by James A. Bacon
Whether we’re ready for them or not, the United States will be flooded with self-driving cars (SDCs) within 10 to 15 years. Envisioning a future in which people subscribe to driverless-car sharing services, some urbanists look to the future with equanimity: When people don’t need to own cars outright, they’re more likely to take mass transit more and use cars only for trips that require extra carrying capacity.
Others see driverless cars reviving the long-distance commute by allowing commuters to spending their time emailing or web surfing rather than focusing on the road. Then there’s Robin Chase’s nightmare vision of cities plunging into hellish congestion as robo-cars clog the roads running incessant errands for their owners.
As founder of car-sharing company Zipcar and peer-to-peer car-sharing enterprise Buzzcar, Chase has an interesting perspective. She wants to see car-sharing spread. She thinks it would be “thrilling” if SDCs morphed into a form of public transportation owned by municipalities, rental car companies or ride-sharing companies. When people use shared-car services for trips where only a car will do, they are more likely to walk, bike or ride transit for other trips. Fewer car trips equates to less congestion and pollution.
But Chase shared her fear at Internet Week in New York City last week that people will purchase SDCs and send them into the streets to run errands on their behalf. As Issie Lapowsky sums up her argument in Wired, “Why walk 10 blocks to the dry cleaner, when your car can drive there and back on its own? And who cares if traffic’s terrible at that time of day? Cars don’t get impatient.”
“The future of autonomous cars that are personally owned is a nightmare,” Chase said. “I’m going to venture, 50 percent of the cars in the street will have no one in them.” Ultimately, this could wipe out potentially more efficient services like taxis, busses, Uber, Lyft, and yes, Zipcar. “It’s going to take all of them out,” she says.
Chase raises a possibility that cannot be ruled out, but I don’t see the nightmare scenario transpiring. First, there will be many errands that Self Driving Cars cannot perform. For instance, not many people will send their car to Kroger and let their milk and chicken sit uncooled in the car trunk until they get off work. Neither will people send their cars to Lowe’s to choose a suite of patio furniture. Second, when SDCs do pick up the laundry, they will replace trips in which drivers would have picked up the cleaning themselves. SDCs won’t create new trips; they’ll substitute trips. Indeed, one could argue that the proliferation of SDCs could displace errands that are tacked onto a commute from rush hour to less congested times of day.
I’m open to other views but, at this point in time, I just can’t get panicked about our streets getting overrun with robo-cars.
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