“Have you seen an American when they try to drive in Europe for the first time?”
The widely-shared video, “How Self-Driving Vehicles will Destroy Cities” suggests that AV company deployments will “send American-trained [autonomous] cars loose on European streets” and “European cities will be pressured to Americanize their streets to make them more self-driving friendly”.
Errr… No. ⚠️ Shared mobility modes dominate European cities today, and there is no reason to believe that regulation and infrastructure would be wiped away to accommodate the American robotaxi (least of all, a camera-based one without redundancy). AV tech – regardless where it’s built – respects the traffic laws and human behavior of where it’s implemented. What’s built and what’s deployable in the US, China, or Europe, will always need to be adapted – in tech, and also in vehicle-type 🚌🚃🚎.
What’s more, autonomous technology is not just about cars. It’s about safe and efficient mobility of all shapes and sizes – for goods and for people. Consider autonomous trains, subways, shuttles, and paratransit that are designed and already deployed. European cities aren’t defined by wide and heavy American cars today, but by sharedmobility. Ridehailing is a part of the mobility puzzle, but only a part – whether human or robot-driven.
While Not Just Bikes has a lot of great videos about urban design, road safety, induced-demand and micromobility, this one wrongly conflates car-centricity, lack of regulation, and poor design with AVs. It thereby highlights and amplifies some key misconception around autonomous mobility. It also suggests AVs will be loud, heavy, and will require pedestrians to wear transponders to send messages to self-driving vehicles 🙄.
P.S. With respect to an increase in transport demand? When you make mobility inclusive and available to the one-third (or so) of the population who the current (human-driven, car-based) system ignores, then yes, more people will travel. The elderly, the disabled, the young, the impaired… will go to jobs, to see friends and family, and to participate in… life. Let’s endorse this enablement.
“Have you seen an American when they try to drive in Europe for the first time?”
The widely-shared video, “How Self-Driving Vehicles will Destroy Cities” suggests that AV company deployments will “send American-trained [autonomous] cars loose on European streets” and “European cities will be pressured to Americanize their streets to make them more self-driving friendly”.
Errr… No. ⚠️ Shared mobility modes dominate European cities today, and there is no reason to believe that regulation and infrastructure would be wiped away to accommodate the American robotaxi (least of all, a camera-based one without redundancy). AV tech – regardless where it’s built – respects the traffic laws and human behavior of where it’s implemented. What’s built and what’s deployable in the US, China, or Europe, will always need to be adapted – in tech, and also in vehicle-type 🚌🚃🚎.
What’s more, autonomous technology is not just about cars. It’s about safe and efficient mobility of all shapes and sizes – for goods and for people. Consider autonomous trains, subways, shuttles, and paratransit that are designed and already deployed. European cities aren’t defined by wide and heavy American cars today, but by sharedmobility. Ridehailing is a part of the mobility puzzle, but only a part – whether human or robot-driven.
While Not Just Bikes has a lot of great videos about urban design, road safety, induced-demand and micromobility, this one wrongly conflates car-centricity, lack of regulation, and poor design with AVs. It thereby highlights and amplifies some key misconception around autonomous mobility. It also suggests AVs will be loud, heavy, and will require pedestrians to wear transponders to send messages to self-driving vehicles 🙄.
If you want to know more about the true benefits of the technology – just reach out to PAVE Europe, and the Partners for Automated Vehicle Education (PAVE).
P.S. With respect to an increase in transport demand? When you make mobility inclusive and available to the one-third (or so) of the population who the current (human-driven, car-based) system ignores, then yes, more people will travel. The elderly, the disabled, the young, the impaired… will go to jobs, to see friends and family, and to participate in… life. Let’s endorse this enablement.