the same impact. 

 

Another argument people use for having your own car is that of flexibility. --- you to drive away at any time. This argument not sound right. Even Ubers are available within five minutes or so. If the cost differential between ownership and cost of rides is substantial, as it is likely to be, a few minutes delay will be acceptable by most people.

 

A more complicated situation arises when you want to go on a road trip. You can always rent a Waymo to take you wherever you want. However, that would mean a longer-term rental than a few minutes for within city travel. Depending on pricing, there may end up having rental non-self-driving cars available, for affordable price and perhaps fewer features. 

 

Some folks will tell you that these self-driving cars are dangerous and cite an incidence that demonstrates their fear. They neglect to tell you that human driven cars are even more dangerous. Also, these are just the early days of driverless cars. They will improve as the experience base expands and AI make a big difference. 

 

There is also fear that once self-driving cars become the norm, people will forget how to drive. This is similar to what is already happening thanks to technologies such as Google Translate and auto correction. People will slowly stop learning other languages or spell correctly. A bigger storm, called AI, is about to make humans taking pictures, writing stories, diagnose ailments, or compose music a thing of the past. Ability to drive a car will join the list. If you still insist on keeping your ability to drive intact, maybe there will be rental cars available, just as they would be for people undertaking road trips.

 

Surely, auto manufacturers and parking lot owners might resist. However, if their customers display their preference for not owning their own cars, they may eventually capitulate.

 

Like cars becoming automated, an equally game changing event would be trucks becoming driverless. Just imagine tucks thundering by, safely and efficiently, but having no drivers. This is already happening and a company called Kodiak has self-driving trucks on the road. The technology is about the same as driverless cars. When this becomes more popular, the impact would be felt most acutely by the truck drivers. The trucking companies will reduce their operating costs but the human impact would be severe at least in the short term.

 

There will be a liability issue and also that of public perception. A driverless truck having a major collision will attract news media and litigators. It is only after some time that the experience base will be sufficiently significant to quieten things down. 

 

One final transportation system that can be more fully automated is airplanes. Even now, autopilot systems are so well developed, the pilots do not have to do much, especially during the cruising phase of a flight. I agree that during take-off and landing, pilots are required but I cannot imagine that the same situation will apply in the future. 

 

Pilots are required primarily to provide comfort to the passenger. It will be many years before passengers accept that flying in a pilotless airplane is completely safe. They would point out, once again, to a situation where a pilotless airplane crashed, and forget that airplanes with pilots crash as well, many times because of pilot errors. Sometimes even because of a suicidal pilot flying the airplane. It is hard to imagine a suicidal autopilot. 

 

I think that for the for seeable future, there will be at least one pilot in the cabin, just to provide comfort factor. 

 

So, to summarize, driverless cars are already here. They will become an increasing presence in the coming future. Also around are self-driving trucks and, eventually, pilotless airplanes.