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Driverless London · Mark and Pete

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  Driverless London Welcome to Mark and Pete.
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  You know London traffic is already an exercise in patience
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  and humility. What's going to come now The
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  cars are driverless. Welcome to Mark and Pete. 2
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  blokes with half an opinion. Now here's our first thought.
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  Nervous Nomad robotaxis are simply driverless cars, but
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  where they're going is anyone's guess, so they may be just
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  passengerless cars if travellers suffer from nervous stress.
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  Now I wonder when you are out and about in London, in a town,
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  yes, you want to get somewhere? Well, maybe flagging down a taxi
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  is a good thing. The problem is that the world is
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  changing. Technology is taking over.
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  Yes. the US driverless firm called Waymo said it hopes to be
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  operating a robo taxi service in London by the end of 2026.
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  Now the UK Government said it's plans to change regulations in
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  the second-half of this year is to enable driverless taxis to
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  operate in the city, but it is not given a specific date.
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  I wonder whether there is something more specific about
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  this. Do you feel, Mr. Pete, that this
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  is a good thing for London travellers?
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  Or are you slightly nervous that you will not have that old
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  cheeky, cheery London cabbie to take you where you need to go?
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  Yes, well, I'm as soon as I heard that this was in the
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  offing, of course I bought a a new crash helmet and a complete
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  protective armour to make my way through London.
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  No, I, I think that driverless cars are my thinking is they're
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  almost universally a bad thing. In this one case.
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  I'm a real Luddite. I love taking on new technology,
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  but I it's, it's, it's about responsibility.
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  You see humans, of course, responsible for developing this
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  technology, but to what extent are they then responsible if
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  they run someone over, you know, it's a, it's if, if there's a
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  driverless car, they don't have the same sort of same sort of
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  moral compunction. They can, they can make
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  mistakes. And people who claim otherwise,
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  well, I don't think that that's, that's, that can be right.
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  I mean, because everything is errors into it.
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  It's made by humans, even though it they're not being driven by
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  humans. So my feeling is that it's a
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  recipe for disaster as if if they get, you know, not just a
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  few around, but if there's a large number of them, I think
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  it's going to be bad. And what, what would happen, you
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  know, if a driverless taxi is flipping off another driverless
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  taxi, what's going to happen there?
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  No, no, but that's just a, a flippant remark.
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  But I, I, I do think it's a bad thing because there are some,
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  there will be some errors then if there are many, many of them,
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  even if it's a small proportion, that's going to be disastrous
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  because, and it's going to be very difficult to know who to
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  blame. Well, it is, but now
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  interestingly, there have been pilot projects in other parts of
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  the world. So if you take San Francisco,
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  for example, you would have seen that there are driverless
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  vehicles actively operating in a consistent way there.
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  Now they have a slightly different infrastructure to
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  London. And of course, you know, that's
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  not to say that it's easy, but it's slightly easier.
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  You're right. There have been examples where
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  taxis have gone to the wrong venue, they've either not let
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  the passenger out or that they found their way into some very
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  peculiar and dangerous places. But I think that what the UK
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  government is thinking is a slightly different picture and
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  that is that autonomous vehicles is an industry that potentially
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  is the worth of around 40 odd billion pounds to the UK economy
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  by 2035. Now what they're also saying is
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  from a commercial perspective, this could generate up to 40,000
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  new jobs. Now that's a good thing.
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  But here you go. It's about and we've already
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  highlighted somebody, Mr. Pete, typical passenger, a sort of a
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  person maybe who might be a bit of a technophobe who might be
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  sort of thinking I'm not going to get in one of those vehicles.
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  There is something, in my opinion that somebody's probably
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  overlooked and that is potholes. Now, I don't know whether you're
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  aware of this, is that in London the infrastructure is crumbling,
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  in fact. It's, well, I'm aware of it,
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  very much so. Well, the fact of the matter is,
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  is that if the government's going to invest in this or even
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  Waymo, when they actually start putting their vehicles around,
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  how is the vehicle going to cope with the devious nature of our
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  rather crumbling infrastructure? And I think that that's
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  something that has to be addressed, which is going to go
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  way beyond 42 billion. Oh yes.
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  Mr. Pete, let me ask you this is that it might seem like a
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  theoretical a good idea, even if the the actual robotaxis can
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  actually, you know, do what they say.
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  But how? How are they going to navigate
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  some rather rather crumbling Rd. systems?
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  Yes, crumbling Rd. systems and things that you can't predict.
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  So many things have happened. Trees falling, people running
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  out into the road from 2 directions, Protests happens in
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  many London streets. You know what?
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  I, I just don't, I, I think that it's, it's difficult, although
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  impressive technology, it's difficult to, to be implemented
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  in this way. Yes, I think that we can go back
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  and look at, this isn't, in some ways isn't similar at all, but
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  it has aspects that for which we can learn from.
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  And that's it. That was the introduction of
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  trams into cities across Britain, certainly across the
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  world. And they seem such a good idea
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  because they can, they run along preset lines and just perfect.
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  And, and what a brilliant idea because it's not going to cause
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  any trouble. You can see where they are.
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  And then you found that bikes got stuck in the, in the tracks
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  and people got run over. And there are various other
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  problems to do with people, the fact that you can't steer the
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  tram as the person wasn't in control, the track was.
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  And you see how that is there's a similar nature in the the
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  consequences were not predicted before were being used across
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  the world really there were trams in my local city of
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  Birmingham still there were still there when I was young.
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  They're not there anymore. And that the trams were removed
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  and replaced with buses with a driver.
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  And it may well be that that's what happens to this new
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  technology. But I have to say that my
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  experience, Mark is maybe the same view of driving around this
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  lovely country of England is that other drivers are really be
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  stupid. I mean, obviously not me, but
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  the other drivers are all stupid and make stupid mistakes.
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  So in a way, I'm I'm the ideal person to support this.
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  I just see the the the issues of introducing this technology on a
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  large scale thought with problems.
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  It's it's there's a Bible verse is interesting.
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  This is Proverbs 19, verse 2. It is not good to have zeal
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  without knowledge, nor to be hasty and miss the way the way
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  here, I mean the way forwards. I think there's too much
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  enthusiasm for this new technology and it may well come
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  back to bite us. Well according to Waymo
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  themselves it uses just to give you a little bit of reassurance,
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  it uses 4 sensor system to gather data from the world
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  around it, Lidar, vision, radar and microphone.
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  Now according to the capability it can for every vehicle look
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  around 363 hundred 360° as far as 3 football fields ahead and
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  indeed during bad weather. But to your point, I was
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  wondering really culturally though you are missing out
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  because normally you know, a taxi driver would be saying,
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  hey, guess what, who he used to have the celebrity in the back
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  of my vehicle. Well now if you're the passenger
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  is guess who I didn't have in the driving seat?
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  I mean, you know, and the other one is what happens if it runs
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  off with your drives off with your baggage.
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  I mean. So your baggage goes on a
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  different journey. I think really I, I'm all for
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  this. I'm very much for the, for sort
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  of seeing how the pilot works. But you know, whilst I do agree
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  with you that there may be some concerns, it's quite possible
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  that Waymo this could all end up being driven down a dead end.