The application for Leadership New Hampshire, a training course for emerging or established state leaders, asks candidates to identify the three most important issues affecting New Hampshire. Applicants usually mention the graying workforce, the cost of higher education, the difficulty of keeping young people here and, more recently, the opioid crisis. This year, a member of the selection committee on which I serve observed that a looming issue that could bring profound change hasn’t been mentioned on anyone’s application: driverless cars.
The committee member believes autonomous cars are more than an advance in driving technology: they could bring a social upheaval. If successfully deployed, driverless cars could revolutionize driving, the transportation industry and much more.
Think about it. Accidents could be virtually eliminated, people would spend less time idling in traffic, and we’d have more efficient fuel consumption. Insurance costs could drop, parking hassles could disappear, and the elderly and the disabled could have an easier time getting around. There’d be no drunken driving, people could text while “driving,” and cars could be sent to do errands. There’d be no need for police to issue speeding tickets, perhaps no need for a driver’s license, and maybe no need to own a car, since they’d be easier to share.
The driverless car revolution is coming. Testing is already being done in California, Michigan, Florida, Nevada and Washington, D.C. Car industry articles are talking in terms of years, not decades. But don’t expect the revolution to hit the Upper Valley anytime soon.
Most models of driverless cars thus far are designed for urban areas. They would be what amounts to a fleet of automated taxis, available on demand. The cars would cut down on parking spaces by being almost constantly in use and cut costs by having very little down time. These models are suited to a planned, tightly controlled, densely-populated environment, which the Upper Valley is not.
In a recent column in the Valley News, a man from Pasadena, Calif., wrote about looking forward to driverless cars for access to the world when he reaches the time he needs to hang up his keys. There’s a difference, though, between driving in Pasadena and driving in Plainfield.
Google’s Self-Driving Car Project website description is titled “Navigating City Streets,” not “Navigating Country Roads.” It states that its self-driving cars are “designed to navigate safely through city streets.” Urban areas don’t have Class 6 roads, which are not maintained by towns. Urban areas usually have cross-streets that are closer than 2 miles away. Urban homes don’t have long, uphill gravel driveways.
Then there’s the weather. As an EMT, I regularly respond to motor vehicle accidents in town. Many are caused by driver error — distracted drivers, drunken drivers, drugged drivers. It would be good to see these kinds of accidents disappear. However, many accidents are also caused by black ice, freezing rain, heavy rain or slippery snow.
The Auto Insurance Center and other sources talk about issues with snow, ice and heavy rain – the sensors and lasers in test cars now don’t work well in those conditions. In order to function safely all the time, a driverless car has to have a steady stream of information. Although the sensors and lasers can detect lane markings and road edges and even the height of curbs, I wonder how they are with snow banks during plowing or snow drifts, both constantly changing obstacles.
A 2015 article on Driverless Future.com stated that current autonomous cars “can operate only in sunny areas with little rain and without snow.” That would rule out most of the year around here. Maybe testing in Michigan and Nevada will change that view, but the driverless car industry still has a long way to go before it can offer an all-weather car that customers can rely on to operate in all parts of the country.
Finally, there is coverage issue. There are significant cell-phone coverage lapses in my town of Plainfield. Even when traveling down I-91 in more-populated Massachusetts, there isn’t continuous cell-phone service. Driverless cars are all about communication: from other cars, satellites, sensors and computers. Without a continuous blanket of coverage and communication, no autonomous car can even approach operating safely all the time. It’s going to take a lot of science and inventiveness to reach that point.
It is a bit premature to start celebrating the freedoms and independence driverless cars might bring. Instead, this is a good weekend to focus on the freedoms and independence we already possess, enumerated in a document penned by that eminent man of science and invention, Thomas Jefferson.
Margaret Drye lives in Plainfield.