無人駕駛汽車將改變世界

Your next car might drive itself. “The technology is essentially here,” Barack Obama told Wired magazine this month. Robin Chase, the transportation entrepreneur who co-founded Zipcar, reckons driverless cars are “three-and-a-quarter years away”. Yet we have barely begun to think about how they will revolutionise our lives, revamp our cities — and destroy tens of millions of jobs.

你的下一輛汽車或許會是自動駕駛汽車。巴拉克•奧巴馬(Barack Obama)本月向《連線》(Wired)雜志表示：“這項技術(shù)已經(jīng)基本成熟。”交通運輸企業(yè)家、Zipcar的聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人羅賓•蔡斯(Robin Chase)認為，無人駕駛汽車“再有三年零三個月就會來臨”。然而，我們幾乎還沒有開始考慮它們將如何革命性地改變我們的生活、我們的城市，以及摧毀數(shù)千萬就業(yè)崗位。

After years of trials on city streets, driverless vehicles are now nearing the live phase. Last month, a driverless bus began carrying passengers through Lyon, France. Most in the automobile industry think self-driving vehicles will be on the road by 2020 or before, says Richard Holman, head of foresight and trends at General Motors.

在城市街道上試運行多年之后，無人駕駛汽車現(xiàn)在已快要進入實際應(yīng)用階段。上月，法國里昂開始使用無人駕駛公交車運送乘客。通用汽車(General Motors)的預(yù)見和趨勢主管理查德•霍爾曼(Richard Holman)表示，大部分汽車業(yè)內(nèi)人士認為無人駕駛汽車將在2020年乃至更早的某個時間上路。

Driverless cars will initially coexist with human-driven cars. But the first places where they will become dominant are dense urban areas — precisely the spots most damaged by the automobile age. This is “a chance to have a do-over for cities,” Chase told this month’s Autonomy conference in Paris. Many advanced cities are already reducing the role of cars. Driverless cars will hasten that process.

無人駕駛汽車最初會與人類駕駛的汽車共存。但無人駕駛汽車首先會在人口密集的城市地區(qū)占據(jù)主導(dǎo)地位——正是那些遭受汽車時代打擊最為嚴重的地區(qū)。在本月于巴黎召開的Autonomy大會上，蔡斯表示，這是“城市從頭來過的機會”。許多發(fā)達城市已經(jīng)削減了汽車的角色。無人駕駛汽車將會加速這一過程。

Cities don’t want everyone to own their own driverless car. That would prolong congestion, and isn’t necessary anyway. A driverless car is the perfect cheap taxi — it can drop you at work, and then go off to collect somebody else. If you still insist on driving your own car, cities will probably charge you for the privilege: motoring will become a luxury, like owning and flying your own plane. Driverless cars could allow cities to cut vehicle numbers by about 90 per cent while transporting the same number of people. They will bring us enormous benefits:

城市不希望所有人都擁有自己的無人駕駛汽車。那將會加劇擁堵，而且也沒有必要。無人駕駛汽車是完美的廉價出租車，它可以把你送到公司，然后再去接其他人。如果你仍堅持開你自己的車，城市很可能會為這項特權(quán)向你收費：開車將成為一種奢侈，就像擁有和駕駛自己的飛機一樣。無人駕駛汽車可以讓城市得以將汽車數(shù)量削減90%左右，同時運輸?shù)娜藬?shù)不變。無人駕駛汽車將帶給我們極大的益處：

• Driverless cars will reduce accidents by around 90 per cent, predicts Pascal Demurger, director-general of French insurer MAIF. That’s big — the annual death toll on the world’s roads is about 1.2 million a year, or double the toll from armed conflict and homicides combined.

• 法國保險公司MAIF總經(jīng)理帕斯卡爾•德米爾熱(Pascal Demurger)預(yù)計，無人駕駛汽車將讓事故量下降90%左右。這非常了不起——全球每年有約120萬人死于交通事故，兩倍于死于武裝沖突和兇殺的人數(shù)之和。

• Pollution and carbon emissions will drop, because urban driverless cars will be electric. • 污染和碳排放將會下降，因為城市無人駕駛汽車將是電動的。

• The old, the disabled and teenagers will suddenly gain mobility.

• 老年人、行動不便者和青少年將一下子能夠方便地出行了。

• People will save fortunes by ditching their cars. The average cost of owning a car in Europe is about €6,000 a year, says Chase. If you think personal cars will survive as status symbols, remember that horses were once status symbols.

• 拋棄汽車將讓人們省下一筆錢。蔡斯表示，在歐洲，擁有一輛汽車的平均成本是每年6000歐元左右。如果你認為私家車將作為地位的象征繼續(xù)存在，那么別忘記，馬也曾經(jīng)是地位的象征。

• Driverless cars will hardly ever need to park, and certainly not in city centres. Cities can therefore convert parking spaces — where many cars now sit for the vast majority of their lives — into bike lanes or parks.

• 無人駕駛汽車幾乎從來不需要停放，而且肯定不需要在市中心停放。因此，城市可以將停車場——現(xiàn)在許多汽車在大部分使用期限里都是呆在停車場里——改造為自行車道或公園。

• Congestion will diminish, as driverless cars can drive in dense packs, won’t get lost and won’t have to circle around looking for parking.

• 交通擁堵將減少，因為無人駕駛汽車可以更密集地行駛，不會迷路，也不用轉(zhuǎn)著圈尋找停車位。

• Police will no longer pull over black drivers — or indeed any drivers.

• 警方不會再讓黑人司機靠邊停車，實際上他們不會再讓任何司機靠邊停車。

• Once driverless cars spread beyond urban centres, the tedium of commutes will go. “You can use your car for eating, working, sleeping, kissing,” Carlo Ratti, head of MIT’s Senseable City Lab, told the Autonomy conference.

• 一旦無人駕駛汽車推廣至城市中心以外，通勤將不再乏味。麻省理工學(xué)院智慧城市實驗室(MIT Senseable City Lab)負責(zé)人卡洛•拉蒂(Carlo Ratti)表示：“你可以在車上吃飯、工作、睡覺和接吻。”

On the other hand, driverless cars will bring catastrophe. The best thing about the automobile age was that it employed tens of millions of people to make, market, insure and drive vehicles. Over the next 20 years, the mostly low-skilled men who now drive trucks, taxis and buses will see their jobs decimated. Instead of taxi drivers setting Uber cars on fire, we could see taxi and Uber drivers get together to set driverless cars on fire. If you thought Donald Trump was bad, wait for the next wave of male losers from modernity.

另一方面，無人駕駛汽車將會帶來災(zāi)難。汽車時代最大的好處是，它為數(shù)千萬人提供了汽車制造、營銷、保險和駕駛方面的就業(yè)機會。在未來20年，現(xiàn)在開卡車、出租車和公交車的那些人(大部分為低技能勞動者)將失去飯碗。我們可能會看到出租車和優(yōu)步(Uber)司機們聯(lián)合起來放火焚燒無人駕駛汽車，而不是出租車司機燒優(yōu)步汽車。如果你認為唐納德•特朗普(Donald Trump)很糟糕，那么等著看下一波現(xiàn)代化浪潮帶來的男性輸家吧。

Or think of insurers, many of whom now get about half their revenues from automobile insurance. Warren Buffett, whose company Berkshire Hathaway owns the auto insurers Geico, says that anything that sharply reduces traffic accidents “would be wonderful. But we would not be holding a party at our insurance company.” Demurger muses, “We could almost become an insurer without insurance.” Governments and cities, too, will lose revenues from parking, speeding fines and petrol taxes.

或者想想保險公司吧，許多保險公司現(xiàn)在一半收入來自汽車保險業(yè)務(wù)。沃倫•巴菲特(Warren Buffett)表示，任何大幅降低交通事故的事情“都將是極好的。但我們不會在我們的保險公司開派對來慶祝”。巴菲特的伯克希爾哈撒韋公司(Berkshire Hathaway)擁有汽車保險公司Geico。德米爾熱沉吟道，我們“可能幾乎會成為沒有保險的保險公司”。政府和城市也將失去停車、超速罰款和汽油稅的收入。

Carmakers are especially scared. The few cars of the future might be made by tech companies such as Apple, Baidu and Google. Imagine the impact on Germany, where the automotive sector is the largest industry.

汽車制造商尤其感到驚恐。未來的少數(shù)幾種汽車可能由蘋果(Apple)、百度(Baidu)和谷歌(Google)等科技公司制造。想想對德國的影響吧——汽車業(yè)是德國規(guī)模最大的行業(yè)。

There may be a clash ahead between mostly European car companies and American tech companies. The carmakers want people to keep buying and driving their own cars, albeit with new technological aids. By contrast, the tech companies will lobby governments to favour driverless cars.

汽車公司(大多為歐洲公司)和美國科技公司將來可能發(fā)生沖突。汽車制造商希望人們繼續(xù)購買和駕駛自己的汽車(雖然是在新技術(shù)的輔助下)。相反，科技公司將會游說政府偏向無人駕駛汽車。

Dramatic change is coming, but governments have barely begun thinking about it. Obama is a rare politician even to have mentioned self-driving cars. Only 6 per cent of the biggest US cities have factored them into their long-term planning. Driverless cars could arrive by 2020, but most mayors and transport ministers are preoccupied with next week.

巨大的變化即將來臨，但各國政府幾乎還沒有開始考慮這些事情。奧巴馬曾提及自動駕駛汽車，這在政客當(dāng)中已經(jīng)是比較罕見的了。在美國最大的城市當(dāng)中，只有6%的城市將自動駕駛汽車考慮到了長期規(guī)劃中。到2020年，無人駕駛汽車就可能上路，但大多數(shù)市長和交通部長滿腦子想的還是下周的事情。

A decade ago hardly anyone saw the smartphone coming. It has brought an epidemic of mass addiction. Let’s hope we do a better job of handling the driverless car.

十年前，幾乎沒有人預(yù)見到智能手機的來臨。如今，智能手機癮大規(guī)模流行。希望我們在應(yīng)對無人駕駛汽車方面做得更好一些吧。