Speaker 1: Hey guys, this is Jonathan. I have a quick announcement
Speaker 1: before we get to today's episode, which is sort of
Speaker 1: a capper on the autonomous car episodes we listened to
Speaker 1: last week, and that is starting this week, Tech Stuff
Speaker 1: is going back to publishing two new episodes and one
Speaker 1: classic episode each week, so we're cutting back a little bit.
Speaker 1: This is so that I can spend more time putting
Speaker 1: these episodes together, making sure they are the absolute best
Speaker 1: I can make them, as well as making time to
Speaker 1: work on some other shows like The Brink. If you're
Speaker 1: not listening to The Brink, you should go check that
Speaker 1: out and some more shows that might be coming down
Speaker 1: in the near future once we get through pilot season.
Speaker 1: Here at How Stuff Works, and I just want to
Speaker 1: let you guys all be aware of that nothing bad
Speaker 1: is happening. These are good things. It means that I
Speaker 1: get to spend more time on this stuff and I'm
Speaker 1: not quite as a as rushed as I have been
Speaker 1: for the last half year. So enjoy and I'll see
Speaker 1: you guys again on Wednesday. Get in touch with technology
Speaker 1: with tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with How Stuff Works, and I
Speaker 1: heart radio and I love all things tech, and we
Speaker 1: are continuing our long journey with autonomous cars. Actually we
Speaker 1: are concluding it at this point, even though as I
Speaker 1: get to the end of the episode you will hear
Speaker 1: about how I could cover even more. But out of
Speaker 1: consideration for you, my dear listeners, I'll move on to
Speaker 1: other topics for a while. But last week I did
Speaker 1: a whole series of episodes about the history of autonomous cars,
Speaker 1: and we started with the science fiction visions of the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties and radio controlled vehicles up to the upcoming
Speaker 1: launch of the Weymo one service in Phoenix, Arizona, which
Speaker 1: maybe in operation by the time you hear this. And
Speaker 1: I mentioned how over the last several years, in particular,
Speaker 1: a few accidents, a couple of them fatal accidents, have
Speaker 1: brought a lot more critical attention to driverless cars, even
Speaker 1: as numerous services prepared to unleash thousands of them on
Speaker 1: the streets of several cities across the world. In this episode,
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about the arguments for and against
Speaker 1: autonomous cars, or at least against early autonomous car deployment.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna talk about how these things are complicating factors.
Speaker 1: It's not just a technological problem. In fact, I don't
Speaker 1: really get into it in this episode, but there are
Speaker 1: entire issues with regulation and legislation. Like many other technologies,
Speaker 1: autonomous cars has outpaced the law, and so there are
Speaker 1: a lot of places that are trying to take into
Speaker 1: account what driverless cars in the streets would actually mean,
Speaker 1: and how do you legislate that. Who do you find
Speaker 1: at fault in the event of an accident? These are
Speaker 1: still largely open questions. There are other ones that I
Speaker 1: haven't touched on in this episode either, For example, the
Speaker 1: trolley problem, the idea that if you have to build
Speaker 1: into your car system a decision making process to follow
Speaker 1: in the event that an injury is unavoidable, you've got
Speaker 1: and and a scenario where no matter what, someone is
Speaker 1: going to get hurt. How does the car make the
Speaker 1: choice of who gets hurt. That's a huge question in ethics,
Speaker 1: in artificial intelligence in general, and in autonomous cars in particular.
Speaker 1: I don't really go into that in this episode, so
Speaker 1: there are still many topics in this field that I
Speaker 1: will have to come back to at some future point. However,
Speaker 1: that being said, there's still a ton of stuff to
Speaker 1: talk about outside of that, and I'm going to start
Speaker 1: off by exam and some of the arguments for autonomous cars,
Speaker 1: as well as the criticisms leveled at those arguments now
Speaker 1: before we jump into this, because it's going to sound
Speaker 1: like I'm totally down on the concept, like I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm really against the idea of driverless cars. That's what
Speaker 1: it might sound like to you as we go through
Speaker 1: this episode. But that is not the case. And I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be real with you, guys. I don't drive. I
Speaker 1: I do not have a driver's license. And I don't
Speaker 1: talk about this very much because it's hard to talk
Speaker 1: about because driving in the United States is such a
Speaker 1: a common experience among many many people. I mean, unless
Speaker 1: you're living in a city that has incredible public transportation
Speaker 1: and driving is incredibly expensive, then you probably drive a car,
Speaker 1: Especially in the Southeast where I live. Owning a car
Speaker 1: and driving a car is very much tied with the
Speaker 1: thought of independence. But I don't have a driver's license.
Speaker 1: I actually have a phobia about driving. I end up
Speaker 1: locking up when I get behind the wheel of a
Speaker 1: car and I become a danger on the road, and
Speaker 1: I'm aware of that, and then that also feeds into
Speaker 1: my fear and it gets worse and worse. So you
Speaker 1: see where I'm going. I I have realized that I
Speaker 1: am a danger to myself and others if I get
Speaker 1: behind the wheel of a car. I am not a
Speaker 1: good driver. So this is an incredibly frustrating condition for me,
Speaker 1: and it's difficult for me to talk about because there's
Speaker 1: a big stigma against this. But it means that I
Speaker 1: frequently have to rely upon other people to help me
Speaker 1: get around, and that means I often feel like a burden,
Speaker 1: even when people go out of their way to dismiss
Speaker 1: that idea, saying no, no, no, no, I want to
Speaker 1: give you a ride. I want you to be involved
Speaker 1: in this thing. I can't help but feel otherwise. So
Speaker 1: I very much want a future in which we have
Speaker 1: a reliable, safe, autonomous car service where I can call
Speaker 1: upon a car anytime need and it will show up.
Speaker 1: And I'm not putting anyone out right, I'm not making
Speaker 1: it inconvenient for somebody else. It's a service. I'm paying
Speaker 1: for it. Everything's cool. I'm eager to see that kind
Speaker 1: of thing across the world. That being said, I also
Speaker 1: recognize that I can't allow my desire for that technology
Speaker 1: to come to maturity to guide all my thinking on
Speaker 1: the matter to bias my point of view. The responsible
Speaker 1: thing to do is to hold up the facts to
Speaker 1: critical thought and consideration. After all, we're ultimately talking about
Speaker 1: enormous vehicles traveling at potentially very high speeds, and that's
Speaker 1: a lot of force. So it's only right that we
Speaker 1: look at all the facts before we leap to any conclusions.
Speaker 1: And knowing how badly I want autonomous cars to become
Speaker 1: a thing has to be a warning sign to me.
Speaker 1: I have to say, well, I need to be extra
Speaker 1: careful when I'm looking at the facts so that I
Speaker 1: don't just become latch on to the most optimistic outlooks
Speaker 1: and then just, you know, deny that there are any problems.
Speaker 1: So the first big argument for autonomous cars in favor
Speaker 1: of them tends to be that, assuming you have cars
Speaker 1: that perform safely and consistently, you would cut way back
Speaker 1: on the number of fatalities and injuries caused by car accidents.
Speaker 1: And the general line of reasoning is that machines can
Speaker 1: react in a fraction of the time that people can,
Speaker 1: which is absolutely true, and a well designed vehicle, one
Speaker 1: that has the proper sensors, could maintain a three D
Speaker 1: sixty degree awareness at all times, whereas a human can
Speaker 1: only focus on a small part of their overall field
Speaker 1: of view, which is locked to whichever way they happen
Speaker 1: to turn their face at any given time. That's also
Speaker 1: true assuming you've designed the sensors and the processing system
Speaker 1: properly so that it can accept that data and analyze
Speaker 1: it in real time and be able to react to
Speaker 1: it in real time. Now, this argument that autonomous cars
Speaker 1: will save lives also assumes that the software the algorithms
Speaker 1: guiding the car's behaviors have been properly designed and tested
Speaker 1: and they're reliable. Whether that means programming the car for
Speaker 1: specific scenarios or using a process like machine learning in
Speaker 1: which an autonomous system is quote unquote taught how to
Speaker 1: handle various driving scenarios. Now, that assumption is particularly important,
Speaker 1: and it also is one that we should be particularly
Speaker 1: critical of. Now, I don't mean to suggest that it
Speaker 1: is impossible to design a sufficiently adept system or a
Speaker 1: sufficiently a depth set of algorithms but rather we should
Speaker 1: be as certain as we can and be as we
Speaker 1: can reasonably expect us to be that such systems meet
Speaker 1: are required levels of reliability before we start getting into
Speaker 1: driverless vehicles for any sort of you know, given trip. Now,
Speaker 1: all that being said, statistics do show that humans are
Speaker 1: far from perfect drivers. The U s Department of Transportation
Speaker 1: produces reports from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System or FARS,
Speaker 1: and yes, that's pretty grim, but it's very important work.
Speaker 1: The two thousand sixteen numbers, which were some of the
Speaker 1: more recent numbers that I could get hold of, say
Speaker 1: that in the United States in two thousand and sixteen,
Speaker 1: there were thirty four thousand, four hundred thirty nine recorded
Speaker 1: traffic accidents that had one or more fatalities. So if
Speaker 1: you look at all the actual deaths, you're looking at
Speaker 1: thirty seven thousand, four hundred sixty one people who lost
Speaker 1: their lives from car accidents. So when you take into
Speaker 1: a account the population of the United States, that averages
Speaker 1: out to eleven point six deaths due to car accidents
Speaker 1: per one hundred thousand people. When you break it out
Speaker 1: state by state and you look at their statistics, you
Speaker 1: see where the concentration is highest. Mississippi had the highest
Speaker 1: fatality rate by this metric, at twenty three point one
Speaker 1: fatalities per one hundred thousand people. The report also takes
Speaker 1: into account the number of vehicle miles traveled. It's very
Speaker 1: important as well, because that tells you how frequently people
Speaker 1: were on the roads and how far they went, and
Speaker 1: how much time they were spending on the roads. So
Speaker 1: in sixteen, the estimated total miles traveled in vehicles in
Speaker 1: the United States was three trillion, two hundred twenty billion,
Speaker 1: six hundred seventy seven million miles. It's a really important
Speaker 1: number that we're going to come back to in just
Speaker 1: a second. But another important number is that in the
Speaker 1: United States, experts estimate that human error causes somewhere between
Speaker 1: and of all car accidents. Uh, there's discrepancy because it
Speaker 1: all depends upon which study you're looking at, but the
Speaker 1: the message there is the overwhelming majority of car accidents
Speaker 1: in the United States are caused by human error, as
Speaker 1: opposed to say, mechanical failure or other extenuating circumstances like
Speaker 1: a tree falling on a car. So it's easy to
Speaker 1: see how the thought of removing the human element from
Speaker 1: driving could dramatically reduce the number of crashes. But again,
Speaker 1: this assumes that the driver list systems are in fact
Speaker 1: more reliable more safe than human drivers. Now they likely are,
Speaker 1: but it's hard for us to say we've definitively proven this.
Speaker 1: In fact, that would be misleading to say we have
Speaker 1: definitively proven these cars are more reliable and more safe
Speaker 1: under automated control than human control, And the reason for
Speaker 1: that is because of the amount of data. This is
Speaker 1: where we start to really get scientific with our thinking.
Speaker 1: So the safety argument says, imagine a future in which
Speaker 1: all cars are autonomous and can detect one another. They
Speaker 1: can react quickly to changes in the environment much much
Speaker 1: faster than humans can. So then imagine how drastic the
Speaker 1: reduction of fatalities would be. Those nearly forty thou people
Speaker 1: who died in would still be alive in a world
Speaker 1: where those cars were the way we got around. But
Speaker 1: this presupposes that the autonomous cars would perform as we
Speaker 1: would like them too, and that still remains to be seen.
Speaker 1: Google's way MOW, which is the company that I think
Speaker 1: is the the foremost authority on driverless cars as far
Speaker 1: as public awareness is concerned. At least, they like to
Speaker 1: point out that their self driving vehicles have passed the
Speaker 1: ten million mile mark. In other words, autonomous vehicles have
Speaker 1: driven more than ten million miles and there have been
Speaker 1: no accidents in Weymo vehicles that resulted in a fatality
Speaker 1: from their operation in autonomous mode. And ten million is
Speaker 1: a big number. Ten million miles. That's a lot of distance.
Speaker 1: But remember that in humans in the United States drove
Speaker 1: three trillion miles in one year. You know, Weymo is
Speaker 1: looking at the entire history of their autonomous car program
Speaker 1: in one year. Because of the number of drivers and
Speaker 1: how much we drive, humans racked up more than three
Speaker 1: trillion miles. So we have more human drivers on the streets,
Speaker 1: which also makes it difficult to draw any sort of
Speaker 1: comparison between human drivers and autonomous drivers. There are more
Speaker 1: human drivers out there and they're driving more miles than
Speaker 1: autonomous cars are, so it's not an apples to apples
Speaker 1: kind of comparison. We cannot say definitively that autonomous cars
Speaker 1: are safer. They just haven't been driving enough and there
Speaker 1: aren't enough of them out there for us to make
Speaker 1: that kind of general conclusion. Does that mean it's wrong?
Speaker 1: Not necessarily. It just means we lack the information to
Speaker 1: be able to say it definitively, and without that information,
Speaker 1: there's doubt, and when there's doubt, you have problems. In
Speaker 1: the last couple of years, there have been some pretty
Speaker 1: high profile incidents involving autonomous cars and accidents, and these
Speaker 1: accidents don't necessarily mean that the safety argument for autonomous
Speaker 1: cars is invalid. We haven't seen a rash of driver
Speaker 1: list car accidents. We've only seen a couple like a
Speaker 1: few dozen, and many of those aren't even the fault
Speaker 1: of the autonomous system, but rather the fault of human
Speaker 1: drivers who happened to be on the road at the
Speaker 1: same time. However, even if we were to sift through
Speaker 1: all of the data and prove definitively, statistically speaking, that
Speaker 1: driverless cars are safer than one driven by an average person,
Speaker 1: it might not matter at the end of the day. Now,
Speaker 1: this is because we humans are not entirely rational, and
Speaker 1: I am guessing this does not come as a shocking
Speaker 1: revelation to you guys. Psychologically, it can be easier for
Speaker 1: us to accept that driving a car on roads dominated
Speaker 1: by other human drivers is risky. We understand this because
Speaker 1: we know that driving, while often a mundane task that
Speaker 1: we can kind of do without even devoting our full
Speaker 1: attention to it, can sometimes be punctuated by moments of
Speaker 1: unique circumstances, and that in those circumstances, the wrong reaction
Speaker 1: could cause an accident. This is something we can wrap
Speaker 1: our minds around. We can accept this. We know accidents happen,
Speaker 1: sometimes we are in them, sometimes we cause them, and
Speaker 1: that is something that we can accept. But there's a
Speaker 1: bit of a leap for an awful lot of people
Speaker 1: when you shift that two vehicles that are controlled not
Speaker 1: by human drivers but by machines and algorithms. Suddenly the
Speaker 1: same people who accept that driving can be inherently dangerous
Speaker 1: in certain situations find it much more difficult to accept
Speaker 1: when humans are no longer directly responsible. The journal Risk
Speaker 1: Analysis published the results of a survey in which people
Speaker 1: were asked to determine how safe an autonomous vehicle would
Speaker 1: have to be before they would feel comfortable with the
Speaker 1: idea of them being on the road. The results were
Speaker 1: really interesting. They showed that, on average, people felt that
Speaker 1: autonomous cars would have to be proven to be four
Speaker 1: to five times safer than human operated vehicles for them
Speaker 1: to feel comfortable four to five times safer. So let
Speaker 1: that sink in because by this argument, even if the
Speaker 1: driverless car was twice as safe as the average human driver,
Speaker 1: which by definition would mean that if you had enough
Speaker 1: of these replacing human drivers out on the road, would
Speaker 1: mean you would have fewer injuries, fewer cases of vehicle
Speaker 1: or property damage, fewer fatalities. But that wouldn't be enough
Speaker 1: for these people to feel comfortable even if they knew that,
Speaker 1: as a result, fewer people were being hurt or killed,
Speaker 1: there was less damage. And when you turn this argument
Speaker 1: on its side, it's kind of like saying it's okay
Speaker 1: if a certain number of people are hurt or killed
Speaker 1: because we didn't shift to autonomous cars. It's only when
Speaker 1: autonomous cars are far more safe and capable four to
Speaker 1: five times than human drivers that people start to feel
Speaker 1: better about them. And I think you could argue that
Speaker 1: it's a pretty extreme double standard. We're not requiring humans
Speaker 1: to undergo driving tests more frequently to prove that they
Speaker 1: are just as safe or not if not safer, than
Speaker 1: they were the last time they took a test. We're
Speaker 1: not requiring people to do that. But it is the
Speaker 1: sort of stuff we're demanding from the machines, and it's
Speaker 1: also something I can kind of understand because it means
Speaker 1: taking the humans out of the equation, or seeming to,
Speaker 1: since these cars and algorithms are ultimately designed by humans
Speaker 1: and that's scary. The idea of entrusting lives to machines
Speaker 1: so is a bit of a paradox. So to summarize
Speaker 1: the safety part of the argument, we don't yet have
Speaker 1: enough information to really know how safe autonomous cars are
Speaker 1: compared to human drivers, although I suspect they are as
Speaker 1: a whole safer, but again hard to tell because you're
Speaker 1: extrapolating a lot from a very small data sample size.
Speaker 1: We don't know because we lack that information. There just
Speaker 1: aren't enough driverless cars in the road that haven't driven
Speaker 1: nearly enough miles and enough different environments in order for
Speaker 1: us to draw any firm conclusions. We also have to
Speaker 1: remember that different companies are taking very different approaches to
Speaker 1: driverless cars, so we can't make any sweeping statements because
Speaker 1: one approach might be better in some situations and worse
Speaker 1: than others, with no single approach being the best for
Speaker 1: all scenarios or regions. We do know human drivers are
Speaker 1: fallible and that we are at fault in the overwhelming
Speaker 1: majority of car accidents, and we suspect that eventually will
Speaker 1: have autonomous cars that can operate more safely than people.
Speaker 1: We just don't know if we're there already or if
Speaker 1: we still have a ways to go. Now. I'll have
Speaker 1: more to say about the arguments for and the arguments
Speaker 1: against autonomous cars in just a second, but first let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break to thank our sponsor. So, the
Speaker 1: safety argument also presents a couple of other possibilities. Besides
Speaker 1: an improvement in safety, assuming that everything is working properly. Uh,
Speaker 1: it also presents the possibility that autonomous cars might require
Speaker 1: less material and less energy to operate. So here here's
Speaker 1: the thought. If your vehicles are proven to be safe
Speaker 1: and you don't have to worry about them getting into accidents,
Speaker 1: let's say that you have reached a point where you're
Speaker 1: ready to really deploy these, then you don't have to
Speaker 1: build your vehicles quite as sturdily. Right. One of the
Speaker 1: reasons why cars and trucks and other you know, consumer
Speaker 1: vehicles way as much as they do is because the
Speaker 1: materials they're made out of are in part there to
Speaker 1: protect the people inside in case of accident. But if
Speaker 1: you've removed the possibility of accident, then you don't have
Speaker 1: to build them quite as Hardy will say, so it
Speaker 1: means you could go to lighter materials to make your vehicles. Well,
Speaker 1: lighter vehicles need less energy to move around than a
Speaker 1: heavier vehicle does. You don't have to put as much
Speaker 1: force to get the vehicle moving or to stop it.
Speaker 1: So if you reduce the weight of vehicles on the road,
Speaker 1: you also reduce the amount of energy you need to
Speaker 1: move them around. That also means less fuel consumption, which
Speaker 1: could be in the vehicle itself if it's a gasoline
Speaker 1: powered vehicle or hydrogen powered vehicle, or in a power
Speaker 1: plant that produces the electricity that is going to charge
Speaker 1: those electric vehicles batteries. And that sounds pretty good, except
Speaker 1: I would argue we can't really afford to get fully
Speaker 1: behind switching over to light vehicles until we reach a
Speaker 1: real tipping point of the percentage of driverless cars versus
Speaker 1: human operated ones, because even if we assume robot cars
Speaker 1: are perfect, which again this is just like hypothetical, just
Speaker 1: assume that they work exactly the way they're supposed to.
Speaker 1: You still have humans on the road and they could
Speaker 1: still cause accidents. And for that reason, we can't really
Speaker 1: afford to essue safety features that add weight to vehicles
Speaker 1: just yet. We need to still have those considerations in place.
Speaker 1: Another big argument for autonomous cars is that they could
Speaker 1: have a positive influence on traffic, meaning a reduction in
Speaker 1: traffic and traffic jams and congestion. But the studies on
Speaker 1: this subject of conflicting answers. The National Science Foundation funded
Speaker 1: a study to look into this matter, and the study
Speaker 1: consulted with auto industry experts and government officials. And in
Speaker 1: that study, the researchers created a simulation in which one
Speaker 1: autonomous vehicle, a computer controlled simulated vehicle, circled a track
Speaker 1: with at least twenty vehicles driven by humans. It was
Speaker 1: a simulation that used VR, so these were VR cars
Speaker 1: driven by human beings and not just you know, twenty
Speaker 1: simulated human beings, because then you're talking about two different
Speaker 1: types of autonomous cars, and that wouldn't tell you anything anyway.
Speaker 1: This experiment saw that humans create a stop and go
Speaker 1: oscillation effect in traffic, but that autonomous cars don't cause
Speaker 1: this kind of oscillation effect, and this can happen in
Speaker 1: things like when cars change lanes or they need to
Speaker 1: exit the highway or into the highway, and this can
Speaker 1: lead to traffic jams. So if you've ever been on
Speaker 1: highway and you hit a super slow section of traffic
Speaker 1: and then the traffic starts to clear up, and you
Speaker 1: never see any reason for the traffic jam, right, there's
Speaker 1: no accident, there's no reason, nothing to rubber neck at.
Speaker 1: You might wonder what the heck happened, Well, that's this phenomenon,
Speaker 1: this oscillating effect. It probably means that someone somewhere did
Speaker 1: this stop and go approach and it ended up perpetuating
Speaker 1: throughout the traffic from that point behind the car. So
Speaker 1: the researchers concluded that if even only five percent of
Speaker 1: the cars on the road were to be autonomous, it
Speaker 1: would cut down on traffic problems and it would reduce
Speaker 1: fuel consumption because you wouldn't be doing the stop and go,
Speaker 1: you'd be using fuel more efficiently, and that in turn
Speaker 1: would mean less pollution admitted as a result. So it
Speaker 1: has this ripple effect, which sounds great. It's kind of
Speaker 1: similar to the safety argument. And then the fact that
Speaker 1: that would mean less fuel consumption, less volution. You start
Speaker 1: to see real promise here. However, there's a flip side
Speaker 1: to this argument that we cannot ignore. While various studies
Speaker 1: have argued that concentrations of between five to of autonomous
Speaker 1: cars on the road would really help with traffic problems,
Speaker 1: and a full conversion to autonomous cars would be presumably
Speaker 1: even better, this often presupposes that the number of cars
Speaker 1: on the road would remain pretty much the same as
Speaker 1: they are today, but some studies suggest that just isn't
Speaker 1: necessarily the case. For example, the World Economic Forum and
Speaker 1: the Boston Consulting Group partnered to conduct a study about
Speaker 1: how driverless cars might impact traffic in and around Boston.
Speaker 1: According to their research, they found that driverless cars would
Speaker 1: actually increase traffic in downtown Boston. Their findings suggested that
Speaker 1: people would opt to use driverless cars over other alternatives
Speaker 1: such as public transportation. So maybe some people would give
Speaker 1: up driving and let the robots do it. And then
Speaker 1: in that case, you're just changing a human driven car
Speaker 1: for a robot driven car. No big deal, it's a
Speaker 1: one for one swamp. But there would be other people
Speaker 1: who would give up taking the bus or the train
Speaker 1: in favor of more direct door to door service using
Speaker 1: these driverless car ride hailing services, And so it's possible
Speaker 1: that for some areas, driverless cars would actually increase congestion
Speaker 1: in certain municipal corridors like downtown Boston. Now that's not
Speaker 1: an isolated study, by the way, it's not just the
Speaker 1: one outlier. AUDI conducted a similar research project in Europe.
Speaker 1: The company focused on Ingelstadt, Germany. Now that happens to
Speaker 1: be where AUDI headquarters are, so I suppose that has
Speaker 1: something to do with their choice for location. But beyond that,
Speaker 1: Audi said that this city represented a really good case
Speaker 1: study because it's a medium sized city and it has
Speaker 1: very limited public transportation options. And those studies suggest that
Speaker 1: a more important component than adding driverless cars might be
Speaker 1: just to increase the number of people riding in each vehicle.
Speaker 1: According to Audi's research, if the average car worked out
Speaker 1: to holding one point three passengers, so in other words,
Speaker 1: you just average it all out, you get one point
Speaker 1: three passengers per per car instead of one point one,
Speaker 1: commute times would drop as much as even if you
Speaker 1: increase the number of people taking cars, so true ride
Speaker 1: sharing would make a bigger difference than autonomous cars. Whether
Speaker 1: it's a person driving the vehicle or a robot driving
Speaker 1: the vehicle, the more important part is that you have
Speaker 1: more people sharing that car. But the company was also
Speaker 1: quick to point out that what applies to one city
Speaker 1: may not apply to other cities, so it's not like
Speaker 1: it's a one size fits all approach. The message seems
Speaker 1: to be that driver less cars alone are not enough
Speaker 1: to help solve traffic problems, particularly in cities that have
Speaker 1: lots of cars in them Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles. Cities
Speaker 1: need to invest in public transportation and alternative means to
Speaker 1: get around, particularly for short distances, and that will reduce
Speaker 1: the demand for car services as well as just cars
Speaker 1: in general. But without that investment, we should expect to
Speaker 1: see a lot more cars hitting the streets, human driven
Speaker 1: or otherwise. I should point out, though, that these studies
Speaker 1: do pretty much universally conclude that one thing we would
Speaker 1: need less of with a proliferation of driverless cars would
Speaker 1: be parking spaces. Because these studies all presume that we're
Speaker 1: going to rely on ride haling services with these autonomous
Speaker 1: cars rather than owning our own autonomous vehicle, we're not
Speaker 1: likely to go out and buy one. They're going to
Speaker 1: be way too expensive. It makes way more sense to
Speaker 1: make use of it in an as needed basis. So
Speaker 1: if we're using them just when we need them, then
Speaker 1: we don't have to park them anywhere. So the cars
Speaker 1: will just drop us off at destinations and then whisk
Speaker 1: us whisk off on their own to go pick up
Speaker 1: somebody else while we go and do whatever it is
Speaker 1: we need to do. There'll be no need to park,
Speaker 1: so a lot of the space currently dedicated to parking
Speaker 1: in various cities could be repurposed for other things, which
Speaker 1: is kind of cool. One great argument for driver list
Speaker 1: cars is accessibility. People who cannot drive for whatever reason
Speaker 1: could potentially reclaim a lot of agency in their day
Speaker 1: to day lives. The elderly people who have vision issues,
Speaker 1: people like me who have anxiety issues and fear issues.
Speaker 1: That's not just a benefit for those people, but for everyone.
Speaker 1: Those people would otherwise never meet. It's benefit to society
Speaker 1: because it allows them, these people who otherwise would have
Speaker 1: trouble integrating and contributing to society to do so. I mean,
Speaker 1: it may not be a big positive with me. If
Speaker 1: I show up, you might roll your eyes and wonder
Speaker 1: where the closest eggs it is. But for other people
Speaker 1: it could be really cool. And that's a pretty darned
Speaker 1: compelling argument. Now. One of the arguments against Thomas Cars
Speaker 1: that I have heard is that if driverless cars are safe,
Speaker 1: and if they reduce accidents, that would mean personal injury
Speaker 1: attorneys will get less business. But while that might also
Speaker 1: be true, I think it's pretty grim to suggest a
Speaker 1: reduction in accidents is a bad thing. So I acknowledge
Speaker 1: that it would create a hardship on people who are
Speaker 1: in that profession, I do not necessarily agree that in
Speaker 1: the end, that is the worst of all the alternatives.
Speaker 1: Then there are the arguments that driverless cars would free
Speaker 1: up passengers to do other stuff rather than drive, so,
Speaker 1: in other words, you don't have to pay attention to driving,
Speaker 1: so you can do whatever you need to do, like work,
Speaker 1: or you watch movies, or you catch up on social media.
Speaker 1: The biggest cautionary warning I think we should consider is
Speaker 1: that driverless cars may not be effective in all the
Speaker 1: environments and weather conditions that we encounter. Heavy rain, fog,
Speaker 1: other weather events could damage or mislead sensors. And since
Speaker 1: many autonomous vehicles like Waymost cars depend at least in
Speaker 1: part on pre mapped information. In other words, the company
Speaker 1: has already gone out and mapped out the regions in
Speaker 1: which the cars are going to operate. That presents a
Speaker 1: bit of a challenge. So on the good side, the
Speaker 1: cars have a baseline to work from. It makes them
Speaker 1: more accurate, more precise, at least as long as the
Speaker 1: environment continues to match the data inside the database. But
Speaker 1: things can change. Let's say there's a catastrophic event. Maybe
Speaker 1: there's a fire or there's an earthquake. You know, we've
Speaker 1: had both recently in the news as I record this.
Speaker 1: In December two thou eighteen, you had the massive earthquake
Speaker 1: in Alaska. You had the fires in California. These can
Speaker 1: be transformative events, and it can change the terrain significantly
Speaker 1: from what it used to be. And if a car
Speaker 1: is at least partly dependent upon drawing information that has
Speaker 1: been stored in a database to know where it is
Speaker 1: within its environment, that can produce a real problem, especially
Speaker 1: if there are now obstacles in the way. And if
Speaker 1: you're talking about an event where you might need to
Speaker 1: evacuate people, that could cause even more issues. Whether the
Speaker 1: driver list cars are carrying anyone at the time or not,
Speaker 1: they might be obstacles. So conceivably it could be more
Speaker 1: dangerous to be in a driverless car in that kind
Speaker 1: of situation than a human operated car. But here's another
Speaker 1: crazy thing. We have to consider, what do we even
Speaker 1: mean when we talk about driverless cars. I'll explain more
Speaker 1: in just a bit, but let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. In two thousand fourteen, s a
Speaker 1: E International, which is an organization that creates standards for
Speaker 1: the automotive industry, published a document designated J three zero
Speaker 1: one six and had the title Taxonomy and Definitions for
Speaker 1: terms related to on road motor vehicle automated driving systems.
Speaker 1: Other organizations, such as the United States National Highway Traffic
Speaker 1: Safety Administration had likewise classified autonomous cars in several ways,
Speaker 1: but ultimately the world has largely adopted this s a
Speaker 1: E classification, which got an update in ten. And here's
Speaker 1: how they classify the concept of autonomous cars. They define
Speaker 1: it in varying levels of autonomy. You start at level
Speaker 1: zero and you work up to level five, that is
Speaker 1: least to most autonomous. So a level zero automobile can
Speaker 1: have automatic warnings and may intervene very briefly, but there's
Speaker 1: no ongoing control of the vehicle. A human driver maintains
Speaker 1: control through the vast majority of any trips. So you
Speaker 1: might have like an emergency braking system that immediately comes
Speaker 1: on and turns off, but that's it. It's not going
Speaker 1: to continuously control the car. A level one autonomous car
Speaker 1: is one in which the car and the human driver
Speaker 1: share control. A car with adaptive cruise control is an
Speaker 1: example of a level one autonomous car. The human driver
Speaker 1: continues to steer the vehicle while adaptive cruise control is
Speaker 1: in is in effect, but the car itself is what's
Speaker 1: establishing and maintaining the speed, so it's cooperative. A Level
Speaker 1: two vehicle can take full control of all driving operations,
Speaker 1: including steering, accelerating, and breaking, but the human driver is
Speaker 1: supposed to monitor everything closely and be ready to take
Speaker 1: over control if necessary. Google's driverless cars in the testing
Speaker 1: phase fell into this category, as does still to this day.
Speaker 1: Tesla's autopilot system is a is essentially a level two um,
Speaker 1: or at least it's marketed as such. Level three autonomous
Speaker 1: cars are one sophisticate enough that it is no longer
Speaker 1: necessary for a human operator to monitor the situation and
Speaker 1: keep eyes on everything. You can take your eyes off
Speaker 1: the road, in other words, so you can turn your
Speaker 1: focus to something else, at least temporarily. But the car
Speaker 1: also can give an alert to the person in the
Speaker 1: car that indicates they need to take over at some
Speaker 1: given time, preferably not right the heck now, but more
Speaker 1: like in five seconds, we're going to hand control back
Speaker 1: over to you. Level four would allow for total vehicle
Speaker 1: control to the extent that a person inside the car
Speaker 1: could take a nap if they wanted to, but only
Speaker 1: within specific geographical areas. In other words, there would be
Speaker 1: a geo fencing feature built in, so if the vehicle
Speaker 1: were to approach the boundary of that area, it would
Speaker 1: alert the person in the car that their control would
Speaker 1: be necessary. Otherwise the car would take care of everything.
Speaker 1: This is the way way MOO one would work, because
Speaker 1: it's working specifically within the city of Phoenix, Arizona. It's
Speaker 1: been designed for that, it's been optimized and localized for that.
Speaker 1: Level five would be a car that never needed to
Speaker 1: seed control to a human operator. A Level five autonomous
Speaker 1: car would have to be capable of following all traffic
Speaker 1: laws wherever it may be, and go from city to
Speaker 1: city to city without any issues. So when we say
Speaker 1: driverless cars, we have to determine what level we're talking about.
Speaker 1: It's not just sufficient to say an autonomous car. You
Speaker 1: need to understand that autonomy is a spectrum. So a
Speaker 1: level of five car would be ideal. It's a sort
Speaker 1: of model I assume people tend to talk about when
Speaker 1: they're discussing things like the reduction and accidents and the
Speaker 1: improvement of traffic flow, but no one has quite reached
Speaker 1: that level. In fact, that's a very difficult problem to solve.
Speaker 1: Level four is more of the region that companies like
Speaker 1: Weymo appear to operate within, or at least how they're
Speaker 1: presenting themselves. The driver less vehicle with no human safety
Speaker 1: operator would have to work on level four at the
Speaker 1: very least, or else you're gambling with a person's life,
Speaker 1: because again, level three would occasionally hand over control back
Speaker 1: to a human driver. So if you're using a driverless
Speaker 1: ride hailing service and there's no safety operator in there,
Speaker 1: it has to be a level four if it's going
Speaker 1: to be responsible. If the safe operation of the vehicle
Speaker 1: means that it has to a hand over control to
Speaker 1: a person on occasion. That doesn't really work for a
Speaker 1: ride hailing service obviously, unless you've also got a backup
Speaker 1: driver in the car, at which case you start to
Speaker 1: ask the question, why are we even bothering with the
Speaker 1: autonomous part? At least from a service perspective, you might
Speaker 1: argue it's useful from gathering information to make it better,
Speaker 1: But when you're talking about an actual ride hailing service,
Speaker 1: that raises a lot of questions. So level four is
Speaker 1: where we really need to be At the least, the
Speaker 1: question is are we really confident that we're at level
Speaker 1: four now? Now it is possible. I don't mean to
Speaker 1: suggest that there's no way we're at level four, but
Speaker 1: there's a lot to a lot of standards we have
Speaker 1: to meet to truly be level four. There's now there
Speaker 1: are a lot of very sophisticated technologies that go into
Speaker 1: these cars, and there's and equally astonishingly sophisticated series of algorithms.
Speaker 1: Guy eating this technology and way Moo's approach of rolling
Speaker 1: out in that specific region of Phoenix, Arizona means that
Speaker 1: the cars can rely upon that localized data to help
Speaker 1: guide decisions. The car doesn't have to be so versatile
Speaker 1: that can adapt to different cities with different traffic laws
Speaker 1: and cultures. And a localized approach means that it's even
Speaker 1: possible even to program in rules that might only apply
Speaker 1: to specific parts of Phoenix, like specific intersections. So, for example,
Speaker 1: to let you know what I'm talking about here, in Atlanta, Georgia,
Speaker 1: where I live, there are certain communities where it is
Speaker 1: against the law to make a right hand turn at
Speaker 1: a red light within that community. There's a community in
Speaker 1: the Atlanta area called Avondale Estates is against the law
Speaker 1: to take a right turn on a red light there.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter what the traffic situation is. If you're
Speaker 1: in Avendale, states don't make a right on red. But
Speaker 1: in other parts of Atlanta, making a right on a
Speaker 1: red is perfectly legal. So a driver less car service
Speaker 1: in the Atlanta area would need to have that information
Speaker 1: built in so it could integrate into existing traffic while
Speaker 1: obeying the law. It wouldn't hold up traffic in neighborhoods
Speaker 1: where a right on red was permissible, and it wouldn't
Speaker 1: break the law by taking a right on red in
Speaker 1: a place where it wasn't that would be a requirement
Speaker 1: that might work if the service is truly local. The
Speaker 1: service might also be bounded by a geo fencing feature
Speaker 1: like I mentioned that prevents writers from specifying a drop
Speaker 1: off point beyond a certain distance of the center of operations. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, if I said I'm in Atlanta, I
Speaker 1: want to get picked up, and I want to be
Speaker 1: dropped off in Charleston, in a different state, then if
Speaker 1: I tried to select that distance, that location, or that destination,
Speaker 1: the app could tell me I'm sorry, that's not possible.
Speaker 1: So you might find out you can get a ride
Speaker 1: with a driverless car, but only across town, not across
Speaker 1: the state or into another state. And it's also good
Speaker 1: to remember, just to couch our expectation, what the conditions
Speaker 1: of Phoenix, Arizona are like. The city has an average
Speaker 1: annual rainfall of eight point zero four inches for the
Speaker 1: entirety of the year. In Atlanta, the annual rainfall average
Speaker 1: is closer to fifty inches. Now, what that tells us
Speaker 1: is that you get fewer rainy days and Phoenix than
Speaker 1: you would in Atlanta, and presumably you would have fewer
Speaker 1: days with very heavy rain, which is important because that
Speaker 1: could interfere with a car's sensors. The annual low temperature
Speaker 1: and Phoenix is sixty three point four degrees fahrenheit, which
Speaker 1: is about seventeen point four degrees celsius. Even in the
Speaker 1: coldest month of the year for Phoenix, which is December,
Speaker 1: the average low is forty five degrees fahrenheit or seven
Speaker 1: point two degrees celsius, which is chilly for someone like
Speaker 1: me who grew up in the Southeast. I might want
Speaker 1: to wear a jacket, maybe even a light coat. But
Speaker 1: it's not freezing, right, you haven't dropped below the temperature
Speaker 1: of freezing. The likelihood that the driver lest cars and Phoenix,
Speaker 1: Arizona would encounter conditions like ice or snow is very low,
Speaker 1: not impossible, but very unlikely. So you could argue that
Speaker 1: rolling out a driverless car service in Phoenix is like
Speaker 1: riding a bike with training wheels. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: it makes way more sense to me to start off
Speaker 1: in areas where conditions are pretty consistent so that you
Speaker 1: can continue to gather information about driving conditions and driver
Speaker 1: behaviors and work with that knowledge and build it into
Speaker 1: future algorithms and improvements. That might mean we'll see a
Speaker 1: very gradual rollout of autonomous car technology in cities that
Speaker 1: are most amenable to it, let's say, so it might
Speaker 1: be a very controlled rollout, and it might be a
Speaker 1: long time before we see it everywhere. Now, I think
Speaker 1: I'm going to close with one other big point. There
Speaker 1: are tons more that I could talk about, obviously, but
Speaker 1: the one I want to talk about here. Another warning
Speaker 1: is I just mentioned the idea of Weymo gathering useful
Speaker 1: information from the driverless car service. It's it's launching in Phoenix,
Speaker 1: but that also ties into information about us as potential customers.
Speaker 1: Weymo is part of Alphabet. Alphabet's the holding company for Google.
Speaker 1: Google is ultimately in the business of information. So consider
Speaker 1: this for a moment. Using a driverless car service, it's
Speaker 1: just like using any other ride hailing service. It requires
Speaker 1: that you establish an account with that service. That account
Speaker 1: is tied to your identity. You have to be able
Speaker 1: to pay for the service, so ultimately this has to
Speaker 1: be linked to some legitimate form of payment, which in
Speaker 1: turn tends to be linked to your specific identity. And
Speaker 1: you use an app to call for a ride, you
Speaker 1: designate where you're going to be picked up and where
Speaker 1: you want to be dropped off. That means part of
Speaker 1: your payment is not in money, it's actually in the
Speaker 1: information you're giving the service. The service learns where you're
Speaker 1: coming from, where you're going, and when you were traveling,
Speaker 1: and that is valuable information. You can bet it will
Speaker 1: get tied to other stuff like advertising. So that's a
Speaker 1: very good thing to remember too. It's not to say
Speaker 1: don't use the service, but be aware of everything that's
Speaker 1: going on, be an informed consumer. Driver lest cars might
Speaker 1: transform our world, but they might do so in ways
Speaker 1: that aren't entirely to our liking in the future. Like
Speaker 1: I said, I'll probably do some more episodes about this
Speaker 1: to touch on some of those other elements that I
Speaker 1: mentioned at the top of the show but didn't really
Speaker 1: get a chance to go into. And I didn't really
Speaker 1: talk about things like the impact that driverless cars might
Speaker 1: have on employment, for example, so people who do deliveries,
Speaker 1: you know, postal service, the trucking industry, the taxi industry,
Speaker 1: right hailing businesses. I haven't talked about how driver lest
Speaker 1: cars could potentially have a big impact on those those
Speaker 1: various industries, but I have rambled about autonomous cars for
Speaker 1: more than a week now, so there's plenty for us
Speaker 1: to come back to later. For the time being, we're
Speaker 1: gonna put this to bed. We're gonna switch to other topics.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take the air out of an entirely different
Speaker 1: futuristic idea in our next episode. If you guys have
Speaker 1: suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, whether it's a technology, a company, Maybe there's
Speaker 1: a person in tech I should talk about. Maybe there's
Speaker 1: someone I should interview or have on as a guest host.
Speaker 1: Let me know. Send me an email the addresses tech
Speaker 1: Stuff at how stuff works dot com. Head on over
Speaker 1: to our website that's tech Stuff podcast dot com. You'll
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