Heya friends, happy Friday!
First, I am re-sharing a link to the Happy Hour I’m helping host with SFBC on April 19th (as the link was broken last week!). I would loooove to see some friendly faces. The event is free, and beer is on me!
Ok, time for ze news:
Government and Policy
An AV rear-ended a bus in San Francisco
Well, well, well. What do we have here? An AV from Cruise rear-ended a bus in San Francisco on March 23rd. The articulated (“long boi”) bus slowed as it was leaving the stop and was hit by a Cruise vehicle that inaccurately predicted how the bus would move as it pulled out of a bus stop. As a result, Cruise recalled 300 AVs.
In other news, Waymo’s vehicles can’t seem to handle San Francisco’s fog and disengage when things get too foggy (SF Chronicle). Saw this tweet (from a friend!) about how maybe when road conditions are truly miserable, it would also be good for human drivers to hit pause and stop driving.
Waiting for the bus is an act of protest
This story follows Steven Hardy-Braz, who was arrested under allegations of “willfully impeding traffic” on another inaccessible road in nearby Greenville, where Hardy-Braz had no choice but to sit in a driving lane with a posted speed limit of 45 miles per hour as he waited for a bus ride to a medical appointment. It talks about how Steven’s use of the bus as a person in a wheelchair in and of itself is an act of protest against transit and landscape design that is fundamentally inaccessible to people with disabilities.
Who’s breaking traffic laws? Why it’s the police, of course
AFTR reader and friend (and within the first ten people to subscribe to this very newsletter!) Marcel Moran released new research about how NYPD often break the same traffic violations they are in charge of enforcing (🙃). Surprising no one, this research found that NYC cops routinely park on sidewalks, which, for anyone else, is against the law and causes a $115 fine. The article is fascinating and comprehensive (for those of us who have the attention span of a squirrel and can no longer read academic papers), but the research-research is also referenced below.
Industry
The Wall Street Journal asks everybody’s favourite question: “When will AVs reach their promised potential?”. We were promised years ago that by now, we’d be in full Wall-E mode, traveling about eating nachos and watching TV while the little computer chip in the car does its business of carting us around. Billions and billions of dollars have been spent, and it seems what we have to show for it is cars that know it’s not safe to drive in the fog and some that rear-end buses. I’m still waiting for my nachos, Google.
Tesla’s workers share customer camera images and mock their own tech
Filed under “Tesla workers behaving badly” and not because they were mocking their own tech (this is very allowed, even encouraged). A class-action lawsuit against Tesla demonstrated that employees “internally shared private, sometimes embarrassing photos and videos captured by car cameras without customers’ consent.” Yes, that is a violation of privacy rights under California law.
In case you’re like… hmm, what could the footage be? Well, rest assured there is a naked man approaching a Tesla, people’s children, and videos of crashes and road rage—to name a few. The lawsuit alleges employees were not sharing these images for business use “but for the tasteless and tortious entertainment of Tesla employees, and perhaps those outside the company, and the humiliation of those surreptitiously recorded.”
DiDi is developing its own AV for rideshare alongside Chinese carmakers, with a plan to roll out the vehicles in 2025. The vehicle is called the ~DiDi Neuron~. And as if that wasn’t exciting enough, DiDi also announced an autonomous trucking business named Kargobot, which it says already has more than 100 driverless trucks in operation.
Research and Academia
The relationship between road rage and driver performance
“Traffic crashes remain a leading cause of accidental human death where aggressive driving is a significant contributing factor. By examining the selected 34 studies, the measures relating to vehicle speed (e.g., mean speed, n = 22), lateral control (e.g., lane deviation, n = 17), and driving errors (e.g., violation of traffic rules, n = 12) were reported most frequently with a significant difference observed between aggressive driving and driving in the control group. The result of the meta-analysis indicates that the aggressive driving behaviour would have 1) a significantly faster speed than the behaviour in the control group with an increase of 5.32 km/h (95% confidence interval, [3.27, 7.37] km/h) based on eight studies with 639 participants in total; 2) 2.51 times more driving errors (95% confidence interval, [1.32, 3.71] times) than the behaviour in the control group, based on five studies with 136 participants in total. This finding can be used to support the identification and quantification of aggressive driving behaviour, which could form the basis of an in-vehicle aggressive driving monitoring system.”
Understanding the land use of Transit Oriented Developments in Shanghai
“In recent decades, transit-oriented development (TOD) has been considered an effective way to alleviate the negative impacts of rapid urbanization. The ridership of rail stations is an important indicator for understanding the relationship between rail transit and land use, which helps enhance their coordinated development.. We conclude that the proposed method and findings are beneficial to balancing the needs of public transportation development and promoting the integration of transportation and land use for TOD implementation.”
Authorized Vehicles Only: Police, parking, and pedestrian access in New York City
“Sidewalks and crosswalks do not benefit pedestrians if they are blocked by automobiles. In New York City, local media have documented that cars outside of law-enforcement offices routinely park on sidewalks and in crosswalks. This study systematically and longitudinally pursues this topic by tracking the geographic extent of this obstructive parking via in-person observation of the streets surrounding all 77 New York Police Department (NYPD) station houses across all five boroughs.. Of 77 NYPD station houses, 70 (91%) exhibited parking of at least one of these kinds, with sidewalk parking often extending along the entire block (and not simply in front of station houses), on adjacent blocks, and on both sides of the street.”
Extra Bits + Bobs
This week was hard after a cyclist, Ethan Boyes, died in San Francisco after a driver struck them with their vehicle. I spent Friday evening at a vigil and Tuesday evening riding to protest Ethan’s untimely death. In heart-breaking times, it is easy to feel low, as if years of advocating for survival are coming up empty.
However, as I write this, the cherry blossom tree outside of my window is in full bloom (forcing me into further tears thanks to #allergies), and I have an ounce of hope. I hope that things will get better incrementally, likely not at the pace I’d like to see, but better bit by bit nonetheless. So from my cherry blossom tree to whatever is bringing you to hope today, I am glad you are here and alive and caring about transport ❤️🩹
That’s all from me. Have a beautiful weekend, friends.
Sarah