Smart Driving Cars episode 414- new laws for driverless mobility?

Welcome back to the Smart Driving Cars podcast. Thank you for spending time with us once again.

I'm Fred Fishkin along with the Faculty Chair of Autonomous Vehicle Engineering at Princeton

University, Alan Kornhauser. Hi Alan. Good morning this first day of June. We're into June of

2026. My goodness, six months. Summer is near. And the weather's nice, right? Finally. And with us

once again from Sweden, the co-author of the Real Case for Driverless Mobility Consultant

and Publisher of Mobility Industry Insights, Michael Senna. Hi Michael. Hi Fred. Hi Alan.

Great to be with you again. Has the snow melted yet? The snow is, it's almost melted. The glaciers

are still in the process of flowing into the rivers. I don't know if anybody saw the video from

the top of Mount Washington, I guess on Friday. Top of Mount Washington got like six inches of

snow on Friday or Saturday. That's what Mount Washington is there for. I guess that's what

it's there for, yes. Well Michael, in the June edition of Mobility Industry Insights, the focus

is on enabling driverless mobility to work for riders, requires the right laws for the right

reasons. You say driverless vehicle making is missing the objective function and therefore the

point. So give us the overview. Well, the overview is simple. There's been a spate of

proposals for new laws and all of them are focused on what the technology, what driverless technology

is going to do. The main reason for, it seems the main reason for most of these laws and there

were two proposed, one is called Stay in Your Lane. We love the names of these, Stay in Your Lane Act,

Self-Drive Act are the two main proposals and then there's the 2026 surface transportation

reauthorization bill that's coming up and they're all focused on technology. But the more we think

about it, the more we understand that the reason for this, the reason that they are technology-oriented

is because the organizations that are proposing them, whether they're at the state level or at

the federal level, they're not in the mobility business. Even though the Department of Transportation

says our dream is more, the golden age of transportation is now begun. Happily thinking

means that it's going to be a period where things will be better rather than gilded.

The Department of Transportation is in charge of ensuring that there are roads and bridges

and the avenues on which cars and trucks and buses and trains and airplanes can travel because

they take the full range. NHTSA National is in charge of safety. They're not

in the business of providing mobility. They're not in the bus business. They're not in the taxi

business. They're not in the driverless or otherwise business. They're in the business of safety.

So the laws that are being proposed and the suggestions for how to improve transportation

are primarily related to safety because there isn't anyone who's in the business of providing

mobility that's affordable or mobility that's meeting certain needs of individuals.

So what I've tried to do in this June issue of mobility industry insights

is to explain what the laws are, what the proposals are, and then to try to move from

that position to the position where we might be getting more transportation for more people,

but that's going to take a different level of

legislation. In fact, it's going to take another department within the Department of

Transportation if this is going to make any difference in the near term.

And organ a group within the government at the federal level, which has responsibility

for how people move, not just on what they move or in what they move. And that's what

this issue is focusing on. And thus far, most of the action has taken place at the state level

when it comes to permitting many of these technologies to be used on the roads.

And that's not what we're seeking here, I suppose.

No. The states decided to play in the federal sandbox because Department of Transportation

and NITSA were not doing their job. They were not doing the kinds of things that were necessary

to allow the Waymos and the other companies to be able to test their vehicles without having

special laws to decide what they wouldn't be able to do. There was enough pressure on the part of

California to require them to do something. And what they did was to establish certain

regulations that applied in certain locations, like initially San Francisco and then extended

throughout the state. So the Division of Motor Vehicles and the Department of Transportation

in California took the matters of their own hands. What the legislation that's now being proposed

is principally intended to do is to get the states out of the legislation business

and into deciding how cars and trucks and pedestrians move on their streets.

But to put driverless vehicles, they continue to call it autonomous vehicles, but put driverless

vehicles under the jurisdiction of the federal government, primarily NITSA. And that's what

these three regulations that are in process and other regulations are intended to do.

Now the states continue to try to do what the federal government hasn't done so that tests

can be done. But unfortunately, we have situations like, for example, in New Jersey with proposed

legislation that would do similar things as was being done in California with one major

difference, the proposed legislation in New Jersey says you can't have driverless cars,

you'd have to have somebody behind the wheel, and we're doing that already. And we have cars that

could be driven in driverless mode, but we're providing rides and we're doing that as part of

a test of the concept of delivering affordable rides to a large number of people within communities.

And I think we can talk a bit more about that. It sounds to me, based on what I've

listened to, the conference that just took place in Boca Raton, and also some other things that

I've been hearing, people are beginning to finally understand that it's not the technology

that's important, it's what the technology is supposed to be doing. The technology is supposed

to be delivering rides for people who can't drive their own cars for whatever reason. They

aren't able to afford to have their own cars, they can't drive their own cars. And that's what

our primary message is. The main purpose for driverless cars is to be able to deliver affordable

rides to people who need to go to the same places that people go with cars, but don't have the

possibility of using cars. And lawmakers at the different levels have primarily, I think,

focused to this point on the safety aspects of this, not on giving rides. Is that a fair assessment?

Well, they've focused on the safety aspects of it because it's the only thing that they can

control. There isn't anyone at a legislative level, whether it's at a state level or at a

federal level, there's no one who's in the business of providing real mobility. The states,

even though there are city or regional transport authorities that have been set up after 1950s,

1960s, everybody went out of business, the government's got into the business of running

trains and running buses. They haven't gotten into the business of running taxis, although there are

there are kind of metropolitan vans that deliver rides, and there are contracts for providing

rides to people with taxis and transport network companies. But there needs to be another focus

on the part of the governments, both at the state level and at the federal level, but it has to

come from the federal level. It has to be nationalized because this is like commercial

operations. People don't just drive around in the city, they don't just drive around in the state,

they go between states, they travel between states. I mean, there are cities like in

St. Paul and Twin Cities, Minneapolis, where people do travel back and forth between two

different jurisdictions, like Kansas, between Missouri and Kansas. But even so, it's normal

that most people, we drive our cars and we see that most people around us are in the same state,

they have the same license plate, but then suddenly cross the border and you think, well,

we're all those cars that were in New York, and am I the only one driving into Pennsylvania

from New York? But as you drive further, you find that there are lots of people who come from New

Jersey and Florida and even other countries like Canada. So it has to be at a federal level,

we can't have 50 different jurisdictions, and this is the kind of thing that's happening in

Europe, because with type approval, the process occurs in one country, and then the laws are

incorporated into the legislations in each of the countries automatically. And somebody doesn't

say, well, I don't want to have that. Once it's type approved, it's incorporated into the laws of

all of the countries. Well, the opportunity has to be for it to be across Europe and across the

United States. These vehicles mobility is an interstate commerce type of thing. It's not

allowed across state lines. It's the same thing that's happened with respect to trucking.

There is an 80,000 pound limit or whatever it happens to be with respect to trucks,

and you can't have a state saying, oh, no, you can only have 60,000 pounds in our state because

it's part of interstate commerce. And so these regulations, either in terms of the implications

on the pavement or the implications on safety, need to be set up and overarched on a national

basis. The whole question with respect to the safety, safety is, I guess, and that is why we

have public oversight on things. Is it anything different than when electricity was just coming

on to the market, whether it be AC or DC, there was a safety aspect of it. And so I guess you have

the United Laboratories or somebody else who's put out there all the safety aspects to make sure

that people don't electrocute themselves on this new fangled technology that all of a sudden gives

you light. Instead of burning your house down with oil or whatever or killing all the whales or

however else you were going to generate light at night, one now has this new gizmo, the electricity

to generate that. And so we've been through this. We've been through the beginning of it. We went

through the build up in the problems with respect to safety. I think where I see us today is that

the safety question is becoming moot because the data that's coming out, at least the current

data of those who are doing it well is absolutely

phenomenal with respect to safety. And the unsafe elements of this, everybody is realizing

is the human in the loop in this driving business. Anybody, I mean, riding around on the freeways

in Florida yesterday, I mean, I thought people were crazy here in New Jersey. I mean, it's just like

it's nuts on 95. Okay. And the problem is the human in the loop. And I think the whole

discourse is about to change. And it would be nice if the insurance entities of this

country instead of just totally focusing on becoming rich and making money

would all of a sudden say, oh my goodness, insurance rates, it costs you more if you're

going to drive because you're less safe. Okay. And we'll have to pick up less. Now, of course,

there's, you know, there are all the ambulance chasers out there. I guess I won't be popular

among them. They happen to be all the legislators that end up writing the laws, whatever. I mean,

it seems like there's might be a little bit of a conflict of interest and all that stuff. But my

goodness, look at any of the current data and these things, my own personal experience,

I can't drive that well. I've never been able to drive that well. I've never been that courteous.

I've never been that nice on the road. Everything that we're doing right now

is based on laws that were established in the 1960s and 1970.

The Department of Transportation Act of 1966 established the DOT. And someone by the name of

Najib Halabi, who was at the time the chief federal aviation, head of the chief of the

federal aviation agency, said to President Johnson at the time, we need to have an organization

that's in charge of all of transportation. And Johnson took him at his word and they combined

the commerce and FAA and they created the Department of Transportation. That was in 1966.

Four years later, under President Nixon, NHTSA was established. And NHTSA was established

with three different organizations. The Highway Safety Act put together the National Traffic

and Motor Vehicle Safety Act and they had three different organizations that were part

organized, one bureau, two agencies that were formed into the National Highway Transportation

Safety Administration. It's the Transportation Safety Administration. They didn't establish the

National Highway or the National Mobility Association and they didn't establish the

Department of Mobility for people. It's the Department of Transportation and you look at

the missions of each one of these organizations. Even though they say we want to provide, in the

case of DOT, we want to provide a good transportation options for all of our citizens.

They don't establish anything. They don't build international railroads. They build roads,

they provide funding for it, they provide funding to build the railroads. But it's not their job to

see that everybody gets to work on time. That's not what they do or that they get to the hospital.

You know, that's up to the businesses that are operating. But in order for the businesses

to be able to do what they need to be doing, there needs to be legislation in place.

And that's been the biggest problem that we've had with getting

testing done for driverless vehicles because it's the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards

which are in charge of ensuring that the vehicles that are on the road are safe to be operated.

It's not the states who do that. The states are in charge of having the roads with proper signage,

with proper speed limits, ensuring that the roads are not filled with debris and that people

are able to drive on the roads properly. But it's the vehicles are the responsibility of

the federal government. And these two things don't necessarily work in concert and they haven't been.

So now the federal government is saying, well, we really do want to get control over this.

But they're doing it with the only tools that they have and the only tool they have is safety.

It's both for the Federal Vehicle Motor Vehicle Standards and for other aspects of what these

organizations are doing. There has to be another approach to this. There has to be a better way

of providing financing encouragement for the development of business cases for mobility.

And that doesn't exist. Well, I agree with you on all that. I guess it must be,

it's got to be 15 years ago or at least, if not before a conference similar to the one that

just occurred at Boca about all this. And I actually raised my hand and said, we need a new

administration in DOT. We have one for cars, FHWA, we have one for pipelines, we have one for airplanes,

the DA maestro, we need one for automated vehicles. And in fact, it probably needs it.

And that should also have not only safety as its objective. If your objective is safety,

and especially if you have a vision zero, you know how to reach vision zero, don't move. Stay home.

That was the proposal. Okay, that's how you reach vision zero. That's almost ludicrous.

One of the professors in Sweden, when I first started working in the

Volvo, someone said, have you read this guy's reports? He's saying that we can reduce deaths

on the highways in Sweden if everybody stops driving. So, well, that's novel. That's interesting.

Oh my goodness. I mean, stay home. Okay, but I like to say, if I stay home, my house burns down,

I die in the house fire, I died anyway. I mean, what the hell? Thank you for, you shouldn't get

any great credit for vision zero. You caused me to be home and when my house burned down,

but whatever, that's almost, it is so silly. It's unbelievable. Okay.

But by the way, don't mix vision zero with what I said, because there's another suite

who was worked for the Swedish National Road Administration who had came up with the concept

of vision zero and ways to get the number of deaths and accidents on roadways down.

And his work, his name escapes me for the moment. And his work

put the number of deaths on roads from somewhere like 5,000 to 250. So, that's his vision zero.

No, but that's not it. That's a vision down. That's not a vision. That's not zero. I mean,

the number of regulations Nitz has tried to put out there over the years with respect to

bumper crash worthiness of five mile an hour bumpers and a whole bunch of other stuff out

there that was supposed to stop cars from crashing. And then the 12 mile an hour or whatever

automated emergency stuff that the IIHS did videos on that was just, there was only one system

of work. I think it was only Subaru's and everybody else's. And now, I guess in 2029,

the existing legislation is in 2029, we're all finally going to have technology in our vehicles

that are not going to, that are going to avoid crashes as long as you're going under whatever

12 miles an hour and actually do avoid crashes, apparently, whatever the regulations are.

Well, at least some of the situations that exist today, at least, I guess, with Waymo

and with Tesla is that, boy, those darn things do work. And even though, maybe Waymo's unfortunately

tried to go across a road that was under flooding conditions and got stuck and so on,

do you know how many other people who were driving themselves probably got themselves stuck in

equally bad situations. And so that's some bad, unfortunate press, but that's all fixable by them.

Those things, my goodness, they are the data coming out is just so overwhelmingly

safer, I'll claim that you've both alluded to it. This this conference that took place in

Boca, Guided in the Jacksonville Transportation Authority, they had their fifth annual autonomous

vehicle conference just a few days ago. Alan, you are a participant and so was the Assistant

Secretary of Transportation for Research and Technology at the DOT, Seval Oz. I think maybe

we can take a little look at at some of what she had to say. She started out with a video that she'd

been involved with 15 years ago when she worked for Google.

So we're here at the stop sign. The car's using radars and lasers to check and make

sure there's nothing coming either way. Old habits die hard, man. They don't die.

Hey, anybody up for a taco? Yeah, yeah. What do you want to do today, Steve? I'm all for

a taco, myself. All right, well, let's go get a taco at the drive-thru.

And we're turning into the parking lot. Howdy. There we go. Kind of creep along here. Does anybody

have any money? I've got money. No, I've got my wallet right here. You roll down your window

in order for you to put that. I'm doing very well. How are you today?

This is some of the best driving I've ever done.

95% of my vision is gone. I'm well past living blind.

You lose your timing in life. Everything takes you much longer. There are some places that

you cannot go. There are some things that you really cannot do.

Where this would change my life is to give me the independence and the flexibility to go

the places I both want to go and need to go when I need to do those things.

You guys get out. I've got places that I have to go. It's been nice.

Thank you all. I don't know if I'm talking from this mic or this mic, but if I can walk around,

it'll be better. In 2011, I made a short film. The founders of the company, Google,

wanted me to show how autonomous technology could change people's life. So I found Steve

Mann, who was formerly a graphic designer who had lost 85% of his eyesight to macular degeneration.

It took him three hours and four different modes to get to work because he wanted to still show up

and do something productive with his life. He was a director of the blind center in Silicon Valley.

We searched and found a way to bring back and restore some of his freedom, dignity,

because you can see movement is essential to life. It's one thing we take very much for granted

that if we do not move, we atrophy. If we cannot visit our loved ones, we isolate, and we eventually

lose our willingness to live. So it's critical that we start measuring up to certain technologies

that are available to change that coming forward 15 years. The true promise of autonomous vehicle

technology is being built as we speak now by most of you in this room today. I'm very excited

and privileged and honored to have been asked to speak because so much of what you're doing right

here right now is a part of what we're trying to do up in Washington. We're making transportation a

vital utility, and I believe I have a vision that soon families may even be able to subscribe to

capabilities just like they do their water, their electricity, and other types of utilities.

So it's great to be here in Boca Raton. I'm excited, and I wanted to thank our friends at

Gaiden, our friends outside, Carson, Adas Tech, Mika, Holon, Volkswagen, Moja, Beep. You all are at

the frontier of really changing the way in which we have built research and technology from the

first self-driving car in 2011 to what we have today, thousands of vehicles ready to deploy

and already in use. We are at a major historic turning point. You all will look back on this as

I look back at my career in 2010 and first started on the self-driving car team when we were 14

engineers and people coming out of the DARPA Urban Challenge programs. It's time to transform

and transmit technology in transportation science. For decades, we solve problems in Washington by

pouring concrete. Today, we must do more. We must digitalize and modernize the movement of goods,

people, and services. And for that, we need data, right? I think many of the folks in my team hear

me saying, in God we trust, everyone else, bring data. We must use artificial intelligence. We must

use these connected technologies and embed large language models into recognizing patterns, recognizing

learnings across all platforms and release these new platforms for movement. Not just in vehicular

side, but we have EV tolls, we have drones, we have a whole new array of spatial technology

that's hitting the curb as well. Our goal is clear. We are here to connect all modes of

transportation to improve safety, eradicate congestion, optimize the flow of freight.

And that is how we lower prices at the store, basically. This is how we give our families

back the time they need and be clever about the way in which we move across the country.

We have a bold mission at the U.S. DOT to prioritize the safe scaling of autonomous vehicles.

You'll hear from our NHTSA deputy, Pete Simmshauser, who's here today, who will be speaking as well to

you all. Safety is our North Star as we integrate this AV technology responsibility, but innovation

gets us there. That is what brings us into that new safety envelope space. So safety always,

innovation every day. The days of building research in sandboxes are over. We must build

the public trust now through transporting safety data, and we know exactly where to start. We start

with rideshare. We start with public transportation. Public transit and shared mobility are the

bedrock of community movement. By mastering safe autonomy in these areas, we prove the technology

in controlled, high-impact environments. And from there, we take our learnings and we scale

across the nation. Maybe we drive differently around these vehicles because computers drive

differently than humans. Those are things we need to learn, study, and prepare for. So deployment

is the way we get those shared learnings. How do we unlock the future? Well, through our transportation

digital infrastructure effort, TDI. That is something we put out in RFI a few months ago.

We received roughly 200 comments and 3,000-plus pages, and we combed those pages. We used our

friend Gemini and other, you know, other fun sort of large language models to understand what you

all were interested in and what your consensus was on transportation digital infrastructure.

And under the hospices of Secretary Duffy, we are moving at lightning pace. We are cutting the

red tape. Much of the procurement to obligation is going down. We're reducing those spin cycles.

We're starting with digital corridors for our surface modes. Highways, rail, transit, motor

carriers, all moving to connectivity and ports, maritime and other geospatial forms of modes.

We hope to seamlessly connect these, but we will not stop at ground transportation.

We are expanding this digital network into the air, working on important national security elements

such as complimentary PNT, which is very important for position navigation and timing.

At high precision, we're looking at redundant GPS. We're looking at things and researching,

tying in under a unified DOT approach, which includes federal aviation.

And eventually, we will expand into space commerce. This is the future of American logistics.

This is unequivocally America first, and I would not bet against America.

So to build this, we demand results. So there's no more research to nowhere.

We're actually needing now scalable, accessible deployment options to adopt and accelerate

the speed of AV modality. We are embedding applied research into our own use cases and asking

for funds to be used for strategic, national strategic transportation

deployment science. This vision requires a very strong persuasive leadership,

but also engagement. Events like today matter. We must slow down to thank our public sector

pioneer partners. So thank you to the Jacksonville Transportation Authority. You are a truly

exemplar of the innovation we are seeing today. You are building the operational infrastructure

we need. You are proving that public agencies can lead the tech revolution, like we work with

partners to build critical infrastructure. Thank you to Florida State College at Jacksonville.

And Dean Brower is here today. We salute your work. And as you develop your workforce capabilities

now and start thinking about curriculum and transportation science and undergraduate programs,

that's something we care about. We would like to support and it's newly an agenda on our

workforce environment. So Jacksonville is building the digital future right now.

Look at what your local government is achieving. And we have many and many other programs like

this, but in Boca Raton what we are seeing today is an incredible example of what the

innovation campus of the future looks like. You have it here today, everything from the origins

of the IBM PC laptop. And if you all haven't taken a chance, please go out and step on the

life size or actually larger than life size concrete keyboard. The autonomous innovation

center has a centralized operations hub, which is also very critical that we understand transportation

operations traffic management system. It manages autonomous fleet safely. It uses a human in the

loop model to ensure strict safety oversight. It should scale and will probably hopefully scale

with the help of our friends in D.C. to the entire United States.

So I think bringing jobs home because of our clear regulatory vision and infrastructure

investments, we are seeking manufacturers to Florida. This means buy America compliant vehicles.

This means reshoring, retooling of some of the software as well as hardware technology

that was built in this country years ago. We have to think about how we're going to

restore and reshape some of that. And this eventually leads to American jobs. You increase

the size of the pie. You don't necessarily work on how you're going to divide it up.

In order to launch the what I call A squared E, affordable autonomy economy, the Office of

Research and Technology at the U.S. Department of Transportation is funding a lot of the digital

transformation we're looking at. We are deploying smart grants to communities that prove they can

deliver. We are funding university transportation centers. We're investing heavily in digital

connected transportation. And we are building, rebuilding our research portals for accessibility

of that data, shareability of that data and platforms as we move towards more friendly

interfaces and shared content. Long-haul autonomous trucking are safely, trucks are safely now

operating across the Dallas Houston corridor. They're expanding into west to El Paso and they're

expanding east into Jacksonville. One of the problems we dealt with this year was what we

called cargo theft and cabotage. The secretary leaned in on this and we are announcing every

day more and more outcomes of how we're shutting down non-domicile commercial drivers, which single

handedly was on the road to reducing our spot freight prices and really hurting our trucking

industry. Throughout my career, I work to bring people together around a common mission. A big

part of leadership is finding a way to collaborate on something that's more important than you are

individually. A collective mission. And earlier this year, as I said, we launched the RFI for

Transportation Digital Infrastructure. And I'm very happy to announce that our digital corridors,

as we call them, which run across north, south, east, west, and the United States,

are coming to life as eight state DOTs under the leadership of Georgia DOT, Russ McMurray,

who's head of AASHTO, volunteered to become anchor tenants for the national interstates

in the United States. I call them my constitutional congress or my final four basketball teams.

We would like to think about embedding education, university transportation centers,

and to maybe adopt a highway. But right now, we are not looking to boil the ocean. Instead,

we are building competitive regional clusters across the interstates in the United States,

working to build up the back end, to bring up the back end of a common data exchange,

so that we can share interoperably as we go from state to state. So that will lead hopefully to

a safety envelope, which is proven, and enabling our regulatory environment really to do what they

need to do on the national framework for regulatory rulemaking. So we're working in

collaboration with our state DOT CEOs, with our industry partners, and with mobile network

operating providers to really try to approach standards. We don't want to write the standards,

we don't want to be the landlord of software in this country, but we do need to create that

kind of federated back end common exchange data governance for this effort. And this will eventually

to interoperability, and that will push forward on scaling the adoption across U.S. highways.

Our first use cases are construction zones, lane closures, truck parking, and emergency services.

But as we phase in other requirements and other modal activities such as rail freight, port,

this mission becomes the new network of modern digital activity and safety. So as we approach

the golden age of transportation, and I like to say this is our declaration of innovation,

the golden age shines in the eyes of our students. It vibrates when you ride in a publicly funded

AV shuttle in our nation's capital, and we are celebrating innovation this year at our 250th

year anniversary. It's also the 70th year anniversary for federal highways, and along those lines we

hope to share the podium with our federal highway administrator, Shaw McMaster on June 9th in

Detroit for some interesting announcements we hope will hit the mark and stride.

So earlier this year I visited Mount Vernon with Secretary Duffy and the leadership team,

and someone asked how would George Washington have handled decision making at this very important,

but a little bit unsettling moment in time. I thought for a while and I responded by thanking

leadership and my colleagues for never doubting that a small group of thoughtful and committed

citizens like you here today can change the world. It is actually the only thing that ever does.

Today I'm joined by my family, my friends, the Kazaminis who've spent their years in this country

developing technology, computer technology, so we can have a better life. I'm joined by my daughter

who graduated last week from Johns Hopkins in music and brain science. In the past we had silos,

we had silos of degrees, we had silos of thinking. Today's youth can intersect at two completely

different capabilities and bring those together and really improve something we don't even know about,

perhaps music's healing of the brain. So the same way that we need to break out of those silos

and academia, we need to break out of them right now as we speak in terms of innovation and technology.

So be bold, honor our legacy of independence, innovation, entrepreneurship. We have a monumental

mission ahead of us, but we will get it done. So God bless you all and thank you for the opportunity

to serve. Thank you.

Alan, you were there for this, so tell us how you received it and others did as well,

because she's talking about some of the things that we've been talking about for a long time here.

Well, the way I came out of it was with two things. One, powerful, and two is I think I said in the

beginning of my comments is I don't think I have heard from an official, high official,

at DOT ever a vision for the value propositions of this form of mobility that's been expressed

any more, any better than, than, than what she was. I was, I just thought it was powerful

for the reason. And the important thing is, is that I think she believes it. I think that this is,

this is Saval and Saval's mission as the Assistant Secretary of Research and Development and Chief

Scientist. I think this is fundamental because of the video that she presented with, with Mayhem.

And that video is something that she was the Executive Director for. She created that.

She was probably the motivation. I mean, certainly she was working with her Google and they decided

yes, I'm going to do and we're going to, you know, that's, but she picked that up and did it 15 years

ago. She believes that the mobility piece, having, having Steve be able to go get his laundry,

go get a, a hamburger or whatever he got, have the mobility, get your hair done, get to work on

time. The real value propositions associated with mobility of people for which the current systems,

the current array of technology is available as, has completely left those folks behind.

And as Michael and I, you know, pointed out, ad nauseam almost, the end of the sixth summit and,

and in the first book and continue here, that in fact, if you look at the

1.1 billion person trip demand that exists today and will exist tomorrow and existed yesterday and,

and you know, and at least whatever in the United States, there are about a 100000000 at

least a 100000000 of that demand of where mobility would have led to value increase

improvement of quality of life of individuals. There's at least a 100000000 of those things

that didn't take place yesterday, aren't taking place today, won't take place tomorrow, won't take

place the next day. Why? Because for them, their only way to achieve that is to walk

or whatever other modes might be available to them, doesn't do it for them. And here we have this

now new thing, this thing that all of a sudden might allow them to improve their

lives. Why? Because it's demand responsive, higher quality will, will do what they need to have done

for them, their need, not what me as an operator, hey, this is what I have to do and create it and

take it or leave it. That's the value proposition. That's, that's what's so powerful about what,

not only what Seval said, but the technology is its flexibility to be able to do, to give the

person who says, this, this is what I want to do to improve my life. And my goodness, if it is,

there should be an entity at least in Washington, if not in every state, but let's coalesce in

Washington that says, go for it, make it happen. This is all positive, plus it's safer. Cut it out.

And in your panel, you pointed out that as far as the riders are concerned,

the people who need to get from here to there, the technology isn't relevant. They don't,

they don't even care. They just need to care. They don't care, they care

whether it's being done with, you know, whatever, whatever, whatever, you know, no, it's, it's,

it's having, having an, in fact, if you're really worried, affordability is a key. And,

and one of the things that Seval, Seval pushed on the affordability piece, the affordability,

and it's not affordability after you have that sugar daddy or the government or somebody else

pick up the tab, it's that the fundamental asset, this thing costs a good sold ends up being

affordable. Why? Because whatever it's taken to put that on, and you divide it by the number of

users to do, so for me as an individual, it's easy. Ellen, Ellen. Yeah. The reason it's affordable.

Yeah. I've, I've, I've spent many little tests talking with people about this concept. And I

have a driverless car, and here you have a car with a driver. Why is this option better?

And the answer is always, oh, maybe it's because it's safer because you don't have people driving

drunk or whatever. But what's the effect of having a driverless car on the per, and most

people say, oh, well, somebody's going to lose their job. And then I say, if you take the, this,

these two cars, the difference between the car without a driver and the car with a driver,

the biggest difference between these two, assuming that both of them meet the requirements

of being on the road, is that the car without the driver doesn't have the cost of the driver.

Now you said productivity, but productivity is this car is out there 100% of the time

taking away the times that it has to be charged without the cost of the driver. In any drive that

you take in a taxi or a bus, 60% of the cost of that is the cost of the driver. If you take the

cost of the driver out of the equation, you have a much less expensive ride as long as you don't

have to put in the equivalent in the cost of technology, operations of this

driverless vehicle. If you assume that you've got the same car doing exactly the same kinds of things

at the same level of safety, the difference between the two is the cost of the driver and the

allowance of having that driver gives you the productivity of that vehicle. It's essential.

That's only part of the answer, Michael. The other part of the answer that we are finding,

and you're experiencing, and we are finding, and I really don't want to say it because it's not a

pretty thing to say, is that the ability to respond to changing demand, because things change.

Yeah, yeah. The thing where that's the machine that's responding versus the person

is so much easier with a machine than it is with the average person. I don't want to suggest that

the really good person can't outperform a machine. Absolutely. The question is,

most of the time, just some of the time, and it's tough. It is hard to outperform a machine.

Beautiful. In Boca Raton. Nobody appreciates that. In Boca Raton. Who was talking about that?

Nobody, me. I was the only one, I think. Nobody talked about mobility. the

people. Everybody in the audience, people working for needs up, people working for DOTs, state DOTs,

federal DOTs, everybody. They're all in another business. They're in the business of a transit

agency who should take very good care of their workers. They should be good to their workers.

And then make it so that their life is good, their life gets it done, and then see whether or not

anybody cares to take their service. And it's time to change the laws again.

Yeah. On that topic, Michael, why don't we bring it back to you to wrap things up

in terms of what you're suggesting in the mobility industry insights?

What I'm suggesting in the mobility industry insights is that we need to bring us back down

to 1965, 1966, when people with vision said we need a Department of Transportation.

Back in 1970, when people said we need an organization that's responsible for ensuring

that the cars and trucks and other vehicles that are on our roads are safe, which is when

the needs that was established, we need to have a look at providing the incentives from the federal

government to the states and to businesses for providing affordable mobility for everyone.

That doesn't exist today. The organizations that do exist are focused on safety. They're

focused on the technology, but they're not focusing on what that technology is supposed

to be doing. It's supposed to be helping people get to where they need to go safely and affordably.

Those two things go together. So it's time to take someone to stand up within the government

and say, we've done a lot so far for safety, and we have the number of deaths on the roads

compared to the vehicle miles driven is extremely low compared to countries in Africa and countries

in Latin America where the numbers of people that are dying proportionately to the number of cars

is incredibly higher than we have here in both Europe and in the United States.

So it's time for someone to stand up within the government and say, we need to establish

an organization not to promote driverless cars or what they call autonomous cars,

to promote mobility, to provide the means for putting these vehicles on the roads

to be able to achieve the goals that are rider related, not driver related or vehicle related.

Well, of course, we agree, Michael, and that was the crux of my comment

on Friday was that when our experience in giving people rides who really need a ride,

and yes, they don't care about what technology was, what they really care about it was the

mobility that they got, and they got it at a price that was acceptable to them.

And if you look at this really latent demand that exists there, it is big.

At some point there are people that can't afford anything, pay anything, so the price is not going

to be zero, we're still going to need some public spirited entities that provide subsidies to the

very poor, but to progress down the economic spectrum and to progress down the capability

spectrum, to the too young, old, to the folks who just don't want, who just can't

see well enough as Saval's video clearly shows, the amount of the value proposition, the opportunity

to, as our mission statement, to help create high quality, affordable communities and the

community spiritedness that one finds. And one of the things that happens with respect to this

kind of mobility opportunity is that the whole question about ridesharing disappears,

because in fact what you can do with the folks who really need a ride, because they tend to be

coming from the same community, they are compatible with each other, and in fact

ridesharing becomes actually a positive attribute rather than a negative attribute.

So you have all these things working together because this machine has been able to provide

the mobility to allow them to improve their lives. Sounds like the real case for driverless

mobility to me. This is I guess what Michael and I have been trying to push for all this time.

And we're not loose cannons on the ship, that in fact they're going to go mow down people and

whatever. It's a turning point. We are very close to making this happen.

Well I think that's going to be a wrap on this edition. Michael, thank you again for all of the

insights. The website for more is michaelelsenna.com. People can find the insights and lots more.

You can find more and the newsletter at smartdrivingcar.com. You can also find us these

days on the transportation channel. You want to encourage you to find us there.

They're on Fire TV, Roku, Apple TV as well. Find my tech reports at textination.com. Thanks again

for taking the time to watch or listen, and please stay safe. Thank you.

Smart Driving Cars episode 414- new laws for driverless mobility?

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