back to article Robot cars will kill London jobs – but only from 2030, say politicans

The London Assembly has lashed out at driverless cars, declaring that autonomous vehicles could cause "significant job losses" – while figures from the UK's driverless car industry told it that they don't expect Level 4 or 5 (fully autonomous) tech to hit the streets for another decade or more. While conceding that connected …

  1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    No problem

    Just insist that all driverless cars have a Victoria line tube driver at the not-wheel

    1. big_D Silver badge

      Re: No problem

      Germany is looking at making all inner-city public transport free for everybody, in an attempt to clean up city centres, reducing polution. They are currently having problems in many large cities keeping within the EU guidelines for CO2 and fine particle emmissions.

      Maybe TfL should stop thinking about filling their coffers using traditional techniques and look at how they can improve the city!

  2. Oddlegs

    Maybe we should ban motorised vehicles and move back to horse and carts? Think of the number of jobs that would be created!

    1. Steve 114
      Go

      'Walk-On', Meklenburg

      My brother's landau was self-driving in London, because the horse knew its way home. However tight the corner, the long rig never ever scraped a car with a wheel boss. Good luck with self-driving software, like Never.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Seems to me that the mountains of horse shit in the streets would violate public health codes.

      Maybe tall towers with elevators, and zip lines?

  3. ukgnome

    2 birds one autonomous stone

    Simple - if all cars have a man sat in them then there is someone to blame when it crashes into a queue of nuns waiting for a bus. Until that happens the man has a rather easy job.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: 2 birds one autonomous stone

      cut out the middle man and insist that all cars have a nun in them

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: 2 birds one autonomous stone

        As a former inmate of a Catholic school - if I see a queue of nuns and I'm driving anything with bull-bars , they are mine.

    2. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: 2 birds one autonomous stone

      " there is someone to blame when it crashes into a queue of nuns waiting for a bus"

      At the average london traffic speed that would play out like the steamroller scene in Austin Powers.

  4. AMBxx Silver badge
    Boffin

    Drivers retrain as mechanics

    These things are going to go wrong. As the passengers don't own the vehicle, there's likely to be more wear and tear. Add to that the safety concerns and there are going to be frequent service intervals.

    Just become a mechnanic. No different to horse and cart drivers becoming car drivers 100 years ago.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Drivers retrain as mechanics

      "As the passengers don't own the vehicle"

      There is no inherent connection between autonomous vehicles and ownership.

      Shared autonomous vehicles will replace taxis, Uber, buses, streetcars, light rail transit, subways, and passenger trains... also some short haul airliners.

      Privately owned autonomous vehicles will gradually replace private vehicles with lower levels of automation.

      Whether you own a vehicle or not primarily depends on use cases, not whether it can drive itself.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A lot of 'hot air'

    coming out of the London Assembly. Nothing new there really.

    The only thing that TfL wants is to have ZERO privately owned cars on the road in Central London.

    TfL is running a huge deficit and need to get that down to zero or even turn a profit.

    Expect to see the congestion charge raised to £25/day within two years. Then they'll expand it back into Kensington and Chelsea (where it was before Boris).

    LEss cars means more people on public transport.

    1. CM

      Re: A lot of 'hot air'

      > Then they'll expand it back into Kensington and Chelsea

      The current bloke has bigger plans: out to the North & South Circs. Call the whole thing "ultra" low emission even though the current cars that'll be allowed in emit more than the oldest ones. And the black cabs, pollutants all, get a free pass.

      1. big_D Silver badge

        Re: A lot of 'hot air'

        Yes, diesel buses and taxis are one of the biggest problems, even if you reduce the "normal" traffic.

        These need to be moved back to electric as soon as possible. Bring back the electric omnibus.

        1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: A lot of 'hot air'

          Bring back the electric omnibus.

          And how are you going to power them ?

          String wires above the road ?

          1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
            Holmes

            Re: A lot of 'hot air'

            There ARE 100% Electric Busses running in London at the moment.

            From memory, they are built by BYD (Build Your Dream) and are used on route 135 from Finsbury Park to Morgate.

            TfL seem to be concentrating in getting the single decker fleet to be all EV before the Double Deckers.

            BYD built all the 2100+ all electric busses for Shenzen in China (their home city).

            1. big_D Silver badge

              Re: A lot of 'hot air'

              Bremen has had hybrid buses, for example, for 6 or 7 years now. Electric buses are just starting to appear over here.

              But there is all this talk about banning diesels from city centres, but diesel buses and diesel taxis are exempt, so no real change...

          2. Alan Brown Silver badge

            Re: A lot of 'hot air'

            "String wires above the road ?"

            Why not?

          3. Ogi
            Go

            Re: A lot of 'hot air'

            > String wires above the road ?

            Why not? Its been done for more than 100 years now, and quite a few European cities have them. I have fond memories going on them 15+ years ago.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus

            They work well, and as most buses have batteries on them and are constantly charging, they can in fact disconnect and travel a few miles without being wired up ( I suspect with the improving battery technology, they should be good for even longer range now), not even taking into account those that have an IC engine as well and can work as series hybrids if needed.

            Plus you don't have to worry about charging points, and having buses run out of juice.

            The UK used to have them as well (from 1911 till 1972), but for some reason they were all shut down:

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus_usage_by_country#United_Kingdom

            1. Alister

              Re: A lot of 'hot air'

              @ogi

              The UK still has electric trams, in Sheffield, Manchester, Nottingham and Tyne & Wear to name just a few successful implementations, why can't London?

    2. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: A lot of 'hot air'

      "The only thing that TfL wants is to have ZERO privately owned cars on the road in Central London."

      True, but they also want to extract their pound of flesh from those who ply for hire on that road.

      T'aint gonna happen.

      One thing worth noting is that despite the horrors of the Ringways plan execution(*) and the Central Box, the original (1950s!) plan was for everything inside Ring 1 to be car-free and as pedestrianised as possible.

      (*) The real problem was cheaping out and not taking account of the effects on the neighbouring properties. They should have been buying up 100metres each side.. Outer rings (and the new south circular) were planned to be in trenches to keep noise levels down. If you ever wondered why the M25 is so bad, it's because it's carrying _all_ the traffic intended for Rings 2,3 and 4, plus more besides.

    3. strum

      Re: A lot of 'hot air'

      >LEss cars means more people on public transport.

      Fewer people on public transport means fewer people in the city.

      Cars - driven or driverless - can't service London's daytime population of 15M, without bulldozing the very buildings they were going to work in.

  6. Alister

    I notice that the Oxbotica "self-driving" delivery vehicle has two human occupants for safety.

    I also notice that (from the marked compartments on the sides) it can apparently only carry items for a maximum of 8 different destinations.

    In the rush to adopt autonomous delivery vehicles, scant regard has been paid to the necessary changes in social behaviour required to make it work.

    There will be no more "home delivery", as there is no way for the vehicle to place packages on or in the recipient's property - and no more post through the letterbox.

    Instead, householders will have to fetch the delivery from the vehicle themselves - not practicable if you are out at work - or arrange to pick up the delivery from an agreed holding point, in which case there's no need for the delivery vehicle anyway.

    1. Stoneshop
      Big Brother

      Technology will solve that too

      There will be no more "home delivery", as there is no way for the vehicle to place packages on or in the recipient's property - and no more post through the letterbox.

      This will be solved by Amazon Delivery Boxes (a followup to the Amazon Key doorlock, for those in apartment buildings and council flats etc. not having their own private ground-level front door) and a robotic arm. And this Boston Dynamics door-opening robodog would also be a contender for filling the gap between the delivery van in the street and your cupboard or fridge.

      (plus they're better at snooping than your average delivery driver.)

    2. Dan 55 Silver badge
    3. Stoneshop

      or arrange to pick up the delivery from an agreed holding point, in which case there's no need for the delivery vehicle anyway.

      It's not uncommon for a regional courier dispatch centre to be somewhere on some vast industrial estate somewhere way outside any population centre[0], inaccessible except by car, and open only during office hours. Moving your parcel to a pickup point local to you, such as a supermarket open a good deal longer, at least allows you to pick it up on foot or by bike. And one cargo slot can hold stuff for several recipients if it all has to go to that pickup point.

      [0] worst case that I myself had had to deal with was right on the other side of the next town over, 30km shortest route straight through that town's centre, 40km if you took a more sensible route.

  7. }{amis}{
    Joke

    To Arms My Brothers

    Let us take hammers to these deceitful weaving machines that are taking away or jobs and making our skills irreverent!

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

    1. Jeffrey Nonken

      Re: To Arms My Brothers

      And thus will it ever be. Each new technology will replace some jobs, causing a moral panic, but will ultimately create more jobs than it replaces.

      Think of all the buggy whip manufacturers and their employees clogging the employment lines!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: To Arms My Brothers

        All those lost jobs! Bring them back!

        And you can have a rewarding career providing services such as:

        elevator operator

        switchboard operator

        calculator

        cotton picker

        loom operator

        typesetter

        stable hand

        ice delivery

        coal delivery

        knitter

        lamplighter

        intersection flagman

        ditch digging / road construction (with a shovel)

        harvester (with a scythe)

        Of course, you will have to make do with a lot fewer goods and services - I believe the volume of phone calls in North America reached a level to employ all the working age women of the continent as phone operators some time around 1960.

      2. strum

        Re: To Arms My Brothers

        >Each new technology will replace some jobs, causing a moral panic, but will ultimately create more jobs than it replaces.

        Hardly ever do those who lose jobs to new tech, get the new jobs.

        And past performance is no guarantee of future performance. The wealth-hoarding classes have decided that people are too expensive; robots do as they're told (mostly) and don't need paying (mostly). No-one is going to create new industries that need people.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: To Arms My Brothers

      I wonder if you sang that joyful tune if it was YOUR job on the line...

      1. ecofeco Silver badge

        Re: To Arms My Brothers

        Most of us here work in tech and our job are daily "on the line."

        Is it fun? Of course not. But frankly, NO job is safe these days.

      2. }{amis}{
        Meh

        Re: To Arms My Brothers

        Been made redundant on more than one occasion it sucked at the time but i retooled and moved on.

    3. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: To Arms My Brothers

      "Let us take hammers to these deceitful weaving machines"

      The issue with luddites was that a rapid change resulted in massive unemployment.

      This time around there's a shortage of drivers and to be honest the way it's rolling out means that they probably won't be replacing humans as fast as they retire.

      "Driving" on a nice road is fun. "Driving" in city traffic is a tedious and stressful pain in the arse, exacerbated by selfish cunts who cut up everything in sight and trash smooth traffic flows. Such twats should be strung up by the toes from a streetlight on the second offence and by the nipples with fishhooks for the third.

  8. SVV

    Predictably predictable

    "Between 2025 and 2030 perhaps, most vehicles will have advanced autonomous control."

    No, in the next 7 to 12 years, most of the vehicles will be exactly the same vehicles that are on the road niow, as the exobitant and continually rising cost of living in London will make buying and running new ones an unaffordable luxury for 99% of Londoners. Not such a bad thing either in my opinion, as a user of public transport in the capital. For goodness sake, please stop wasting your time and money on this rubbish ,and put the money into rail and trams instead....

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Predictably predictable

      "put the money into rail and trams instead...."

      Where it can be wasted on two century old technology which no longer addresses many of the needs of current society. We can do better, now, and we should.

  9. codejunky Silver badge

    hmm

    "Transport for London condemned driverless car technology last year on the grounds that it would reduce tax income for the rapacious transport authority."

    Thats pretty much all we need to know.

  10. Adelio

    Driverless cars.

    Unless you scrap ALL existing cars you are going to see most cars on the road requiring a driver for at least 30 years. (not sure what the average age of a car in the UK is but i would guess around 15/20 years).

    As for public transport. Try living somewhere other than a City (read "London"). Using public transport, if you are lucky would probably require a doubling of journey times for most people. I can remember taking 2 buses and a train to get to and from work and EVERY day the train was standing room only day and night!

    I do NOT want to go there again!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Driverless cars.

      I can remember taking 2 buses and a train to get to and from work and EVERY day the train was standing room only day and night!

      Sounds like you were actually quite fortunate. When I looked at using public transport (ie buses and trains) to get to work by 8:00am, all of 15 miles up the M4, I discovered that it was only possible if I left home by 8:00pm the previous evening!

    2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: Driverless cars.

      Average age of a car in the UK is remarkably stable at around 7.5 years

      You can just increase the tax/congestion charge for older more polluting vehicles and it would make sense for a London resident to sell the old banger to somebody in the country and buy a newer electric one.

      That happens over here, the smog tests are much stricter in the city than in rural areas, so beaters migrate to the countryside. The city air stays cleaner and people who need a cheap car out in the sticks can buy 10year old suvs/pickups cheap.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Driverless cars.

        "Average age of a car in the UK is remarkably stable at around 7.5 years"

        Why are they replaced so often?

        It's at 11.6 years on this continent, and rising.

        1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: Driverless cars.

          Why are they replaced so often?

          Not sure, could be a combination of a lot of them being company fleet cars and license plates that show the year.

          It used to be that everyone had to have the new car on the day the new year plate came out or everyone at the golf club would think you were a failure

          1. Ogi
            Angel

            Re: Driverless cars.

            > Why are they replaced so often?

            > It's at 11.6 years on this continent, and rising.

            I suspect two reasons (based on my anecdotal experience):

            1) A lot of cars are bought on finance now. A lot of people have to "keep up with the Jones" and drive around in a flashy new car, usually bought on a 3 year lease, or some kind of credit, then they trade it in for a new model.

            Then you got the (fewer) enthusiasts driving around in classics that are 20+ years old, so you get an odd average like 7.5 years for a cars age.

            2) Rust. The UK is a very wet country. I bought a 2003 car recently, paid a bit over the average price for it due to being in really good shape, when I took it to the local garage they were amazed at how little corrosion was on it for its age.

            A few months later I took it to a garage in the south of France while I was there, and they told me they had never seen such a rusty car of its vintage before.

            Cars don't last long here, it is far more common in the UK to have cars that are mechanically sound, but unfit for the road due to rusting through, while on the continent (especially further south) cars usually last much longer.

            Indeed I know people who actually come here, buy rusted MOT failures and strip them for parts to sell in Europe (95% is the same, apart from the headlights and some RHD specific things) because generally you get a good quality bag of parts in a rusted tub.

            The "European average" includes cars in very dry areas, and in very poor areas, where people will patch up and run cars for as long as they can, which, assuming little rust and access to spare parts, can be a very very long time.

            Also it might be cultural. In some places they are not seen as a fashion accessory to be changed every 3 years, but a large investment, that can even be passed down the family line (Indeed my first car was passed down to me that way).

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Driverless cars.

          "Average age of a car in the UK is remarkably stable at around 7.5 years"

          Why are they replaced so often?

          In the past it used to be because of corrosion - a typical UK car in the 70's/80's would have completely rusted through after 10 years. Nowadays corrosion is less of an issue, but what's really changed is that they've become virtually irreparable - any significant fault on an 8-year old car is simply too expensive to be cost-effectively repaired, so cars that are 95% fine are just scrapped.

      2. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: Driverless cars.

        8 seats is about optimum for an autonomous vehicle to act as scheduled and hailed transport. You're going to see a melding of "bus" and "taxi" functions.

        Busses are only (barely) economic in peak periods and they do levels of damage to roads that's wildly disproportionate to their carrying capacity (road damage is proportional to the 5th power of axle pressure). The rest of the time they're a subsidy pit, so if you can have a fleet that breaks off into taxi mode outside of peaks and during peaks doesn't hit every stop because it doesn't need to (you'd need to have vehicles staged and ready to jump in/out of service but at the inner end of the journey that is taken care of by varying endpoints). For commuter-style services in peak periods where the busses run nearly empty they can entrain themselves out to the service edge in order to achieve best speed/throughput, breaking up at the points where a normal bus would start filling.

        If you can make busses/taxis convenient then noone feels the "need" to have a car. I found that out living in a number of asian cities where taxis and minibuses were at most a couple of minutes apart.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Driverless cars.

      Nope. There is no reason you can't mix autonomous and driver controlled cars... it just make the problem a tiny bit harder. Maybe delay implementation a year or two. Optimal efficiency, however, will be achieved in lanes or roads restricted to autonomous mode operation - but things like dedicated bus lanes, streetcar tracks, and light rapid transit lines can be converted to autonomous car lanes with a bit of paving, signage, and entrances/exits. Time to ditch obsolete and less useful technologies.

      Trains and subways will last a bit longer for specialized mass point to point transit.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Driverless cars.

      "Using public transport, if you are lucky would probably require a doubling of journey times for most people."

      That's relatively good.

      Public transit to my work increases my daily trip time by a factor of four over a car, barring transit issues - which are common.

      1. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: Driverless cars.

        "Public transit to my work increases my daily trip time by a factor of four "

        Public transport by entrained podule may actually be faster than driving.

  11. pauhit

    It's a conspiracy!

    One (small) issue that I have never heard brought up about driverless cars is the actual method by which they get around. So far, I have heard the method as being entering a destination into the computer, and then letting the car take over. Whilst this might be fine for the daily commute to and from work, it seems overall restrictive to the actual control an individual will have over the vehicle. Say I want to actually make a right at the next light instead of continue on the course I set, will I be able to do that? Another thing, if I can put my tinfoil hat on for a second, the very nature of a police officers job requires a human controllable car, which seems vaguely unsettling in light of the fact very few others will have them. Additionally, by creating a society formed around autonomous cars, you also create a black market for non-autonomous, as there are certain more illicit professions which require a certain level of control over the vehicle.

    To backtrack a bit, say the gov sets up a police checkpoint in the city, whats to stop them from setting every cars route so that the cars have to go through the checkpoint? Whats to stop the pols from remotely disabling any car they want to? On the other side of things, whats to stop some enterprising young spark from redirecting cars to his uncles warehouse in back-of-the-yards for some unscheduled maintenance. Or manufacturers from disabling cars that haven't undergone "necessary preventive maintenance" such as changing the tires after 10,000 miles. I don't really care to see how the myriad crims, corps and govs will variously set up the new system to benefit themselves.

    1. Clunking Fist

      Re: It's a conspiracy!

      "say the gov sets up a police checkpoint in the city, "

      Eh? 99% of checkpoints are for MOT/WOF checks and drink driving. Autonomous cars won't drink, and if their MOT/WOF has expired, they (in theory) won't drive.

      So the government would route autonomous cars AWAY from the check point, leaving humans to take the quieter route until it's too late and they are snared in the checkpoint.

      TINFOIL HAT: Having said that, just recently in New Zealand, police set up a checkpoint, seemingly to look for drink drivers, but causally asking the elderly drivers if that had just attended the seminar on (illegal) assisted suicide just held down the road. So a nice little database of elderly folk who may ask a friend for a bit of help at the end of their life. Old such friend is in court at the moment, charged with supplying the drug a terminally ill patient used to end their own life.

      1. Scoular

        Re: It's a conspiracy!

        Basic rule of life;

        NEVER volunteer any information to any business or government agency unless you have to and even then be as careful as possible.

        Anything they know is more likely to be used against you than to your benefit.

        A few millennia of human experience in one line.

  12. strum

    "Rapacious"? Really? It's one of the most efficient city transport systems in the world.

    Assigning a ton of metal & glass - and about 6 sq m of (stationary) space and about 10 times that, moving - is a horribly inefficient use of city resources.

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