Self-Driving Cars Have A Long Road Ahead (Part 1)
While advances in AI technology promises safer roads and fewer accidents, the current environment and culture will have to change to accommodate these newfangled autonomous cars.
Of all the road accidents today, a significant number are due to people making mistakes. Our fellow human drivers are one of the biggest threats to our safety. In the US alone there were over one and a half a million crashes resulting in injuries in 2020. Across the world, there are per year over one million car accidents ending in fatality. Self-driving cars serve to mitigate this vulnerability. They overcome limitations such as delayed human reaction speed and have improved anticipation of other drivers. Self-driving cars also feel no road rage.
This technology promises to reduce road deaths, improve productivity, and decrease fuel costs, potentially saving the US economy alone over a trillion dollars per year. While there are job concerns, especially from professional drivers, many new jobs will also emerge in technology, maintenance, and other such sectors. The challenge is being able to upskill people who are at risk of job displacement. Tech moves quickly and many workers simply won’t be able to adapt in time, without some support from the institutions who will likely profit from the economic value of self-driving cars. In the long run, many new jobs will be created because of self-driving cars. It also stands to reduce private car ownership, by as much as 43% in the US. Finally, they are steering the automobile industry towards enhanced fuel efficiency, while also promising to alleviate traffic congestion, leading to both personal and societal cost savings. Fewer accidents also translates to lower insurance premiums for vehicle owners.
The long road ahead will not always be smooth. In order to turn our society into one suitable for autonomous driving, there must be substantial investment into infrastructure and urban renovations. There may be high ongoing costs in maintaining the necessary legislative and regulatory frameworks, not to mention cybersecurity and data centers to safeguard against potential threats. Before going further into the current state of AV (autonomous vehicle) technology, it’s worth considering the journey cars took to get here, beginning with their inception in the late 19th century.
The first gasoline-powered car was designed by Karl Benz in 1885. It crashed into a wall during a public demonstration- not unlike many recent demos of self-driving cars have done. The decades following saw the mass production of cars, thanks to the assembly line innovation by Henry Ford. The car reflected the mass production ideals of the modern industrial capitalist society. It did much more than simply take a person from one location to the next.
The automobile proceeded to sculpt out urban landscapes. Suburbs, highways, shopping malls, a sprawling expanse of different sectors. We built roads to sell cars. The car became almost necessary to go into the dispersed outskirts. Cars were a cultural icon. People had a sort of love affair with their cars. All of this meant that urban planning was orientated around cars, which necessitated the construction of highways.
In Detroit, the construction of two freeways in the 50s and 60s resulted in the destruction of Black Bottom and Paradise Valley, neighborhoods that were the heart of the city's African American community. Other highways became famous in literature and media, such as Route 66.
66 is the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder of tractors and shrinking ownership, from the desert's slow northward invasion, from the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what little richness is there. From all of these the people are in flight, and they come into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads. 66 is the mother road, the road of flight.
- John Steinbeck in ‘The Grapes of Wrath’
Under the guise of infinite promise, the automobile also brought along some dark times. In the winter of 1952, the city of London was enshrouded in a fog. This Great Smog, as it came to be known, descended upon the city. For five long days, the sun was but a dim memory. Air became a venomous brew, a choking amalgam of soot, smoke, and sulfurous fumes. Since then, there have been several major movements centered on safety in cars.
As the years rolled on, cars became faster, safer, and more efficient. The latter half of the 20th century saw vehicles becoming increasingly sophisticated with the integration of advanced electronics and computer systems. The advent of onboard diagnostics in the 1980s and the introduction of electronic stability control in the 1990s were indicative of a growing trend towards automation. That brings us back to the present.
While ignoring the lesson from the Great Smog of London, manufacturers and businesses sought scale and distributed personal vehicles across the modern world. Now, cars and trucks account for nearly one-fifth of all US carbon emissions.
Burning one gallon of gasoline produces about 20 pounds of carbon dioxide. Given that the average passenger vehicle consumes about 500 gallons per year, it's like each car annually fills a modest apartment with CO2, from floor to ceiling. Most of this comes directly from the vehicles' tailpipes. The broader transportation sector, which includes various modes of transport, is responsible for over a quarter of all US greenhouse gas emissions. Although self-driving cars are virtually all electric, they are by no means sustainable in how they’re produced. At least not yet.
Can we even take this alternative route, where roads are populated by entirely electric, autonomous vehicles, instead of gas-guzzling road junkies? Where vehicles are optimized for efficiency and sustained by renewable energy, instead of fumes and road rage? Read on to find out.