HERE’S a question for you: Is the future of transport self-driving cars? When it comes to self-driving cars, public relations is a bigger hurdle than technology.

Cars that can drive themselves, a staple of science-fiction, have started to appear on roads in real life. Google’s self-driving vehicles are the best-known, but most carmakers are also developing them. Each car hoovers up — and processes — nearly 1 gigabyte of data every second. In 2011, BMW sent a robotic car, at motorway speed, from Munich, the German carmaker’s hometown, to Nuremberg, about 170km away (with a driver on board… Just in case). Audi got a self-driving, with nobody behind the wheel, on paved road a few months ago.  Some say these cars would reduce road deaths, ease congestion, reduce fuel consumption, improve the mobility of old and disabled people, and free-up time spent commuting. So, how do they work?
In many ways, self-driving cars are a logical extension of existing driver aids, such as lane-keeping systems, which follow road markings and sound a warning and correct the steering if a vehicle starts to drift out of its lane; adaptive cruise control, which maintains a constant distance from the vehicle in front, rather than a constant speed; auto-parking systems, which can reverse a car into a parking space; emergency braking, which slams on the brakes if an obstacle, another vehicle or a pedestrian is detected in front of the car; and satellite-navigation systems. Computerized control of a car’s steering, acceleration, and braking is already possible under some circumstances, in other words. For a car to drive itself, these systems must all be tied together, using software, and supplemented with a set of sensors, so that the software can tell what is going on around the vehicle.
Accordingly, today’s self-driving cars are covered with sensors. Mapping nearby features, spotting road edges and lane markings, reading signs and traffic lights and identifying pedestrians are done, using a combination of cameras, radar and lidar (which works like radar, but with pulses of light rather than radio waves). Ultrasonic detectors provide more accurate mapping of the surroundings at short-range, for example when parking. Gyroscopes, accelerometers and altimeters provide more accurate positioning than is possible, using global-positioning system (GPS) satellites alone. Google’s cars scan their surroundings to build a detailed 3D map of features such as road edges, signs, guard-rails and overpasses. Each time a car follows a particular route, it collects more data to update the 3D map. Google’s software also ingests data on speed limits and recorded accidents. Because the car’s roof-mounted sensors can see in all directions, it arguably has greater situational awareness than a human driver. Google’s self-driving cars have clocked up 700,000km (435,000 miles) under autonomous control, without incident.
The BMW i3, an electric car capable of driving itself in stop-go traffic by linking adaptive cruise control with lane-keeping, is due to go on sale later this year; but most observers expect it to be a few years before entirely autonomous vehicles are available. The transition is likely to be gradual.
In Israel, a technology company is combining video cameras with computer-vision algorithms to enable cars to become driverless in certain conditions, for example, on motorways.
There are lots more where that came from. For example, Volvo, Mercedes and Lexus have “driver-alert” systems that can detect when a driver is getting sleepy. And you can have automatic parking systems fitted as optional extras to even humdrum cars.
If fully autonomous vehicles do eventually become widespread, there could be dramatic consequences for car design, car ownership, and urban planning. Some places might even ban manual driving, to save lives and ease congestion. Self-driving cars will not arrive overnight, but they are on their way.
It seems like there is going to be three interesting stages in the deployment of self-driving cars:

Stage #: 1 Where cars are self-driving but require a legally responsible licensed driver. You aren’t going to be able to multi-task in your car anymore than you can today, largely because there is going to need to be legal liability setup when cars crash or injure someone; almost certainly, that will put the burden on the operator for the sake of equivalence to non-self-driving cars.

Stage #2: In some countries, the airline industry will suffer, and the value of city real-estate will decline. The value of real estate outside of cities will increase as the ‘burbs’ get more accessible (and more fun to live in). Cities are going to suffer because commuting for work and fun will become faster and easier to manage.

Stage #3: This is where all the real fun occurs. The real implication of truly driverless vehicles is NOT hanging out in the back seat … The real impact is going to be that you don’t really have to own cars anymore at all; you just have to access them.
So, what else might change? Fully automating highways may make traffic move more quickly and safely (If everything works as planned, right?) for a while. But what will they mean over time for the human and natural environment? Won’t the new types of roads eventually fill up, just as the old ones have? Would such beautifully flowing, electronically choreographed, completely automated cars and intersections be compatible with fully and adequately accommodating pedestrians and bicyclists in a well-designed, walk able urban environment? If so, how exactly?
Could this be a step, not forward but back to an era when the emphasis was all about moving as many cars as possible as quickly as possible, rather than on creating better environments for humans that don’t rely so much on cars? What set of ethics should accompany this bold new technology?