Why our driverless future may require tinted windows

U.K. study predicts vehicles could become rolling love dens

The rise of driverless cars is expected to displace workers, slash cab fares and give people a new place to have sex. Possibly for money.

That’s according to a study from the Annals of Tourism Research with the deceptively dry title: “Autonomous vehicles and the future of urban tourism.”

Researchers who study hospitality and technology in the United Kingdom teamed up this year to explore how advances in automated transportation could reshape tourism around the world.

Co-authors Scott Cohen, a tourism professor at the University of Surrey, and Debbie Hopkins, a transport studies lecturer at the University of Oxford, found that autonomous vehicles have the potential to unleash far more than robot-guided Uber rides.

“It’s only a natural conclusion that sex in autonomous vehicles will become a phenomenon,” Cohen told The Washington Post, citing convenience and the lack of front-seat chaperones.

The academics pored over about 150 studies on the future of cars and tried to imagine the technology’s impact on tourism in marquee cities: How could AVs change the way newcomers move and sightsee and revel?

Once driverless cars flood the roads — Silicon Valley analysts estimate that day is less than a decade away — futurists predict that traditional taxis will phase out.

Free of driver costs, companies could invest more in the customer experience. Interiors may become more spacious. Cabs could come with bedding or perhaps a massage chair, analysts forecast. Passengers might tap an iPad to hear Marvin Gaye. Enter “hotels-by-the-hour” on wheels, Cohen said — a fleet of rolling love dens. Tourists could summon one on yet-to-be-invented apps.

“It is just a small leap to imagine Amsterdam’s Red Light District ‘on the move,’ ” Cohen and Hopkins wrote in their study, to be published in January. Sex, they noted, “plays a central role in many tourism experiences.”

It’s illegal to purchase sexual services in Canada and johns face up to five years in jail, or 10 years in the case of prostitutes under age 18, under a law introduced by the Harper government in 2014.

But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen in driverless cars, the authors predict.

“While (driverless cars) will likely be monitored to deter passengers having sex or using drugs in them,” they wrote, “such surveillance may be rapidly overcome, disabled or removed.” Bad actors could hack into a vehicle’s system or block cameras. Authorities should prepare for such looming threats, Cohen said.

Autonomous vehicles could provide cover for a range of illicit activities, including drug dealing or even terrorism in the form of remote-controlled bombs. (The report didn’t recommend any particular safeguards.)

Toronto police spokesperson Katrina Arrogante said it’s not an issue that has been brought to their attention.

Every new technology seems to be used to sell sex, noted David Ticoll, a distinguished fellow at the Innovation Policy Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs. And “we know in Canada any vehicle can be a venue for sex,” Ticoll added. “I mean, sex in a canoe is a Canadian thing.”

But the “deeper point,” he said, is that driverless cars will be used for a whole range of activities, from sex work to mani-pedis.

“It’s going to have an impact on the hotel industry. Let’s say you’re driving across the country, you can sleep in your car, and you don’t need to sleep in a hotel or a motel,” Ticoll said.

Rolling retail, like barber shops or food trucks, will pose a regulatory issue even though everything happening inside is legal.

Ticoll, who also authored a 2015 study on the potential impact of driverless cars in Toronto, also predicts increased demand for parking as more people get on the roads.

In 2016, the city of Toronto created a staff position focused exclusively on preparing for automated vehicles and co-ordinating across departments. The city also plans to launch a threeyear plan in 2019 to tackle is- sues like the displacement of jobs and gridlock AVs could cause. The Ontario government is currently conducting road safety tests of driverless cars under a 10-year pilot project.

After one of Uber’s test cars struck and killed a pedestrian in Arizona in March, the ridesharing service cancelled tests being done in three other cities, including Toronto.

Investigators later learned Uber employees had disabled the automatic-braking features so the vehicle wouldn’t slow erratically during testing.

“Whenever anyone proposes anything beyond riding in your car and sitting belted-in — whether it’s sex or getting a massage or getting your haircut — all of those suffer from the same reality check,” Cummings said.