How driverless cars can change our lives

Working while speeding down the motorway, no more car write-offs; driverless cars promise great things. However, the social implications of the autonomous car reach far beyond user convenience.

We do not know how the introduction of these cars will affect society’, says Bart van Arem, Professor of Transport Modelling at the TU Delft Transport Institute. ‘Will people still take the train or bicycle if driverless cars perfectly fulfil their transport requirements? And if cars can drive much 

closer to each other on motorways heading into cities, how will this impact traffic in the cities? Perhaps congestion will increase dramatically’. 

Van Arem is behind the STAD (Spatial and Transport Impacts of Automated Driving) project. Alongside TU Delft, this broad collaboration includes partners such as TU Eindhoven, numerous municipalities (including Delft), Rijkswaterstaat, TNO and the Institute for Road Safety Research (SWOV). The aim of the project is to develop future scenarios. 

‘We conduct surveys and run economic models taking the so-called ‘value of travel time’ into account’, explains Van Arem. ‘People will essentially experience distance and travel times differently. Perhaps they will start living further away from work. A two-hour commute is less of an issue if you can spend that time working. It then counts towards your work hours’. 

The STAD project researchers also explore the infrastructural adjustments required to clear a path for driverless cars. ‘We explore whether it is sensible to already start building separate lanes for driverless cars, and which obstacles need to be removed. Roadside advertisement boards, for example. These may confuse the car sensors’. 

Anyone thinking that fully autonomous transport is simply a pipe dream is in for a surprise. Within a few years, expect to see a sign on the TU Delft campus warning of autonomous traffic. As an experiment, Van Arem wants to launch a shuttle service with self-driving minibuses on Technopolis. ‘Such vehicles are already on the market. They are quite basic, but you can add all sorts of artificial intelligence to them. Software to allow the minibus to anticipate pedestrians, for example’.