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CabBuddy – Sharing a ride in autonomous taxis

Dissert about the future of mobility and justify the introduction of a Shared Automate Vehicle (SAV) fleet with ride-sharing in any city is a challenge. Even though the idea leads to a scenery that seems like a fantasy and that might be doomed for different reasons, the exercise is important by itself because the objective is to justify the following idea:

“One of the problems in a city is traffic congestion. Nevertheless, people prefer to spend their time in queues instead of using public transportation. Why? Two of the major benefits of using a car are flexibility and convenience and is not easy to find these characteristics in other ways of transportation.

The past behaviour of a person is the best way to predict how one is going to behave in the future26 and that behaviour hardly changes if there is nothing disruptive. AV is the next step in mobility, therefore it is predicted that, in the future, people will adapt to this. The AV offers the same as a traditional vehicle plus the technological development, therefore, more desirable.

Nevertheless, the mobility paradigm is being challenged by all fronts. The future might be the use of a service instead of owning a vehicle. Meaning that it is expected that the vehicle is to be shared since 95% of the time the owned vehicle is stoped27.

But who is going to own these vehicles? These vehicles are likely to get into the cities as part of a fleet SAV because only big companies will be able to afford the insurance for this new technology.

Since new users will want the ride and not the ownership of the vehicle, dynamic ride-sharing (DRS) in AV, may appear as a low-cost service of a fleet or even as traditional taxis. This service explores the balance between price and quality of a ride, therefore, it may slightly increase the time of travel, but will keep the flexibility and convenience.

Where does this fails?

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How accountable am I in an accident?

On a level 3 SAE vehicle if the driver is responsible for an accident, since the driver is supposed to be aware and intervene if necessary1, then the companies will feel free to develop the technology without any pressure or accountability. Competition between different companies is kept and the evolution tend to be fast.

At this stage, the question is if the driver will react fast enough when required since the reliance on the autonomy of the vehicle might lead to an excess of confidence and lack of attention to the road.

However, driver’s accountability becomes a complicated concept if we’re talking about a level 5 SAE vehicle. On a stage where the advantages of automation may be fully used, it will be possible to integrate people that are not able to drive in a vehicle without an actual driver. Based on these examples, how are we make the driver accountable in case of an accident?

To approach this we should split responsibility between moral and criminal accountability. Relative to the moral accountability there are 2 ideas24 that deserve some attention:

The first one says that since the vehicles are a risk to others, owners/drivers should continue to have accountability over the vehicle. This will force the owner to pay some kind of tax or insurance.

The second one blames the driver in case of an accident. The result or consequences are beyond the driver’s control because one can only be blamed in case of direct intervention. In an example where there is an accident derived from a child running in front of the vehicle, the driver is only accountable if there was any intervention. This second approach is not sustained in itself.

To add to the driver’s accountability, there is the manufacturer accountability that is required to incentive the optimisation of AV. The manufacturer will be, in the end, “the ultimate responsible for the final product”25.