Do we really want driverless cars?
It is just 15 years since the US military’s defense research agency offered $1 million to anyone who could create an autonomous vehicle capable of traversing a 240-km course in the Mojave Desert. All 15 contenders crashed out of the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2004, and not one vehicle got further than 11.9 km.
The following year, however, five vehicles crossed the finish line, DARPA lost its prize money, and the world was thrust into a race to monetize a technology that, until that moment, no one knew it needed.
News that the UK is to relax the rules governing the public testing of autonomous vehicles is the latest sign that the driverless-car gold rush is unstoppable.
Traditional car manufacturers, afraid to be left behind by competitors, are clambering onto the driverless bandwagon. Without a doubt, fully automated cars are coming to a road near you, and soon.
Self-driving cars and trucks clearly have the potential to reduce climate-change emissions. Also, it would be nonsense to suggest that the four fatal accidents since 2016 (three Tesla drivers and a pedestrian struck by an Uber car) invalidate the potential of this technology to one day save lives.
After all, human beings are shockingly bad drivers. In a classic demonstration of flawed risk perception, we accept with blinkered equanimity the annual global toll of 1.2 million lives lost to cars, equivalent to 160 Airbus A320s crashing every month.
But there are so many potential practical, moral and psychosocial consequences of the rush to automation that the collective failure to consider them amounts to a global abrogation of responsibility.
No consensus has been sought on the desirability of this technology. Who wants it, and why? Forced to choose between protecting its passenger or a pedestrian, who will the car spare? If you are a passenger in a car that harms someone, will you or the corporate owner be legally responsible? What will the millions who lose their jobs to automated transport do for a living?
And — the most pressing current concern — did anyone ask you if you wanted to be part of the experiment taking place in the next lane as you drive your child to school? A good analogy would be a pharmaceutical company administering a trial drug to individuals without first bothering to secure their informed consent. But governments, dazzled by the prize, seem not to care about this.
For industry, there is a more fundamental question. Will we willingly give up our cars and go along for the automated ride? A recent survey showed that 75 percent of Americans would be too afraid.
Driverless cars, trucks and buses may well end the carnage on our roads and reduce consumption of fossil fuels. But if the mesmerized governments and self-serving technocrats do not pause to address the concerns of the man and woman on the street, they may find themselves facing social upheaval on a scale that makes the recent stoning of Waymo cars in Arizona look like an enthusiastic endorsement.