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Ironies of Automation
Automation induces upstream and downstream work. For the automation process to work, the inputs are far less flexible, as an automated system has less tolerance for variation than a typical human.
Similarly, the outputs are also far more standardised, requiring a different set of adaptations. Think about carpenters fitting a new, standardised door from the local big box hardware store into an old, far-from standardised house where things have settled and nothing is level or straight. They save time on constructing the door, but spend more time on the preparation outside the frame, and on the final trimming of the door frame. Pre-processing and post-processing the automated thing may exceed the initial amount of work (pre-automation) until those steps are automated as well. This may explain why a new house on a Greenfield is often easier to build than an old house is to remodel.
This blog-cum-newsletter is the Transportist (née the Transportationist). Thus I better talk about movement across (trans) gates (portal), rather than the construction of doors.
My claim here is that vehicle automation, which is clearly coming, will have some ironically unexpected effects. (How can they be unexpected if you expect them? They are just unexpected to everyone else. Transportist readers would expect them when they thought about, as they shortly will.)
Driving skills are developed through practice. Just as most Americans cannot drive a stick shift [this is disputed, but surely the general principle is true, the number who can drive a stick is dropping] due to the rise of the automatic transmission, eventually most people will be unable to drive well, or at all, due to the rise of AVs. Eventually (after the first eventually) that won’t matter, as once the transition is complete all cars will be AVs.
In the meantime, (including around the first eventually) there will be a very mixed fleet of automated and non-automated vehicles. New “drivers” and even older drivers who have gotten used AVs will have difficulty coordinating steering and braking on the occasions that they do need to manage a car, in a way that to the present generation seems trivial.
The examplar for this is aviation, where autopilot features have been getting more are more pervasive. There are claims that pilots are losing their skills as a result.
Should the vehicle automation system fail (e.g. because someone thought it a good idea to introduce dependency on real-time connectivity for automated vehicles), we would be in a worse state than if automation had never been introduced.
What is to be done? Just as pilots must complete a certain number of hours in the cockpit, drivers should be required to complete a certain number of hours annually behind the wheel to maintain licensure. This would provide a good business for test tracks and the like, certifying driver skills annually, just as in many places, cars have to be certified each year. [Honestly, we probably should do this now, given the state of drivers, rather than just accepting an on-road test from back when they were 16 years old. This would also flush out some older drivers who don’t want to be retested, and bad drivers, and people who are too disorganised to get their license re-upped.]
News
Steven Ruggles, Historical Demographer at the University of Minnesota and champion of the IPUMS project digitising the US (and other countries’s Censuses) and the NHGIS, got a MacArthur grant. Congratulations and well-deserved.
Joby and Delta are cooperating on “home to airport” eVTOL flights. Helicopters from neighborhood to airport is an extremely niche problem. Solving problems of some Venture Capitalists (maybe), but not a widespread market. I guess luxury goods have their place in identifying who the revolution will put up against the wall first.
The SMH Takes on road funding [polling results, editorial] after EVs decimate the fuel tax (which to be clear in Australia does not directly fund roads or other transport, but is considered roughly proportionate.) I don’t think people think about this, and so the poll results are indicators of weak opinions, and instead of following a poll that tries to ascertain popular opinion, leaders should lead on this issue, and make the case why EVs should get a road user charge (most people agree), and whether Hybrids should (yes, of course, but at a lower rate), while maintaining the fuel tax for older vehicles, which is implementing road pricing One EV at a time, as called for eight years ago in these pages.
Why does rain make potholes worse (record rains in Australia this year), a far cry from the fires of three years ago.
XKCD should be funny to this crowd.
City of Bloomington (Indiana) to limit electric scooter access after crash that killed IU student. A speeding drunk driver hit a student on a scooter. Galaxy brain solution, restrict scooter usage.
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You will receive weekly posts like this if you choose to become a paid subscriber to the Transportist Newsletter. The free Monthly Edition will remain, I am targeting this to be on Tuesdays (Australia time) in the interim weeks. My hope is if enough of you subscribe, I will be more motivated to write. And if writing has a deadline, more writing will occur.
My related hope is that if you do subscribe, you will value this more than if it is free, and be more likely to read it. Thus by charging, I am increasing total value (assuming what I write is more valuable than if you were to give your attention elsewhere). Note: I don’t expect to become rich, or give up my day job.