Carpool lanes might disappear in an era of self-driving cars.
Carpool lanes are undeniably both beloved and hated.
Drivers that can utilize one relish the fact that much of the time they have fewer cars in them and move at a faster pace than the rest of the traffic—the so-called mixed lanes. Meanwhile, drivers stuck in the bumper-to-bumper mixed lanes are at times irked to see the free-flowing cars in the carpool lane.
What makes them so special? Who do they think they are?
Occasionally, renegade drivers in the mixed lanes try to sneak into a carpool lane, even though they legally aren’t supposed to be in there. The mindset seems to be that if you jump quickly into the carpool lane, zip ahead at light speed, and then leap back out of the special lane, the odds of getting caught are slim.
During my morning commute, I see law-breaking drivers commit such a crime all the time.
This makes the law-abiding drivers in the mixed lanes become infuriated at the carpool lanes, namely that the carpool lanes can so easily be “stolen” by other drivers and do so without any direct repercussions.
Overall, most people are sympathetic with the intent of carpool lanes as a set aside to have society shape what kinds of cars we drive and how many people we carry, but when those scofflaw drivers that aren’t supposed to use the carpool lanes get away with their untoward incursions, we become enraged at the loathsome drivers and the very existence of the carpool lanes that permit such lawlessness.
If you want to enumerate the downsides of carpool lanes, you can also include the aspect that getting into and out of carpool lanes is known to be a producer of car accidents.
Here’s what happens.
A carpool lane is moving at top speed, while the traffic in the next lane over is moving sluggishly. A driver that misjudges getting into the carpool lane, assuming they legally can do so, merges into the special lane at a snail-like speed. Bang, a carpool car and the merging car bash into each other.
Likewise, when a car exits from the carpool lane, they often do so at a high speed, and inadvertently ram into slower traffic in an adjacent lane.
You could try to argue that those slipshod drivers are careless and therefore it’s a human driving problem, though similarly, you could say that the fundamental design of carpool lanes lends itself to putting drivers into situations that lead to car crashes. Roadway infrastructure that tempts drivers into making mistakes is poorly designed and indefensible.
Adding fuel to the fire, you’ve got interlopers that break the rules entirely and try to enter into the carpool lane when they aren’t supposed to do so or try to exit from the carpool lane when it isn’t allowed.
One must ask, do carpool lanes actually work?
In some locales, there is an argument to be made that the enormous cost for a carpool lane is marginally worth the benefits it accrues.
To enact a carpool lane, you either need to take an entire lane out of normal service and dedicate it to this special purpose, or you need to expand the roadway to accommodate an additional lane to serve as a carpool lane. Adding lanes to an existing highway or freeway is a multi-millions of dollars proposition (sometimes billions of dollars), and the construction process will likely disrupt existing traffic for an extended period.
Some would vehemently argue that by not allowing mixed traffic into that dedicated lane, you are making the mixed traffic situation worse.
A counter-argument is that if those drivers are upset about sitting in the mixed traffic lanes, those drivers ought to look in the mirror and realize they need to change their type of car or include more passengers so that they too could enjoy the recompense of a carpool lane.
Round and round you can go on the never-ending debate about the merits of carpool lanes. The battle between those in favor of a carpool lane versus those opposed can be loud and quite acrimonious.
This brings up an interesting question: With the advent of true self-driving cars, will we continue to have carpool lanes or will they disappear?
Let’s unpack the matter.
The Levels Of Self-Driving Cars
It is important to clarify what I mean when referring to true self-driving cars.
True self-driving cars are ones that the AI drives the car entirely on its own and there isn’t any human assistance during the driving task.
These driverless cars are considered a Level 4 and Level 5, while a car that requires a human driver to co-share the driving effort is usually considered at Level 2 and Level 3. The cars that co-share the driving task are described as being semi-autonomous, and typically contain a variety of automated add-on’s that are referred to as ADAS (Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems).
There is not yet a true self-driving car at Level 5, which we don’t yet even know if this will be possible to achieve, and nor how long it will take to get there.
Meanwhile, the Level 4 efforts are gradually trying to get some traction by undergoing very narrow and selective public roadway trials, though there is controversy over whether this testing should be allowed per se (we are all life-or-death guinea pigs in an experiment taking place on our highways and byways, some point out).
Since semi-autonomous cars require a human driver, such cars aren’t particularly going to make a difference in our use of carpool lanes. There is a minor argument to be made that perhaps the Level 2 and Level 3 features will aid in forewarning the human driver when merging poorly into or out of a carpool lane, but the human driver is still the judge and jury in deciding what action to take.
In fact, it is notable to point out that in spite of those drivers that keep posting videos of themselves falling asleep at the wheel of a Level 2 or Level 3 car, do not be misled into believing that you can take away your attention from the driving task while driving a semi-autonomous car.
You are the responsible party for the driving actions of the car, regardless of how much automation might be tossed into a Level 2 or Level 3.
Self-Driving Cars And Carpool Lanes
For Level 4 and Level 5 true self-driving cars, we might be able to reconsider the notion and use of carpool lanes.
First, let’s tackle the conventional reasons for wanting to have carpool lanes.
Most carpool lanes today are set up to allow EV (Electrical Vehicles) as an immediate use for the carpool lane.
If you are driving an EV, you are typically allowed to proceed to use the carpool lane, regardless of whether you had obtained any prior tags or permission to do so and regardless of how many passengers you have in the car. The idea is that society wants to cut down on gasoline-powered car emissions, and so by giving EVs a free pass to use the carpool lane, it will incentivize people to switch to EV’s.
Well, fortunately, the odds are that true self-driving cars are going to be EV’s.
Part of the reason for the EV use of self-driving cars is that computers and sensors require a lot of electrical energy. Sure, a gasoline-powered car could potentially generate the needed power, but an EV is ready-made to do so.
Furthermore, most of the self-driving car makers are aiming to dovetail into the presumed societal shift toward EV’s. It would seem rather short-sighted to instead be putting your eggs into a gasoline-powered car that would receive consternation by energy-conscious people and get criticized for being bad for the environment.
A lousy way to try and get traction for true self-driving cars.
If we had a world of all true self-driving cars, and they were EV’s, this facet would knock out one of the pillars for needing to have carpool lanes.
Consider another reason for today’s carpool lanes, specifically the act of carpooling.
Society hopes to get more people per car and avoid the seeming irresistible act of having solo drivers in cars. By providing today’s carpool lanes, it encourages drivers to find others to travel with them.
If you have more people per car, the belief is that you’ll have fewer cars on the roadways, freeing up congestion.
True self-driving cars won’t require and will not have a human driver.
When you take a trip in a self-driving car, all the occupants will be passengers. Some hope that this will spur people to truly carpool, especially since the interior of driverless cars will be more spacious (you can remove all of the human-used driving controls that normally take-up precious interior space).
As I’ve elaborated in one of my other pieces, we don’t yet know whether self-driving cars will promote carpooling or whether it might simply bring us more solo occupancy riding.
In theory, if you are in the camp that says self-driving cars will encourage carpooling, this is yet another take-down of a pillar for needing carpool lanes.
Perhaps people will carpool in self-driving cars just because of the nature of self-driving cars, and no longer need any added incentive such as a special travel lane. You could also argue that since there aren’t any drivers in the driverless car, those in the driverless car might not even realize whether the traffic is congested or not. The attention inside the self-driving car might be on interacting with other passengers or watching a streaming movie, and even change our sense of time.
Keeping count, we’ve so far edged out the pollution abating reason for carpool lanes and somewhat undercut the need to force people into carpooling due to the assumption that people will freely do so on their own as a result of driverless cars being available.
Another factor for conventional carpool lanes is traffic management, though this is a contentious topic, for sure.
One argument is that carpool lanes aid in traffic flow.
Such a claim raises eyebrows since the traffic overall would presumably flow more smoothly if all cars could use all lanes, rather than having a small subset of cars use a lane that others aren’t able to use.
For true self-driving cars, they will be outfitted with V2V (vehicle-to-vehicle) electronic communications, allowing nearby driverless cars to digitally communicate with each other. In addition, self-driving cars are going to have V2I (vehicle-to-infrastructure) electronic communications, enabling the roadway traffic lights and other elements to communicate with driverless cars.
Some believe that if properly managed, self-driving cars will “talk” with each other about the flow of traffic. Hey, there’s debris in the second lane up ahead, so everybody moves gently over to avoid the problem. This kind of communication could significantly reduce traffic delays and disruptions.
With the combined punch of both V2V and V2I, traffic might flow more smoothly via self-driving cars, doing so as a result of the coordination and cooperation among the driverless vehicles.
Today’s human drivers are living in a dog-eat-dog world of tussles with other drivers for every inch of roadway travel. To some extent, this human greed in driving is what hampers traffic flow, though there is surprisingly a good side (sometimes) to this mankind-derived style of driving (see my post here).
Conclusion
The case seems to have been made that we can dispense with carpool lanes once self-driving cars have arrived.
Not so fast!
One issue to consider is that we are going to have a mixture of human-driven cars and self-driving cars for many years to come.
There are about 250 million conventional cars in the United States alone. Those everyday cars are not going to suddenly become driverless cars. Self-driving cars will gradually emerge and at first, be a tiny proportion of the cars on our roadways. Over many years, likely decades, we’ll gradually see a shift toward less and less conventional cars and more so driverless cars on our streets.
During that interim period of a heavy mix of human-driven cars, maybe we should keep the carpool lanes in place.
You could add a rule to the carpool lane access rights that may be all driverless cars can use it too, in addition to those that are driving EV’s or those that have two or more passengers.
If society wants to encourage people to use driverless cars, the carpool lanes might eventually be dedicated exclusively to driverless car use only.
As a side note, please don’t confuse the point about making carpool lanes into lanes for driverless cars with a different topic that has some controversy associated with it. Namely, there are some that believe that the only means to ensure the safety of self-driving cars is to put them into their own separate lanes.
Maybe we could reduce the difficulties of the AI having to deal with human-driven cars by setting aside roads or lanes that only driverless cars could use. Without those pesky human drivers in the same lane, it would make life easier for the AI.
I don’t subscribe to that notion.
It’s my fervent belief that we need to make sure that the AI can handle driving near to and among human drivers. Only in very narrow circumstances might it be sensible to set aside special roads or lanes, but overall any properly done and true self-driving car should not need to be shielded away from the realities of driving on our public streets.
One last point about carpool lanes is an novel aspect that becomes feasible in an era of true self-driving cars.
Since driverless cars have the V2V and V2I electronic means to communicate with each other, you could pretty much establish a kind of virtual carpool lane.
Here’s how that might work.
A slew of driverless cars is on the freeway. Traffic is moving at a constant flow but a somewhat slower pace than the freeway itself could allow.
Within one of the driverless cars, a pregnant woman is about to give birth. The AI in her car communicates with other nearby self-driving cars and explains that this woman needs to be rushed to the nearest hospital.
The self-driving cars all begin to open up a path for the driverless car with the pregnant woman. Maybe all of the self-driving cars move out of the fast lane and let this one driverless car zip along in it.
Or, maybe the driverless car weaves in and out among the other cars on the freeway, doing so like a football player that’s scampering down the field. In this case, all the other self-driving cars are purposely opening up spaces between them to allow for the one driverless car to readily zoom ahead in traffic.
My point is that we might not need to have a physically dedicated carpool lane anymore.
Instead, there would be the possibility of virtual lanes. You might not even refer to these as lanes per se. They are paths through traffic that are jiggered-up on-the-fly via the overarching real-time cooperation of the self-driving cars.
Yay!
What a boon to mankind.
Maybe.
We will need to figure out the rules about when such virtual paths can be instantiated.
If you are late for work, does that give you the right to raise a red flag and request that all other driverless cars get out of your way?
Probably not a good enough reason (though you might think so!).
All told, we are gradually going to see the extinction of dedicated and physical carpool lanes.
In their replacement might be state-of-the-art on-the-fly virtual paths that can be crafted as needed and when legally allowed, occurring via electronic communications among self-driving cars.
Imagine that you are driving on the freeway, one of the few remaining human drivers and all of a sudden all of the driverless cars around you started shifting back-and-forth in their lanes and you have no idea why they are conducting a seemingly intricate ballet.
Those driverless cars might be making room for a self-driving car with a top dignitary, or maybe the AI has decided that you, the human driver in the mix, an oddball among all the self-driving cars, needs to be boxed-in and slowed down.
Serves you right for not giving up your driving privilege and allowing the AI overlords to run our roadways (here’s a link to AI conspiracy theories).
