Many seem to believe that autonomous cars will free up valuable time otherwise spent driving.
For example, according to the UK report ‘Pathway to driverless cars’: ‘The average driver in England spends 235 hours driving every year. That is the equivalent of six working weeks. …. For the first time since the invention of motor vehicles, the ‘driver’ will be able to choose whether they want to be in control, or to hand the task of driving over to the vehicle itself. This represents a major opportunity – allowing drivers to safely use the journey time however they wish, from reading a book, to surfing the web.’
This seems to be a ludicrously overblown view. Are the opportunities presented by being a passenger rather than a driver really that significant? Isn’t this in large part simply a psychological device, an example of using number to exaggerate the apparent significance? Using the same logic then every year the average person spends the equivalent of 43 working weeks, or just shy of a full working year watching TV. (Actually 1700 hours).
Bearing in mind that most trips in a car are fairly short, it is unrealistic to assume that the ex-driver is suddenly going to be released to engage in more meaningful, economically valuable activity, as opposed to listening to the radio or to music, or chatting to a passenger or texting or chatting on a mobile. What proportion of that time could really be shifted to ‘productive’ time rather than time ‘wasted’ ? The movement of a car precludes many activities like writing, and a portion of the population suffers from travel sickness to some degree or other. There are many people who experience a feeling of queasiness if reading a book in a car. And then there is the simple fact that many drivers find driving a pleasant experience in itself under the right circumstances.
Perhaps one problem is that the value ascribed to this ‘free time’ is such a substantial part of the supposed economic gain from autonomous driving. In the KPMG report their estimate of the value of this time constitutes 40% of the total annual economic benefit, at £20 billion out of a nett total of £51 billion (in this report KPMG don’t show how they arrived at this figure, nor give any detail of how they valued any of the other benefits or costs).
The probability is that fully autonomous cars could well be largely restricted to motorways for the foreseeable future. In the UK motorway journeys account for only around 25% of total mileage and even a lower proportion of journey time. If we assume an average of 65 mph on a motorway and 40 mph on other roads, the average time then available for more ‘productive’ use drops to only 38 hrs per year.
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