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Automated Vehicles: What’s Next?
Over the last day and a half, I attended the first workshop in a series of five workshops that will be hosted throughout the country by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). This series of workshops, called the National Dialogue on Highway Automation, is meant to facilitate information sharing, identify key issues and support the safe and efficient integration of automated vehicles into our nation’s transportation network.
The National Dialogue workshop I attended was focused on Planning and Policy. It was an invigorating day and a half of discussion with federal, state, and local agency staff; automakers; consultants; and other stakeholders in our transportation system. It left me with more questions than answers, but it was great to see FHWA’s commitment to a process of public engagement so that automated vehicles positively contribute to societal goals.
The rest of this blog post draws upon the brainstorming exercise we did as the last group exercise which asked us to create an action plan for a stakeholder group looking at the policy and planning issues over a 20-year time horizon. This blog also draws upon the framing for automated vehicles used by Robin Chase, founder of Zipcar, which is that automated vehicles may lead to “heaven” or “hell.” You can find a short video about what that means to her here: https://youtu.be/DeUE4kHRpEk.
These scenarios are speculation, but I hope that they can help you consider how automated vehicles may affect bicycling in the future. The examples for each time period are far from the only action(s) that would contribute to each scenario, but are intended to provide ideas for places for bicycle advocates to focus efforts.
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Heaven |
Hell |
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Scenarios |
More people are more comfortable biking more places |
People are restricted from biking more places than now |
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1 year |
Governments at all levels continue to plan and invest in bicycle networks including better bicycle facilities that are comfortable for people of all ages and abilities. |
Governments begin to worry about how AVs will affect road networks due to possible increased congestion and/or begin to believe the AVs will make bicycle facilities unnecessary because AVs will be perfectly safe. |
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5 years |
Governments sees AVs enabling less parking or greater road capacity with fewer general travel lanes and begin to use this additional space for bicycle facilities. |
Governments begin adapting curb space for pick-up and drop-off for shared AV fleets or Uber/Lyft and see it as dangerous to have bicycle facilities in that curb space. |
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20 years |
Governments have built out connected bicycle networks utilizing space freed from parking and/or general travel lanes thanks to AV efficiency. |
AVs have led to more congestion and vehicle travel as they are used to circle blocks instead of parking or for unaccompanied trips. No space has been re-allocated to bicycle travel due to increased congestion. In some areas, bicycles are banned on roads so that AVs can operate more efficiently or AV optimized infrastructure, like high-speed signal-less intersections, make bicycling very uncomfortable if not banned. |
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Heaven |
Hell |
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Scenarios |
Bicycling is substantially safer (zero fatalities and serious injuries is foreseeable or reasonable) |
Bicyclists are a significantly higher percentage of traffic fatalities |
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1 year |
Third-party tests of AVs and/or Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) show that they detect, recognize, and safely respond to people who bike. |
There is little to no public information about the ability of AVs or ADAS to detect, recognize, and safely respond to people who bike. |
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5 years |
Manufacturers who have voluntarily agreed to make Automated Emergency Braking (AEB) standard by 2022 can show by third-party tests that AEB systems reliably prevent the most common types of vehicle-bicyclist collisions. |
AEB systems in the United States are not tested by third-parties for their ability to prevent the most common types of vehicle-bicyclist collisions. A mixed fleet of AVs and normal cars make distracted driving enforcement difficult or impossible. |
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20 years |
AVs and cars equipped with ADAS provide data to governments to identify areas where vehicle-bicyclist conflicts occur and governments use that data to create better bicycle facilities. |
The United States has begun testing of AVs and ADAS for their ability to prevent the most common types of vehicle-bicyclist collisions, but is 10-15 years behind Europe which began testing in 2018. |
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Heaven |
Hell |
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Scenarios |
Bicyclists routinely recover damages when injured by motor vehicles |
Bicyclists rarely recover damages when injured by motor vehicles |
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1 year |
Traffic laws continue to be updated to provide better protection for bicyclists through the adoption of 3 foot passing laws and changes to negligence doctrines in some jurisdictions. |
State legislatures use AVs as a reason to not provide better protection for bicyclists because AVs will solve everything. |
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5 years |
A national effort for more uniform traffic laws includes strong protections for people who bike and walk so that normal human behaviors that are not intrinsically dangerous do not prevent recovery – or – there is a shift from negligence doctrines to strict liability for AVs. |
A national effort for more uniform traffic laws is focused on enabling AV deployment and creates additional restrictions on non-occupant behaviors so that AVs have fewer interactions with them, those restrictions make it harder for bicyclists to recover damages when they are hit. |
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20 years |
Motor vehicles are presumed liable in crashes involving non-occupants and traffic laws restrict bicyclist and pedestrian behavior as little as possible. |
It is prohibitively expensive to litigate an AV-involved crash to prove AV negligence because the trial involves terabytes of data, complex machine learning algorithm analysis, and several possible responsible parties involved in creating AV systems. |