My prediction is that in less than 15 years, we will be debating whether human beings should be allowed to drive on highways. After all, we are prone to road rage; rush headlong into traffic jams; break rules; get distracted; and crash into each other. That is why our automobiles need tanklike bumper bars and military-grade crumple zones. And it is why we need speed limits and traffic police. Self-driving cars won’t have our limitations. They will prevent tens of thousands of fatalities every year and better our lifestyles. They will do to human drivers what the horseless carriage did to the horse and buggy.
Tesla’s recent announcement of an autopilot feature in its next-generation Model S takes us much closer to this future. Yes, there are still technical and logistical hurdles. Some academics believe it will take decades for robotic cars to learn to navigate the complexities of the “urban jungle,” and policymakers are undecided about the rules and regulations. But just as Tesla produced an electric vehicle that I liken to a spaceship that travels on land, so, too, will it keep adding software upgrades until its autopilot doesn’t need a human operator at the steering wheel. I expect this to happen within a decade — despite the obstacles. I have already placed an order for the new model so that I can be part of this evolution.
Tesla isn’t alone in developing semiautomated driving assistants. Most car manufacturers now offer options in their high-end vehicles to keep them within their lane, adjust speed, warn of pedestrians, and stop in the event of an impending accident. These technologies work well.
Google is far ahead of Tesla in the race to build robotic cars. It already has several on the roads in California and says that they have logged 700,000 autonomous miles. But Google is going for all or nothing. Its new prototype vehicles don’t even have a steering wheel.
The liability issues regarding fully driverless cars will be easy: The car’s manufacturer or software maker will be responsible for any accident unless it can be shown that a human driver was at fault. But the hard part is what Ryan Calo, a University of Washington law professor, calls the “social meaning” of technology. He observes that a driverless car may always be better at avoiding a shopping cart. And it may always be better than a human at avoiding at stroller. But what if the car confronts a shopping cart and a stroller at the same time? A human would plow into the shopping cart to avoid the stroller; a driverless car might not. Meanwhile, the headline would read: “Robot Car Kills Baby to Avoid Groceries.” This could end autonomous driving in America.
There will be many difficult choices and endless debates about ethics. But we can work these out. The numbers of fatalities caused by robotic cars will be a tiny fraction of the millions that humans have caused, after all. And if political leaders and lawyers in the United States try to stop progress, other countries will still adopt the new technologies; they are unstoppable. We may just end up playing catch-up with the rest of the world.
I am looking forward to having my wasted driving time turned into work and leisure. Robotic cars will enable major fuel savings because they won’t need the bumpers or steel cages and so will be lighter. We won’t have to worry about parking spots, because our cars will be able to drop us where we need to go to and pick us up when we are ready. We won’t even need to own our own cars, because transportation will be available on demand through our smartphones. I can’t wait for the traffic jams to disappear because our cars won’t rush headlong into traffic as mindlessly as we do.
Vivek Wadhwa is a fellow at Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University and director of research at Duke University. He wrote this piece for The Washington Post. His website is wadhwa.com.
