IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2019 - 31

will operate in all weather conditions. Technology-related failures
are inevitable [24], and their contribution to potential safety issues
should not be ignored.
Furthermore, the selection of
safety data in the article is, at most,
circumstantial. Only data from the
U.S. were used and presented in
absolute numbers, without taking into account travel distance and
travel time by each mode of transport. As a result, cities that possess a
railway system that is of vital importance to their transport networks,
e.g., European and Asian cities, were
ignored, leading to incomplete data
selection and subsequently, inconclusive arguments.
As outlined above, there is progress in terms of enabling presence
and benefits from driverless vehicles as part of transport systems.
However, there remain a number of
fundamental issues that, from the
point of view of transport systems'
planning and operation, make Wiseman's vision not a credible scenario
for the near future.

Consequently, it was unclear in the
article as to what concepts or business models will be used for fully
autonomous vehicles in urban systems. It was also implicitly assumed
that these vehicles will be used to
transport small numbers of people,
similar to the way conventional
human driven cars are used.

A Bold Vision Based on Some
Crude Assumptions
Wiseman in his paper presents a
very bold vision of the future of driverless cars, making rather controversial recommendations concerning
transport policies in relation to rail.
As with any futuristic vision, however, his approach is based on a number of assumptions. The explicit
assumptions are rather crude,
based on extrapolations of limited
pieces of evidence or their incomplete interpretation. There are also a
number of implicit assumptions,
some of which we have spelled out
and reflected on with our existing
knowledge in transport systems
operations. Based on this approach,
we do not see a credible basis for
accepting Wiseman's recommendations. We see the need for continuing efforts towards understanding
how driverless vehicles, with their
expected capabilities, can complement the broader socio-economic
role of dynamic transport systems.
We make this recommendation,
bearing in mind that even driverless
vehicles themselves can be subject
to competition from other, also
futuristic modes, e.g., autonomous
passenger air vehicles (e.g., proposed by Boeing and Airbus), airresistance-free transport (e.g.,
Hyperloop), or improved participation in services via digital means
(e.g., virtual or augmented reality).
In conclusion, we argue that an evolutionary approach to planning and
management of transport systems is
needed. Such an approach should

Lack of Evidence to
Justify Projections
Wiseman claims that the first autonomous vehicle will be available in June
2018. Almost a year after that day,
only those in the experimental
phase exist. The term autonomous
vehicles used in the article can be
described as misleading as it can be
assumed that the author refers to
fully autonomous vehicles due to the
repeated use of the term "driverless
cars," indicating that a human being
present in the vehicle does not control the trajectory of the vehicle.
According to the Department for
Transport in the U.K. [2], fully autonomous vehicles refer to vehicles where
a driver does not need to be present,
while driver assistance systems refer
to vehicles where the driver should be
engaged or in the loop at all times.
JUNE 2019

∕

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

explore emerging technologies and
their application to transport, while
leveraging extensive existing knowledge about travel behavior, safety,
and environments, and of the socioeconomic role of transport.

Author Information
Elena Psyllou is with Lloyd's Register
Foundation Transport Risk Management Centre, Centre for Transport
Studies, Imperial College London,
London SW7 2AZ, U.K. Email: elena
.psyllou11@imperial.ac.uk.
Jacek Pawlak is with the Urban
Systems Lab, Centre for Transport
Studies, Imperial College London,
London SW7 2AZ, U.K. Email: jacek
.pawlak@imperial.ac.uk.

References
[1] House of Lords, "Connected and Autonomous Vehicles: The future?," Science and
Technology Select Committee, Mar. 15, 2017.
[2] Department for Transport, United Kingdom, "The pathway to driveless cars," Summary report and action plan, 2015.
[3] B. Johnson, "Great horse manure crisis of 1894," Historic UK, 2015; http://
maysweb.tamu.edu/wp-content/uploads/
sites/16/2017/11/The-Great-Horse-ManureCrisis-of-1894.pdf.
[4] T. Forester, "The myth of the electronic cottage," Futures, vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 227-240, 1988.
[5] E. Morris, "From horse power to horsepower," Access Mag., pp. 2-10, 2007; https://
cloudfront.escholarship.org/dist/prd/
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[6] MTA, "Annual Subway Ridership," MTA,
http://web.mta.info/nyct/facts/ridership/
ridership_sub_annual.htm, accessed May 2019.
[7] New York City, "New York City Mobility
Report," NYC Dept. of Transportation, Oct.
2016; http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/mobility-report-2016-screenoptimized.pdf, accessed Nov. 3, 2018.
[8] S. Franklin, "Location, search costs and
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[10] B. Friedrich, "The effect of autonomous
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