無人駕駛汽車將解決擁堵難題

There’s no use denying it — autonomous cars are coming. Experts says that partially autonomous cars will be on the road by 2017, and that within a decade, fully autonomous vehicles will be zooming on highways and through our neighborhoods.

不容否認，自動駕駛汽車離我們已經不遠了。專家表示，能實現部分自動駕駛的汽車將於2017年上路；不到10年，完全自動駕駛汽車將開始穿梭在高速公路和大街小巷。

When this day comes, though, what will become of the two car garage? It may not be needed anymore, according to a new study from the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute.

等那一天真的來了，雙車車庫會有什麼樣的遭遇？根據密歇根大學運輸研究院的一項最新研究，到時我們可能就不再需要這種車庫了。

The study essentially posits this: if autonomous cars become the norm, they could be shared by two people in the same household. Say Jack and Diane are married and live in the center of a medium-sized city, one where there is no major public transportation to speak of. Their self-driving car could take Jack to his job in the suburbs, then return to the apartment, where Diane would get in and be shuttled to her job in another part of town. The two no longer need their own vehicles to get to work, and can share the one autonomous car without having to deal with car pooling or going out of their way.

該研究指出：如果自動駕駛汽車成爲常態，兩位家庭成員就可以同時使用一輛車。比如傑克和丹妮是一對夫婦，居住在一座中型城市的市中心。他們的自動駕駛汽車可以載着傑克到郊外上班，然後返回他們的公寓，載着丹妮去城裏的另一個地方上班。兩人無需分別開一輛汽車上班，也不必再爲拼車之類的麻煩事操心，而是可以共用一輛自動駕駛汽車。

“This reduction in ownership and an accompanying shift to vehicle sharing within each household, in the most extreme hypothetical scenario, could reduce average ownership rates by 43% (from 2.1 to 1.2 vehicles per household,)” the report says.

該報告指出：“家庭汽車擁有量的減少和用車模式的轉變，在最極端的假設下，可能使家庭汽車的平均擁有量降低43%（每個家庭從擁有2.1輛車下降到1.2輛）。

As noted, though, this is just the most extreme possibility. Brandon Schoettle, the lead writer of the study, said the actual reduction in car ownership could be much less than that, depending on a few factors. For instance, states may pass laws that prohibit such an arrangement by requiring autonomous cars to only operating with a human inside.

不過正如上文強調的，這只是最極端的假設。該研究項目的首席作者布蘭登o舒特勒認爲，受一些因素的影響，機動車保有量的實際減少幅度可能顯著低於這個比率。比如，美國的有些州可能會出臺法律，禁止無人駕駛汽車單獨上路，而是要求必須有一名駕駛員坐在車內。

And even though driverless cars are starting to creep into the mainstream, don’t expect this change to happen overnight. Schoettle said turning over the existing fleet of cars would take time, so any reduction in the number of cars on the road could take “decades.”

即使無人駕駛汽車已經開始潛入主流，但這種改變也不會一夜之間發生。舒特勒表示，要淘汰現有數量的汽車需要很長時間，所以要想看到路面汽車數量明顯減少這一幕，可能還得等上“幾十年”。