Self-driving vehicles and better communities
The limitations of human drivers are at the root of many challenges
I’ve been self-driving all over Toronto for the past year and a half, and I’m convinced that the car is a much safer driver than I will ever be. Its 12 cameras are constantly watching for hazards, and never miss that pedestrian darting out from behind a parked car or a cyclist swerving around a van blocking their bike lane. My two eyes and the limits of parallel processing in my brain just can’t compete. Even though I consider myself to be a good driver, with more than 30 years behind the wheel and a clean record, it’s really only a matter of time before I miss something, make a mistake, and put myself or others in danger. While self-driving is not perfect, its issues are now predictable and fairly minor, like sitting in a right turn lane when trying to go straight because it didn’t see the arrow. With self-driving, the risk of a safety incident is not completely eliminated, but close.
Over the past decade, there has been an increased focus by city governments to improve roadway safety. Vision Zero programs have sprung up in virtually all cities, with the aspiration of eliminating deaths and serious injuries. To attempts to achieve this, cities have been trying many things, such as:
Reducing speed limits to as low as 30 km/h
Installing automated speed enforcement cameras to fine drivers exceeding the limit
Adding more signalized intersections
Installing red-light cameras to fine drivers running reds
Installing speed humps, medians, raised crosswalks, and bump-our corners to help pedestrians cross more safely
Building more protected bike lanes so cyclists don’t have to ride in mixed traffic
Changing signal phasing so pedestrians get a head start before cars
While road user safety has improved thanks to these changes, they also have trade-offs. Travel times have increased, congestion is worse, drivers are frustrated, and the backlash against these measures is real. In Toronto, the speed enforcement cameras were recently deactivated by order of the Premier, who has also banned building new bike lanes that remove vehicle lanes without his explicit permission.
On top of that, there is the consideration of “safetyism”. By implementing policies and infrastructure changes to improve safety, we are shifting responsibility away from individuals and towards government. Individuals feel less accountable for behaving in a safe and responsible way as more and more control over their behaviour is exerted. While this control may indeed improve safety, it has serious and deeper consequences that degrade the overall quality of our communities.
Even the best and least distracted humans are not safe enough drivers to achieve Vision Zero. Freedom is also important to people, and they tend not to like being restricted and constrained while driving around. All of the above policies and roadway infrastructure changes are attempts to grapple with the opposing forces of human performance, preference, and freedom versus safety. The trade-offs are significant.
Autonomous vehicles overcome the whole conundrum. They drive much more safely, even at higher speeds and with fewer safety features such as speed humps or protected bike lanes. If pedestrians or cyclists behave erratically, a self-driving vehicle is very unlikely to injure them since it can react much more quickly than a human driver. With only self-driving vehicles on the road, speed limits could be increased significantly. Traffic congestion is also made significantly worse by human drivers’ tendency to space out vehicles inefficiently. They tend to speed up as much as possible between red lights, causing bunching and not driving in sync with the signal timing plan. Autonomous vehicles don’t have this problem, and would minimize overall travel time rather than driving as fast as possible between red lights.
As I wrote previously, safer streets are an important part building better communities, as they encourage people to come out of their houses, walk, cycle, and interact with each other. Streets become animated and vibrant rather than sterile highways. Achieving this through existing Vision Zero mechanisms comes at the expense of serious trade-offs and diminishing returns due to the inherent limitations of human drivers. A concerted effort to accelerate the transition to autonomous vehicles has a lot of advantages over the current plan. Whether we remove the right for humans to drive is another matter, but even if a small percentage of people continue to drive, the improvements will be immense and these remaining drivers will also benefit from interacting with vehicles that see everything and behave consistently.