Jaime Waydo

I spoke on a panel at the CTF Transportation Forum a few days ago.  The panel was titled, “Can we get there from here? Making self-driving technology a reality for California”  That seems to be the main question I get over the last decade.  Some version of “Will autonomous cars ever happen?”  or “is the tech real?”  or “When will I have one?”

They are all questions pointing at the skepticism that surrounds Autonomous vehicles.  And honestly – for good reason.  As an industry, the promise of fully driverless mobility solutions has come and gone several times over the past decade.  It always seems to be 2 years away.  

Even the title of this panel highlighted the skepticism and then turned to the second part of the question which I think we miss a lot, “what is needed to help?”. 

In my time at Cavnue, I got to talk to a lot of different road owners and operators, and they are all in a similar skeptical boat.  “You tell us we need to have our roads ready for autonomous vehicles, yet where are they?  When are they actually going to be an issue on our roads we need to think about?”  was a theme I heard repeatedly.  

As engineers we are trained to be skeptical.  Every problem we try to solve, we ask, “have we defined the problem correctly?  “Is this the right solution?”  “How could we solve it faster?  Cheaper?”  “Can we simplify this?”  “Is this even going to work?”  “How will we know when it is working?”  We are professional skeptics.  

What I was struck by at this conference was the skepticism does two things that are problematic – 

First, it dismisses or overlooks all of the huge progress and safety benefits that have been borne out of the industry even before we realize self driving cars for everyone everywhere.  We see autonomous technology aiding in contactless delivery services — which was of utmost importance during the pandemic.  We have seen sensors that aid in seeing objects around vehicles become more and more capable while the costs of the sensors have gone down – making them possible not just for driverless cars, but for human driven vehicles.  There to help whomever is driving – human or robot – to see.  

I also want to point out here, that while you can’t yet buy a vehicle that you never have to drive and will get you where you want to go, you can hail a fully driverless vehicle in certain cities in the US already, and that footprint is expanding.  We are already seeing the autonomous trucking industry starting to run routes with no one in the truck.  It is limited.  The companies shepherding this technology into the world are doing it with care — because they are asking all the skeptical questions too!  But the tech is obviously real, deployed in the real world and scaling today.

The second thing the skepticism does is it makes you lose the importance of this technology.  There is a real mission here.  A problem (or many problems) that need solving.  The one that is important to me is giving everyone mobility. 

My grandma is 92 and no longer drives.  She’s in rural Montana and can’t just call an Uber or Lyft when she wants to go somewhere.  So, what happens is four women in the community regularly call each other and coordinate grandma’s calendar of appointments to make sure someone can drive her where she needs to be.  And granny has a lot of appointments!  She can’t wash her hair, so she gets that done once a week.  She can’t bend to reach her toes, so pedicures need to happen.  There are a myriad of doctors appointments for eyes, ears, heart, brain, body.  And granny likes to go to church, pick her groceries, and visit her family and friends.  There are dozens of trips each week.  All to ensure that my Grandma is taken care of mentally and physically.  Mobility is the key that enables her to get food, care, and connect with loved ones.  A fundamental human need.

Driverless technology does solve these issues.  So while the tech is harder than anything else I’ve worked on, it is so important for this world, that I think the right approach is to ask the tech companies what they need to go faster rather than only meet what they are doing with skepticism alone.

The cool thing at the CTF forum was that that was exactly the conversation.  The skepticism married with wanting to discuss what California can do with our infrastructure and our policies to help this important technology deploy as fast as is safe.

At the forum I told the story of the first man who ever rode in a fully driverless car on public roads.  His name is Steve.  Steve is 95% blind.  One day in Austin Texas in 2015, a fully autonomous vehicle picked Steve up at a doctor’s office and took him to the park.  Do you know what he said his favorite part was?  He said, “I loved being alone in the car.  I’m never able to just be alone.”

Driverless technology gives people mobility.  It lets them get where they want, when they want, and HOW they want.    Let’s keep the skepticism to help us make sure we deploy this in a thoughtful way, and let’s also look for ways we can help this important technology go faster.