Since its invention, autonomous driving has promised a disruptive change that should above all make transportation easier, safer and more sustainable. There have always been innovative concepts for the mobility of the future. Ridesharing providers like Uber and Lyft also wanted to make mobility easier, safer and more sustainable. At the time their approach was very innovative, and they had set themselves lofty goals with public appeal in order to challenge the entire transportation and mobility industry. They wanted to be close – inexpensive, easily accessible and, above all, for everyone. The benefit from this business model wasn’t for industry, but for the people. In addition, they were addressing a problem that autonomous driving is now addressing again, namely the issue of accessibility in rural areas.
Uber in particular wanted to make the principle of “by the company for the company” socially acceptable and enable it to profit from the novel platform business model that Airbnb had established in relation to the housing market. But what came of it? Rising prices for end users, less profit for Uber drivers, empty promises after more than 10 years since the company was founded?
Autonomous driving is on the verge of mass adoption. That’s why it’s important we discuss how to ensure that the technology delivers real benefits to society and truly improves our transportation system in a sustainable way.
At our Transatlantic Autonomous Driving conference, that’s exactly what we talked about. We invited pioneers and long-time experts in the autonomous driving industry from Silicon Valley and Germany: Christoph Keller, Senior Manager Business Development at Aurora, Stacey Randecker, Co-Host at The Flying Car and Julian Bartsch, Senior Manager at Zoox.
In order to assess whether autonomous driving will really benefit society in the long term, we first had to ask what needs exist in society in the first place.
Needs in society
William Riggs, Associate Professor at the University of San Francisco, was able to give us some interesting insights in his keynote. In his Research Rider Project ‘Trip Patterns & Experiences in Autonomous Vehicles’ he investigated which means of transport students use and in which social settings this happens. Of particular interest here were the marginal times of normal student life, when public transportation is no longer available. According to the survey, the largest “transportation gap” occurred during late evening and night hours and very early morning. Rigg’s survey to students found that half would turn to autonomous vehicles to remain mobile during these times when other transportation options such as buses, streetcars and trains, or their own cars were not available or eligible due to safety concerns. The study further proved that autonomous driving could ensure that people who have limited access to alternative transportation, for example in rural areas, or even at off-peak times, are more likely to engage in social interactions if they rely on transportation to do so. Autonomous driving could come into play and the willingness to use it in such a gap in supply was confirmed by 50 percent of respondents.
So how does autonomous driving manage to satisfy these needs?
Let’s take another detailed look at the specific benefits of autonomous driving. In the panel discussion, led by our moderator Sven Beiker, Founder and Managing Director at Silicon Valley Mobility, the following points were raised:
1. Safety
Driving becomes safe once you remove humans from the equation.
This thesis seemed to be supported by our experts, most notably Stacey Randecker, who loves to watch the autonomous vehicles already driving in San Francisco as they continue to expand their networks and the technology continues to learn. She revealed that she already sold her car and would like to see her daughter not get a driver’s license, as she feels Californian roads are unsafe for her to drive on. Various studies show that traffic fatalities remain high and that autonomous vehicles are more reliable when it comes to road safety. Or in Randecker’s words,
I trust Waymo and Zoox more than any human driver.
Stacey Randecker, The Flying Car
2. Efficiency
The technology installed in autonomous vehicles also ensures increased efficiency in other areas. Our experts mentioned parking as an example, which is becoming increasingly limited, especially in metropolitan areas. Autonomous vehicles can skillfully steer into even the narrowest of gaps at a 45-degree angle without any awkward maneuvering, outsteering even the most experienced of drivers. Other scenarios, such as double-parking or dropping people off, are also immensely simplified by autonomous driving.
3. Accessibility
As William Riggs’ social experiment at the University of San Francisco has already shown, autonomous vehicles are a potential solution for people who have limited mobility. In this context, they can serve many people and be used in various situations where there is a gap in service in rural areas, during marginal hours, or other social settings. Related to this is the higher level of service that autonomous vehicles can provide. If you yourself no longer have to be focused on what’s happening on the road in front of you, there are new possibilities to be productive. Minors would also no longer have to rely on driving companions, a crucial advantage in countries where driving licenses are not issued until the age of 18.
Now that we have looked at the advantages of autonomous driving, we also need to take a look at the conditions that must be met for these advantages to come into play.
What does it take to make autonomous driving beneficial?
The one thing needed, as according to our keynote speaker Annie Lien is data—a lot of data. It’s needed to train the artificial intelligence of self-driving vehicles so that they can get from A to B safely, reliably and sustainably. This is called “smart data” and unfortunately, there is still a need to catch up in this area as there is simply not enough data to enable autonomous driving in all environments. In the next few years, the main task will be to collect and evaluate the right data in order to make AI products and machine learning suitable for autonomous driving. This will also affect the speech data needed for voice assistants such as Siri or inventory data for supply chain logistics.
It’s not just the technology that needs to be able to follow, but also the people themselves. In order to make autonomous driving a success, it’s crucial to win over the users which can only achieved by a cultural shift. According to Julian Bartsch, society must be prepared for autonomous driving. If some people are still hesitant to get into an Uber with a “stranger,” what will it be like when there is no longer a human being in the car, and you must “hand yourself over” to a machine?
So what can we conclude from our discussion? There is no denying that technology promises us many options we didn’t have before and there’s no need to be afraid of it. Data is continually improving and certainly has a way to go before autonomous driving is so safe that we feel at ease in the hands of a self-driving car or bus. In terms of what it takes to successfully implement the concept of autonomous driving and really rethink mobility, our experts all agreed on the role of government. In order to get mobility right, they said, autonomous driving needs to be embedded into politics. There has to be a discussion not only with the involved companies in the mobility sector, but also with the government so that technology and society can grow together.
Would you like to join the discussion at our next mobility event?
Then register here and join us at our 5th German-American Mobility Dialogue on August 30th in San Francisco!
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