On the future of transportation in an era of automated and autonomous vehicles

Automated vehicles (AVs) already navigate US highways and those of many other nations around the world. Current questions about AVs do not now revolve around whether such technologies should or should not be implemented; they are already with us. Rather, such questions are more and more focused on how such technologies will impact evolving transportation systems, our social world, and the individuals who live within it and whether such systems ought to be fully automated or remain under some form of direct human control. More importantly, how will mobility itself change as these independent operational vehicles first share and then dominate our roadways? How will the public be kept apprised of their evolving capacities, and what will be the impact of science and the communication of scientific advances across the varying forms of social media on these developments? We look here to address these issues and to provide some suggestions for the problems that are currently emerging.