By Jeff Sanford
Toronto, Ontario — May 20, 2016 — The hype around autonomous vehicles continues, with a number of stories hitting the streets in the last week. A new company is working on a self-driving transport truck, some transportation experts believe self-driving cars will actually increase traffic congestion and Google has filed a patent for an adhesive to help prevent pedestrian injuries.
– Otto is a new company led by 15 former Google engineers. According to a story in the New York Times this week the company has also hired some “major figures from the search company’s self-driving car and maps projects” and is now working on a self-driving long-haul truck. The Google engineers think that “automating trucks rather than passenger vehicles could be more palatable financially and to regulators.” The report notes that, “Nationally, trucks drive 5.6 percent of all vehicle miles and are responsible for 9.5 percent of highway fatalities, according to Department of Transportation data.”
– The usual take on self-driving cars so far has been that they will reduce traffic congestion. The general idea is that they will organize themselves while driving to move most efficiently. Plus cars will be used all the time, rather than spend 97 percent of their time parked. This will reduce the number of cars on the streets. But another take on the effect of AVs on congestion arrived this week in a report by Associated Press that quoted severals experts as worrying that people will like AVs too much and will begin driving much more than ever.
The report quotes Gary Silberg of accounting firm KPMG as comparing 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.”
Don MacKenzie is a transportation research with the University of Washington. He notes that the biggest cost of car travel is the driver’s time.
“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 according to the report.
A study last year by the International Transport Forum seemed to indicate that total vehicle miles tranveled would increase anywhere from 30 to 90 percent after the introduction of AVs, assuming that half of travel is still carried out by conventional cars.
– Google has apparently filed a patent for an adhesive device to use on cars to “protect pedestrians from self-driving cars,” according to a report in the tech media this week. “In its patent, Google acknowledged that robot cars will hit pedestrians — until the technology gets to the point that the vehicles can ‘avoid all accidents.’”
Google has come up with an adhesive that would be applied over cars that would keep humans hit by a braking car from bouncing off on to the pavement, which is when injuries often occur. According to the story an, “eggshell-like layer covering the adhesive would protect the sticky surface during everyday driving, but shatter in an accident to reveal the glue.” The patent application also includes “an option to use a ‘releasable adhesive’ that would allow the person to be unstuck ‘after a period of time.'”
– A report this week in the Financial Times of London notes that a transport bill announced in the Queen’s Speech will extend compulsory cover to accidents where the car itself is at fault. The Queen’s Speech is annual event that sets out the government’s legislative program.
The report quotes James Dalton, Director of General Insurance Policy at the Association of British Insurers as saying the change will “provide more clarity to consumers and the market around how insurance operates in an environment where there are more autonomous vehicles on the road … what we’ll need to work out, working with government, is what new legal and insurance solutions there should be when the car is in fully driverless mode.”
