The Driverless Future's Stakeholders Featured Pattern: P1147 December 2017
Abstracts in this Pattern:
Self-driving technology has already proved disruptive for automakers, which now find themselves in a race to reinvent their businesses. But automakers do not constitute the only constituency the technology is affecting. Other constituencies are now seeing themselves as stakeholders in the driverless future and are working to advance their interests.
Foremost, policy makers are looking at self-driving technology. An ethics commission initiated by Alexander Dobrindt, former minister of the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (Berlin, Germany), recently released ethical guidelines for driverless applications. But multiple points of view exist among people in the automotive industry. For example, some former Tesla (Palo Alto, California) engineers reportedly had concerns about the safety and reliability of the driverless technologies the company is developing.
Some stakeholders are looking at potentially positive effects of driverless vehicles for members of their constituency. Cities constitute a major constituency that could benefit from the advent of driverless vehicles. For example, Paris, France, has been looking at the wide deployment of driverless vehicles to reduce pollution and congestion and to free up parking spaces for better uses. People with disabilities that prevent them from driving constitute another constituency that seeks benefits from the deployment of driverless vehicles. For members of this constituency, driverless vehicles represent a chance to obtain new freedoms; however, this chance exists only if other stakeholders take special-needs individuals into account when deploying driverless solutions. To that end, the National Federation of the Blind (Baltimore, Maryland) is promoting its members' interests to government and industry.
Driverless technologies also raise concerns. One such concern is that autonomous cars could eliminate jobs. For instance, Ford Motor Company (Dearborn, Michigan) and Domino's Pizza (Ann Arbor, Michigan) are working on self-driving pizza-delivery vehicles. Another concern is that owners of autonomous vehicles could be dissatisfied with them. Audi's (Volkswagen Group; Wolfsburg, Germany) 25th Hour research project aims to understand what people will do in vehicles once they no longer have to operate them and what car companies can do to prevent boredom in self-driving-vehicle passengers.
The Development of this Pattern
Data Points
- SC-2017-11-01-016
An ethics commission initiated by Alexander Dobrindt, former minister of the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, recently released ethical guidelines for driverless applications. - SC-2017-11-01-093
Paris, France, has been looking at the wide deployment of driverless vehicles to reduce pollution and congestion and to free up parking spaces for better uses. - SC-2017-11-01-002
The National Federation of the Blind is promoting its members' interests to government and industry.
Implications
The Driverless Future's Stakeholders
Many organizations and constituencies outside the automotive industry are coming to see themselves as stakeholders in the driverless future.
Previous Alerts
- SoC144 — Progress in Autonomous Vehicles (November 2005)
The results for the 2005 DARPA cross-country autonomous-vehicle challenge differed dramatically from those in 2004, but don't expect autonomous vehicles downtown anytime soon. Agricultural, industrial, and military applications are first on the agenda. - SoC551 — Navigating Urban Futures (December 2011)
To enable the effective and efficient navigation of urban environments, companies need to focus on all aspects of urban environments—from the basic infrastructure to goods and services—and old concepts are unlikely to be successful. - P0456 — Ethics of Autonomous Transportation (February 2013)
The increasing autonomy of vehicles will create challenging ethical and moral questions for lawmakers, manufacturers, and users alike. - SoC757 — The Specter of Autonomous Transportation's Utopia (October 2014)
Experimental autonomous cars have so far proved to be remarkably good "drivers," but they cannot operate on just any road. - SoC779 — Morality of Autonomous Vehicles (February 2015)
Autonomous cars will eliminate many common human errors and therefore make driving safer; however, the accidents that do occur will present issues. - SoC841 — The New Role of Cars in Urban Mobility (December 2015)
Some regions are very open to the idea of integrating privately owned transportation services into their public-mobility infrastructures. - P0900 — Driverless Cars' Ripple Effects (March 2016)
The potential proliferation of driverless cars and their enabling technologies could affect the transportation industry in a variety of ways. - SoC915 — (P)Review 2016/2017: Urban Mobility (January 2017)
In 2016, urban environments' becoming increasingly smart, autonomous-transportation concepts' emerging, and planners' considering new mobility infrastructures offered a glimpse of the future of urban mobility. - P1087 — Automotive Infiltration, Not Disruption (July 2017)
Although tech firms are struggling to disrupt the auto industry, they are infiltrating it through software.