Behind the Wheel in the Driverless City
Autonomous Vehicle Mobilities and Regulatory Challenges
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Abstract
As the hype cycles surrounding autonomous vehicles (AVs) continue to oscillate, it appears that the mobilities they entail are set to become more than a fleeting feature of our socio-spatial landscapes. How to understand these emerging mobilities, the range of issues they generate, and the regulatory approaches they demand? This article centers on a single incident that took place on October 2, 2023, in San Francisco, where a Cruise vehicle pinned a woman and dragged her several feet after she had been struck by a human-driven car. Examining the key facts of the case and tracing its aftermath illustrates some of the principal challenges posed by AV mobilities as well as possibilities for regulating them. The text offers four interlinked analytics as future avenues of research and policymaking surrounding autonomous mobilities: (1) rhetorical trickery, (2) new kinds of mistakes, (3) informational asymmetries, and (4) regulatory ambiguities.
Contributor Notes
Luis Felipe Alvarez Leon is Associate Professor of Geography at Dartmouth College. His work focuses on the political economy of geospatial data, media, and technologies. Among other projects, he is currently researching the geographies of electric and autonomous vehicles, and the changing political economy of the new satellite ecosystem. He is the author of The Map in the Machine: Charting the Spatial Architecture of Digital Capitalism (University of California Press, 2024). Email: Luis.F.Alvarez.Leon@dartmouth.edu