Wrong turn ahead – Why Autonomous Vehicles are a terrible idea

The discussion around autonomous vehicles (AVs) is being led by the wrong people. I think this is dangerous and wrong.

Full disclosure: I'm all in favour of new technology and I'm fascinated by the opportunities it gives us. Amlot has worked for a company that provides autonomous vehicles in a protected and specific environment. I'm definitely not against the concept per se. But I have a number of doubts which I'd like to elaborate on here.

Who is leading the discussion?

My main concern is that the discussion is being led almost exclusively by people with a vested interest in the manufacturing and distribution of AV products. This means it is being led by the people who create the technology, not by the people who would be impacted by it, whether positively or negatively.

Here are some questions and topics I think have not been adequately addressed.

Power to the people

Autonomous vehicles are almost exclusively electric vehicles, which is a good thing compared to an internal combustion engine. However, they are extraordinarily energy hungry. The one thing that is rarely talked about is how much computing power is needed, how much energy is used and how much CO2 is emitted (and before you scream, I mean Scope 3 emissions) by using autonomous vehicles. Even if the vast amounts of energy used are renewable, we are taking that energy away from other markets, pushing up prices, making it harder for other industries to transition.

Safer than what?

One of the main arguments presented by all AV manufacturers is that they are safer than human drivers. I agree and admit that human error is a real issue and that accidents caused by motorised vehicles are a problem that needs to be solved. My issue is that we should compare the safety of an autonomous vehicle with the driver it replaces. In the case of “Robotaxis”, they are replacing taxi drivers. That’s the statistic we need to look at, but it’s strangely absent in the PR materials from manufacturers, who prefer to use global or national figures.

Whose space is it anyway?

One AV company, Waymo, says that they will improve people's access to mobility. I disagree fundamentally with this. AVs will not get people to give up their cars. It will get people to give up their bikes or buses, their taxis and other forms of public transport. By introducing autonomous vehicles, we will change the relationship between users of open spaces, for better or worse.

Accessibility is a real problem. Every single prototype I've seen is not accessible for people with physical disabilities. They’re simply not on the radar for the designers. But accessibility is not just a question of physical disability, accessibility is also a social issue.

Ride and car sharing companies have already shown that the central markets are young, childless people from affluent areas (usually places that already have good public transport). Why would AVs be any different?

The next subject is the idea of the common space, public streets and how to use them. AV companies misunderstand the idea of common space and they misuse them to generate profit for private companies.

Taking the human out of humanity

Currently, all interactions between users of public space – pedestrians, children, cyclists, car drivers, delivery drivers, bus drivers etc. – are human to human interactions. They are based on eye contact and hand signs, respect, common sense, and other factors. Allowing autonomous vehicles to ride in open public spaces demands from all other users of those spaces that they change their behaviour, to adapt to a tiny minority of technology products being pushed by a few companies.

AVs dehumanise these spaces. By introducing AVs to public spaces, we are forcing humans to interact with machines in a way that they didn't consent to, all to further the interests of a few technology companies.

AVs monopolise the goals of a few large tech companies and will bring less choice, not more.

Manufacturers often talk about solving the problems of traffic. If these technology providers really wanted to solve mobility issues for millions of people around the world, they would, of course, be investing in safe streets and massive amounts of affordable public transport.

Taxi!

We already have taxis. Why aren't we trying to improve them? I really don't like travelling by taxi. It's a lottery, a game of Russian Roulette whether you get a smoked-out cab with an unfriendly driver who doesn't know where you want to go, or a polite driver in a clean car. The only improvement we saw in the past years was the Uber business model, which basically subsidises every single ride with venture capital. The reality that the software developers working for Uber earn more than their drivers shows where the influence of these companies lies.

All your data are belong to us

I don't really know where to start with the subject of data protection. By any standards, the concept of data protection with autonomous vehicles is absolute pure hell. AVs record and store staggering amounts of live data. If you thought clicking on a cookie banner was tedious, imagine the consent an AV would need to drive down a road without violating your privacy.

It's clear that we don't have the regulation in place to reflect the use of autonomous vehicles on public streets. Any regulation related to AVs will tie up regulation resources, i.e., public resources. Why should a local government have to come up with regulation for a product it neither needs or asked for? Would the manufacturers' venture capital investors (VCs) be happy subsidising that regulation? I fear not.

If your goal is safety, why are you ignoring the low-hanging fruit?

Coming back to the question of technological advances, why are autonomous vehicles the next logical step? If companies are really interested in safety and convenience, why aren't they implementing the obvious technological advances that are staring us in the face, like speed limits, red light sensors, proximity warnings, mobile phone use and other distractions? The technology already exists to solve these problems. Which VC is going to put their hand up?

AVs are a smokescreen for real solutions like accessible mass transit. They tie up innovation, capital and public discourse with a diversion. And they displace real solutions; the opportunity costs of improving safety in the public space are so massive they don't even bear thinking of.

Is that it?

To sum up, AVs display the worst that technology development can bring to us. They're bad from an energy use point of view, a social point of view, an accessibility point of view and from a regulation point of view. They're a technological puzzle solving a problem that didn't exist before.

When the roof catches fire, you get water. Then you talk about how to prevent the roof from catching fire again. What you don’t do is invest billions of dollars in an automatic fire-fighting system without asking yourself why the roof was burning in the first place.

I fundamentally believe that AVs are an abhorrent expression of technological and financial group-think that deliberately avoids simple, easy and affordable fixes to the real problems we face, for the want of commercial gain, control and dominance.