1 to 1.5 hours per day. That is what the average Dutch working citizen spends on commuting. Of a standard working day (8 hours), that is a near 19% addition to the time spent on work. Why are we still stuck in this 20th-century loss of efficiency?
The alternative is already here, and it is far more superior than any other solution yet conceived. Just imagine: a quiet, private space, that brings you anywhere you want, without any distractions. Fully customizable, according to your wishes? You want a 55” flat screen in there? Go ahead. 7.1 Surround system with lounging chair and turntable? Comfortable bed, couch, video conferencing tools, workstation, bath? All feasible. Improving your efficiency by 19% because you can work while commuting? Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?
Guess what, the technology is already here. Autonomous driving is widely present and extensively researched by major car and tech companies. The advantages are clear: we do not need to focus on driving, so we have time for other activities, among which is working of course. You can get extra sleep so you are more focused at work, or more relaxed when you return home. But also the amount of traffic jams and accidents will decrease.
There are two things preventing us from being in the future, however. Governmental regulations and infrastructure. Autonomous driving will be a lot safer and quicker implemented when the roads, crossings, cameras and other infrastructure can communicate with the cars. The Internet of Things will aid this development, soon. Governments are careful with implementing laws that allow for a novelty like this, because the current technology is not yet fully operational with other, non-autonomous cars. One solution for this would be to exponentially increase the amount of cars with autonomous driving technology on the road.
It is like group immunity. The more people have it, the safer the entire community will be.
Society is waiting for you, autonomous driving, please hurry. We need you, and we know it.
Ps. if you are one of those people that does their make-up, reads a newspaper, watches Netflix, listens to music, shaves, talks, calls, eats, works or sleeps in their car: you are living in the future. It is just not legal yet.
Hi Jeroen, nice blog you posted! However, I do have some questions regarding your view on autonomous driving. As we – humans – still make and train the algorithms of the self-driving cars, what do we program if the car approaches two kids running into the street (assuming the car does not see this from afar)? As a human, you can make an altruistic or egoistic decision. The altruistic decision (from my point of view) would be to cause an accident where you – the driver – die, and the egoistic decision would be to hit the children. So, what kind of car should we design and who should make these ethical decisions on what is good and wrong? And would it be even possible to design two cars knowing that one of the cars can kill people? Moreover, whom’s responsibility is it if the car experiences technical issues, and what would be the legislation on it?
Hey Jeroen, thank you for a great article! The emergence of AVs is a very interesting and intriguing topic nowadays. Huge automakers such as Mercedes, BMW, GM, etc. restructure their business and overall approach to this industry. Self-driving cars require innovative technological involvement which can be made primarily by such tech sharks as Google and Apple, apart from the traditional carmakers, of course. Even though Google and Apple are not fully in this industry yet, it is not a secret that Google owns Waymo (self-driving technology company) and Apple has an electric car project named Titan. I would like to ask your opinion on whether such technologically advanced companies will be able to surpass the traditional automakers and disrupt the automobile industry?
Thank you for this interesting read Jeroen! I completely agree with you, I believe that a lot of opportunity exists with autonomous driving. However, with the pandemic situation, it has been proven that working from home could also be as effective as it saves even more time! (you don’t even need to dress up!). This questions the urgency of developing autonomous driving for the purpose of work commuting. Another important point is making sure that this way of commenting does not increase the emission and the waste for the automobile industry. As everyone would like to have their personalized cars, public transport will maybe be used less.
Hi Jeroen!
Interesting topic. I have been to Frankfurt’s car show last year and they introduced these futuristic autonomous cars from BMW and others in which you can sit, sleep, eat, do whatever, without having to worry about traffic. I know people are pessimistic about it, because the tests are still failing due to traffic variables, like bikes, (many) irrational people ding irrational things etc. The computers inside the autonomous cars cannot handle these variables.
I like the way you stated this by saying there should be some kind of switch, an immediate switch from all to autonomous driving. This is by far not realistic for now, but who knows for the future? One thing is sure, we cannot manage to have both the autonomous driving and normal cars driving due to these variables.
What we might be able to do is to bring autonomous driving to the highways (less variables like lights, bikes, scooters or children/ dogs on sidewalks) and keep our normal cars in the cities. Maybe this would be the starting point in the future for the implementation of autonomous cars?
Autonomous driving is definitely the future and even more so, people can share these autonomous cars. You can combine carharing with autonomous driving. This way, you create some star-trek way of transport where people can just enter or leave a moving autonomous car. How sustainable and cool would that be… Just like all the people who fantasize about that, you’ll probably be called crazy.
This was the case with the dutch IT specialist Benno de Winter, who talked about autonomous driving years ago.
He was called crazy, but was he?
A well-written post Jeroen! You certainly discuss the advantages of autonomous driving well.
You briefly mention the challenges such as regulation, however, perhaps an even larger fundamental challenge is legislation. A common argument I hear when people discuss the implementation of autonomous vehicles (AVs) is; when a collision occurs between an AV and other road user, who is responsible? Especially in a scenario with a fatality. The passenger will unlikely state it was his/her responsibility as the passenger was not driving. Insurance companies will not be willing to be dependent upon the tech’s ability to avoid collision (for example see Tesla’s autopilot test which resulted in a collision due to errors in the visual recognition sensors). And the producer of the AV will also not claim responsibility as it would otherwise lose fortunes for each collision and/or fatality that occurs globally.
Therefore, an important hurdle to overcome is to identify who is responsible during a collision and/or fatality. As it probably will not be an easy fix, it may take much longer than expected until society accepts AVs.
Thanks for the interesting insights. I also believe that autonomous driving is the future. However, I am critical of the time frame in which this will happen. For example, it turns out to be very difficult to have autonomous vehicles driving in traffic alongside human drivers because they are difficult to estimate each other.
But, I do think that future generations will look at old photos and will say: ”hey how strange? That vehicle was driven by people, how dangerous!!!” 😉
Very interesting topic! I think there are a lot of different opinions about this subject what makes it even more interesting. I also believe that autonomous driving is the future and that it has countless opportunities. But I don’t think it will happen in the near future. A lot of problems and difficulties surrounding autonomous driving still have to be solved. For example, the different weather conditions that affect the the sensors or the safety. And also as mentioned before in one of the comments, who is responsible when an accident occurs? I do think that changes in legislation and infrastructure will speed up the process to a future with autonomous driving. And that it would make solving these kind of problems easier.
Very cool topic Jeroen! I certainly agree with all the benefits autonomous driving can give. This can not only change the way we mobilize but also change the way we work, live (maybe sleep in your car while your making a trip to Spain?!), and interact. Especially, that last one – interaction – is one that is a hot topic for everyone today. Staying addicted to our fundamental desires of being connected with people around us can then be extended while being in the car.
Regarding the challenges, I agree infrastructure and governmental issues have to be addressed before implementation. However, ethical decisions are always hard. But, what do you guys think about the following. Autonomous vehicles can become better at “seeing” the environment than humans can, because computers are inherently better at predicting than humans. This will already decrease the amount of fatalities. If, in the unlikely case, the vehicle cannot stop in time to prevent a collision, the car will always be able to calculate the least amount of damages done to all humans in the situation (especiially when connected through the cloud to a quantum computer). Therefore, no choice between humans does have to be made in such situations. Hence, ethical concerns can be dealt with in my opinion.