556 The blessing to come: Driverless cars
Oh boy, I couldn’t agree more with
Peter Martin, SMH. Honestly, I couldn't put it better myself, so I publish the whole article (I concur, even with the mobile phone story ... I bought mine two months after the "cell-net" was introduced; it cost me $7,500. No Kidding!)
I've said it before, I say it again: Nothing has ever changed our lives as much as driverless cars will. Not mobile phone, not computers, not the internet ... not even all three of them combined!
I just add this: I don't care what they'll look like, and I don't care how slow they'll be. Bring 'em on, I say. I've blogged about them before: Blog 490. Oh, and one other thing, I read
somewhere that in most surveys more than 50% of people questioned said they don’t
like the idea ... they will want to drive themselves! Are they nuts? Anyway, read on ...
Peter Martin:
It was once fashionable to mock
mobile phones. They were toys for yuppies, on the way out. Not for a second did I take part in
the ribbing. As early as the late 1980s I wanted one badly. As soon as I could,
I paid a fortune to get one.
I feel the same way now about
driverless cars.
In November they will come to
Australia. Adelaide will host Australia's first trial in
a closed off section of its southern expressway. If the automated Volvos
can stop and break into traffic and and turn where they should, South Australia
will consider making them legal. Other states will follow. And then driverless
cars will free us up for living in the same way as mobile phones ensured we
were always in touch.
Imagine studying, reading books,
watching TV, sleeping or (legally) playing with your mobile phone on the way to
work. Whichever way you look at it, the freed-up time will boost productivity.
If it is used for working, it'll boost the productivity of the working and
commuting hours. If it is used for leisure, it'll cut the number of hours given
over to work or driving to it.
It'll also make previously
unproductive people productive. Disabled Australians (especially the blind) and
those above driving age will be able to command cars. People who live a long
way from work will no longer have to endure hours of anguish. If their cars
drive to cheap car parks after dropping them off it'll free up city real
estate.
If their cars are summoned by
someone else (for a fee) while they are at work, the cars themselves will
become more productive. They'll form a sort-of uber Uber. Taxis themselves will
become far cheaper without drivers and because of that more plentiful. One
estimate says most taxi drivers have just five, perhaps 10, years left. And
truck drivers too. Rio Tinto is already using automated trucks in one of its
mines.
Driverless cars will free up
infrastructure in more profound ways. We are forever being told we need more
and wider roads. But if automated vehicles couple up, bumper bar to bumper,
peeling off only when needed, we will get an awful lot more out of the roads
we've got. As automated vehicles come to dominate traffic we will need
narrower lanes. Driverless cars will be more precise. Perhaps even too
precise. There's talk that eventually sloppy human-driven cars could be banned
from roads in
the same way as pedestrians were banned from roads some years after the advent
of the car.
And driverless cars will be safer.
Human error is thought to account for 90 per cent of crashes. Alcohol, drugs
and tiredness are responsible for 40 per cent of fatal crashes. In Britain the
Eno Centre for Transportation says this means driverless cars could
cut road deaths by 40 per cent, which in Australia would mean 400 lives
saved a year. Even alert humans usually can't beat machines. It takes us a
second or more to react. Computers do so instantly and control the car better
(which is why modern braking systems take over from us the minute we
hit the brakes).
Early reports from passengers
sitting in the front seat of Google self-driving cars show frustration with how
cautious (safe) its automatic driving style is. But that caution is often
warranted. On one occasion a Google car refused to turn into a main road even
though it looked as if it was clear. It had spotted a cyclist, obscured by a
tree, but seen by its radar.
Automation raises awkward moral
questions. At the moment we have no formal guide as to what to do when faced
with a choice of hitting an old person or a young person. A driverless car
would need that decision programmed in.
The Reserve Bank governor this week
joined a chorus of experts saying Australia's living standard might grow
more slowly from now on because productivity might grow more slowly.
The easy productivity gains had been made. But there's another possibility.
It's that productivity gains build on productivity gains, accelerating growth.
Cars became possible only because of steam engines. Driverless cars have become
possible only because of computers, vision processing technology, global
positioning satellites and Google Maps.
Modern phones do things undreamt of
when I got my first. Vodafone told me in all seriousness they had no plans to
introduce SMS in Australia. I'm optimistic about what's in store, which means
I'm optimistic about us.
Peter Martin is
economics editor of The Age