Episode 27

How could self-driving cars change the world? - Part 2

July 15, 2022

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TRANSCRIPT

This episode is the second of Jack’s investigations into self-driving cars. Last time, he was interested in Phoenix, Arizona. This time, he’s back home in London, an old, complicated, messy city with an extensive public transport system.

The episode was presented and written by Jack Stilgoe and edited by Gemma Milne, with research assistance from Nuzhah Miah.

Study Questions:

1. How can the history of the motorcar help us anticipate futures for self-driving vehicles?

2. What would it mean to, as Lucy Suchman puts it, ‘close the world’ to make life easier for self-driving vehicles?

3. Which attachments of ‘autonomous’ vehicles are likely to prove most consequential?

4. How should cities respond to the development of self-driving vehicles?

Related links:

• Joe Moran, (2006). Crossing the road in Britain, 1931–1976. The Historical Journal, 49 (2), 477-496.

• Joe Moran (2010). On roads: a hidden history. Profile Books.

• Lucy Suchman (1987). Plans and situated actions: The problem of human-machine communication. Cambridge university press.

• Peter Norton (2011). Fighting traffic: the dawn of the motor age in the American city. MIT Press.

• Peter Norton (2021). Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-tech Driving. Island Press.

• https://www.wayve.ai/ (and the company’s published papers, e.g.: Hawke, J., Badrinarayanan, V., & Kendall, A. (2021). Reimagining an autonomous vehicle. arXiv preprint arXiv:2108.05805).

• Chris Tennant, & Jack Stilgoe, (2021). The attachments of ‘autonomous’ vehicles. Social Studies of Science, 51(6), 846-870. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03063127211038752

• Tennant, C., Neels, C., Parkhurst, G., Jones, P., Mirza, S., & Stilgoe, J. (2021). Code, culture and concrete: Self-Driving Vehicles and the Rules of the Road. Frontiers in Sustainable Cities, 122.