RESEARCH BRIEF Autonomous Vehicles, Mobility, and Employment Policy: The Roads Ahead JOHN J. LEONARD, DAVID A. MINDELL, AND ERIK L. STAYTON 1 Autonomous Vehicles, Mobility, and Employment Policy: The Roads Ahead* John J. Leonard†, David A. Mindell‡, and Erik L. Stayton¶ †
[email protected], Samuel C. Collins Professor of Mechanical and Ocean Engineering, MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering and MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) ‡
[email protected], Frances and David Dibner Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing, MIT Program in Science, Technology, and Society and MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics ¶
[email protected], PhD Candidate, MIT Program in Science, Technology, and Society *Research brief prepared for the MIT Task Force on Work of the Future. Support for this work has been provided by the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation and the MIT Task Force on Work of the Future. The authors wish to thank Timothy Aeppel, David Autor, Russell Glynn, David Goldston, Susan Helper, Chad Huang, Frank Levy, Gill Pratt, Elisabeth Reynolds, Kevin Shen, and Anuraag Singh for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. All views expressed herein are solely those of the authors. Executive Summary Fully autonomous cars, trucks, and buses, able to operate across wide geographical areas with no drivers necessary, would revolutionize ground transportation. The number of accidents and fatalities could drop significantly. Time that people waste stuck in traffic could be recovered for work or leisure. Urban landscapes would change, requiring less parking and improving safety and efficiency for all. New models for the distribution of goods and services—the “physical internet”—would emerge as robotic vehicles move people and objects effortlessly through the world, on demand.