Gear Up for Driverless Cars: The Billion Dollar Questions – When, How and What?

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Last week, I had the opportunity to speak at the Maryland Association of Counties Summer Conference on the topic of autonomous vehicles. Coincidentally, the presentation was the same day Uber announced it would be launching rides in self-driving vehicles this month in Pittsburgh, Penn. This led to some insightful discussions with members of the audience, primarily composed of local government officials.

While the Uber vehicles in Pittsburgh will have drivers (for now) to take back control as needed, this announcement gets to one of the three “billion dollar questions” that we are asked when discussing or presenting on this disruptive technology: when will these vehicles be hitting the roads? In addition to Uber’s announcement, General Motors is also testing autonomous vehicles in San Francisco and most recently in Arizona, and Ford Motor plans to mass produce driverless cars and have them in commercial operation for use in a ride-hailing service by 2021. While we are still years away from full deployment of driverless technologies on our roads, the phased integration of self-driving vehicles into our transportation system through increased testing is underway now. Moreover, many technologies that will support driverless vehicles are already found in cars today.

This brings us to the second question: how will these technologies be deployed? The initial answer appears to be through ridesharing fleets. In addition to companies like Google, Uber and Lyft racing to develop and launch this technology, Tesla and BMW have announced they are also considering deploying ridesharing services that will eventually incorporate self-driving vehicles. Moreover, a recent article discusses the potential of an “Autonomous Vehicle Public Transportation System.” Accordingly (and not surprisingly, considering the likely initial high costs of driverless vehicles), ridesharing fleets can be expected to be how everyday people will get access to this technology at the outset.

The next question (and perhaps the most important in the eyes of local governments) is: what infrastructure will be needed to support the safe operation of these vehicles within our cities? The answer to this question is not yet known, but will be quickly formulated with the release of the highly anticipated guidelines and model policies by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the continued testing of driverless vehicles on our roadways, and best practices developed in Columbus, Ohio through the Smart City Challenge grant.

With the answers to two of these three important questions concerning driverless vehicle technology taking shape, now is the time to think about laying the foundation for the safe rollout of this technology. As this technology crosses legal borders, proactive planning and a collaborative multi-discipline approach will be needed to ensure the full benefits of this transformative technology is realized through transportation harmony rather than congestion chaos.

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DISCLAIMER: Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.

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