Book review: driverless: intelligent cars and the road ahead by Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman

In Driverless: Intelligent Cars and the Road Ahead, Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman reflect on the possibilities and risks posed by the new horizon of automobile technology: the driverless car. This insight into the potential future of transportation is well-researched, sprinkled with interesting anecdotes and accessible for both policymakers and the wider public, finds Joseph Savirimuthu

The driverless cars emulsion: Using participatory foresight and constructive conflict to address transport’s wicked problems

This paper introduces a novel methodology to the transport sector to foster dialogue between actors holding different perspectives on issues pertinent to the future of mobility that might be termed ‘wicked’. The case of driverless cars is considered. The paper points to a dearth of interaction between actors holding different and sometimes polar opposite views on what driverless cars could mean for the future of transport and society. It examines the role of bringing diverse perspectives together in a collaborative setting to address this wicked problem. The importance of creating task conflict is highlighted in the facilitation of engagement and achievement of shared learning. The Emulsion Methodology brings together into constructive dialogue (the emulsion) people with alternative perspectives on driverless cars (evangelists, opponents and agnostics) that may not typically mix (oil and water). The one-day workshop format (the emulsifier) involves co-creation, in mixed-perspective groups, of plausible utopias and plausible dystopias for a driverless cars future in 2050. The Three Horizons method is then used to identify significant issues at play in the transition to such futures. In turn, this enables guiding principles for present day policy to be identified. Application of the methodology to driverless cars resulted in new learning, changed perspectives and specific insights of relevance to policymaking

Google’s Driverless Cars and the Future of Human Driving

Self-driving cars have been an appealing futuristic goal since before KITT on Knight Rider. The United States Department of Defense created the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to promote the development of self-driving cars. Congress has allowed DARPA to host a grand challenge competition and award cash prizes for autonomous vehicles that could drive a 150-mile route through the Mojave Desert. Sebastian Thrun, former director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and co-inventor of Google Street View, developed the robotic vehicle with his team in Stanford that won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge. Thrun formerly led the Google X Project that has transformed their autonomous prototype into Google’s self-diving car today. This post was originally published on the Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal website on April 26, 2016. The original post can be accessed via the Archived Link button above

Understanding customers’ attitude and intention to use driverless cars

The use of driverless cars is a future trend in road transportation and set to improve quality of life. Although marketing studies on technology acceptance are abundant and cross a variety of contexts, few studies investigate thoroughly the key factors influencing customers’ intention to use, and explicitly demonstrate the mechanisms in which each factor affect the acceptance of driverless cars. This research adds new knowledge to the body of marketing literature and studies in technology acceptance towards driverless cars. Specifically, this study extends cognition-oriented theories by integrating factors such as perceived enjoyment and perceived societal benefits into the new model to explain how individual perceptions impact user attitude and intention to use driverless cars. The research further uses the habit literature and integrates the status quo bias perspective to hypothesise that in addition to cognitive factors, incumbent system habit as a subconscious source of inertia that contribute to the resistance of adopting driverless cars lies in the use of a traditional automobile vehicle. Drawing on qualitative evidence from 13 interviewees, the key themes that influence customers’ perceptions towards driverless cars are disclosed, including perceived travel efficiency, enjoyment, helpfulness, and societal benefits. On the other side, technological issues, hacking and privacy issues, laggard regulations and policies, and concerns about the deterioration in driving skills are barriers to customers’ intention to use. The proposed conceptual model is empirically assessed using data collected from 493 potential customers through an online survey. The results illustrate the significant influences, in descending order, of attitude, perceived enjoyment, concerns, perceived travel efficiency and gender on customers’ intention to use, and also confirm perceived enjoyment, perceived societal benefits and age as strong factors in consumers’ attitude toward driverless cars. Incumbent system habit influences two paths among variables: 1) dampens the positive relationship between attitude and intention to use, and 2) strengthens the negative relationship between concerns and intention to use. Attitude is verified as a mediator between the perceived enjoyment and intention to use. Age differences are also revealed. There are practical implications too for research and development managers in the manufacturing process, and for marketing managers in the retail market

Transformational Autonomy and Personal Transportation: Synergies and Differences Between Cars and Planes

Highly automated cars have undergone tremendous investment and progress over the past ten years with speculation about fully-driverless cars within the foreseeable, or even near future, becoming common. If a driverless future is realized, what might be the impact on personal aviation? Would self-piloting airplanes be a relatively simple spin-off, possibly making travel by personal aircraft also commonplace? What if the technology for completely removing human drivers turns out to be further in the future rather than sooner; would such a delay suggest that transformational personal aviation is also somewhere over the horizon or can transformation be achieved with less than full automation? This paper presents a preliminary exploration of these questions by comparing the operational, functional, and implementation requirements and constraints of cars and small aircraft for on-demand mobility. In general, we predict that the mission management and perception requirements of self-piloting aircraft differ significantly from self-driving cars and requires the development of aviation specific technologies. We also predict that the highly-reliable control and system automation technology developed for conditionally and highly automated cars can have a significant beneficial effect on personal aviation, even if full automation is not immediately feasible

Car Insurance Rate-making with an eye toward the future

For my project, I investigated car insurance rate-making. I took an in-depth look at the car insurance industry. I also studied driverless cars, and the expected timeline surrounding them. I also took a look at how driverless cars are expected to change the car insurance industry in the coming decades. In general, what I found did not surprise me. I did, however, glean insight from various opinions that I read about how the insurance industry is likely to change. Change of some sort in the car insurance industry is sure to come, with companies likely to become much more multi-faceted. This is very applicable to my future work as an actuary, and I look forward to following the developments as I begin my career

Driverless Cars and Disability: Alternative Worlds in Media Presentation

How liberating? For whom? At what costs (economic and social)? This paper is an exploratory examination of images that people have expressed about driverless cars, particularly as seen through particular media outlets. I am also concerned with the question of where disabled people fit. As I argue, many answers are narrow and superficial. Neither policy-makers nor media outlets should reduce disabled people to consumers of a product, while paying insufficient attention to related environmental and social issues. Although it would be easy to identify problematic media images of disabled people, there are also examples of nuanced, detailed analysis. The author teaches Peace Studies and Political Science at Chapman University, south of Los Angeles.This paper is part of an ongoing project exploring connections between Disability Studies and Peace Studies. I argue that one connection is the prominence of autonomous vehicles, the driverless car in Disability Studies and the drone weapon in Peace Studies. In both cases, detailed analysis by researchers is fruitful. In the first section, I examine conceptions, sometimes definitions of the three essential terms of this paper: driverless cars, disability, and media. In the second section, I report quantitative results from a search of five major media outlets. In the third section, I identify five frames that characterize media 3 coverage of driverless cars: technological breakthrough, entrepreneurship, futures, disability, and public policy. In the fourth and final section, I draw implications for future exploration by scholarly researchers and by the media

Planning for Density in a Driverless World

Automobile-centered, low-density development was the defining feature of population growth in the United States for decades. This development pattern displaced wildlife, destroyed habitat, and contributed to a national loss of biodiversity. It also meant, eventually, that commutes and air quality worsened, a sense of local character was lost in many places, and the negative consequences of sprawl impacted an increasing percentage of the population. Those impacts led to something of a shift in the national attitude toward sprawl. More people than ever are fluent in concepts of “smart growth,” “new urbanism,” and “green building,” and with these tools and others, municipalities across the country are working to redevelop a central core, rethink failing transit systems, and promote pockets of density. Changing technology may disrupt this trend. Self-driving vehicles are expected to be widespread within the next several decades. Those vehicles will likely reduce congestion, air pollution, and deaths, and free up huge amounts of productive time in the car. These benefits may also eliminate much of the conventional motivation and rationale behind sprawl reduction. As the time-cost of driving falls, driverless cars have the potential to incentivize human development of land that, by virtue of its distance from settled metropolitan areas, had been previously untouched. From the broader ecological perspective, each human surge into undeveloped land results in habitat destruction and fragmentation, and additional loss of biological diversity. New automobile technology may therefore usher in better air quality, increased safety, and a significant threat to ecosystem health. Our urban and suburban environments have been molded for centuries to the needs of various forms of transportation. The same result appears likely to occur in response to autonomous vehicles, if proactive steps are not taken to address their likely impacts. Currently, little planning is being done to prepare for driverless technology. Actors at multiple levels, however, have tools at their disposal to help ensure that new technology does not come at the expense of the nation’s remaining natural habitats. This Article advocates for a shift in paradigm from policies that are merely anti-car to those that are pro-density, and provides suggestions for both cities and suburban areas for how harness the positive aspects of driverless cars while trying to stem the negative. Planning for density regardless of technology will help to ensure that, for the world of the future, there is actually a world

Dawn of autonomous vehicles: review and challenges ahead

This paper reviews the state of the art on autonomous vehicles as of 2017, including their impact at socio-economic, energy, safety, congestion and land-use levels. This impact study focuses on the issues that are common denominators and are bound to arise independently of regional factors, such as (but not restricted to) change to vehicle ownership patterns and driver behaviour, opportunities for energy and emissions savings, potential for accident reduction and lower insurance costs, and requalification of urban areas previously assigned to parking. The challenges that lie ahead for carmakers, law and policy makers are also explored, with an emphasis on how these challenges affect the urban infrastructure and issues they create for municipal planners and decision makers. The paper concludes with strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats analysis that integrates and relates all these aspects.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio