1st ICAI 2020

International Conference on Automotive Industry 2020

Mladá Boleslav, Czech Republic

under human driving. As we know, human beings do not make their choices in a purely rational way, and traffic, far from being an exception to this rule, has long been a situation in which people can become quite aggressive and irrational (Disney, 1950). In fact, the situation we pointed out in the previous paragraph is already happening with autonomous vehicles used for testing. In a study [14] carried out by the University of Michigan, in the USA, accident data from three companies authorized to test autonomous vehicles (Google, Delphi, and Audi) were compiled and it was found that these have been involved in almost five times as many accidents as vehicles under human driving. The researchers point out, however, that the autonomous vehicles involved were not to blame in any of the cases analyzed, having been rammed while they were slow or stopped, and, in most cases, in the rear. Anyway, such accidents had a lower rate of victims than other accidents. 3.3 Urban Space and Soil Use The twentieth century saw dramatic changes in the urban fabric, as a result of the massification of the automobile. Despite gains in personal freedom to move, a myriad of researchers, such as Jane Jacobs, pointed out the perverse effects of the car on urban planning and the degradation of the quality of life that the excess of cars within the city brings to its residents. In fact, some authors even classify the gigantic spaces dedicated to parking as a “non-place” (Schoettle & Sivak, 2015): they are inside the city, but they are hostile to pedestrians and do not articulate themselves with the urban fabric that surrounds them, serving, at the limit, for separate and degrade them. The existence of ample “non-spaces” dedicated to parking lots is configured in a terrible vicious cycle in which their presence reduces the attractiveness (and the distances) to get around on foot or by public transport, at the same time that it stimulates the use automobile, which demands more and more parking lots. It should be noted that, far from being a problem restricted to our neighbors in the north of the American continent, it is easy to see, throughout Brazil, the continuous destruction of buildings (often with irreparable loss of architectural heritage), to give way to large graveled areas. where cars are stationary, unused, all day. Fortunately, the autonomous car can be the solution to break this pernicious cycle of successive expansions of parking lots, since cars will no longer need to be parked a few steps away from their owners. In fact, depending on costs and incentives (cost of fuel or electricity, level of energy efficiency of automobiles, cost and existence of parking in places closer to where the owner is, and existence of spaces where parking pockets can be created around cities), either these cars will return to their owners’ homes, or they will be directed to parking pockets around cities, a place that, at least, does not encourage the degradation of urban centers. The space claimed back could even stimulate a revival of urban centers through projects to revitalize and rehabilitate these degraded areas.

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