Regulation of autonomous vehicles and implications for urban planners

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1 John Parkin Professor of Transport Engineering Regulation of autonomous vehicles and implications for urban planners The Transport Future of Cardiff City: 2026 and beyond 21 st March 2018

2 Outline 1.What do we want? 2. What are Autonomous vehicles (AVs)? 3.University of the West of England research: interactions in the street environment 4. Matching AVs to roads: use scenarios 5. Design approaches: grasping the nettle

3 1 What do we want? The fabric of communities should be designed principally for people. Streets are the arteries of a community that give it life.

4 2 What are autonomous vehicles? Car, taxi, shard taxi, bus, freight delivery pod, van, truck

5 Timescales: anybody s guess 1 assistance; 2 partial (steering, acceleration, deceleration); 3 conditional (hand-back); 4 high (could be human driven); 5 full.

6 The UK government recognises the potential benefits of driverless and automated vehicle technologies, particularly the potential to improve road safety and reduce casualties.

7 3 Our research Venturer: Trial 1, Trial 2 and Trial 3, and acceptance Flourish: consumer demands and expectations, especially of an ageing society CAPRI: design, development and testing of a pilot pod for airports, hospitals, business parks, shopping and tourist centres, on-road public trials at London s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Highways England CAV Pilot Implementation Projects: support in technology integration, real world demonstrations and trials, simulation, designing experiments, public participation and on-line surveys, qualitative and quantitative analysis, ethics Multi-CAV: range of types of mobility as a service ultimately leading to AV bus between Didcot Parkway station and Milton Business Park

8 8 Driverless Cars on UK Roads

9 Interactions Private car is a deeply ingrained cultural icon (Thrift, 2004) Driving is not done in a social vacuum (Wilde, 1976) There is a social layer of rules, customs, and bespoke modes of communication The car is all too capable of undermining its own utility (Shaw and Docherty, 2013, p12) Issues: Road users may not behave in a sufficiently patterned way for machine intelligence prediction Communication subtle and culturally specific

10 Aggressive behaviour When the emotional supervenes the rational Aggressive driving: dangerous or forceful manoeuvring, no intention to harm Road rage: action specifically to harm (Schafer, 2015). Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand? (Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 1) Source: Davis, R. (1992) Death on the streets. Leading edge Press, Hawes. From a Dutch cartoon

11 Ethics and personality Should driverless cars kill their own passengers to save a pedestrian? Goldhill (2015) Utilitarianism / moral obligation: maximises happiness, therefore minimise loss of life Incommensurability / participation in a moral wrong: AVs programmed to save those outside vehicle, and AV users should know the risks Bonnefon et al. (2015): 75% say do not kill pedestrians Effect dramatically weakened if they were in the car Adams (2015) Deferential programming = AVs going nowhere

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14 4 Use scenarios

15 US1 Fully segregated AV network Completely segregated Have their own system Interact only with other AVs West Virginia University, Morgantown, 1973 Heathrow Terminal 5, 2011

16 US2 Motorways and expressways Mixed with driven vehicles Only motor traffic present Only on high-volume, high-speed Infrastructure highly engineered Significant instrumentation and management Truck platooning trial, converging on Rotterdam, 2016

17 US3 Typical urban network Arterial roads, distributor roads, high streets, access roads and local streets Range of road user types Complex highly variable infrastructure Variety of junction types, layouts and control Frequent changes in numbers of lanes available Great variety in level and type of management (regulation) Place as well as movement function

18 US4 Shared space Carefully designed to reduce traffic speeds Often entails removing physical features and street furniture Less well defined and regulated than a typical urban road Interact on equal basis with no priority PostAuto trials, Sion, Switzerland, 2016,

19 5 Design approaches Skinner, R. and Bidwell, N. (2016) Making better places: Autonomous vehicles and future opportunities. WSPPB and Farrells. Available at:

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21 Design for people priority in towns

22 John Parkin Professor of Transport Engineering