Transport Insights

Today’s announcement from the Department for Transport that passengers are one step closer to booking taxi and bus-style self-driving vehicles is so full of bullshit, it’s hard to know where to start.

I’ll forgive them the one step closer because something his actually happening:

Applications open for operators to join the self-driving vehicles pilot scheme.

Then the bullshit really gets going:

an industry that will unlock significant economic growth and support thousands of jobs

So not having drivers is increasing employment is it?

And then Mike Hawes of the SMMT weighs in:

Automated passenger services represent a market expected to be worth some £3.7 billion annually in Britain by 2040, while having the potential to widen society’s access to mobility and improve road safety.

It’s not a huge amount of money in the grand scheme of things, but is that a new market – ie more people using cars to get around – or displacing the existing non-automated passenger services?

The SMMT/KPMG report that it comes from does not state whether this is additive or displacement.

In fact, in the entire 40 page document there is just one, unquantified acknowledgement that automation will displace labour and economic activity.

It contains no definition of what is being displaced; no sectoral breakdown; no modelling assumption; no numbers; and no discussion of job losses.

On the safety front, the DfT takes displacement for granted:

Self-driving technology could transform roads, with human error currently contributing to 88% of collisions on UK roads.

Just as it will take decades to replace the existing internal combustion engine fleet with EVs – something the SMMT is whining a lot about – it will take many, many years for even the majority of cars to be self-driving. Nothing in this single trial will make any difference to that.

On the taxi/private hire front, the question is not how much safer automated vehicles are than your average driver but whether they will be better than professional drivers.

But we should give the last word to Ben Loewenstein, Waymo head of policy and government affairs for the UK and Europe:

The UK is leading the way in enabling the safe deployment of pilot autonomous vehicle services.

[…]

Waymo is serving riders in eleven major metropolitan areas in the US, providing over 500,000 rides each week.

Sorry, which is it? Leading the way or way behind?