Will my kids ever learn to drive?

Hello, and welcome to Raising Generation AI with me, mom of two, Holly Green.
And me, AI expert, Fiona Morgan. This podcast is all about the complicated world of parenting and AI, because I’m a mom and I’m rather worried about it all. And this week, we’re asking the question, will my kids ever need to learn to drive? And later on, we’ll be talking to Dr. Nick Reed about whether driverless cars will be everywhere by the time your kids are 17, Holly. How are they, by the way?

Yeah, they’re good. I’m excited for Sports Day coming up this week. I am less excited for Sports Day because last year, I’m sure you know they do like a parents race, these Sports Days.

I’m not a runner, as you know, but I quite like joining in with things. So I thought, you know, I’m going to go down there, I’m going to have my trainers on, my leggings, I’m going to give this mom’s run a go. And so when they call the mom’s run, I’ll straight down the front.
And the only other mom that stepped in was wearing a dress. She was carrying a kid’s backpack, a water bottle and a baby. And she had her big toe plastered up.

And I know she had a big toe plastered up because she was wearing flip flops. So luckily they managed to persuade a few other moms to come to the front. And they all beat me and I just beat the mom in flip flops.

But I feel like I’m going to have to reassess how I approach the mom’s race this year. I don’t even really want to run it this year, but my daughter is so adamant that I need to and keeps pleading with me to run it. I think I’m just going to have to embrace it and run it again. And maybe this time not look like I’m taking it so seriously.

I saw something on Instagram a while ago now. Goodness, I can’t remember who it was, but it was a professional runner. All these mums went down for the mom’s race.
And there was an Olympian.
Amazing.

Can you imagine turning up? And it’s just been like, I mean, it wasn’t. But just imagine it was, I don’t know, Usain Bolt was there.
I can’t remember exactly who it was.
That would be very unfair in the mom’s race, wouldn’t it?
Particularly in the mom’s race.
Did she take it really seriously? Did she just smash all the other moms? Amazing.
She did. She did properly like you’d see on the other. I wish I could remember who it was.

I looked like that mom just without any of the running skills. Are you going to go full sports gear this year?
Okay, fine.
I’m going to be opposite this year. I’m going to be there in jeans looking like I’m taking it very casually.
And then just absolutely smash them. Have you been doing training? Have you been in the gym?
I wish I could say yes. I’ve done absolutely nothing. I haven’t really run properly since I was doing cross-country in school.
So I think I overestimate my own ability at things. Because I’m like, wouldn’t I be great at running when I haven’t run in 30 years?

But we are not talking about running this week. We are talking about a very different type of transport.
I don’t think it does.
Thank you. I thought you’d appreciate that.
Get us back on topic.
I’m excited about this one. We’re talking about driverless cars, aren’t we? And do you know, this is one of those that I said, some of my friends, my mom friends, oh, we’re talking about driverless cars this week.
And this is the one that’s got everyone talking. I think people are so interested. Yeah, yeah.

I think people are fascinated with driverless cars and whether we’re all going to be forced to drive them in the future, how quickly they’re going to come in. I mean, the big question this week is, will the kids ever learn to drive properly or will they just be driving driverless cars?

So I think this is going to be a really, really interesting topic this week.
It’s also super timely because in the last, well, I think it was last month, I think it was April. I don’t know if you’ve seen, but there are now driverless cars in London. Are you aware of this?

Well, I sort of vaguely saw, I’ve deliberately tried not to look too much into it because I kind of want to find this out on the podcast today. But it’s sort of been flitting around my social media. Have you been watching it closely?
Yes, I hate driving. So I am-
You hate driving? I did not know that.
Yes.
Why do you hate driving?

I can’t drive in these cars. Oh, it’s just tiring. It means you can’t have a glass of wine.
I’m a bit of a zero alcohol if I’m driving person. So I can’t have a glass of wine if I’m driving.
But most of the time that you’re driving, you’re not drinking. It’s like just driving in the day. It’s not like you’re getting up every morning and having a glass of wine.
That’s true.

But you have to, I don’t know, you have to get in and then you have to pay attention to what other people are doing and you can’t be doing other things particularly well. I used to watch things like, I don’t know, Gossip Girl when I was younger and see these people that just had drivers and just got in the back, someone opened the door and just got in the back of the car. I was like, that is the life.
That is what I want.

Do you think that’s what driverless cars will feel like? It will feel like having a driver and it will feel really swish and luxury. Because I think you’ll still be sitting in the front, like paying attention and making sure the driverless car is not doing anything it shouldn’t be doing.
I think in a way that’s harder because it’s easier to drift off if you’re not actively driving, but if you’re still having to make sure you’re not crash, I don’t know how it’s going to work. Hate is too strong or wet. I don’t like the idea of driverless cars because firstly, I really enjoy driving because it’s one of those times, I think, where my brain, this sounds really weird.

My brain can sort of relax because I’m driving and my brain is paying attention to the driving, but it also allows my mind to wander and I’m not looking at social media, I’m not talking to people, I’m not doing any other things. So my brain just has that time to sort of wander off. It’s the same as walking for me, that my brain just kind of floats away and thinks about things.

I mean, not entirely floats away, I’m still paying attention to the road, but I think I’ll be really disappointed if we all end up having to drive driverless cars, I think that’ll be really sad. And also, maybe this is ridiculous, if your car is entirely controlled by a computer, isn’t that hackable? What about if someone hacks your car and decides to take you somewhere you don’t want to go?

And in fact, do you get kidnapped by your car? I mean, I don’t know, maybe that’s a bit Bond movie-esque, but that sort of feels to me like the sort of thing that, I don’t know, could happen. I think I can put that to our expert today, or is it going to think I’m ridiculous?

I think it’s a legitimate question. I often bring everything back to this, but the technology itself isn’t technically the problem. It’s all of the bad actors around the technology that is the problem.

So I agree. I think that’s a real risk. And on top of that as well is, who are the people that are making the decisions on how these driverless cars behave?

And do our morals align with them? I mean, I’ll pose a question to you. If you were driving along yourself in your normal car that you have today and a kid, a ball bounces in front and a kid runs out, you have to make a split decision on what to do.

Do you carry on and potentially hit the child? Or do you drive onto the pavement where there’s a couple waiting outside the bakery? You have to make a split decision on what you would do in that scenario.

Oh, I mean, that’s horrible, isn’t it? And I think the answer is you don’t even know what you’d do until that second. I think most of us would just try and break as hard as we could and hope for the best.

And I suppose the extension of that is that that’s the decision our cars will be having to make.

Exactly. And so when that decision is made to, I don’t know, let’s say the decision is made to run onto the pavement and hit the couple, that couple’s family are obviously going to be quite upset and possibly the couple, depending on how it pans out, who is responsible for the decision that was made there? Is it the company that made the car?

Is it you? Because you bought that car, even though the decision technically wasn’t yours. Was it the child’s fault for running out in front of the road?

Like who is responsible for when accidents go wrong? I think when a human makes a decision, if you had personally made that decision, and you might be taken to court and you might, but fundamentally people understand you’re human and make human mistakes. I think people have a different view on technology.

They expect technology to be better.

Yeah, that’s true, isn’t it? And it’s not even like a, it wouldn’t be a split second decision for a car. Not that a car makes a decision, but you know what I mean?

It would be something presumably that’s programmed into it. So it’s told if you have the option of hitting a child or a couple, you hit this person or this couple.

Yeah. It will be taking so many different data points, camera views. It may have mistakenly identified the child as a dog.

Yeah, that’s true.

There could be all sorts of different… It just takes all these… So it’s going to be a really interesting…

We’re going to see this pan out in an interesting way.

There have been some issues with people getting injured and even getting killed by driverless cars, haven’t there?

Again, to bring this back into the conversation, Hannah Fry’s recent series on BBC has an episode on driverless cars and has someone called Elaine Hertzberg, which is the famous one. I actually did it as a debate in my ethics class at university when I did my masters in AI. It’s a really well known story.

So someone was knocked over and killed and it went through American courts to figure out who was responsible for that death. But it’s a really interesting episode. I do suggest that people go and watch it.

Yeah, I’m really looking forward to watching that episode. I haven’t watched it just yet, but I am going to watch it after we’ve spoken to Dr. Nick Reed. Can you tell us a bit more about him?

Yeah, he’s the perfect person to talk to. You might have seen him pop up on places like BBC News and stuff. He’s the go-to guy about driverless cars.

He’s actually been in one of these Waymo cars in the States, which is fun. So if you’ve got any questions about that, you can ask him. But he basically runs a company now advising driverless car companies on how to safely and within the bounds of the law move into the UK market.

So he knows everything there is about how the UK laws work and how soon we’re going to see them realistically driving on our streets.

Great. That’s Dr Nick Reed coming up next.

So we’ve talked a lot, Holly, about how much I hate driving. So you can imagine that I’m super excited about driverless cars coming in, hopefully in the near future. And you actually asked a question about this in our very first episode.

Will your kids ever learn to drive, or will all cars be driverless by then? Today, I found someone who can hopefully tell us. Nick Reed spent over 20 years working in road safety, which means he’s watched all of this develop from the start.

He was the first ever chief road safety advisor to National Highways, and now he runs his own consultancy, Reed Mobility, helping the companies bringing driverless cars to the UK do it in the right way. He’s also been in a Waymo himself, so he can tell us what they’re actually like inside. Dr Nick Reed, welcome to Raising Generation AI.

Hi there, great to see you.

Thank you so much for joining us this morning. So you’ve actually been in a Waymo. What is that like?

Is it like a normal car? Are you just getting in the door and there’s a steering wheel?

Yeah, so for the moment, these cars are based on very much regular cars. And certainly in Waymo’s case, they’ve done a lot to add additional sensing equipment and computer equipment to enable it to drive for itself. But when you get inside, the interior is more or less the same as a regular car.

Perhaps the biggest difference is the screens inside, which are there to help you as essentially a customer of the service and give you some information about what the car is seeing and doing. So you feel that you trust what this car is doing when it drives for itself, that it’s doing the right things. And then of course, the first time it sets off, when you see the steering wheel move for itself, that is quite a freakish experience.

But after a short time, it gets very familiar. You’re very comfortable with it. You see that it does the right things and you relax into it.

No problem at all.

And you’re not expected to get involved. I mean, if you saw it doing something that you thought was wrong, would you override it and get involved? Or do you just completely hands-free sit back and let it get on with its thing?

You are essentially a passenger in the service. So if something happens that is unexpected, there’s also remote assistance that can come in as well, and they can interact with, say there’s a, you’ve just stopped for some reason, there’s a policeman there. The remote assisters can talk to those emergency services.

But for the most part, it’s a very smooth, regular experience, like being in a taxi, except there’s no one in the driver’s seat.

I’ve always thought if the car is entirely driverless, and you sort of touched on this there, why does it need to be and look like a car does nowadays? I mean, it would be safer, for example, to have everyone we’re facing. Could you not have an entirely reclining seat so you could have a little nap?

Will those things come in or do you think they will continue to look like cars nowadays?

I think you’re right there, Holly. I think what we’ve seen to date is that we’re in the process of developing the technology. So for the time being, the companies developing the technology are using platforms that they know are very well built, are very reliable, traditional cars.

But as the technology matures, and we see that its systems are reliable and they can always drive safely, and we’ll start to see this kind of specialization of vehicles. There’s a company called Zoox and they have a more specialized vehicle where two passengers sit facing backwards and two passengers sit facing forwards. It’s more like those airport shuttles that you might get a friendlier experience, more specialized to this driverless experience, as you say, because you don’t need to have this forward-facing seat, you don’t need any kind of controls, and they’re pursuing that angle.

But for the most part, most of the companies developing this technology are using traditional vehicles that they know are available and reliable until we move to more maturity of the technology.

Okay, and so Waymo is testing right now. What’s the end game with this? What are Waymo hoping to do?

And Waymo is just a brand name, isn’t it, of a type of driverless car, is that right?

Yeah, so Waymo is the service that has emerged from what was originally Google’s self-driving car project. They’re owned by Alphabet, the same parent company of Google. And Waymo is their brand for this driverless service.

And we say they’re trialing. They’re actually offering commercial services in many cities in the US already. So people can go in San Francisco or in Miami or in Austin.

You can have the app, download the app and ride these vehicles today as a commercial service. In the UK? Yes, so that’s all possible today.

In fact, they’ve got over 200 million miles of operation of these vehicles. They’re doing thousands of rides every week where people are using them as they would an Uber or a regular taxi. The UK is one of the first markets they’re moving to outside of the US.

And a lot of that is to do with the efforts that our government has put in to make the regulations as clear as possible. So that when companies come here, they understand what it is they have to do in order to operate self-driving vehicles on our roads. So yeah, we’re in the kind of pilot stage and Waymo is working to make sure its vehicles are suitable for UK roads when they launch commercially.

But yeah, it’s an exciting time. It’s probably the biggest year for self-driving vehicles in the UK.

And do we have any idea as to when these cars might start operating and we can hail one in the UK?

Later this year is the only message we’ve had to date. And of course, this is a new technology for UK roads. Things may change.

We’ll see. And there are other companies as well pursuing this. So there’s a UK company called Wave that is working with Uber that are going to try and do similar trials.

Also, Chinese company Baidu, Apollo, also working with Uber and Lyft are going to be trialing similar taxis on UK roads. So yeah, as I say, it’s an exciting time. We’re going to see some of these different competing models of self-driving and see which ones prevail.

It seems unnervingly soon because I sort of thought we were still dealing with a lot of the safety issues around driverless cars. I mean, are they safe for pedestrians? And aren’t there various, I suppose you’ll call them ethics issues around if there was a situation where a child ran into the road and it had to swerve onto the pavement to avoid them, what it would do, where are we with all that now?

Yeah, I’d say it’s a work in progress. Right? So as I said, Waymo have hundreds of millions of miles of data now, and they can start to do the kind of apples to apples comparisons of how do their vehicles perform compared to human drivers doing the same types of drive in the same cities.

And they’re showing massive improvements. Their data suggests they have 92 percent fewer serious crashes compared to human drivers, which is amazing. That’s since the seatbelt is one of the most amazing improvements.

One of the challenges is the incidents they do have might look very different to the sorts of incident that a human might have had. They might happen for very strange reasons. And so the media can pick up on those.

And of course, everyone’s got a smartphone, a camera, a video phone, can broadcast the sorts of mistake that they make. And we’re in the world where we’re having to adapt to this new technology and understand, yes, it could potentially have a huge safety benefit, but we have to get used to some of the new issues that emerge with this technology.

What kind of issues are they, Nick?

A recent example is there was a power outage in San Francisco, which meant a lot of the vehicles needed support from those remote assistance, and there weren’t enough remote assistance to provide that support in a timely manner. So many of the vehicles were stopped, and they tried to get to safe locations, but it meant there was significant traffic issues around these vehicles that had stopped. So kind of adapting to all of the infinite variety of eventualities that might occur on public roads is something that the companies are having to get used to.

And when you say they stopped, some of them just stopped in the road, did they?
Yes.

And in which case, why could the passengers not just take over and start driving?

Because you’re not allowed to in those situations. So I mean, you don’t know who the passengers might be. It’s functioning as a taxi service.

So it could be someone who doesn’t have a license. It could be someone who for medical reasons isn’t able to drive. So it purely is a passenger service.

Do you think the future of driverless cars is very much just taxis effectively, or will people own driverless cars?

I think the model is kind of to be determined. It’s an interesting time. And as I say, we’re not really there with the maturity of the technology.

Ultimately, once we can show that it works, it could be applied to trucks, it could be applied to buses, it could be applied to shuttles, it could be applied to cleaning vehicles. So yeah, the model at the moment is robo-taxis, as they’re called, because I think there’s an immediate kind of commercial model that can be applied. But in time, the technology could be applied to cars that are owned, it could be applied to buses, taxis, any manner of vehicles.

When you talk about trucks, if you had a driverless truck, you don’t even need a driver in that, do you? Because you’re not trying to get a person from A to B, you’re not trying to get stuff from A to B. So are we now talking about vehicles without anyone in them at all driving around on the roads?

Potentially, yes. I mean, there are companies doing that. The premise of our discussion today is whether your children would ever need to have a driving license, right?

And one of the founders of those companies called Aurora that is doing driverless trucks is a guy called Chris Amson. And he used to be in charge of Google’s self-driving car project and made the prediction in 2015 that his son, who was 11 at the time, wouldn’t need to get a driving license. Now, as it turns out, it took longer for the technology to reach maturity than he was anticipating and his son did indeed get his driving license.

But yeah, it’s certainly he views it that it is possible to have vehicles that are fully driverless operating, including trucks. There is a shortage of truck drivers, so automation can help to fill those gaps and deliver those goods with support in the same way that we do today.

And what would be able to just pop our kids into a driverless car? I mean, could you effectively put your child in and send them off to grandmas? Or is that ridiculous?

I think it’s a very good question. It’s something I’m not really comfortable with at the moment. I think we’d need to prove the safety of these systems.

I mean, they will have a big red button in, right? A big red button where someone on board can stop the vehicle if they’re feeling uncomfortable, if they feel they need to get out for whatever reason. I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable with someone under the age of 12 being in that vehicle and have potentially been able to press that button.

So yeah, I think there are some kind of ethical issues to resolve around whether young children are safe to put them in such a vehicle. But I know certainly in San Francisco, Waymo are seeing people who are doing that and sending their vehicle to school in Waymo. So it’s not unprecedented.

Yeah, that’s difficult, isn’t it? Because on one hand, you might say, well, it’s the parents’ choice, but on the other hand, if it just doesn’t seem safe, maybe it should be the sort of thing that’s legislated against. It’s interesting as well, you talk about the big red button.

One of my questions was going to be, could a car be hacked and could you effectively be shipped off somewhere you don’t want to go? But it sounds like not if you can press the big red button.

Well, I mean, in the worst case, the hacker might override the big red button. Cybersecurity is something that the companies are taking very, very seriously. And I think the way I look at it is, 20 years ago, you might have felt very uncomfortable managing your finances over a mobile device, but everyone is pretty comfortable now managing banking apps and so on with the smartphone.

And so the level of trust and the level of security needs to be equivalent to that, so that people always feel they can trust these vehicles and that if the worst should happen, it will safely come to a stop and safety will be the priority.

Now, Dr. Nick, for anyone who’s watching rather than listening, they will have noticed that you are sitting in a car this morning because you very kindly stopped to have a chat with us. Now, you’re in a regular car, not a driverless car, but I suppose one of the benefits of driverless cars is things like this. You can use your time in a more efficient way.

Yes, so I am in a car safely parked and with my seatbelt on. But yeah, you’re right. If I was in a driverless car and I wasn’t having to drive myself up the M1, in this case, it would have been possible for us to have this interaction, to complete the interview whilst completing the journey, which would have saved me time, would have saved me stress, and I could have completed my journey more swiftly, more effectively.

And so that is one of the potential benefits, that bringing up of time to be used productively, either relaxing or work or socialising, whatever it might be.

So that’s obviously a major benefit to driverless cars. What are the other benefits and are there any major downsides?

I think in addition to safety and that freeing up of time, one of the key benefits is around accessibility. So people with additional needs, whether through age, disability, medical reasons are unable to drive. Having access to driverless vehicles might mean they can retain greater independent mobility for longer than they otherwise might.

So being able to get to education, being able to get to employment, being able to get to medical appointments might become easier if that could be delivered using a driverless vehicle. Downsides, I think one of the things people are concerned about is jobs. Does it mean that there will be no truck drivers, no taxi drivers in the future?

And my view on that is we have a shortage of people wanting to go into those roles at the moment. So certainly in the short to medium term, the technology will be filling a gap rather than taking away jobs. And I feel that anyone who is in one of those roles today will almost certainly be able to do that for the rest of their working life as the technology comes in and gets rolled out gradually.

So it sounds like we will still have the ability to drive cars if that’s what we choose for a long time. We’re not all going to be forced into these driverless cars. We’re not going to change the whole road networks or any driverless cars can go on them.

Yes, that is my feeling that it will be a choice for the foreseeable future if people want to drive. And certainly lots of people enjoy driving, enjoy classic cars and so on. Now, whether there’s an insurance aspect where we recognize the risk associated with human driving, maybe that’s a different question.

But certainly I think the choice will be there, and the technology will get better and support safer driving and help to reduce that risk.

Okay, I know we’ve touched on this a little bit already, Dr. Nick, but the title of the episode is Will My Kids Ever Need To Learn To Drive?

In the next 10 to 15 years, which I think is the kind of window we’re talking about, I think in cities we will see these services emerging. And that might mean that fewer people feel the need to get a driving license because they can meet their mobility needs by the services that are available. But I suppose, you know, don’t forget Uber is in a lot of places already, which kind of offers something similar already.

So I suppose what we’re thinking about is to what extent will driverless, self-driving vehicles transform the way we can get around. And I think certainly in cities over the next 10 to 15 years, that will happen. It’s not going to happen everywhere all at once.

And it will improve journeys. It will make them safer. But it’s going to be a long time before everyone can get anywhere they want to in a self-driving vehicle.

Nick, that’s brilliant. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, especially very appropriately for stopping your journey halfway through to talk to us. Thank you so much.

And yeah, it’s been brilliant to talk to you.

And if anyone wants to find out a bit more about you, Nick, where’s the best place to find you?

My website, which is http://www.reedmobility.co.uk.

Well, that was really interesting. My main thing that I’ve come away from it with is I’m really glad that we’re not all going to be forced down the route of driverless cars because I had this image that in a decade or a couple of decades time, we were all going to have to drive driverless cars and wouldn’t have a choice. But it sounds like in Dr. Nick’s eyes that although the technology is now coming here, for a long time, at least, we are going to have the choice of whether to embrace it or not.

Yeah, I think you’re right. For me, that’s a disappointing discovery. I was clinging on to this idea.

That’s true. What I found really interesting was that they’re all going to be, he very much sees it as a driverless cars alongside driven cars. He doesn’t see it as this complete Jetson style super highway.

It’s just loads of driverless cars being robotically moving along.

One thing that did occur to me, which is a shame in your book. I have to say though, I think I’ve loved this chat today about driverless cars. I feel like I’ve learned loads.”

It will be really interesting to come back maybe in a few months time. And once Waymo have done some more of this testing and see how it’s all getting on.

Definitely. And hopefully everyone that’s been listening has also enjoyed the chat. If you have, we’d love a review.

It really helps boost the podcast up and hopefully it will help other parents find it as well. So thank you so much and we’ll see you next week.
See you next week.