IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2019 - 26

For examples, improper waste treat-
ment such as burning of waste, and
unfiltered emissions from industrial
plants near living areas, as can be
seen in Figure 6.
Air pollution generated by means
of transportation has been significant-
ly reduced in recent years, and is no

Modern private cars create
only a very slight amount
of pollutants.
longer an acute concern. Accord-
ing to [25], by 2040, CO2 emissions
will no longer be an issue for means
of transportation any longer in Europe.
Therefore it is unreasonable to spend
billions of dollars to subsidize trains,
which will yield almost no improve-
ment in air quality.

Driverless Cars are not Less
Safe than Rails
Nowadays, it is customary to accept
as true that among all transportation
means, train travel is the safest. In
2015, there were only 749 record-
ed deaths in the U.S. in rail related
accidents; whereas in the same
period 35 092 people died in the
U.S. in highway crashes [26]. Road
crashes are the leading cause of
death among young people ages
15-29 and account for 2.2% of all
deaths globally.
In addition, road crashes im -
pose significant costs. Simula-
tions of traffic accidents indicate
that more damages are generated
to cars in accidents, because they
are feebler than train bodies. The
annual cost of road accidents is
US$518 billion globally, costing
individual countries from 1%-2%
of their annual GDP [27].

26

Rail Service Will
Fade Away

In [28] it is claimed that in cities
where rail transit is a major compo-
nent of the transportation system,
36% lower per capita vehicle acci-
dent fatalities are expected (7.5 ver-
sus 11.7 annual deaths per 100 000
residents) even though a single rail
accident on it s ow n st atistica l -
ly claims more lives than
a single car accident.
Ac c ord i ng ly, va r iou s
authorities in more than a
few countries believe that
many lives can be saved by
shifting some traffic to trains.
H oweve r, t h i s e n t i r e
line of reasoning will be
ir releva nt when dr iver-
less cars are available. By
automating driving, 95% of car
crashes could be eliminated [29],
because many safety gadgets will
be installed in the driverless cars.
Most trips in the U.S. are currently
undertaken by cars, whereas trains
carry only a small percentage of
passengers. According to the U.S.
Department of Transportation,
3 130 509 million miles were trav-
eled on the U.S. highway system in
2015, and in the same period only
532 million miles were traveled by
trains [30]. So even now, it is not
clear that rail travel is safer. When
driverless cars are available, it will
be as clear as daylight that driver-
less cars are much safer than con-
ventional trains.
However, the rail system will
be also driverless, so train safety
also will be improved, and both
driverle s s c a r s a nd d r iverle s s
trains will have an almost zero
probability of having a fatal acci-
dent. For that reason it will unrea-
sonable to subsidize trains with
the aim of convincing people to
travel in this means of transpor-
tation that essentially will have
a lmost the sa me sa fet y attri-
butes and qualities as driverless
car travel.
IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

Trains are a means of transportation
that were invented more than 200
years ago. In this article we have
shown that in the age of driverless
cars, a means of transportation that
takes many people from one central
station to another central station
has lost justification for its exis-
tence. The reasons detailed here
that are commonly accepted as true
are no longer valid.
Driverless cars are much more
restful and comfortable for passen-
gers than rail services. Moreover,
train stations are not often in a close
proximity to passengers, so pas-
sengers must use other means of
transportation to travel to the train
station. Use of driverless cars will
not involve any need for the hassle of
these connections. As a result, driv-
erless cars will gradually dominate
the transportation market [31]. As
more and more driverless cars are
on the roads, the trains will slowly
but surely fade away from our lives.

Author Information
Yair Wiseman is with Bar-Ilan Universi-
ty, Israel. Email: wiseman@cs.biu
.ac.il.

References
[1] S. Bhattacharjee and A. R. Goetz,
"Impact of light rail on traffic congestion
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[2] R. Emardson, P. Jarlemark, L. Pendrill,
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"Measurement of accessibility to rail trans-
port systems", In Advanced mathematical and
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[3] J. Campos and G. De Rus, "Some
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world",  Transport policy,  Vol. 16, No. 1, pp.
19-28, (2009).
[4] P. Newman and J. Kenworthy, "The End
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[5] P. Fernandes and U. Nunes, "Platooning
with IVC-enabled autonomous vehicles:
Strategies to mitigate communication

∕

JUNE 2019
http://wiseman@cs.biu .ac.il
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2019

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