Technophobes may want to look away now

Good day my good friend.

I’m writing this while listening to Metallica’s the Black Album. Hush now baby, don’t say a word, and never mind any stray song lyrics you may read in this newsletter. Here are your news items for today.

James

Autonomous cars could really result in modal shift. Just not what you think.

A thought experiment for you: if in the future we are going to have a mixed traffic environment between manual and autonomous vehicles, and you had to use one of the two, which would you choose? Only now are researchers beginning to answer that question, although admittedly in a theoretical manner.

A lab experiment undertaken by Chinese and Australian researchers posed participants a choice – manual vehicles or autonomous vehicles? The results were that more than half of travellers chose autonomous vehicles. When they threw in a cash reward to achieve social equilibrium (in the choice model at least), travellers took it. The research is as techy as it comes, but its worth a read.

The Law Commission in the UK finally says “this is what the legal framework for driverless cars should look like.”

Speaking of driverless cars, the Law Commission finally published its recommendations to change laws in the UK to make driverless cars a reality. A couple of paragraphs don’t do it justice, but a few quick bullet points:

• The ‘passenger’ will not have legal liability for the task of driving, instead going to an Authorised Self-Driving Entity;

• There needs to be a clear legal distinction for each type of technology and operation. A vehicle is automated or it isn’t;

• If a vehicle is driving around with no passengers, a licenced operator is responsible.

I will state my bias here. I like these proposals a lot. Particularly when it comes to transferring liability from ‘drivers’ for the task of driving. Now it is up to law makers to come up with the laws themselves to make it so.

Random things

These links are meant to make you think about the things that affect our world in transport, and not just think about transport itself. I hope they do just that.

• Chip Shortage Leaves U.S. Companies Dangerously Low on Semiconductors, Report Says (Wall Street Journal)

• Google sued in US over ‘deceptive’ location tracking (BBC)

• Boom will build a supersonic jet factory in North Carolina (TechCrunch)

• How a handful of prehistoric geniuses launched humanity’s technological revolution (The Conversation)

• Aviva Investors to hold company directors accountable for failing on climate (Energy Live News)1

Something interesting

Get learning this, fellow Brits.

If you do nothing else today, then do this

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