Autonomous cars will likely mean traffic getting worse before it gets better, reckons Paul Horrell

Paul Horrell

ILLUSTRATION: PAUL RYDING

Many things bug me about the prospect of autonomous cars. I bring those concerns to researchers and developers, who calmly reassure me they’ll eventually solve most of them. But there’s one issue that no engineer will address. Or at least none that I’ve met. They just laugh it off.

Here’s the theoretical example I give them. On my pushbike in London, if I need to cross the traffic, I know it’d be insane to swerve in front of moving vehicles. But what if in the future I saw an autonomous car? Clearly I could pedal across in front of it, trusting it to slam on its brakes to avoid me. Now extend the problem’s scope. I could do the same if I were driving, knowing I could happily barge in front of a robo-car, because it’d be programmed to proceed with saintly defensiveness. Pedestrians too would treat autonomous cars in the same way: no more waiting patiently for the green man. Prankster kids would dawdle in the middle of the road. Which means all the cars behind the autonomous vehicle would grind to a halt too. Traffic chaos ahoy.