Expanding the Design Horizon for Self-Driving Vehicles: Distributing Benefits and Burdens

With over one billion vehicles in the world today, the motorized road vehicle is the pillar of modern society. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the automobile has revolutionized our spaces, practices, cultures, and identities through a complex matrix of technical, financial, economic, political, and social linkages. Visions of automobile use have always shaped its design, manufacture, and production. Now, motorized road transport is set to revolutionize our society once again on a huge scale. Recent technological developments in propulsion, telecommunications, sensing, and in-vehicle computing technology are expanding the range of vehicles? capabilities. A technological convergence is underway, moving towards self-driving vehicle (SDV) technology. These vehicles will utilize computational algorithms, sensors, and communication devices to automatically navigate a variety of environments with limited or no intervention from human drivers.