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Why Purely self driving cars may not work in major cities


Google's Lexus RX 450h Self-Driving Car

Self-driving car manufacturers have arranged the car so that a human driver can take over once they get to a tricky spot.  But why is this? Driverless cars don’t get road rage, drunk or sleepy. They have had a few technical hiccups, but these are being ironed out as technology improves.  According to the US Department of transportation, more than 90 percent of car accidents in the United states are caused by driver error.*
     Self-driving cars have the rules of the road immaculately programmed into them, so that makes them perfect for driving in large cities, right?
Wrong.  The times that I have spent driving in Dublin, Ireland and America and seeing the state of driving in big cities in general tells me otherwise.  It is not a flaw in the car itself.  It is just that one must be aggressive to drive in major cities.  I will never forget the day that a sleepy truck driver in America basically pushed my wife and I off the road.  Having spoken to a friend who has been involved in trucking deliveries all over Europe, he informed me that in cities like Rome and Paris, even people on pedal bikes will cut him off.  Roundabouts are the most insane part of the whole journey.
 If one gets stuck at a tricky place in a city, it could be some time before one can make a move to get clear of it.  If one gets out, it is because someone is decent enough to let one out (unlikely), or a fast one is pulled.  If one waits for the right, polite, opportunity, then one could be waiting forever.
            If this is true in major cities in America and Europe, it is every bit more so in Southeast Asian countries where traffic at junctions almost morphs together; the Tuk-tuks and mopeds nearly colliding with each other.  The ubiquitous horn is merely to let everyone else know that one intends to occupy a space in traffic, whether they like it or not.
            The rules of the road in these countries are more theoretical than practical.  Traffic lights in cities are rarely strictly obeyed. This is no less true in Africa and Latin America than Asia. 
Additional challenges to the driverless car are the plethora of human cues such as hand signals that humans recognise but machines cannot.  One also cannot ignore the large number of Darwin award nominees who run unexpectedly onto the road.  People, through experience and intuition, know when other people are about to do something stupid and dangerous.  The car’s computer must make a decision based on the input from the surrounding environment.  It must know who will try and cross a road instead of remaining still.  Pranksters will undoubtedly make use of this inability and will trick the computer into stopping the car.   The end result will be a traffic jam at best and a fatality at worst. 

Car companies will make leaps and bounds with artificial intelligence, but they should leave the controls in place, just in case.

 *https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812115
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