{"id":3473592,"date":"2018-09-13T13:20:52","date_gmt":"2018-09-13T13:20:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/?p=3473592"},"modified":"2018-09-13T13:20:52","modified_gmt":"2018-09-13T13:20:52","slug":"driverless-cars-and-the-cult-of-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2018-09-13\/driverless-cars-and-the-cult-of-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"Driverless Cars and the Cult of Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, we are sharing a guest post by Andy Singer<\/strong>, a professional cartoonist and illustrator and the volunteer co-chair of the Saint Paul Bicycle Coalition<\/a>. This article was originally published on Streets.mn<\/a>. It is reprinted here with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n

We liked Singer\u2019s take because it dovetails nicely with Strong Towns\u2019 skepticism of silver-bullet solutions to complex problems. We\u2019ve argued before that autonomous vehicles could have unpredictable negative consequences when human psychology and politics<\/a> are taken into account, that they are not a panacea<\/a> for urban mobility problems, and that transportation is as much a geometry problem<\/a> as a technological one. Ultimately, we think the best way to design a resilient transportation system is to build in the tried-and-true traditional development pattern<\/a>, in which the best technology for getting around is often your own two legs.<\/em><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s yet another perspective on the autonomous vehicle phenomenon that we\u2019re happy to share with you. Tell us what you think in the comments.<\/em><\/p>\n

We constantly hear that driverless cars are just around the corner. We\u2019re told they will revolutionize transportation and enable us to continue using our car-based transport and land-use system. If they\u2019re made by Tesla, they\u2019ll be powered by magic, solar-powered, super efficient batteries and we\u2019ll all be able to keep living our hyper-mobile, hyper-consumptive lifestyles without any damage to the environment. The only problem is we\u2019ve been hearing about all this for the last five to ten years and there\u2019s no evidence that it\u2019s anything but the same old technological, utopian dreck that we\u2019ve been hearing since General Motors debuted \u201cFuturama<\/a>\u201d at the\u00a01939 World\u2019s Fair<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Technological utopianism fueled by science fiction is nothing new. If you\u2019ve never seen it, watch Disney\u2019s short animated film \u201cMagic Highway<\/a>\u201d from 1958. It\u2019s remarkably similar to this recent promotional film for an Elon Musk tubular\u00a0underground transportation system<\/a> in Los Angeles. They\u2019re both fantasies that\u00a0maintain our inefficient, car-oriented transportation and land-use systems and help the Automobile Industrial Complex retain its stranglehold on our imaginations. They\u2019re also fantasies that dovetail with corporate capitalism\u2019s fantasy of automating the entire workforce and using technology to eliminate jobs and reduce costs.<\/p>\n

In many ways, driverless cars have all the makings of a massive cult\u2014the Cult of Technology. This is the idea that technology will somehow solve the problems of human greed, over-population and over-consumption of planetary resources, and therefore will also solve the related problems of climate change, waste, pollution, and species extinction. It\u2019s an old fantasy but one we still buy into. It preys on our laziness and gullibility and it distracts and deludes us so much that we can\u2019t see basic realities staring us in the face.<\/p>\n

Witness all the absurdly hyped stories about driverless cars in the media. This\u00a0NBC news story<\/a>\u00a0is typical, gushing that \u201cSelf-driving cars will turn intersections into high-speed ballet.\u201d Their \u201cevidence\u201d for this is just an animated simulation video. They\u2019ve even got city and state governments devoting staff time and resources to \u201cPlanning for our driverless future.\u201d Non-profit \u201ctransit\u201d advocacy groups like MoveMN have held\u00a0seminars<\/a>\u00a0on it as if it\u2019s an impending reality. Cheerleaders for driverless cars claim they will reduce traffic deaths, increase the efficiency and carrying capacity of roadways, reduce costs and revolutionize transportation.<\/p>\n

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Lots of money has poured into research and development of driverless vehicles\u2014Waymo (Google), Volvo, Tesla, Mercedes, Uber and other companies have made and\/or operated test vehicles and some sell commercially available cars with driverless features like parallel parking and glorified cruise control, or what they call \u201cautopilot.\u201d Even companies\u00a0like Intel<\/a> are making bets on chip technology for driverless cars. With all this money and hype, you\u2019d think that driverless vehicles will be taking over our roads in the next ten or twenty years.<\/p>\n

But many folks, including the owner of the driverless shuttle company\u00a0EasyMile<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0scientists at MIT<\/a>\u00a0and other institutions who are actually working on the technology say widespread use or deployment of driverless vehicles is a long way off and may never happen at all:<\/p>\n

\u201cGoogle often leaves the impression that, as a Google executive once wrote, the cars can \u2018drive anywhere a car can legally drive.\u2019 However, that\u2019s true only if intricate preparations have been made beforehand, with the car\u2019s exact route, including driveways, extensively mapped. Data from multiple passes by a special sensor vehicle must later be pored over, meter by meter, by both computers and humans. It\u2019s vastly more effort than what\u2019s needed for Google Maps.\u00a0\u2026Pedestrians are detected simply as moving, column-shaped blurs of pixels\u2014meaning \u2026that the car wouldn\u2019t be able to spot a police officer at the side of the road frantically waving for traffic to stop. \u2026The car\u2019s sensors can\u2019t tell if a road obstacle is a rock or a crumpled piece of paper, so the car will try to drive around either. (Chris) Urmson (former director of the Google Car team) also says the car can\u2019t detect potholes or spot an uncovered manhole if it isn\u2019t coned off.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThere are major, unsolved, difficult issues here. We have to be careful that we don\u2019t overhype how well it works. \u2026I do not expect there to be taxis in Manhattan with no drivers in my lifetime.\u201d\u00a0<\/em>(John Leonard, MIT Professor working on robotics navigation)<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Uber\u2019s autonomous test vehicles in Pittsburgh all have backup human operators and, in over 20,000 miles of operation, those operators have had to\u00a0intervene every 0.8 miles<\/a>. Then there are the crashes:<\/p>\n