Imagine it is the late 2020’s and Autonomous vehicles are a fact of life. No one you know or interact with owns a car and in one way or another you utilise self-driving transportation. There are few vehicles on the road and they are all electrically powered. The once immobile person, whether they be sick, too old or too young, is now mobile and independent. Road fatalities are at an all time low and productivity is reaching new highs as people are able work while they travel and travel quickly to where they need to be. This once unimaginable future is now widely considered inevitable. As Autonomous Vehicles move from their current testing stage to market, there are numerous public policy decisions Governments around the world will face.
Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are transportation vehicles which conduct driving tasks through an automated system rather than the human driver. This is done through use of a number of sensors, cameras, real-time maps and large quantities of data to paint a virtual picture of the road, traffic and other driving conditions. Waymo, a subsidiary of the parent company of google, is widely considered the leading company in this industry. In December 2018, Waymo became the first commercial taxi service using AVs, offering its service first in Phoenix and now in Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto. Their vehicles also reportedly on average only needed driver intervention once every 17,000 km, almost double the distance of last year. Competition is fierce with many other companies also aiming for top spot. These include companies such as Mercedes, NVIDIA, Huawei, and Tesla. Part of the motivation to be in this industry is the projected value of the AV market. According to Allied Market Research estimates, the AV market is projected to be valued at $556.67 billion USD by 2026, over five hundred billion more than its 2019 projected valuation of $54.3 billion USD. An underlying assumption in this valuation is that once AVs are ready for the market, there will be a rapid adoption by consumers similar to the use of ride sharing services like Uber. However, unlike the almost overnight adoption of Uber, Governments around the world have an opportunity to speculate and design policies before wide spread adoption occurs.
Regulation surrounding AVs have and will continue to be a point of discussion by governments for optimal policy. In March 2018 an Uber self-driving car hit and killed a pedestrian crossing the street in Arizona. Although Uber was not found liable for the fatality, AV safety became the subject of much discussion and scrutiny. Ultimately companies aim to fully automate cars, with drivers not having to intervene. With this in a mind, the level of requirements for AV’s as well as the passenger will be the subject of much debate and considerations for Governments. Questions such as should AVs be held to a higher standard than human drivers and whether AVs need insurance will need to be addressed.
In addition to safety another regulatory consideration, albeit less immediate, is whether there will be a need for driver licenses. If vehicles are autonomous, there will be no need for drivers and ultimately no need for driver licenses. This can have huge implications as drivers’ licenses, in many jurisdictions, are the main form of identification. Similarly, Governments will need to address these implications and create regulations on which are best for their citizens.
Another area of consideration for Governments will be their infrastructure investments. Once AVs develop, it is a fair assumption that there will be changes to the ways roads are designed and integrated. For example, an AV road is unlikely to need barriers, traffic lights and lanes could much narrower to accommodate more cars on the road. These changes will need to be considered for upcoming infrastructure investment projects as well as future projects with AVs on the horizon. In addition, the data AVs will record and use could assist infrastructure in being more responsive to its users. For example roads could be designed so that an operator can allocate lanes during peak travel times to ease congestion. The possibilities are almost endless with the data that will be recorded.
With data playing a big part in AVs, another policy issue which will arise is how data will be managed and secured. Naturally, companies will want to monetize the data they collect from AVs and Governments will need to decide the best policy measures to introduce for their citizens. On one hand, the data AVs gather may be used to create innovative and helpful products. On the other hand, citizens may want their privacy protected. Currently in terms of data security, Europe and Canada have strict data privacy laws in place putting their citizens in control of their personal data. In contrast, the US is yet to have comprehensive data privacy laws by comparison. It will be interesting to see the policies which form in this space and those which change due to AVs.
As AVs become closer and closer to being market ready Governments will face policy issues in areas such as but not limited to regulation, infrastructure investment and data security. All areas that will need to be considered in the lead up to AV’s being widely adopted by citizens.
This may lead to different Countries having different policies as governments have different preference and focuses. The issue becomes that some governments may create policies which will allow for speedy development and implementation whereas others may create restrictive policies and delay the benefits this technology brings. The future of transportation is inevitable but only time will tell which countries are will embrace or restrict it.
