An article in the Detroit News describes advances in robo-car technology.
And this raises the question: what kinds of car-bike crashes could this technology prevent?
As suggested in the article: rear-end collisions and drift-out-of-lane collisions. Also perhaps right hooks, if a vehicle has sensors and robo-control to inhibit turning across the path of an overtaking vehicle. In all of these collisions, the bicycle or other vehicle to whom a robo-car might yield is, if not in full view of the driver — so robotics would mitigate driver distraction — in full view from a sensor somewhere on the vehicle.
Dooring collisions and drive-outs from parking? Yes, if a sensor in the side-view mirror prevents the door from opening. But this doesn’t prevent the cyclist from striking a pedestrian who walks out to get into the vehicle, and also prevents a person from getting into or out of the car, also potentially presenting a hazard. The real world is inhabited by real people, not only robotic cars.
Could robotics prevent head-on and ride-out collisions? Only unreliably, because of larger distances and greater closing speeds, and because the cyclist, or a pedestrian, or another car, or a deer leaping across the road — may have been hidden around a curve, or may suddenly appear from concealment. The robo-protection might prevent a vehicle from crossing the center of the roadway, or rounding a curve too fast to yield to traffic ahead — but this only works without drastically lowering travel speed if the vehicle, person or animal to be avoided is operating properly (e.g. oncoming cyclist is on the correct side of the roadway, pedestrian does not dart out into the street).
Left cross collisions? NOT, if the cyclist is overtaking other vehicles, or parked vehicles, close to the curb, where concealed by them.
All in all, then, the technology could:
* greatly reduce the risk collisions for cyclists and others traveling according to the rules of the road;
* Significantly reduce the risk of car-bike collisions for cyclists edge riding or riding in a bike lane to the right of other traffic;
* be of little or no help when cyclists are riding in a bikeway concealed behind a barrier, or crossing in a crosswalk.
The potential for robotic control to prevent collisions is, then, very similar to that of an alert driver — though with additional ability to look in more than one direction at once, and into blindspots. Why? Because the rules for efficient and safe interaction — the rules of movement — aren’t any different when robotics are in control.
And I’ll also draw a more sweeping conclusion: robotic technology, once universally and correctly implemented on motor vehicles, would very significantly improve the safety of cyclists and pedestrians, and make rumble strips, a real problem for cyclists, pointless. Many other facilities-based solutions also would become white elephants.
This is assuming that the technology reflects a real traffic mix on streets, including non-motorized travelers, rather than some fantasy vision of a motorist’s utopia.
I’m only discussing technology here which can be implemented independently on each vehicle, without its communicating with others. There have been utopian schemes described in which all vehicles would communicate and negotiate with one another, avoiding the need for traffic signals, but except on limited-access highways, those pose a very daunting challenge due to the need for instant wireless communication with wide bandwidth, and that not all moving objects can be instrumented, nor would people tolerate this on their bodies — also, that a monkey wrench could be thrown into such systems, bringing traffic to a stop, simply by pedestrians’ walking out into the street. The Atlantic magazine has an article describing such a scheme — as usual in its articles about transportation, short in attention to unintended consequences.
Now, am I guilty of the same, in my optimism?