Review by New York Times Review
AN APPALLING STATISTIC appears toward the end of "No One at the Wheel," Samuel Schwartz's valuable primer on self-driving cars: In the century since the automobile arrived on the scene, 70 million people have been killed by it, and four billion injured. Schwartz, who served as New York City's traffic commissioner in the 1980s, was nicknamed "Gridlock Sam" for his devotion to the conundrum of traffic (and for coining the loathsome term). He knows everything about how cars and people don't get along, having been on the front lines. This book - written in an earnest, conversational style - is his attempt to grapple with a fresh threat that's appeared after decades of progress. Futurists may have promised us flying cars, but what we're going to get instead are driverless ones, and Schwartz's is the first comprehensive analysis of what that will mean on the ground. Most likely, there will be far fewer fatalities. With nearly 40,000 people killed in 2017 in the United States alone, that's a huge benefit. But cars that can drive themselves will bring with them other knotty societal problems. By next year, both General Motors' selfdriving unit, Cruise, and Alphabet's Waymo (formerly the Google Car) aim to have driverless cars available for ride-hailing services in major American cities. And that's just the beginning. Schwartz figures that autonomous vehicles, or A.V.s, will arrive in huge numbers in the decades ahead, bringing cheaper mobility options, improved safety, reduced pollution thanks to the electric motors they will favor, but also profound ethical dilemmas - namely, the restaging of the conflict between walking and driving. Schwartz is in it for pedestrians (and bicyclists). For centuries, shocking as it might seem now, people could walk pretty much wherever they pleased. Sure, they had to dodge the occasional mule cart or arriving stagecoach, but for the most part, they ruled the crude paths and humble cobblestones, from ancient Rome to Belle Époque Europe. The automobile constrained them. Jaywalking became a crime. Cars mowed them down. Schwartz and fellow urban enthusiasts successfully fought to reclaim space for the basic human act of walking. And now the A.V.s have appeared. "If history warns us about anything," Schwartz notes, "it's that pedestrians and cyclists have to be better organized, more vocal and more vigilant if they are going to ensure that A.V.s will not completely eliminate walking on many streets, except in fenced-in locations or at different levels from the roadway." The advent of smartphone-enabled businesses like Uber and Lyft has accelerated this disruption, as Schwartz points out. The riches are plainly in sight: Cruise was valued at over $14 billion, and one Wall Street bank thinks Waymo could be worth $175 billion. These players want to launch autonomous mobility services quickly to gain market share, leaving until later the debugging of the ensuing mayhem. Will pedestrian deaths go down in an A.V. future? Almost certainly. But there are other factors to consider even before the robots take over, like congestion pricing, which Schwartz forcefully supports for both human-driven cars and A.V.s. I'm someone who enthusiastically drives cars for a living and who, without reservation, admits that the automobile has brought menace and avoidable carnage right along with the freedom to set out on the open road. We should have better thought it through the last time around. If we heed Gridlock Sam and this valuable, humane book as we move toward a future in which we largely surrender the wheel, we can avoid messing up again. From his perspective, we don't have a choice. Matthew debord is a senior correspondent at Business Insider and the author of "Return to Glory: The Story of Ford's Revival and Victory at the Toughest Race in the World."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 11, 2019]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The bold opening prediction that autonomous vehicles, or AVs, will be the "most disruptive technology... since the advent of the motorcar" is amply and insightfully supported by Schwartz (Street Smart: The Rise of Cities and the Fall of Cars), former New York City traffic commissioner and the New York Daily News's "Gridlock Sam" columnist. He clearly illuminates both the promise and the peril of driverless vehicles, which will affect "family and work life, business, politics, ethics, the environment, travel, health, and yes, our happiness." Before the expected expansion of the AV industry in the coming decades into a "multitrillion-dollar business-bigger than Amazon and Walmart combined as they exist today," Schwartz hopes that both policymakers and average citizens will think carefully; while AVs could make streets safer, they could also create an even more sedentary and unhealthy society. He contextualizes the current transportation revolution through a history of the rise and impact of motor vehicles, noting that commercial interests led to changes that defaulted in favor of the car and its driver, rather than the pedestrian, a history that he hopes won't be repeated with AVs. This is an essential treatise on a technology whose development and regulation will have an impact on "the future health of people, economies, cities, and more." (Nov.) c Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In his latest work, Schwartz (Street Smart: The Rise of Cities and the Fall of Cars) writes a practical, future-focused book on how automated vehicles will come to influence transportation. As the term automation has been applied in many ways to new technologies, such as self-driving cars, a helpful appendix on levels of automation helps to foreground the work and examine the degrees to which it can be achieved in the automotive field. To prove his points, Schwartz brings perspectives and lessons learned from his years as New York City's traffic commissioner. Chapters expand into several aspects of self-driving cars including infrastructure costs and designs, traffic and land use, business and health implications, and the varied ethical considerations of autonomous vehicles. What this work does best is provide timely and informed reporting on historical continuities with the current automated car debate. VERDICT For readers interested in learning more about technology and transportation policy, especially those contemplating the uses, drawbacks, and future possibilities of emerging -technology on society writ large.-Jim Hahn, Univ. Lib., Univ. of Illinois, -Urbana © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
"In just a few years, all cars will be partially or fully autonomous." Are we hapless drivers ready?It's safe to say that few people on the planet know more about guiding vehicles from place to place than Schwartz, an engineer who served as New York City's traffic commissioner for years. In this book, which closely follows the city government's decision to rein in Uber and Lyft drivers, the author emerges as a not-entirely-uncritical advocate of autonomous vehicles, which promise to do all kinds of good things for crowded roadways, with a lot of ifs attachede.g., if governments everywhere "ensure that people are privileged over cars, and that in the rush to innovate, unsafe or untested vehicles are not allowed to come on the market." The author notes that Uber employs "a lobbying troop that is larger than Walmart's" and spends millions on pressing its case. Given that he believes Uber and other disruptive transportation companies will continue to do so given the vastpotentially trillions of dollarsamount of money involved, cars may very well be privileged over people. For all that, Schwartz advocates moving forward with plans to introduce AVs into the transportation mix along with other steps to discourage individual ownership of vehicles, at least in citiesfor, as he also notes, the vast number of vehicle trips are taken with single occupants going to places no more than a mile from home, trips that can easily be accommodated by other forms of transportation. The author contrasts some of the amazingly pedestrian-unfriendly cities of today (Athens, Greece, anyone?) with visions for a future where cars are kept at a safe distance from walkers and cyclistsbut where cars, thus carefully limited and regulated, still hold a place in a vibrant suite of transportation options.An invigorating bit of future-trend prognosticating, generally positive, if warning direly of global gridlock if trends continue. Urban planners, architects, and transportation activists will definitely want to take note. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
