Hussein Dia, Swinburne University of Technology et Ali Matin, Swinburne University of Technology
Roughly half of people surveyed support the development of autonomous vehicles. But a third were undecided about many aspects and will need to be convinced about their safety and other benefits.
Self-driving vehicles that constantly roam the streets looking for passengers could overwhelm cities. But, if kept in check, these vehicles could be useful for improving urban transport.
Planes, trains and automobiles produced a step-change in the speed of travel – driverless and electric cars simply cannot deliver such radical improvements.
Sensors that monitor everything a self-driving vehicle does can help determine who is responsible in the case of an accident – the manufacturer, the service centre or the vehicle owner.
Why do tech companies care so much about self-driving cars? If drivers no longer need to pay attention to the road, they can use their mobile devices even more.
Combining machine learning, artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles could revolutionize how people with disabilities get around their communities.
It’s clear autonomous vehicles will disrupt our cities, their land use and planning. Whether they make urban life better or worse depends on how well we anticipate and adapt to their impacts.
The ethics and psychology of trust suggest ways we might learn to understand self-driving cars, but also show why doing so might be more challenging than we expect.
New technologies do not exist in a vacuum. To succeed, new transport technology needs to match the ways we want to move around cities and be accommodated by laws and regulations.