By
David N. Bengston
People
have been thinking and dreaming about self-driving cars for a long time. Paleofuture.com’s
article about the “Driverless Car of the Future” (Novak 2010) features a 1957
magazine ad depicting a family playing Scrabble in a bubble-topped car as it
cruises down a six-lane freeway, the steering wheel pointedly unattended. The ad
copy reads in part, “One day your car may speed along an electric
super-highway, its speed and steering automatically controlled by electronic
devices embedded in the road. Highways will be made safe—by electricity! No
traffic jam … no collisions … no driver fatigue.”
Self-driving
cars are, of course, no longer a futuristic idea. Virtually every car company
is working on them, along with tech companies such as Google (now Alphabet) and
Apple. More and more self-driving features are available in cars today. They’re
coming, and sooner than many of us think. A recent Business Intelligence report
(Greenough 2015) forecasts 10 million autonomous vehicles on the roads by 2020,
some semiautonomous and some fully autonomous.
The
first-order impacts of autonomous vehicles will be to transform transportation
and mobility. Other travel-related industries will be among the first to feel
the effects. For example, self-driving cars could reduce the need for
short-haul domestic flights, hotels, and car rentals as travelers sleep en
route and have their own cars at the destination (dezeen 2015).
But
self-driving vehicles will also have many unintended higher-order impacts. In
his book Future Ride, technology
writer Peter Wayner identifies scores of ways in which every aspect of society
will be affected (Wayner 2015). The lengthy subtitle of Wayner’s book points to
a few of these impacts: “99 Ways the Self-Driving, Autonomous Car Will Change
Everything from Buying Groceries to Teen Romance to Turning Ten to Having a
Heart Attack ... to Simply Getting from Here to There.”
A
likely higher-order consequence of self-driving cars that has received little
attention is their impacts on natural areas. The effects could be profound. One
possibility is that the comforts and efficiencies of self-driving cars may
result in much longer commutes and more sprawling development. If you can eat
your breakfast, watch the news, surf the Web, catch up on your reading, do some
work, or take a nap on your commute, you may live farther out in undeveloped
areas. Self-driving cars may reduce the need for roads in cities, but they
could induce more road building and low-density development in remote areas.
Roads
create serious environmental impacts (Haddad 2015). Natural systems near roads
are degraded by an increased abundance of invasive species, reduced carbon
sequestration, severed wildlife corridors, and spillover effects as people
clear newly accessible forests and drain wetlands. The net effect is a loss of
wild nature much greater than just the area of the road’s path, and a resulting
loss of life-supporting ecosystem services.
The
consequences of road-building and cars have been a concern among
conservationists since the rapid spread of automobiles in the 1920s. Historian
Paul Sutter (2002) details how this concern motivated leaders in conservation
and wilderness preservation. The future of conservation could be threatened by
a new era of fragmented landscapes and sprawl. Of the 50 largest U.S. cities,
only about 6 percent even mention self-driving cars in their long-range transportation
plans (Cutler 2015).
Foresight
is needed to identify and prepare for the possible effects of self-driving cars
and other major disruptive technologies. Foresight tools such as the futures
wheel can help planners and policy makers anticipate unforeseen consequences of
change and be more proactive, designing policies to discourage negative effects
and encourage positives (Bengston 2015). Most analyses of the implications of
change don’t go beyond the obvious direct consequences. But the higher order
consequences are less obvious, often contain surprises, and may be the most
significant.
The
smart group process, graphic structure, and nonlinear thinking of the futures wheel
make it a powerful tool for identifying and evaluating possible implications of
change. Land-use and transportation policies informed by foresight are needed
to effectively manage urban growth and protect open space in the decades ahead.
References
Bengston,
D.N. “The futures wheel: A method for exploring
the implications of social–ecological change.” Society & Natural Resources: An
International Journal. Published online August
25, 2015. DOI: 10.1080/08941920.2015.1054980.
Cutler,
Kim-Mai. “How many American cities are preparing
for the arrival of self-driving cars? Not many.” TechCrunch.com November 9,
2015. http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/09/cities-self-driving-cars/?ncid=rss&sr_share=twitter#.8p4mjvz:XbDp
dezeen Magazine. “Driverless cars could spell the end for domestic flights, says
Audi strategist.” November 25, 2015. http://www.dezeen.com/2015/11/25/self-driving-driverless-cars-disrupt-airline-hotel-industries-sleeping-interview-audi-senior-strategist-sven-schuwirth/
Greenough,
John. “The self-driving car report: Forecasts,
tech timelines, and the benefits and barriers that will impact adoption.” BI Intelligence. July 1, 2015. http://www.businessinsider.com/report-10-million-self-driving-cars-will-be-on-the-road-by-2020-2015-05
Haddad,
Nick M. “Corridors for people, corridors for nature: How can the environmental
impacts of roads be reduced?” Science
360(6265): 1166-1167. December 4, 2015. DOI: 10.1126/science.aad5072.
Novak,
Matt. “Driverless Car of the Future.”
Paleofuture.com. December 9, 2010. http://paleofuture.com/blog/2010/12/9/driverless-car-of-the-future-1957.html
Sutter,
P.S. Driven Wild: How the Fight Against
Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement. University of
Washington Press, 2002. p.343. http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/SUTDRI.html
Wayner,
Peter. Future Ride v2: 99 Ways the Self-Driving,
Autonomous Car Will Change Everything from Buying Groceries to Teen Romance to
Turning Ten to Having a Heart Attack ... to Simply Getting from Here to There.
Self-published and copyrighted. Sold by Amazon Digital Services Inc., 2015. p.227.
http://futureridebook.com/
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