Bicycle Friendly America Summer 2018 - 12

IMPROVED COMFORT FOR PEOPLE WHO BIKE
Why should we expect improved comfort?
Automated vehicles are marketed as safe and law abiding. At
times, automated vehicle manufacturers go further to demonstrate how these vehicles will be non-treatening and aid people
outside of them, such as Google's koala-faced prototype that
was pulled over for going too slow4 or Mercedes' F-015 that
projects a crosswalk for pedestrians.5 Automated vehicles, barring the revolt seen in many science fiction movies, should be
incapable of road rage and happy to safely follow a bicyclist
before safely passing while giving the space required by law or
more. Knowing and experiencing this improved vehicle behavior is likely to increase the comfort of people who are biking.
What barriers to improved comfort exist?

What can be done now to ensure the automated vehicles make bicyclists more
comfortable?
Until federal legislation regulating automated vehicles and
automated driving systems is passed, the best place to take
action is at the state level. Many state Departments of Motor
Vehicles are being given the responsibility to develop testing
or reporting requirements for automated vehicle operators.
While comfort could be defined in many ways and based on an
extensive list of interactions, the proposed list of principles6
developed by Professors Michael Boswell and William Riggs,
SOURCE: HTTPS://NACTO.ORG/PUBLICATION/BAU/MOVE-PEOPLE-FEWER-VEHICLES/

Comfort is a complicated issue arising out of many interactions, so I'll highlight one potential barrier for one type of
interaction - a car passing a bicyclist. For lower level automation, an automated system will perform one behavior within
defined parameters and rely on the human driver to alter its

behavior if required. This may create a barrier to comfort for
bicyclists if a human driver engaged an automated system such
as lane keeping assist, which is meant to keep a vehicle between painted lanes, and then must move out of a lane in order
to safely, comfortably, and (in many, but not all, states) legally
pass a bicyclist.
At this time, we simply don't know whether the automated
driving system would prompt the driver to intercede to safely
pass or allow a vehicle movement outside of the lane markings
in order to provide a safe distance to a bicyclist.

12 BICYCLE FRIENDLY AMERICA

http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/13/technology/future/waymo-google-car-retired/index.html https://www.theverge.com/2015/3/20/8263561/mercedes-benz-f-015-self-driving-video https://www.planetizen.com/node/88564/bicyclists-manifesto-autonomous-vehicle-future HTTPS://NACTO.ORG/PUBLICATION/BAU/MOVE-PEOPLE-FEWER-VEHICLES/

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Bicycle Friendly America Summer 2018