Skip to Content
Streetsblog New York City home
Streetsblog New York City home
Log In
Streetsblog

Big Auto’s Horrifying Vision for Driverless Cars

In a future with self driving cars, pedestrians would wait in gated pens until they were allowed to cross the street. People wealthy enough to buy self-driving cars get their own special lanes in crowded cities.

Those are some of the ideas self-serving car companies are presenting to the New York Times as "solutions" to social problems. This latest bill of goods from Big Auto is extremely alarming. Let's us count the ways:

'Antiseptic' soulless cities

Even auto industry representatives are apparently worried this new technology will totally wreck cities.

Frank Menchaca, head of the industry-friendly Society of Automotive Engineers, told the Times: “We need students educated in art and design to get involved in the future so we don’t get antiseptic cities.”

In other words, these guys are planning to totally redesign cities around self-driving cars. Companies like Ford have pushed these kinds of grandiose visions before (see above photo.)

It is reminiscent of General Motor's famous "Futurama" display at the 1939 World Fair, that showed soaring highways and suburbs as a futuristic vision of a new way of living, and precipitated the tremendously destructive highway sprawl that followed in the upcoming decades.

On Jaywalking

The article starts out by wondering how self-driving cars will function in cities like New York where lots of people "jaywalk."

Instead of, you know, just stopping and waiting, car companies have devised a way to help ensure that drivers retain their near total privilege to the roads — even in a place like Manhattan. The Times' Eric Taub writes:

One solution, suggested by an automotive industry official, is gates at each corner, which would periodically open to allow pedestrians to cross.

Yikes.

Taub then dismisses the idea saying it's "as likely as never-late subways." But he adds "it’s an example of the thinking by those who worry about planning for the future."

Later in the article, Taub also vaguely references Chris Gerdes, the director of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford University, saying, “We may be able to locate crosswalks at different locations."

Crosswalks "may" need to be "relocated?" Are there going to be less crosswalks? We don't know.

He then adds: “A.V.s may be able to sense the presence of pedestrians and slow down when needed.”

Let's hope so. A self-driving Uber car killed a pedestrian — Elaine Herzberg — last year in Tempe, Ariz.

Special AV lanes

Taub adds:

It’s possible that self-driving cars will need their own lanes, to avoid mixing it up with cars driven by humans, whose errors now account for 94 percent of vehicle crashes.

So in crowded cities where everybody — cyclists, pedestrians bus riders — are fighting for scraps, special lanes for fancy newer cars? If this is where the mainstream discourse on this issue is at this stage, we're in a lot of trouble.

Robin Chase, head of the New Urban Mobility alliance, famously said long ago that the future with self-driving cars would be like "heaven" or "hell."

In the heaven version, safety improves, cities are more multi-modal, less polluted, less congested. On the other hand, without strenuous advocacy, she said, we could have the hell version, where cars cruise around for hours empty to avoid paying for parking, where sprawl is supercharged, where pedestrians have to wear special devices to be detected are blamed when they are killed by a tide of constantly roving machines.

"I know for sure we’re going toward the hell version, because the status quo produces hell," she told me last year. "That is definitely the direction we’re going."

And the final horrifying part of the Times story is this: It doesn't quote anyone who seems to have a problem with the AV proponents' anti-urban vision.

Stay in touch

Sign up for our free newsletter

More from Streetsblog New York City

Anti-Miracle On 34th Street: Adams Administration Pauses Work On 34th Street Busway

The highly-anticipated 34th Street busway may not happen under Mayor Adams after all, sources said.

July 3, 2025

Manhattan DA Says Alleged Central Park Hit-and-Run Cyclist Didn’t Flee, Drops Charges

Prosecutors said the 30-year-old cyclist "remained on the scene for about 45 minutes after the crash and waited for paramedics to arrive to treat the injured person."

Sean Duffy’s ‘Great America Road Trip’ Wants You to Drive to Central Park

Sean Duffy's "Great American Road Trip" encourages Americans to drive to sites in the most transit-rich and car-choked parts of the country.

July 3, 2025

Ex-DOT Official Warns NYC’s ‘Counterproductive’ E-bike Speed Limit Will Curb Biking, Safety

The mayor is working overtime to undo the decade of gains for cycling in the Big Apple, a former de Blasio administration official told Streetsblog.

July 3, 2025

Thursday’s Headlines: Just the News Edition

Things are slowing down for summer, but not entirely. Here's the news.

July 3, 2025

DOT Boss Defends Adams’s ‘Vision Zero’ Record As Agency Fights A Bike Lane in Court

Traffic fatalities are down and the DOT is taking a victory lap — even as it argues against a protected bike lane in court.

July 2, 2025
See all posts