Debating driverless futures: Anticipatory governance and responsible innovation for self-driving cars

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In the middle of the afternoon on May 7th, 2016, near Williston, Florida, Joshua Brown joined the long list of fatalities on the world's roads. However, his death was different. He was his car's only occupant but, as far as we know, he was not driving. His car was in 'Autopilot' mode. The technology in his Tesla Model S that was designed to keep him safe failed to see a white truck that was crossing his carriageway against the bright white sky behind it. Brown's Tesla hit the trailer at 74mph, after which it left the road and hit a post. Had the car veered left instead of right, crossing onto the opposite carriageway, the world's first fatal self-driving car crash could have caused a higher death toll and even greater controversy.Self-driving cars promise to be one of the most disruptive technologies of the early 21st Century. Enthusiasts for the technology think that it could solve problems such as access to transport for disabled people, traffic jams and hundreds of thousands of deaths on the road each year, most of which are cause by human error. Some companies say they will sell self-driving cars as early as 2018. Governments in the UK and elsewhere see huge potential in securing economic growth and new high-tech jobs for their populations. The UK's Industrial Strategy has prioritised self-driving cars and increased investment in the machine learning technologies that will allow computers to replace humans behind the wheel. Morgan Stanley, an investment bank, forecasts a multi-trillion dollar global market with billions of extra dollars in productivity gains in a 'New Auto Industry Paradigm'. The consultancy firm KPMG calls self-driving cars 'The Next Revolution'.The typical approach to a new technology is for society to understand its effects only in hindsight. For self-driving cars, this would be a bad idea. Policymakers, innovators and the public risk sleepwalking into a future in which technology worsens inequality and loses public trust. The history of the car in the 20th Century shows us that, while technologies can have enormous benefits, they can also cause harm and lock society into new ways of living that then prove hard to change. For self-driving cars, the question is whether we can develop a more alert approach to the technology as it is emerging, before it becomes part of our everyday lives. Rather than innovation being 'driverless', we should look for ways in which innovators and policymakers can take responsibility for the futures they help create.To maximise the public benefits of self-driving cars, we should scrutinise innovations and policies that are currently underway. The engineering of our future transport systems is too important to be left to engineers alone. There is a need for democratic discussion of the opportunities and uncertainties of self-driving cars. Rather than guessing at the hopes and fears of consumers and citizens, we should instead ask people what they really think. In 2017, the House of Lords science and technology committee concluded, "There is a clear need for further Government-commissioned social and economic research to weigh the potential human and financial implications of CAV (Connected and Autonomous Vehicles)." But, while investment in self-driving cars currently totals around $80 billion, there is almost no social science exploring public views about what self-driving cars could mean for the future of transport. This proposal is for the world's first major social science project to bring the public voice into the debate on the future of self-driving cars.