IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2018 - 68

The possibility of AVs becoming a
politically partisan issue should not
be ruled out.

certainty - there were overwhelming expert agree-
ment on the safety of AVs, sophisticated critics could
still be put forward to manufacture the appearance of
controversy in order to delay AV adoption. The politi-
cal controversy can't be settled by simply appealing
to "what science tells us," even when science speaks
with a single clear voice.
To be clear, I am not claiming here that AVs will
necessarily become the kind of highly partisan issue
that climate change is. Both Democrat and Republi-
can policymakers have supported AV development
and adoption. At the same time, there are populist
currents in both parties that might be more favor-
able towards professional drivers. For example, in
fall 2017, the U.S. House and Senate both worked on
bills that would loosen regulations for automated
cars (H.R. 3388 was passed by the House and sent
to the Senate; S. 1885 was passed out of committee
but has not been voted on by the full Senate as of
early November 2017). These bills had substantial
bipartisan support. Major lobbying support for these
bills came from the "Self Driving Coalition for Safer
Streets" - note the use of the safety argument in
the name - which was established by Ford, Lyft,
Volvo, and Waymo (the AV arm of Google) (http://
selfdrivingcoalition.org/). However, automated trucks
were excluded from these bills; according to some
reports, this was because of opposition from orga-
nized labor [27].
Not all scientific-political disagreements are partisan
issues in the U.S. But, at the same time, we should not
rule out the possibility of AVs becoming a partisan issue
over the next few decades. Recall that climate change
was a bipartisan issue 30 years ago [28].

Preventing a Proxy War
with Policy, Design, and Science
The worst-case scenario of a protracted proxy war over
AV safety between manufacturers and professional driv-
ers might be avoided with a proactive combination of
policy, design, and science. First, policies developed to
safely promote the adoption of AVs should have com-
plementary policies to facilitate alternative training,

68

retraining, and early retirement for professional drivers,
smoothing the economic transition from human-driven
to autonomous vehicles. By "complementary policies" I
mean that while AVs might be directly regulated only in
terms of safety, these regulations could be extremely
stringent and costly unless and until retraining and early
retirement policies are in place.
Professional drivers will have less reason to resist the
adoption of AVs if they are not worried about their own
economic security. Since AV systems are expected to be
less expensive than human drivers - this is exactly why
AVs pose a threat to professional drivers, after all - a
specific transitional tax on AVs could be used to (partial-
ly) offset the cost of training and early retirement plans.
While this is likely to slow the adoption of AVs, this can
be seen as a feature rather than a bug: a more gradual
transition gives drivers and potential drivers more time
to plan their individual transitions, whether to another
career or to retirement.
Second, for the sake of simplicity, this essay has
generally assumed that AV technology development
and adoption will be market-driven, perhaps with the
pace moderated by policy and politics. However, policy
also plays a role in how technology is designed and
adopted [29], [30]. Specifically, there is a crucial
difference between, on the one hand, robotic systems
designed to supplement human capabilities in order to
improve safety, and on the other hand, robotic systems
designed to be inexpensive replacements for expensive
human labor and that also happen to be safer than
human drivers [31, p. 118]. While both approaches to AV
system design might improve safety, the former
approach would be less controversial. Policy should be
used to encourage researchers, designers, and manu-
facturers to take the former approach rather than the
latter one.
Finally, both safety researchers and AV systems
designers should collaborate with professional drivers
and their trade organizations, such as the Teamsters
union, to design experimental studies that are broad-
ly recognized as relevant. While this kind of ante hoc
acceptance of a body of research cannot totally pre-
vent post hoc criticism - a critic could claim that
unforeseen developments rendered the study irrele-
vant - it does rhetorically constrain such criticism.
Further, professional drivers are likely to have expe-
rience-based knowledge about road conditions,
vehicle handling, and the causes of crashes that
wou ld c omple ment t he expertise of engineers,
roboticists, and transportation regulators [32]. Includ-
ing professional drivers in the process of developing
safety studies could lead to studies that even techni-
cal experts would regard as more realistic, relevant,
and informative.

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

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march 2018
http://www.selfdrivingcoalition.org/ http://www.selfdrivingcoalition.org/
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2018
