Poll: Auto Accident Fatalities and Injuries

[Josh]

The point is, the Iraq war didn’t make oil cheaper and has zip all to do with the cost hard working Americans pay for gasoline.

[Robert]

We will see a release of self driving taxis this fall from Tesla.

Once that happens, I suspect every Tesla sold will have FSD (Full Self Driving) installed. It does cost $100 a month for the feature. Once that goes down, we will see it implemented in many more. There are already a lot of FSD Teslas on the road right now. One still has to be in the driver seat, but the car does the driving. FSD taxis will not have anyone in the driver seat, if I understand it right. The plan is for Tesla cars to be available just like an Uber and people will not have to own one, just schedule one as needed. A car will show up, take you to your destination, then leave for another trip. No need to own when you can just have it show up as needed.

I see this going large in the cities within 5 years. Battery technology will catch up in about 5-10 years also. Soon car ownership will be an option, not a need in the cities. I suspect rural will still need to own and use gas a while longer until battery technology gives 500+ miles per charge and 10 minute or less recharge speeds. Both are available, but will take some years to scale for productivity.

All this will start reducing accidents. Teslas are actually one of the safer cars also. The Chinese and European EVs not so much.

[barnhart]

We will see a release of self driving taxis this fall from Tesla.

Once that happens, I suspect every Tesla sold will have FSD (Full Self Driving) installed. It does cost $100 a month for the feature. Once that goes down, we will see it implemented in many more.

I see this going large in the cities within 5 years. Battery technology will catch up in about 5-10 years also. Soon car ownership will be an option, not a need in the cities. I suspect rural will still need to own and use gas a while longer until battery technology gives 500+ miles per charge and 10 minute or less recharge speeds. Both are available, but will take some years to scale for productivity.

All this could happen but there is a large missing puzzle piece that must be solved first, liability. Maybe the tech billionaires can wrangle watertight protection legislation from Congress but until then they will be very hesitant to have that many machines on the road which occasionally run over people all by themselves. They need a "whatever happens, it's never my fault" law, and they might get it.

[Josh]

Self driving taxis have already existed for a while. Waymo is one of them. For whatever reason, humans apparently are either better or cheaper than self driving taxis.

[Ken]

Self driving taxis have already existed for a while. Waymo is one of them. For whatever reason, humans apparently are either better or cheaper than self driving taxis.

Maybe I'm stupid. But I fail to see the business model with self-driving taxis.

The reason that Uber makes money is because Uber has dumped every bit of car expense onto its individual drivers. The drivers pay for the vehicle itself, the insurance, the fuel, the maintenance. And the drivers provide the parking, cleaning, storage, of the vehicles.

If a company like Waymo or Tesla eliminates the drivers from the equation then suddenly they are going to have to do all of those things themselves. They will need to finance and maintain their own fleets of self-driving cars, they will need to have places to store them, charge them. They will need to clean them daily. They will need all manner of maintenance staff and customer service staff to deal with everything from lost umbrellas and cell phones, to vehicles stuck and abandoned in traffic.

I honestly don't see how a company like Tesla can make MORE money by taking on all those costs themselves rather than pushing them off onto drivers. They might need just as many humans working for them just keeping their fleet going as they would by just hiring drivers and that doesn't even get into the costs of owning all the cars rather than having the drivers own them and skim off a cut like they do now with the apps.

Tesla seems to think that its current fleet of owners are going to want to rent out their cars for self-driving taxi service when they aren't in use. But I don't really buy it. Most Tesla drivers are pretty affluent and they aren't going to want their nice cars being used to pick up drunks from bars and such, which will just get them trashed. And a car designed from ground up to be a taxi is going to look a LOT different from one designed to be a luxury purchase.

The whole self-driving taxi thing feels to me like a giant scam for tech companies to relieve venture capitalists of their billions. Not something that makes much sense in the near-term.

Also, it is substantially easier to design a self-driving vehicle that is constrained to a few square miles of one urban area with staff available to extract vehicles from pinches. Something entirely different to design one that can go anywhere in the US.

[barnhart]

Also, it is substantially easier to design a self-driving vehicle that is constrained to a few square miles of one urban area with staff available to extract vehicles from pinches.

I have some questions how self driving tech will work out in dense urban areas with pedestrian culture. Drivers that hesitate unnecessarily in Manhattan can find the crossing pedestrian traffic never stops. I can see self driving cars programmed to yield to pedestrians getting stuck or if programmed a touch too aggressively, running over people. Maybe suburbia without sidewalks is more fertile ground for this technology.

[Ken]

Also, it is substantially easier to design a self-driving vehicle that is constrained to a few square miles of one urban area with staff available to extract vehicles from pinches.

I have some questions how self driving tech will work out in dense urban areas with pedestrian culture. Drivers that hesitate unnecessarily in Manhattan can find the crossing pedestrian traffic never stops. I can see self driving cars programmed to yield to pedestrians getting stuck or if programmed a touch too aggressively, running over people. Maybe suburbia without sidewalks is more fertile ground for this technology.

In places like Manhattan I expect people will learn they can just walk in front of them which will basically re-write the rules of right of way on the streets and highways allowing pedestrians, cyclists, scooter users, etc. to claim rights of way. It has the potential to greatly increase traffic congestion if traffic on a street stops for every pedestrian who decides to cross the street anywhere. And I expect self-driving car companies will start demanding major infrastructure investments to accommodate/alleviate that. And that will be an enormous future political fight over who owns our streets. People or self-driving car companies.

Right now they are a new thing in places like San Francisco, but pedestrians and others are already learning how to mess with those cars and block them.

[Neto]

Also, it is substantially easier to design a self-driving vehicle that is constrained to a few square miles of one urban area with staff available to extract vehicles from pinches.

I have some questions how self driving tech will work out in dense urban areas with pedestrian culture. Drivers that hesitate unnecessarily in Manhattan can find the crossing pedestrian traffic never stops. I can see self driving cars programmed to yield to pedestrians getting stuck or if programmed a touch too aggressively, running over people. Maybe suburbia without sidewalks is more fertile ground for this technology.

Re: Operation of battery-powered conveyances in areas w/o designated pedestrian walkways:

Background

To protect pedestrians and other road users, FMVSS No. 141 requires HEVs to emit a pedestrian alert sound while operating in certain conditions.[2]

The alert sound on a given vehicle is allowed to change with vehicle operating speed or direction—the standard defines five different operating conditions: stationary in neutral or forward gear and with constant forward speed less than 10 km/h; reverse; and moving at constant forward speed from 10 km/h up to but not including 20 km/h, from 20 km/h up to 30 km/h, and at or just above 30 km/h. Beyond that speed, alert sounds are no longer required by FMVSS No. 141 as other sounds such as tires and airflow produce enough sound to make the vehicle detectable.

SOURCE:
https://www.federalregister.gov/documen ... c-vehicles

Comments:
Note that no alert sounds are required for speeds exceeding "just above 30km/h". For non-metric thinkers, 32 km/h is just under 20 MPH. Battery bikes travel well above that speed.

I have nearly been struck by battery bikes more than once, especially in the winter. Ambient noise also affects the danger associated with this situation. I had another close call just yesterday, as I walked past the back of the grocery store here in Berlin. There is lots of noise coming from the store's appliances - the A/C units, the refrigeration units on the room, sometimes the backup generator, and yesterday, a trash truck emptying the dumpster there along the street.

I mentioned winter conditions for mainly two reasons - the street is not cleared to its full width, and there is often snow piled up along the street. (The people who clear the store parking lots push it across the street into private property as well.) So it is not possible to walk through there, and stay off of the street itself. Second, I, like most other pedestrians in the winter, wear head gear. This further reduces the ability to hear cars or bikes approaching from the rear.

Then there is the general disregard for normal traffic rules. On the part of the non-automotive battery traffic, it is often due to ignorance of the law, as there are no requirements here for any written or driving tests for bicycles, buggies, and tractors. And yes, people do sometimes get killed or seriously injured due to even 'just' bike accidents, and sometimes it is a pedestrian.

Do you have relatives who are hard of hearing? That also increases the dangers which come with battery operated conveyances. (Human powered bikes as well, of course. Being struck by a bike can also result in serious injury or death. It happens from time to time here in Holmes County. And bikes, especially the battery ones, are very often operated up and down our street here in Berlin at reckless speeds, while also crossing well into the opposing lane at the curve just past our house.)

[Neto]

In places like Manhattan I expect people will learn they can just walk in front of them which will basically re-write the rules of right of way on the streets and highways allowing pedestrians, cyclists, scooter users, etc. to claim rights of way. It has the potential to greatly increase traffic congestion if traffic on a street stops for every pedestrian who decides to cross the street anywhere. And I expect self-driving car companies will start demanding major infrastructure investments to accommodate/alleviate that.

Right now they are a new thing in places like San Francisco, but pedestrians and others are already learning how to mess with those cars and block them.

We get a tremendous amount of traffic through Berlin in the "tourist season", which is increasingly almost any time during the year. We have two of these pedestrian right-of-way cross-walks in the center of town, and yes, it causes traffic congestion, because the result is that vehicles often cannot move through the two main intersections when they have a green light. Traffic often then backs up well out of town, in both directions, but especially to the East, where there are another two traffic lights farther outside of town.

[Ken]

In places like Manhattan I expect people will learn they can just walk in front of them which will basically re-write the rules of right of way on the streets and highways allowing pedestrians, cyclists, scooter users, etc. to claim rights of way. It has the potential to greatly increase traffic congestion if traffic on a street stops for every pedestrian who decides to cross the street anywhere. And I expect self-driving car companies will start demanding major infrastructure investments to accommodate/alleviate that.

Right now they are a new thing in places like San Francisco, but pedestrians and others are already learning how to mess with those cars and block them.

We get a tremendous amount of traffic through Berlin in the "tourist season", which is increasingly almost any time during the year. We have two of these pedestrian right-of-way cross-walks in the center of town, and yes, it causes traffic congestion, because the result is that vehicles often cannot move through the two main intersections when they have a green light. Traffic often then backs up well out of town, in both directions, but especially to the East, where there are another two traffic lights farther outside of town.

Here is a fascinating video of a trip down a San Francisco street in 1900. Notice how many pedestrians are crossing the street anywhere, not just at street corners. I don't think crosswalks even existed. That was possible because vehicles were much slower moving and horses aren't going to run over people, they will stop and swerve if you step in front of a horse.

If software prevents self-driving cars from running over pedestrians and cyclists and other non-car road users I expect they will quickly learn to carve out more rights of way in traffic, knowing they are safe in doing so. And that is how it will have to be, otherwise self-driving car companies will be driven out of business due to all the endless liability claims over dead and injured pedestrians and cyclists.

I don't necessarily think it will be a bad thing to have more equitable sharing of the road spaces like we had 125 years ago. But it will be different. And it won't necessarily improve traffic flow through our cities. It will probably make it worse. Self-driving cars aren't going to be some magic solution to traffic congestion. To the contrary.