Self Driving Cars and Mobility

Today I filled in a survey with the premise “Impact of automated vehicles on walking” and it gave me an opportunity to share my views on this topic. The short version is that I’d rather see more bike sharing opportunities, and more safe routes for pedestrians between villages and towns, than self driving cars.

The reason for this is simple. It takes a few seconds to unlock a publibike, six minutes to get to Nyon Station, and then catch a train. In contrast, taking a car would require me to become part of traffic, even if the car is self driving. If I take a bike both ways, then I have very little carbon footprint compared to if I get in a car. A car is 1.4 tons, or more, that has to move around 60kg.A bike is 10 kg to move 60 kg. A good bike has almost 98 percent efficiency.

In theory a self-driving car that would drive from Geneva, pick me up near Nyon, and then drive to the mountains is great, but in practice we have trains for that. I don’t need a car to get me from home to my hiking start point. I need an efficient form of transport to get me from my home to a train station, and unless I am travelling with a suitcase a bike will be fine.

A few days ago I rode a bike in the rain, and it was fine. I was still dry, and the bike didn’t seem to splash mud or dirty water on me. A car would have cost a lot more,and wasted more energy, with the same result.

Ownership

The poll also asked about whether we want to own a self-driving car, and allow it to do journeys for others, and my answer is “no”. A car can easily be filled with junk or damaged by others. If they smoke the car will smell. If they have poor hygiene the car will smell. If they have too much perfume the car will smell. Most importantly though, what is the point of owning a self driving car? If a car can drive itself then it should be owned by a commune or village, or company. The entire raison d’être is to reduce car ownership as well as to reduce the amount of space needed to store them. We use cars an hour every so often. It makes no sense to own self-driving cars.

Ride Sharing

They discussed car sharing but I have been ride sharing for years. We ride shared when diving, climbing, hiking and more. It’s normal for a driver to go to various metro stations and locations to pick people up, before driving on to the destination, and then sharing the cost.

Safety

I don’t trust cars to be safe for a simple reason. The Trolley problem. When self-driving cars were being discussed they discussed who it was better to kill, in a utilitarian manner. To me, as a driver, and as a human being I had to learn to anticipate and evaluate risk with little to no tolerance for an accident that I could have anticipated and prevented.

Tesla cars are often driven too fast and too close when I’m cycling, and the idea that I could be cycling, and for a Tesla or other self-driving car to crash into me is deeply unsettling. Cars are dangerous enough when human beings are at the wheel, let alone a self-driving car. I don’t want to be on an open road with a self-driving car skimming me like human drivers do.

I don’t want roads dedicated to self-driving cars to be off limits to cyclists. Too much infrastructure is already given to cars, rather than pedestrians and cyclists. A car doesn’t stop being a car, just because it drives itself.

Self driving cars are not a step forward. They’re a step sideways. The real step forward is to use bikes to get to trains, and trains to get to destinations, and more bikes, or walking for the last kilometre.

And Finally

I look forward to the era of self-driving cars, but I look forward, even more, to cycling and walking routes that are safe for pedestrians between every village and town. I think self-driving cars will be useful, but, having said this, I think we should reduce our dependence on cars.

I personally went from using a car every day, to using it two times per week, usually for food shopping. This summer I did plenty of hikes via trains rather than driving and it worked well. Despite the journey time being two hours I felt fine.

In my eyes self-driving cars are not the magic solution. Bike sharing, and cycling and biking lanes are.