Responsible Integration of Autonomous Vehicles in an Autocentric Society

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, 94% of all traffic accidents are caused by human errors, accumulating an annual cost of four billion dollars. Many stakeholders, including policymakers and auto-manufactures, recognize this unique situation and have taken steps to address this safety concern and take advantage of the business opportunity many have spent significant effort developing autonomous vehicles. Recent technological advances in computing power, sensor technology, and wireless communication, as well as a drop in the price of these sensors, have resulted in “Autonomous Vehicles” (AVs) that can sense their surroundings and make intelligent decisions by communicating with neighboring vehicles and nearby infrastructure. These improvements significantly accelerated the transition from test-track prototypes to mass production efforts, with many manufacturers claiming large-scale deployment of AVs over the next few years. But how will autonomous vehicles be safely and responsibly integrated into society? Although autonomous vehicles are considered safer than human driving, the first few years of deployment will involve a mix of traditional and driverless vehicles on the road. Among the many issues still needing to be resolved is how these new autonomous vehicles will respond to the unpredictable behaviors of human-controlled automobiles. This paper aims to develop a means to responsibly integrate autonomous vehicles into today's society by using critical analysis, design thinking, and interrogating the autonomous-vehicle-to-driver-vehicle interactions. We build a scale model autonomous vehicle that detects and responds to erratic driving.