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| FILE - In this May 13, 2014 file photo, a Google self-driving car goes on a test drive near the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. Self-driving cars are expected to usher in a new era of mobility, safety and convenience. The problem, say transportation researchers, is that people will use them too much. |
WASHINGTON
(AP) -- Self-driving cars are expected to usher in a new era of
mobility, safety and convenience. The problem, say transportation
researchers, is that people will use them too much.
Experts
foresee robot cars chauffeuring children to school, dance class and
baseball practice. The disabled and elderly will have new mobility.
Commuters will be able to work, sleep, eat or watch movies on the way to
the office. People may stay home more because they can send their cars
to do things like pick up groceries they've ordered online.
Researchers
believe the number of miles driven will skyrocket. It's less certain
whether that will mean a corresponding surge in traffic congestion, but
it's a clear possibility.
Gary Silberg, an
auto industry expert at accounting firm KPMG, compares it to the
introduction of smartphones. "It will be indispensable to your life," he
said. "It will be all sorts of things we can't even think of today."
Cars
that can drive themselves under limited conditions are expected to be
available within five to 10 years. Versions able to navigate under most
conditions may take 10 to 20 years.
Based on
focus groups in Atlanta, Denver and Chicago, KPMG predicts autonomous
"mobility-on-demand" services - think Uber and Lyft without a driver -
will result in double-digit increases in travel by people in two age
groups: those over 65, and those 16 to 24.
Vehicles
traveled a record 3.1 trillion miles in the U.S. last year. Increased
trips in autonomous cars by those two age groups would boost miles
traveled by an additional 2 trillion miles annually by 2050, KPMG
calculated. If self-driving cars without passengers start running
errands, the increase could be double that.
And
if people in their middle years, when driving is at its peak, also
increase their travel, that yearly total could reach 8 trillion miles.
"This could be massive," Silberg said.
Driverless
cars are expected to make travel both safer and cheaper. With human
error responsible for 90 percent of traffic accidents, they're expected
to sharply reduce accidents, driving down the cost of insurance and
repairs.
But the biggest cost of car travel is
drivers' time, said Don MacKenzie, a University of Washington
transportation researcher. That cost comes down dramatically when people
can use their travel time productively on other tasks.
A
study by MacKenzie and other researchers published in the journal
Transportation Research: Part A estimates that the vehicles can cut the
cost of travel by as much as 80 percent. That in turn drives up miles
traveled by 60 percent.
"You are talking about
a technology that promises to make travel safer, cheaper, more
convenient. And when you do that, you'd better expect people are going
to do more of it," MacKenzie said.
There's a
fork ahead in this driverless road, says a report by Lauren Isaac,
manager of sustainable transportation at WSP/Parsons Brinckerhoff, that
envisions either utopia or a nightmare.
In the
best case, congestion is reduced because driverless cars and trucks are
safer and can travel faster with reduced space between them. Highway
lanes can be narrower because vehicles won't need as much margin for
error. There will be fewer accidents to tie up traffic. But those
advantages will be limited as long as driverless cars share roads with
conventional cars, likely for decades.
But
that scenario depends on a societal shift from private vehicle ownership
to commercial fleets of driverless cars that can be quickly summoned
with a phone app. Driverless fleets would have to become super-efficient
carpools, picking up and dropping off multiple passengers traveling in
the same direction.
The congestion nightmare
would result if a large share of people can't be persuaded to
effectively share robot cars with strangers and to continue using mass
transit, Isaac said.
A study last year by the
International Transport Forum, a transportation policy think tank,
simulated the impact on traffic in Lisbon, Portugal, if conventional
cars were replaced with driverless cars that take either a single
passenger at a time or several passengers together.
It
found that as long as half of travel is still carried out by
conventional cars, total vehicle miles traveled will increase from 30 to
90 percent, suggesting that even widespread sharing of driverless cars
would mean greater congestion for a long time.
Airlines
also may face new competition as people choose to travel by car at
speeds well over 100 mph between cities a few hundred miles apart
instead of flying. Transit agencies will need to rethink their services
in order to stay competitive, especially because the elimination of a
driver would make car-sharing services cheaper.
To
make the shared-vehicle model work, government would have to impose
congestion pricing on highways, restrict parking in urban centers, add
more high-occupancy vehicle lanes and take other measures to discourage
people from traveling alone in their self-driving cars.
Land-use
policies may need to be adjusted to prevent sprawl, or people will move
beyond the fringes of metropolitan areas for low-cost housing because
they can work while commuting at high speeds. Taxes based on the number
of miles a personal vehicle travels are another way to discourage car
travel.
All these policy changes would be controversial and difficult to achieve.
While
there are "loads of likely positive impacts for society associated with
driverless technology," people are right to worry about potential for
huge increases in congestion, Issac said.
"Without any government influence," she said, "human nature is to get into that single occupancy vehicle."
