Driverless cars could increase reliance on roads: study

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – We’ve heard a lot about how emerging technologies will improve your commute by reducing traffic and saving time, as well as help the environment by cutting emissions. But a new study suggests the car of the near future might actually make things worse on our roads.

Driverless vehicles have been the topic of some debate by local politicians, with one city councillor trying to get a jump on planning for the technology to help boost Vancouver’s green reputation.

But will it?

Researchers from the University of Washington, Tennessee’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Leeds in the UK have released a study suggesting automated vehicles may actually increase demand on our roadways.

“We’d heard a lot of hype about self-driving cars and how they could help solve a lot of the problems we have in the transportation system — things like congestion, safety, energy consumption, and so on. What we thought we needed was a dispassionate analysis, not through rose-coloured glasses, as we try to assess the potential benefits,” says co-author Don MacKenzie, a UW assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering.

“We took a careful look at the ways people were saying automation could affect energy consumption and our goal was to put some bounds on how big of an impact we think this could have.”

The study analyzes self-driving technology combined with data on car and truck use, driver licenses, and vehicle running costs to model the impact on energy demand of automation on US roads by 2050.

“The benefits don’t come from the automation per se, but from changes in how or how much we use our vehicles,” MacKenzie tells NEWS 1130.

“The biggest potential downside is increased travel demand due to a lower cost of the drivers time in the vehicle. This is reduced by allowing the driver to work, meet, read a book, play games or whatever they want to do in the vehicle instead of driving.”

In other words, the very attractiveness of self-driving technology could reduce or even outweigh the efficiency gains as more people choose to use their cars rather than transit or other forms of transportation.

“We could easily swamp the energy efficiency benefits,” he explains.

And this is not in the distant future.

Since Google unveiled its driverless car technology in 2012, other companies have been developing their own systems with some of the technology already in use. Mackenzie points to testimony from some Tesla owners who use the vehicle’s highway autopilot system.

“One driver said it was the same distance but the commute felt like it took half the time. It’s basic economics. If you make something, easier, cheaper and more convenient, you shouldn’t be surprised if people use more of it,” he says.

“The key take-away is that we need to research and plan for automated vehicles, but automation alone is not going to solve our problems — at least not without other policy intervention.”