Driverless vehicle trial gets underway in London - but could it affect space for cycling? (+ video)

When I read the title of this article I thought that driverless cars were going to be trialled on the roads. y'know, where cars go.

Maybe this is a first step towards putting them on the roads but looking at these trials in isolation they appear to be a different transport solution altogether rather than something that might replace cars on the roads.

I am really looking forward to driverless cars even if only for the safety for other road users as they may arguably be more reliable in spotting and responding to a bike or pedestrian on the road in front.
Interestingly, this may lead to the downfall of the whole idea as this reliability is taken advantage of and pedestrians and cyclists simply get in the way of a driverless car when they want.

tele-operated driving

How can you make normal driving far more dangerous?
Answer: Do it remotely.

This is so obviously a really bad idea. Who watches the driver to ensure they aren't drinking/on drugs, playing with their phone, making a cup of tea or watching TV etc.

lightweight self-driving pods designed for pedestrianised spaces,

So cycling in pedestrian spaces is wrong but driving in pedestrian spaces is right then.

So, if you cycle up to one of these and grab a hold, do you get a free ride or does it detect you and stop?

Very tempted to cycle down to Greenwich and find out!

Wonder whether they can be programmed not to overtake a cyclist and then turn left right in front of them.

Can they also be programmed so as not to run over cats, dogs, birds etc ?

Judging by the traffic that I meet on my commute, we already have some of them on our roads - based on the attention being paid to actually driving!

Judging by the traffic that I meet on my commute, we already have some of them on our roads - based on the attention being paid to actually driving!

Presumably driverless cars will be fitted with cameras which will make other drivers behave more sensibly.

It should be more reliable than a normal car... there's one less nut

This is a great boon for public safety, especially in conjunction with the ID chips that we'll have implanted in our hands by the time driverless cars are ubiquitous. If someone who holds subversive views asks to go to the town centre and the system knows that it has already taken other radicals into town then the car can just take the next bunch straight to a civic detention centre where they can be held until they prove that they weren't up to no good. No more disruptive protests!

The streets will be much safer when people on a low income cannot be driven to the nice parts of town, except the cleaners, gardeners, etc. who are authorised to be there by their employers. The economy will be boosted when workers who miss their allotted time to be taken to work are instead taken straight to a civic detention centre where they can be held until they explain why they were late for work that day.

And anyone who posts inflammatory, anti-corporate nonsense on the internet can be taken straight to a municipal incinerator to protect us all from their ridiculous mental contagion.

Forwards!

Could any eventual widespread adoption of driverless cars affect the allocation of space for cycling? Of course it could. You don't think the past decade of (piss poor) cyclepath building was because our leaders thought cycling was an inherent good do you? Some might, but when making decisions they don't think in those terms. It was because they'd run out of space and money for new roads, but still needed to look like they were doing something, and cycling was the only alternative, hence all the box-ticking lines of paint. The moment that something else comes along, which is more inclusive because physically disadvantaged or just plain lazy people can use it, they'll drop us like a bad smell. And, if it turns out the programming required to deal with sharing the roads with cyclists is too difficult, and every time you ride for more than a kilometre you end up with fifty driverless and undriverless cars stuck behind you, they'll find ways to exclude us from our roads too. The only reason the original motorcar didn't kill off the bicycle (but came damn close) was because it took several decades for cars to become affordable to (nearly) all. If Google, or whoever, floods the market with driverless cars over a period of a few years, things may be different this time.

No idea why any public sector money is being spent on this, when every car company and major technology firms is already throwing millions at the problem.

The public sector role is a regulatory one, enabling and maybe in some case eventually mandating the technology.

If you take out the soft squidgy bit from behind the wheel you will surely have a much safer road network and that has to be a good thing so I think this is money well spent.

What a feckin' waste of time and money which would be better spent on finding a cure for cancer, dementia etc

I wouldn't be so sure. The systems being implemented in such vehicles are coming on leaps and bounds on an almost weekly basis.

You may as well embrace the technology - it IS going to happen and I suspect, and hope, that the roads will be a significantly nicer place to be for everyone.

Can't help but think that these tests are just repeating ones already carried out by Audi & Google...

For £8m, there's not going to be much new research done.

Id imagine a different mindset when you are in a driverless car - you will be able to use a laptop, read a book, talk to passengers, even have a nap. The stress levels one would assume would be lower and the need to get from A to B as fast as possible less.

Car manufactures selling cars with images of driving along empty country lanes are becoming laughable - you get in your car and immediately you are stuck in traffic. Getting in a car, selecting destination and then sitting back to do something else for me is appealing.

Im still sceptical though - American roads reasonably predictable but European roads!....can you ever see an autonomous vehicle driving you along the Amalfi coast!.

The interesting (and perhaps conflict-causing) thing about autonomous vehicles on public roads is that these things will have to be ultra conservative to be allowed in general use - they will pootle along slowly (i.e. legally, safely) and will err on the side of caution in any interaction with anything else. They won't pass bikes until they think it is absolutely safe (with a big margin of error), and if a bike gets too close they will slow down/stop (which might make them much easier to pass in Richmond Park for example, but could be interesting with filtering bikes in city traffic). I think they would be very unlikely to pass you at all on anything approaching a winding country lane.

All great for the cyclist, but I imagine quite annoying for the passengers of the driverless cars and the drivers stuck behind them. Not to mention of course that drivers of regular cars will also be able to cut driverless cars up with ease so there's a lot of possibility for queue jumping etc. for the unscrupulous.

As the driverless Pod is clearly driving down and taking up 75% of the cycle-section of the shared facility...

Question 1. If you use the pedestrian side of the facility to overtake it/avoid a head on collision are you committing an offence in the eyes of a PCSO?

Question2. Without a driver, who is responsible for the actions of the passengers?

Just asking.