99% Invisible: 171- Johnnycab (Automation Paradox, Pt. 2)

July 1, 2015 2:04 PM

More than 90% of all automobile accidents are all attributable to human error. For some car industry people, a fully-automated car is a kind of holy grail. However, as automation makes our lives easier and safer, it also creates more complex systems, and fewer humans who understand those systems. Which means when problems do arise—people can be left unable to deal with them. Human factors engineers call this “the automation paradox.”
posted by radioamy (5 comments total)

Nothing really new here (but I've probably read more about self-driving cars than most people), but it was an interesting look at specific issues, particularly design aspects like narrower streets.
posted by Etrigan at 3:11 PM on July 2, 2015

One thing that struck me as odd was the idea that people wouldn't have their own cars at all. I can see that working for younger people and city dwellers, but I think these dreamers are really underestimating how much some people - particularly suburban parents - rely on their cars. Have you ever seen how much stuff people keep in their cars? I can't see the "car as mobile storage unit" mentality changing. And what about people who live in more rural areas, where it's not feasible or practical for these on-demand taxis to roam around? Many of these ideas (like narrower streets) are based on the idea of nobody owning their own cars, and I just don't see that happening.
posted by radioamy at 8:58 PM on July 2, 2015

One thing that struck me as odd was the idea that people wouldn't have their own cars at all.

I wonder how much it will be like horses, where "cars" (tractors, trains, etc.) encroached on more and more of their duties as people realized how useful they would be and invented engine-powered vehicles into those niches, until nowadays horses are pretty much just cute retro things.
posted by Etrigan at 9:15 PM on July 2, 2015

Many of these ideas (like narrower streets) are based on the idea of nobody owning their own cars, and I just don't see that happening.

I could see it going in like bus rapid transit systems, where there are entire roads only for the automated cars and thus have narrower lanes and what-not. Back in the early 2000s when I lived in Ottawa, they had roads that only buses could drive on and regular shmoes got pulled over routinely, annoyingly for car-lovers and transit-phobes these roads were also often the most direct routes to places you wanted to go (Ottawa may still have this, I don't know, I don't live there anymore).

Municipal governments allocating roadways or parts of roadways for people entitled enough to have a self-driving car is something I can totally imagine happening in many cities.
posted by selenized at 10:30 AM on July 7, 2015

The fact that I cannot listen to 99% Invisible in my car (every time I try to listen to it via Bluetooth, my entertainment system crashes, probably because of the % sign) makes me think we are far from this being in everyman cars. The technology in most cars is awful, and every time I give up on my terrible in-car GPS I realize how I don't trust automakers to write a piece of software.

(Hell, maybe it's more likely Google learns to make a car before automakers learn how to write good code.)
posted by ALongDecember at 12:37 PM on July 9, 2015