EP 52: Driverless Cars 2
Let's catch up on driverless cars, shall we? Last year, we did a primer on autonomous vehicles and policy implications, but it seems like a lot can change in short time with this technology. What's the latest? How does the public feel about it? What are some example scenarios of how we as people might interact with autonomous vehicles in our day-to-day? Brooks Rainwater of the National League of Cities has the research and joins us to flesh it out. NLC report, "Autonomous Vehicles: Future Scenarios" http://avfutures.nlc.org/ Related news release https://www.nlc.org/article/how-will-autonomous-vehicles-revolutionize-cities Pew Research Center, "Americans' attitudes toward driverless cars" http://www.pewinternet.org/2017/10/04/americans-attitudes-toward-driverless-vehicles/ AAA, "More Americans Willing to Ride in Fully Self-Driving Cars" https://newsroom.aaa.com/2018/01/americans-willing-ride-fully-self-driving-cars/ Municipal Equation Episode 24: Autonomous Vehicles in Your City http://municipalequation.libsyn.com/ep-24-autonomous-vehicles-in-your-city 1971 film clip about driverless car https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ocvNxjN3dc
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Transcript
On this episode, The Municipal Equation. It's those instances, like you saw with kind of the Tesla crash or you saw down in Arizona where there's a fatality, and that's what's gonna make the front page of the newspaper. Certainly, now as these vehicles come online, there's a real need for explaining how they will work. You know, there there's just so many basic pieces that are hard for most people to comprehend because it's a whole new system and a whole new way to get around. Checking back in on autonomous vehicles.
With all the innovation and competition among companies to be the first for the best at this point, We do have some kind of future with driverless cars, but what will that look like for us in our daily lives? Specific scenarios. How might things play out between you and autonomous vehicles? My name is Ben Brown, and this is Municipal Equation, a podcast about cities and towns in the face of change, from the North Carolina League of Municipalities, episode 52.
Look. No hands. And no driver for that matter. Scientists assure us that it's the shape of things to come in highway travel. This robot car is the latest project under study by the road research laboratory. It's all done by computerized electronic impulses relayed to the car through a special receiving unit fixed to the front. Signals picked up from the inlaid track are interpreted by the unit to change the car's course or its speed. Rather similar to the automatic pilot system used in aircraft. Sometime in the future, they say, every vehicle on a main road network could be taken by remote control all the way to its destination. It may seem a bit of a pipe dream at the moment, but researchers say,
An archive clip about driverless cars and how they'll work from 1971. So beyond all the references to Stephen King's Christine or Maximum Overdrive or whatever other scary car come to life movies there are out there, There is real technology on the ground and in use today, as we all know, for driverless cars. We've done an episode on it before, and at this point, the basic conceptual understanding of it is within common speak, Whether or not the details are actually understood. If you have the time, you can read, at last count, 356,000 relatively recent news stories on Google, from a Google search. News stories about autonomous vehicles. A good number of which have to do with the public's level of comfort with or trust in driverless cars. And we'll talk a little bit more about that. But, well, let's just get kind of distracted first and just look at some of these headlines, a number of which are just a few hours old as I speak this 06/25/2018 Okay. First one says Volvo could introduce driverless cars by 2021 That story came out today At least it did on the website I'm looking at called No Techy Might be sourcing something else Boston Globe headline. Boston driverless car company will expand testing citywide. Another one here says, Wyoming Department of Transportation director says, Wyoming needs to prepare for driverless cars, Driverless vehicles to become legal in Nebraska. Okay. From smarthighways.net, the headline reads, Blackberry Boss says driverless cars still ten years away. Okay. So that's John Chen, the CEO of BlackBerry, you know, like the phone company, saying that tech development, in addition to public policy, mean that we're still a good, long while away from seeing autonomous vehicles, to any big degree on our roads. I mean, they're already on the roads in some areas, but I think he means on a grand scale. Okay. From the Australian Financial Review. Five industries that driverless cars will devastate. That's the headline and I won't leave you hanging. According to the author of this article, Michael McQueen, the five industries to be devastated by driverless cars are number one, insurers. Like, if you're in an accident with an autonomous vehicle, who's at fault? Among other questions. So the insurance industry will probably get a shakeup. Number two, paid parking. Okay. So when our autonomous vehicles drop us off somewhere, I guess it wouldn't have to go to a pay lot or a parking garage necessarily It could keep driving or head home or you could call it back I don't know I guess implications for municipal parking tickets as well number three, taxis This one seems obvious, and we're gonna get into that a little bit later in this episode. Number four, logistics and freight. And number five, car dealerships. Meaning that when we get into the driverless car world, there may be plenty of other technical or societal changes too that could change the standard of each person having his or her own vehicle. You know, there could be vehicle sharing and so on. And as such, car sales would decline. Okay. Just a couple more headlines and then we'll get into the main part of this episode, from Pew Research. Americans had concerns about self driving cars before fatal Arizona accident. That, of course, referring to the semi recent tragedy in Tempe involving a pedestrian and a driverless car. The next headline here is directly related. This is way more recent, a few days ago. Says, Woman in self driving Uber was watching The Voice before a fatal crash. And I guess in that case, it was a driverless car, but it was a manned driverless car. Another headline says, You just got a speeding ticket in a driverless car. Who has to pay for it? And we just mentioned that a minute ago. US senators probe driverless car testing amid lax Trump oversight. And that's from May 30. So anyway, the word is out, basically, that we're headed towards some kind of future with autonomous cars and trucks. But, what are some specific scenarios that we might really see in our daily lives? You know, how might this actually play out for us as people in a practical sense? Well, lucky for this podcast, we have a great relationship with the National League of Cities, which has done tons of research on this and recently put out a report of specific scenarios of interactions between you and me and the driverless cars or vehicles that'll be humming around us. Us. NLC did this in partnership with the Bloomberg Aspen initiative on autonomous vehicles. And to talk about it, we're gonna bring back a familiar voice. He's been on this podcast before. To start with, identify yourself and where you work and what you do.
Sure. I'm Brooks Rainwater, and I'm the senior executive and director of the Center for City Solutions at the National League of Cities. So I oversee our research portfolio as well as our technical assistance work, leadership education, and best practices.
And and so before we get into what all this means with, the scenarios that you guys came out with in the partnership, I mean, can we kinda catch up generally on where we are with autonomous vehicles? It seems like it changes all the time, you know, which car companies are out in front of us, how many cities are actually planning for these things, and, you you know, how close are we to actually having driverless cars in our daily lives. And we could spend an hour just addressing those little questions alone, but just kind of a quick status report on driverless cars today just so we can kinda set the tone.
Sure. The quick status report on driverless cars is that we're starting to see them come online at scale at the nascent stages. And so if you look at, Phoenix and the Chandler area within Arizona, Waymo now has driverless cars that they're testing without drivers in the in the driver's seat, and they're planning within the next year or so to roll those out at a much larger scale. You're seeing pilot projects all throughout the country. Some of the major ones I'd point to are are clearly in the Bay Area and San Francisco with a whole host of different companies. Then in Pittsburgh, there are a couple different companies, Uber being one of those, although that's been put on hold recently. Then when you go up to Boston, there's an interesting pilot project happening there with NewTonomy and Lyft, you know, but I could go around the whole country and talk about pilot projects. I think what we're really interested in is when does this scale? When do the car companies really start selling these vehicles? And my best guess based on all of the knowledge that's out there is that we'll start seeing autonomous vehicles and shared use within the next year or two. For people to actually be able to purchase them, it looks like most of the major car companies are putting a twenty twenty to 2022 date on that. And so I do really feel like we're at that kind of tipping point right now where we will start to see autonomous vehicles in major cities
within the next few years. And so and if this is a curveball, let me know. But, you know, before we get to the latest work you're doing on this topic, I'd like to kinda, one way or the other, address public opinion. And I I have a feeling, you know, for example, I could probably ask any of my neighbors if they're comfortable with driverless cars cruising down the street. And this is, you know, people who are just on the outside of what the technology is doing. They haven't observed the, the evolution. They just hear the reports of somebody getting hit or, you know, or the what ifs. And if they feel comfortable, you know, inside a driverless car, if I ask them, I feel like they would probably say no. And, again, that's just my feeling. But,
as a legitimate question all the same when it comes to where we're at with this technology and then the public's level of comfort with it, which is crucial, Do we have any public opinion research about this? Yeah. We do have some public opinion research that, the Pew Research Center has put out. And just as you've expressed, you know, I think it's around 30 or 40% of people say that they're comfortable with autonomous vehicles.
Let's put a pin in that real quick because almost every time I've had a conversation with a government official or a public policy person about driverless cars, and we're talking about people who are not really deeply involved in the research of it, but more the perception. It always gets back to how people and their comfort levels drive the market, and how that'll really be the determining factor. So that Pew research that Brooks mentioned. And these numbers may be in a state of change, but what I'm looking at is from October 2017, not quite a year ago, with Pew reporting that 40% of people surveyed were, quote, at least somewhat enthusiastic about this development, while 54% expressed some level of worry. Later in the report, it points to research from 2014, finding that quote, Americans were relatively divided over whether or not they would want to ride in a driverless vehicle. And this survey finds continuing evidence of this ambivalence. Just over half, 56% of Americans say they would not want to ride in a driverless vehicle given the opportunity, while 44% say they would do so if they had the chance. Pew says that a lack of confidence or trust in robotic decision making and general safety concerns lead the list of worries. Sort of on the flip side, AAA, citing its own research, puts it out there as, and this is the title of a news release, more Americans willing to ride in fully self driving cars. Says here again from triple a. American drivers are beginning to embrace self driving vehicles according to a new study from triple a. The annual survey reveals that sixty three percent of US drivers report feeling afraid to ride in a fully self driving vehicle, a significant decrease from seventy eight percent in early twenty seventeen.
But I think this gets at the nature of any new technology, particularly one that's as radical as pulling the driver outside of a vehicle, it's gonna take time. It's gonna take time where people actually see these cars on the streets, get used to the psychological imprint of not having somebody driving them around, but rather being driven around by a robot. I mean, that's just such a a vast transition from what we're all used to, what our parents and grandparents have experienced. Mhmm. I mean, it's a whole different world. And so, you know, to give one example of this, I actually had the chance to ride around in the autonomous Uber in Pittsburgh when we were there for our conference. Wow. Okay. As we were going down the street, these pedestrians, even though we were stopped at a crosswalk, like, jumped out of the way because it seriously just scared them to see this car with all this stuff on top of it, you know? So I do think that it's there's a level of storytelling that still needs to take place, and then just to see them physically on the streets changes people people's minds over time. But it's certainly not something that tomorrow we'll see those numbers shift. I mean, if you look back ten years ago and ask people about smartphones, what they thought about having a phone that was constantly connected to them every moment of the day, you'd probably see some pretty interesting, public polling on that.
Well, so what's new with NLC on this topic? You guys partnered with the the Bloomberg, Aspen initiative on autonomous vehicles. What came of that, and what was the purpose?
Sure. So this is an issue that we've been very focused on for a number of years within our research portfolio. We've put out a couple different reports looking at long range transportation plans, and what we've found is that more and more cities, particularly larger cities, are planning for autonomous vehicles within their cities. And so we kind of moved from there till we had an autonomous vehicle guidance book that we came out with looking at some of the federal regulations Which we covered in episode 24. To ongoing conversations with Bloomberg Philanthropies who launched their, Bloomberg Aspen Innovation Center, autonomous vehicle program late last year. And in conversations with them, we started to talk about could we put out some scenarios about how autonomous vehicles writ large, not just the cars, but thinking about trucks, buses, robots on sidewalks, how these would impact people in cities. And to take it from a human centered approach and think through really what would be the impacts from a municipal perspective, but also how to look at this not from a business perspective, but look at it from a city focused perspective. And I think that's where we were really excited to work together with them because we both had that as our primary goal. Yeah. And I'd love to kinda get into it. You know, like, looking at these scenarios,
one of them is taxis. You know, the the way it's going As you point out, my first ride in an autonomous vehicle, which has yet to happen, but when it does, it it may very well be in a driverless taxi. Right? You know, I think that when we were looking at the different scenarios, we tried to break them down in four key areas with mobility, sustainability,
jobs in the economy, and urban transportation or urban transformation. Mhmm. And when we looked at mobility, that was really tapping taxis to tackle isolation. So it was thinking about the fact that, you know, wide scale usage of autonomous vehicles will be this shared use model through taxis. But beyond just thinking about that, we also need to think about how these taxis have the potential to provide a cheap and inclusive way for people who are isolated, such as elderly and disabled to get around. So, you know, right now, this is something that's come up time and time again with the current iteration of ride hailing with Uber and Lyft, which is how do these vehicles actually comply with ADA requirements and really make sure that they're helping everyone, as well as how do they go to all neighborhoods rather than just concentrating within downtown areas. And so I think this gets at the fundamental piece of autonomous vehicles is that they're data collection machines. There's gonna be wide scale data available. And when you have strong public private partnerships between cities and the companies that'll be running these cars, there's really great opportunities to think about how we can collectively, meet some of these goals.
And and so from the perspective of the sharing economy and ride sharing and, you know, there there have been instances of cities, you know, trying to make the most of this and and partnerships and data sharing and all that. But from the, AV perspective, are there conversations like that happening between cities, who are expecting autonomous taxis on the streets, in one way or another? Or, and is this happening right now when it comes to compliance and and regulations with ride sharing companies being at the table and discussing how they can answer some of these questions? Or Yes and no. I I think that, frankly, where it gets a little bit tricky is
the interrelated nature of different governance. So, you know, local government has certain powers over this. The state government has a lot of power over transportation, and then the federal government clearly has power over the intergovernmental and interstate commerce, piece of transportation. And so at this point, you're seeing really good conversations take place between many of the major companies and cities in those larger markets, particularly, like I said, the Bay Area and San Francisco, down in Arizona, and then Pittsburgh and Boston. And part of it is as these companies want to work within these markets, they're seeing it as advantageous to work together with cities. Mhmm. There was a lot of challenge, I would say, between kind of the the ride hailing industry at its, beginnings compared to where we are now. And so I think on both sides, there's a real hope to to not kind of run into that same kind of issue that we saw there, and particularly because the business models are gonna be different. I mean, these are gonna be fleet owners. They're not gonna be individuals owning their cars and going out and using them to kind of share rides. And so the the you know, from curb space to how roads are marked, you know, to infrastructure and smart city tech, all of these things are gonna come into play. And so there needs to be that conversation in a very different way than there has been heretofore.
Yeah. And it seems, you know, from if I'm somebody in the industry, I I feel like I would fully expect based on kinda where we've been already with Uber and Lyft and Airbnb and questions like that, that that come up with these sort of newer disruptive business models that you might expect at this point some degree of regulation where you would wanna be part of that conversation with the city that you wanna do business in. I mean, that that seems like that would, kinda be a natural expectation. Yeah? Absolutely. And I think it also gets that kind of that key safety component.
You know, every study I've seen talking about this speaks about how we'll probably have ninety eight percent less road deaths. You know? Vast numbers of people saved as a result of autonomous vehicles. Mhmm. But it's those instances, like you saw with kind of the Tesla crash or you saw down in Arizona where one person, unfortunately, passes you know, there's a fatality, and that's what's gonna make the front page of the newspaper. Right. And so the companies realize that certainly now as these vehicles come online, there's a real need for explaining how they will work, you know, who has ultimate control, you know, how they are able to see objects in the road. You know? There there's just so many basic pieces that are hard for most people to comprehend because it's a whole new system and a whole new way to get around.
So looking at another scenario, looking at the one specifically on jobs in the economy, it's called a human touch on robot delivery. And so delivery, I guess, we're talking about the postal service and FedEx and carriers like that? Yeah. And we're also talking about delivery in the context of being able to bring
items from your neighborhood store or from restaurants nearby. So thinking about, you know, models like Uber Eats right now in a lot of major cities. And so there's currently, sidewalk based robots that are being piloted here in DC and many other cities. And the question becomes, how do you kind of put in place a system where they can share the sidewalk in good ways? Because right now, they're they're rather large. And if you have pretty dense number of people on sidewalks, they can, in fact, get in the way. So you have to start to wonder what does it look like if you have hundreds of robots trying to share the sidewalk? But beyond kind of those issues of sharing the sidewalk, there's also questions around accessibility. You know, a lot of buildings have stairs, and so how do you get from the street level to people upstairs, with these robots? And so do you start to think about other usages for people to be part of the equation and something like a porter that could work in, you know, one building or in a series of buildings, to be that connector between those robots on the street and the people on the buildings.
So, obviously, outside of, you know, urban planning and, sort of, what does this look like, on the ground in cities, how involved are state legislatures at this point?
You know, it really depends on the state. Some states have taken a real hands off, role where they just wanna allow the companies to come in and test and kind of see what will happen. Others have passed enabling legislation allowing for autonomous vehicles to be able to be used within the state. There's been others that have passed laws that allow autonomous vehicles but still need a safety driver. In California recently, they passed a law where you can go without the safety driver, but you need to comply with a different set of regulations in order to do that because that's frankly where we need to get is to be able to get rid of the steering wheel altogether. Because when you think about autonomous vehicles, once these vehicles work correctly, it would be the human that could potentially take over that would probably cause more problems from a fatality standpoint than just allowing artificial intelligence to drive the vehicle. Because that split second decision making can be a real challenge with the vehicles like Tesla's autopilot or those that aren't fully autonomous because people, by the nature of being in a vehicle that's supposed to be self driving, aren't paying as much attention. And so I think that's where, like, the regulatory piece is really critical.
And so, who are we kind of looking to as the the leader in The United States when it comes to experimenting, being open, producing regulation, just just trying to craft some kind of future to where this is going to be a reality for us. They know it, and they're being progressive about it. You know, I think I'd have to point to California, you know, just simply because so many of the companies
are from the Silicon Valley area. They're testing in many of the Valley towns. And then in San Francisco, The state has passed this enabling legislation and has you know, the cities as well as the state have been really trying to figure this out. And it's one of those places where you see autonomous vehicles on the regular just as you're driving around in these communities. And so I think, you know, like many large scale trends, it's starting in California, but it's really starting to diffuse more broadly throughout the country. And, I would expect particularly in the next couple of years for you to just see the number of pilots take off and a a few states that will really just be leaders where you see thousands of these cars on the streets in some cities.
How does this, have interplay with public transit, biking to work, and, you know, just these other forms of transportation that we're also trying to foster?
Yeah. I think that's where policymakers play such a key role because because we want autonomous vehicles to be part of the the larger mobility environment. We don't want them to replace other modes. And so if you start to think about them plugging some of the gaps we have with first mile last mile challenges with transit as well as thinking about how they can connect to bike sharing systems and, frankly, just giving people one other way to get around. That's what we as an organization are really pushing for and really hope for. You know? And beyond that, what gets really interesting about autonomous vehicles is once you have, you know, 20% and you start to scale to where they become the more dominant mode, you can start to get rid of parking garages. You can start to think about how you reform streets, starting to kind of take back land in cities for people. You know, wider sidewalks, you know, more room, for people to walk around and, you know, be involved with one another rather than having so much dominated by cars, which is currently how we've built a lot of communities. Mhmm. These are the things that excite me, and I think from a city planning perspective, where people are starting to think, you know, five, ten, twenty years out that we'll be able to get to.
So, yeah, so when it comes to planning for autonomous vehicles, so just kinda going back through what you've said, it's it's it's accurate to say that it's not, you know, just about transportation or how we get around, but it has ramifications for, you know, housing and the future of employment and how we perform our work and maybe where businesses choose to locate, you know, even hotels. You know, do we make the choice to break up a long drive with a hotel stay or do we just let sleep in the car and let it drive overnight or pizza delivery? I mean, it's just I I this is not the last we've heard from NLC on this topic, I I suppose.
No. I I think we'll have more to say on autonomous vehicles for sure, because I think you're right. I think the the potential for them to be transformational is certainly there, but it gets again to the leadership that we've seen in cities on so many of these issues around mobility that mayors and council members need to continue to push for creating that multimodal future where where people are at the center of the equation. So is there anything that I haven't asked about either from these scenarios or just just from the ongoing conversation, if there's one big shiny important thing that I might miss? I think you captured it pretty well. I mean, the other area I would mention within kind of the urban transformation piece is, you know, not only is it potentially with ride hailing services, but it's also thinking about how buses and mass transit and other municipally owned vehicles start to integrate with autonomous technology. Because I think that's something that may take a little bit longer, but we'll certainly start to see, and that will kind of create a whole different dynamic within the public transportation space as well. And, certainly, we didn't get into it, but the trucking industry and when you start to see autonomous trucks kind of take hold, could really impact the job situation pretty tremendously, particularly in some of our more rural states throughout the country.
You can find the full report at avfutures.nlc.0rg. And again, it breaks it down into four different scenarios. There is mobility and taxis, sustainability, weaving a micro transit mesh, jobs in the economy, a human touch on robot delivery, and urban transformation, reprogramming buses, bikes, and barriers. I wanna thank Brooks Rainwater for coming back to the podcast. And thanks to the National League of Cities for always being a great support to this show. I'll for sure have a link to the report in the show notes at municipalequation.libsyn.com. That's where you can access every past episode. Or you can visit nclm dot org slash municipalequation. Or do the easiest thing of all and subscribe on your favorite podcast listening platform or app, iTunes, whatever you prefer. If you're listening on Spotify, let us know. We love getting your feedback, and I know you've got some thoughts about this episode. Send right along to bbrownnclm dot org. NCLM stands for North Carolina League of Municipalities, which brings you this podcast. Thanks for listening, and keep in touch at muni equation on Twitter. This is Ben Brown.
