Abstract
The UK Government has endorsed the case for autonomous vehicle (AV) technology and its economic benefits in its industrial strategies since 2013. In late 2016 the Science and Technology Committee in the House of Lords (the legislature’s upper chamber) conducted an Inquiry into the policy. We conduct a content analysis of the text corpus of the Inquiry. Drawing from theories of sociotechnical change we explore how it contributes to building a vision of a future AV world embedded in a national economic and technological project. The technology is framed as a solution to societal grand challenges and the Inquiry corpus is dominated by actors committed to the project. Alternative visions, including sceptical interpretations, are present in the corpus, but rare, reflecting the selection process for contributions to the Inquiry. Predominantly, the corpus represents the public as deficient: dangerous drivers, unaware of promised benefits and unduly anxious about the unfamiliar. Their views are marginal in this Parliamentary Inquiry’s findings. AV technology is one of several possible means to pursue wider mobility policy goals of greater safety, affordability, access and sustainability. Our analysis suggests that the pursuit of an AV future risks becoming a goal in itself instead of a means to these broader societal goals.
Highlights
Introducing new technologies such as autonomous vehicles (AVs)1 has social impact and since the 1990s there have been growing calls for innovation to be democratised within the field of science and technology studies (Ely et al, 2014; Stilgoe et al, 2014)
The Inquiry materials seem to reinforce the expectations or imaginary of AV technology projected by the UK Government, as a response to the ‘grand challenge’ of future mobility
We have shown how the Inquiry material is dominated by voices committed to the building of an AV future (RQ1), endorsing this future as an urgent national project and addressing questions of how to achieve this future (RQ2a)
Summary
Introducing new technologies such as autonomous vehicles (AVs) has social impact and since the 1990s there have been growing calls for innovation to be democratised within the field of science and technology studies (Ely et al, 2014; Stilgoe et al, 2014). Despite public doubts (e.g. European Commission, 2015, 2020; Tennant et al, 2019) governments have expressed strong commitment to roll out AV technology and hailed its transformative potential (e.g. Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles, 2016; U.S Department of Transportation, 2016). The Government’s accompanying press release was headlined ‘UK to lead development of driverless car technology’ and announced a ‘green light’ for testing of driverless technology on UK Roads (Department for Business Skills and Innovation, and Department for Transport, 2015). A code of practice followed for testing AVs (Department for Transport, 2015a) and by late 2017 the technology had become a keen plank of the mobility strategy that comprised the response to one of four ‘grand challenges’ within the Government’s overall industrial strategy and modernising vision (HM Government, 2017). Governments in other countries have progressed similar plans to enable the technology (Hottentot et al, 2015)
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