AUTONOMOUS vehicles will save cities the size of Glasgow and Edinburgh will save up to £45 million a year by cutting road crashes, according to a report on the future of automated transport technology.
The mass roll out of automated cars, vans and lorries in the coming decades "could reduce both the number and severity of road accidents substantially" by removing the danger of human error, which is a factor in more than 90 per cent of all road collisions.
The 'Making Better Places' report by Parsons Brinckerhoff, the engineering company behind the new Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow, predicts that a shift towards fully autonomous vehicles capable of navigating traffic without a driver will become the norm, making roads safer for pedestrians and cyclists as well as vehicle occupants.
David Campbell, technical director at Parsons Brinckerhoff, said: “Driverless cars and autonomous vehicles have huge potential to transform Scotland’s city centre transport network.
“With the vast majority of car crashes taking place due to driver error, this transformational technology could improve safety, reduce congestion and lower emissions.
“This also fits extremely well with a lot of the place making strategies which encourage safer walking and cycling routes.
“Our research shows that the introduction of autonomous vehicles to Scotland’s cities, where accidents tend to involve more pedestrians and cyclists, could therefore generate large reductions in accident numbers saving between £25-£45 million a year.”
Unlike driverless cars - where a qualified driver must still be at the wheel and able to take over manually in an emergency - AV's can move while empty or shuttle occupants from place to place while allowing them to engage in tasks other than driving for the duration of the journey.
The authors also predict that the amount of urban space given over to parking will be significantly reduced as AV's pick up and drop off passengers before moving on to collect others in the same way, and private ownership of vehicles diminishes.
As the AV's will be electric-powered, they will also cut greenhouse gas emissions, and could also potentially signal the end for traffic lights, road signs and even motorway lanes if autonomous vehicles that are connected to each other became the norm.
Rachel Skinner, Parsons Brinckerhoff development director and report author, said: “Autonomous vehicles will be transformational. There is enormous potential for a new generation of living streets and communities, designed for vehicles, but putting people first. The technology is arriving fast, so now we need leadership at all levels to achieve this vision”.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel