Will we ban driverless cars?

Last year, Mike daydreamed of a future in which autonomous vehicles would shuttle his kids around the Beltway while he was freed to relax and tweet the extra hours away. It’s an attractive notion, and not just for reasons of convenience; this is an innovation that could reduce roadway congestion (thus benefiting the economy) and save many of the roughly one-and-a-quarter million lives lost each year in traffic accidents worldwide.

While the achievement of such a vision seems probable someday, it may not happen before the Petrilli boys get their driver’s licenses—and not because the technology is lacking. In recent months, nearly every major car company (and even companies previously having little to do with cars, like Apple and Google) have hinted that a bit of their autonomous vehicle magic is just around the corner. So-called "active safety" features have already become more commonplace. Anti-lock braking and stability control have been available for years, but several brands are rapidly adding features that alert you if you deviate from your lane; some can even help you brake and steer.

Now Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, promises that his company's vehicles will be able to drive themselves on highways and pick you up when called from your smartphone (on private property at first). Not only that, he says these features will be available this summer and will, most amazingly, arrive on existing Tesla vehicles through a mere automatic, wireless software update.

Given that revelation, one wonders if we may wake up one day, years from now, to find a text message from our car letting us know it can drive on its own, 100 percent of the time. Not only that, it’s offering to drive the kids to school. Maybe some parents will trust that it works perfectly, but many others will probably at least sit behind the wheel at first to see how it goes. Fast-forward a week, a month, or even a year and everything is just fine. What then? Chances are, more and more parents will start handing over the keys to these computer-based chauffeurs while they focus on other things.

The really interesting (and somewhat scary) question, though, is what happens when executives in the transportation industry—which employs millions of Americans who drive for a living—start going through the same decision-making process.

Occupations and wages of the millions of Americans who drive for a living

It’s the fear of these job losses—the “creative destruction” that accompanies all new technologies—that may delay the introduction of fully autonomous vehicles. Maybe new jobs will be created too (that’s been the case with most new technologies), but those will be of little solace to laid-off employees (and other interest groups like the Teamsters), especially if many lose their jobs at once and new jobs replace old ones slowly.

Such progress may seem unstoppable, but experience in education reform tells us that it is never a guarantee. Many school districts and states (at the behest of unions) put a variety of restrictions on online learning, including mandates that a fully licensed teacher be present when students are completing online coursework. It’s quite possible that laws requiring someone always at the wheel will persist in order to preserve jobs long after safety concerns actually warrant them. (Indeed, most of Tesla’s remaining barriers to even limited use of autonomous features seem to be legal, not technical).

In education and transportation alike, society will need to consider how to ensure workers aren’t being left behind. Strong workforce development and safety policies must, of course, be part of the formula. But government must also refrain from interfering with technological progress more than it already does. As with education reform, the only way that the public interest will triumph over the special interests is if it becomes fully engaged.

Education and transportation are fundamentally different pursuits, and the economic sectors that have grown up around them aren’t going to mirror one another perfectly. The cultivation of young minds will probably always demand some form of live, in-person guidance, and no amount of hyper-capable robots will substitute for the attention of a motivated teacher or parent (though classic cartoons have long conditioned us to believe otherwise). Still, our society is no more wedded to the present realities of classroom instruction—let alone the huge array of schooling functions filled by custodians, crossing guards, non-teaching aides, administrators, and librarians—than previous generations were to the buggy-whip manufacturers. Ultimately we’re not doing ourselves any favors by standing in the way of innovation.