Pros And Cons: When Autonomous Vehicles Take To The Road

Thirty years ago, the idea of a car or train without a driver was mostly confined to science fiction. Indeed, literature of 70’s and 80’s — sci-fi’s Golden Age — prominently featured automated vehicles, reflecting the computer revolution of the time. Though their widespread proliferation is still hypothetical, driverless vehicles are quickly becoming more and more common in today’s world, with the technology improving at a breakneck pace. From computerized metro systems to the “hands-free” cars under development by giants like Google & Tesla, it is obvious that the future popularized by Asimov, Bradbury, and other science fiction greats is nearly here. As this trend accelerates, society is forced to think about the real impacts that would come

And yes, they would. Having to weigh the pros and cons insinuates that there are pros, and in the interest of unbiased writing, I will do my best to explain them. Admittedly, autonomous vehicles do have some social and economic advantages. Erick Guerra, a proponent of the autonomous vehicles and a professor at University of Pennsylvania, provides a few examples of these benefits in his paper “When Autonomous Cars Take to the Road”, published in American Planning Association, an academic journal. Guerra suggest that “in addition to freeing drivers to engage in tasks other than driving, autonomous vehicles promise to reduce traffic collisions by removing humans, and thus human error and negligence, from behind the wheel. By allowing closer platooning and lowering the number of collisions, self-driving vehicles will also increase effective road capacity, particularly on highways” (Guerra). Promoting safety and productivity are two of many benefits that come with autonomous vehicles. Taking it one step further, Adriano Alessandrini, a renowned researcher and professor at Sapienza University of Rome, argues that self driving cars are the “only sensible recourse” when it comes to the future of transportation (Alessandrini). In his report “Automated Vehicles and the

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 9.5 million people are employed by the private sector of the transportation industry in the US, and all of their jobs are at risk (Henderson). Proponents of autonomous vehicles suggest that not all of these jobs will be lost. For example, Rui Rocha, a professor at the Institute of Systems and Robotics, part of the University of Coimbra in Portugal, takes that side. Published in the internationally acclaimed academic journal Industrial Robot, Rocha’s publication, “Towards a New Mobility Concept for Cities,” suggests that autonomous vehicles will be seen solely in the public transportation sector. This is because changes of a huge scale, such as the automation of vehicles, are only readily adopted when they address a clear problem. One such problem, Rocha proposes, is that of cities congested by car traffic: “Historic centers of many cities are facing severe problems since the traditional commerce is in decline and moving to the periphery of the cities, and the city centers become less attractive to tourists and citizens” (Rocha). This congestion forces businesses to the perimeter of cities in search of more attractive venues for customers. Self-driving cars would only worsen this advent, Rocha says, as they still congest roads. Instead, new forms of automated public transport “may be a