How Self-Driven Vehicles Can Be A Boon

In the United States, the Department of Transportation will offer a $50-million grant to one of the seven cities that have a grand vision for the future. San Francisco is among those seven cities.

There are plans to implement self-driving buses that will use wireless technology to avoid collisions. City authorities plan to shuttle people who live in dense areas in the periphery to their homes, if those neighbourhoods are outside the area where autonomous vehicles are available. The underlying motive is to lower the usage of cars.

It is debatable whether this is feasible or even desirable. For example, there is no reason why people who prefer to travel in their own cars should be forced to share the services, if that is what authorities want. Cities should be guided by sound economic reasoning than by arbitrary aesthetic goals.

But it is true that greater car sharing will lower traffic congestion. When traffic congestion is lower, even in the present world, drivers will be free to pursue their other goals instead of being stuck in the traffic. For example, a driver who wants to do a part-time college degree will have more time to devote to studies. This will encourage more talented drivers to enter the market. Lower traffic congestion will also allow more people to earn through driving. For example, a person who is jobless may be more willing to take to driving if the cost of choosing driving as a part-time job is low. In other words, lower traffic congestion will increase labour mobility.

This is true of normal human beings, too. When traffic congestion is low, people can access far more jobs from their home. For example, they will be able to access many times more jobs than they earlier did in one hour of commute. This would make it easier for people to switch jobs, and to choose jobs that match their levels of expertise.

But, self-driving cars come with many advantages that ordinary car sharing does not have. The reaction time of driverless vehicles is much lower than that of human-driven vehicles. This would allow vehicles to drive at a much faster pace, saving road space. As road space is valuable real estate, this itself will lower road congestion. As they have a lower reaction time and can avoid collision by wireless technology, they also need less space to park. Driverless vehicles will also make it easier to price roads, when advanced technology becomes common enough to track the people who use them through mobile applications.

In India at present, to use transit, people need to walk or take a rickshaw to Metro stations. But if shared driverless cars were to be introduced here, people would get to enjoy shared transport without travelling to the Metro station. This would also shield people from extreme weather conditions. People would also be able to read or work while travelling, as they would be driven around. The people who drive do not have that luxury at present. A person who earns about Rs 1 crore a year can save human time worth Rs 1 lakh a month, if he travels in a driverless car for one hour a day, instead of driving. Self-driving cars will also lead to greater energy efficiency, and lead to fewer accidents.