Heya friends, happy Friday!
First of all a huge thank you to everybody who sent kind words about the last newsletter where I wrote about losing my friend Hansel. Your kind words mean the world to me and I hope you hugged somebody extra tight in Hansel’s honour.
Second of all….! I am curious if folks have ideas about how this lil newsletter could be made better in 2024. This year I’ve enjoyed writing the newsletter more than ever, and I’m curious if you’ve enjoyed reading 😂. I’m thinking about how I can introduce new segments and perspectives. I promise one thing will always remain the same: there will be spelling mistakes, and they will be endearing. Change is constant… but so are spelling mistakes. Drop me a line by responding to this email and maybe we can have a virtual coffee chat about it?
Alright, we’ve got a few weeks worth of news to dive into, so let’s get started shall we!
Why are we letting private companies lead on AVs?
Two great pull quotes from this piece that tell you everything you need to know (and relate to Waymo’s own internal research referenced below):
“Whenever we let a private company diagnose our ailments, we can be sure that its prescription will include its own products, regardless of their actual efficacy.”
“Public policies have permitted private companies to turn disastrous safety records into marketing opportunities.”
Enough said.
Cruise is suing with City of San Francisco
Sometimes you don’t want to burn a bridge, but rather incinerate it (and all nearby supporting infrastructure in one fell swoop). Cruise has filed a lawsuit over a $108 Million Tax Bill issued by the City over seven years. It’s a classic tale of GM arguing that they don’t really operate in the city, and stating that Cruise is essentially independent of the rest of the org. Meanwhile, I’m just sitting here wondering how many protected bike lanes could be built with that chunk of change…
Poland plans a new high speed rail line
And it’s so damn cheap. For the small price of €37 million, Poland will build 140km of track and a four-kilometre-long tunnel connecting Warsaw to regional hubs. I love a good news transit story.
Urban speed limits set to drop
I know a lot of us know this, but Yale has a really nice deep dive into how lowering speed limits helps to save lives. “According to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, a pedestrian struck by a vehicle traveling at 23 miles per hour faces a 10% risk of death. At 46 miles per hour, this rises to 90%.”
Why 2023 was such a bumpy year for AVs in San Francisco
The SF Examiner has a detailed date-by-date recap of all AV news in San Fancisco from 2023. It’s essentially a long(er) recounting of the trials, tribulations, and various dramas experienced in the past 12 months.
2026 sounds far away by most AV launch plans, however I appreciate the UK wanting to keep an eye on the tech and making a plan to only introduce the technology as and when it is proven to be a solution. For now…. more buses pls.
The more you know!
All the major transit projects that launched in 2023 (The transport politic)
This is a really cool global view. Map nerds will go wild.
The inability to ticket AVs in California is making the news cycle (again) (Electrek)
Montpellier makes public transit free (crowd goes wild) (Guardian)
Argentina considers bill to allow AVs 👀 (bnamerica)
12 of the biggest AV failures of 2023
This isn’t a super detailed view on AV failures, so if you’re looking for something more robust (as I was hoping), this piece ain’t it. It still offers an OK recap from across the industry, but it lacks details and additional resources to contextualize these failures.
Filed under: not surprised and not mad about it. Ah, when Elon Musks’ half-baked idea about what will solve traffic congestion turns out to be non-viable. Smells like vindication?
The sad news? Hyperloop One raised and spent hundreds of millions of dollars since its founding in 2014. I am just thinking about the various bus routes, light rail, and regional transit that could have been delivered with that investment. The test track in Vegas will be sold off… but to who?
Chinese AV companies are hitting the brakes
And you will never guess why. I’ll give you one guess. Yes. You are correct: that reason is because (shockingly!!) the prospect of making a ludicrous amount of money is vanishing before their eyes. Who woulda thunk it.
As funding for AV companies decreases, the prospects of offloading their innovations in America is also evaporating before their eyes. “Compounding their funding dilemma, the prospect of going public in the U.S., a conventional exit route for Chinese tech firms, has dimmed amidst escalating geopolitical tensions.”
Elon Musk’s biggest lie is Tesla
[I could go on about Tesla’s sham of a sponsorship of a public art installation in SF, but I will save that for another time.. lol. Let’s just say it involves solar panels plugged into nothing].
This piece is a deep dive into a different sham (!): Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) program. Long-time readers will know that within the transportation sector, we’ve largely moved away from language such as “self-driving” as (1) it’s inaccurate, and (2) it encourages driver behaviour which is often dangerous given the (lack of) capability of the FSD program. Rolling Stone (of all people!) wrote about Tesla’s recent recall of over two million cars. More recent reports show that after the recall was “solved” via a software upgrade, the upgrade doesn’t seem to have actually solved the problem (WashPo).
Waymo’s super wonderful and totally fluffy safety report
Note: Waymo conducted their own internal research here, so just … take it with a grain of salt. Waymo is doubling down on research, and their most recent safety report claims their cars are safer than human drivers. Here are some “highlights” from the report:
Waymo's data suggests up to a tenfold reduction in the likelihood of causing injury compared to human drivers, showcasing significant safety enhancements, particularly in San Francisco. [Would love to see this compared to BRT!!]
Data from 7.14 million rider-only miles highlighted a reduction in police-reported crashes or crashes that reported bodily harm when compared to human-driver benchmarks. [Because human + police reported incidents are historically… well reported?]
Crash rates differ by location, with San Francisco exhibiting the highest rate of human-driven crashes at 5.55 per million miles, emphasizing the location-specific variations in safety performance. [I wonder if better infrastructure would solve this for everybody…………]
“It is an inarguable fact that there are far fewer AVs on the road than human-driven vehicles and, thus, less data from which to draw conclusions. Humans drive close to 100 million miles between fatal crashes. Some experts assert that we’ll need hundreds of millions of miles from autonomous vehicles before we can start to make more meaningful comparisons about safety.”
The more you know:
Mercedez-Benz has been given clearance to test Level 3 AVs across China (AutomotiveDive)
How May Mobility is avoiding the pitfalls of most AV companies (The Verge)
The City of Austin asked Cruise not to operate on Halloween for fear of their vehicles injuring children (Wired)
Just links for this section today :)
What UX designers can learn from urban planners (Fast Co)
2023 was supposed to be the year of the AV, but it didn’t end that way (NPR)
The dire state of AVs in 2023 (Jalopnik)
Introducing my elephant: This year my mom got my brothers and friend Viet and I elephant adoptions for Christmas, so one of the above photos is of my adopted elephant, Talek (lol). I might share elephant updates here going forward as I get regular updates from the conservation site (again.. lol).
Pasta pasta pasta: I hosted my first-ever new year’s party this year, and it was a Shrek 2-themed Pasta Party. I learned two things: (1) in attempting to make three different types of fresh pasta for the party, I executed none of them well (they tasted fine.. but lemme tell you they were Skrek-like). I entered 2024 with the reminder that sometimes it’s ok to focus on one thing at a time, and do that thing very well. (2) Shrek 2 is a great theme and people will get creative.
Now reading: I’m on the third installment of the Neapolitan Quartet and it’s so good, and reminds me of being in Naples in 2017. I know it’s highly recommended, but the whole series is very captivating. So I’m joining the bandwagon (bangwagon?) of people recommending it.
That’s all from me. Have a beautiful weekend friends.
Sarah
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I love how you have the Cruise tax bill story followed up by the Polish rail line one. What a great example of how that tax money could be used...if San Fran is able to get it.
And thinking about what car companies should do....The story about changing speed limits doesn't mention anything about designs of cars to help slow them. Just changing the speedometers so they don't have insanely high numbers (seriously my 2020 Spark will never get close to 120MPH!) could let drivers have a better understanding of what they are actually doing. Or don't limit the attention awareness systems to just vehicles with semi-autonomous systems, anyone not paying attention should get blaring alarms and sirens (both inside and outside the vehicles so other road users know to watch out for their stupidity).