If you live in one of the cities where Waymo, the autonomous vehicle company, operates, you have likely become utterly used to them. There goes another Jaguar SUV, equipped with expensive cameras and sensors, whisking a passenger around town, with the driver’s seat conspicuously empty.
The lack of a human driver is no longer the reason they stand out most from regular traffic. They do so because they follow the speed limit.
Indeed, cyclists and pedestrians are so used to drivers going 5, 10, or more miles per hour over posted speed limits, that Waymo’s practice of driving by the letter of the law creates a noticeable contrast. So much so that in a recent New York Times article about Zoox entering the autonomous-vehicle fray in San Francisco, the reporters actually had the gall to list law-abiding driving as a downside:
For many drivers who enjoy slightly exceeding the speed limit, it’s not fun to be stuck behind a Waymo. The robot cars are conservative about obeying speed limits and braking to avoid collisions. When more of these cars hit public roads, they will almost certainly add to drivers’ frustrations.
God forbid being ‘conservative’ about obeying speed limits. Mainstream frustration from cars following speed limits stems from a widespread and fundamental misunderstanding of how these laws actually govern roads in the US. Specifically, an enforcement norm has become a behavioral norm. What I mean by this is that because drivers know that they are unlikely to receive a speeding ticket unless they are going more than 10 miles per hour over the posted limit (e.g. 41 MPH in a 30 MPH zone), they have taken that to mean they should drive 10 mph above the speed limit at all times. This artifact and unintended consequence of how speed limits are enforced has created roadways where driving the speed limit will very often earn you the ire of any car behind you, as the Times indicates is likely coming Waymo and Zoox’s way.
Rather than viewing these cars as the annoying class pets of our streets, what if instead we use the transition of autonomous vehicles from novelty to commonplace as a moment to reset our own habits, and bring urban driving in line with the laws it's governed by? This conversation is not consequence-free; pedestrian fatalities in the United States have increased over the last five years, erasing meaningful declines. We still lose roughly 40,000 Americans per year on our roads, as countries throughout Europe have made meaningful progress. There are multiple factors at play in this distressing American trend, but one is speed; it’s estimated that speeding is responsible for as many traffic deaths in the US as drunk driving (roughly 30% each of the nation’s total, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration). And yet, we still treat speeding not like the highly dangerous activity that it is, but something of a personality trait. Indeed, my own research in New York City identified drivers who were racking up over 100 school-zone speeding violations in a single calendar year, and yet not having their licenses revoked. Speed kills, and to reduce roadway carnage, we must reduce vehicle speed. It is a credit to Waymo, which has yet to be involved in a single (human) fatality, that its cars obey speed limits.
Beyond the grim statistics, the qualitative difference of vehicles driving the speed limit is palpable. For those of us on the sidewalk or in the bike lane, the presence of a Waymo is genuinely anxiety-reducing. These vehicles drive smoothly, they stop at stop signs, and they drive at speeds that mean even if and when collisions occur, they are far more likely to be survivable. It is unfortunate that Waymo is an outlier in this way, but we should all take notice and learn from it.
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Marcel Moran, PhD, is assistant professor in the school of planning, policy, and env. studies at San José State University. He lives in San Francisco.
