Self-Driving cars really are the panacea to many of our cities’ woes.
By: Ben Edwards
Tags: AI, Self Driving Cars, Autonomous Cars, Technology, Tech

A million lives saved per year

While it is true that cars have never been safer and the number of accidents per mile driven is way down from the height in 1980: 1.12 versus 3.36 deaths per 100 million miles traveled, it is still the case that over 35,000 people died in car crashes in 2015 alone. [source] And this is only for the U.S. If you consider the worldwide loss of life in auto accidents, the number soars to more than 1.3 million each year.

The computer driving your car will be better equipped than you at handling a wide array of hazards and dangers.

Not only can autonomous cars anticipate conditions far better and react more quickly than any human, there will be many ways in which the cars on the road will communicate with each other in ways we have only imagined. This will allow for decisions, both at the micro-level — in the car and at the macro-level — on the street or even citywide, that save lives.

That brings us to the next greatest improvement…

The end of traffic

There won’t be mirrors in cars of the future.

That same orchestration that will allow your vehicle to avoid that pothole, construction zone, or accident will also end traffic. They will be able to speed up and slow down in unison as well as predict patterns based on past data and observation. Your robot car will remember not to take 5th Street through the park on the 3rd Thursday of the month when the bikers take over all lanes.

Sure, that’s when all cars are automated, but that is many years away. What effect can a single self-driving vehicle have on traffic? Turns out, it can still be quite large. A new study out of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign suggests that the addition of just a small number of autonomous cars can ease the congestion on our roads.

It’s interesting that these improvements can occur even with a single vehicle in a flow of 20 other cars. And it’s also worth noting that the level of autonomy required to have this effect isn’t the kind that Waymo, Uber, and others are seeking to build — it’s more akin to the adaptive cruise control already featured in many higher-end cars. So while we might have to wait a little longer for all of autonomy’s effects to be felt, its ability to reduce traffic congestion could be here rather sooner than we anticipated. [MIT Technology Review]

Not only will traffic be reduced or nearly eliminated, speeds can increase safely and people can get to their destinations faster. In the future, there may not be set speed limits, but instead fluid guidelines based upon traffic, road, and weather conditions.

Reclaiming our time

While our time in the vehicle will likely be reduced per the traffic mitigation topics above, the time we do spend in cars will be transformed. No longer will we have to sit forward and pay attention, crane our necks, and get stressed out. We will get this time back, and we can do with it anything we want. Want to work on your laptop, talk on the phone, play games, or read? You aren’t thinking big enough. Plus, as a recent article from The Atlantic City Lab, points out:

Less than 5 percent of survey respondents claimed they’d even attempt to get any work done.

People may not always work in their cars in the future, but they will be dressed monochromatically.

How about sleeping? Having lunch? Catching up on that Netflix series? Playing Pandemic with three friends Having a wine and cheese tasting event on the way to the theater? Doing something else on the way to the theater?There are going to be whole new industries formed around furnishing and decking out our vehicles once there is no need for a steering wheel and other controls, instrumentation, even windshields.

A cleaner earth

It almost goes without saying (but shouldn’t) that a huge advantage to getting more cars off the road is a huge reduction in emissions. That will only be good for the air we breathe, our cities, and the Earth as a whole.