Abstract

Academic research on automated vehicles (AVs) has to date been dominated by the fields of engineering and computer science. Questions of how this potentially transformative technology should be governed remain under-researched and tend to concentrate on governing the technology’s early development. We respond in this presentation by exploring the possible longer-term effect of government (lack of) intervention.

The paper tests the hypothesis that a ‘laissez-faire’ governance approach is likely to produce less desirable outcomes in a scenario of mass uptake of AVs than would a well-planned set of government interventions. This is done using two prominent themes in transport policy – traffic flow and accessibility – in a scenario of high market penetration of Level-5 automated vehicles in capitalist market economies. The evidence used is drawn from a literature review and from the findings of a set of workshops with stakeholders.

Speaker

Dr. Tom Cohen is a Teaching and senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Transport Studies, UCL. He specialises in transport policy and governance, with a particular emphasis on futures in general and emerging technologies in particular.  In recent years, he has worked extensively on automated vehicles and, starting in 2019, will participate in the ESRC-funded project Driverless Futures? which is intended to support policy makers in developing a coherent governance framework for this technology.

Dr Clemence Cavoli is a Research and Teaching fellow at the Centre for Transport Studies, UCL. She specializes in environmental and transport policy-making and planning, in particular linked with urban mobility. Her current research projects investigate the extent to which growing cities can accelerate their urban transport development processes to support sustainable mobility and land use. She was responsible for establishing a literature review on automated vehicles in the context of a project led by UCL for the UK Department for Transport.

About the CTS Seminar Series

The CTS seminar series aims to facilitate discussion on current research topics in the transport field. Seminars are free of charge and open to all interested parties. Seminars are hosted jointly by the Centre for Transport Studies at University College London and Imperial College London. They are usually held in the afternoons at either University College London or Imperial College London.