Cities are attracting more people and more people to move there, but traffic isn’t one of its best selling points. Streets are crowded — and depending on where you are in the world, they’re full of some combination of cars, buses, bicycles, motos, tuktuks, streetcars, and even animals. More than half of the world’s population lives in cities, according to the United Nations, and that number is only rising.

With this growth comes a myriad of consequences like lost time and pollution, but one of the more urgent issues has been accidents leading to injury and loss of life. For some policymakers and advocates, the solution to congestion and safety is public transportation. But others see humans as the problem, especially where vehicles are concerned. Why not give the driver seat over to the car?

While self-driving, or autonomous, cars have long been the stuff of visionaries and futuristic cartoons, in reality they are developing at lightning speed. The general argument is as follows: Human drivers are distracted, unreliable, and prone to making poor decisions. In comes the “smart” car, which can maintain safe following distances and communicate with other vehicles and infrastructure, preventing accidents and increasing commuter efficiency.

If you look at the news, you’ll see some key players emerge: Google, Tesla, Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, MIT, Stanford, and more recently, Uber. They are test-driving cars not just on experimentation tracks, but in our very streets. Self-driving cars have even been making longer trips, across the US and even from Italy to China.

What is your stance? Would you want a car that could not only drive for you, but also act as a device to communicate with the outside world? Does this kind of robotic mobility have the potential to increase our quality of life and the quality of a good community? How would they change our roads, our buildings, the very layout of our cities?

Here we have collected some reading material to spark your curiosity and continue the conversation:

// Should humans be allowed to drive? //

_ The debate is on. TIME Magazine published a well-written article that gives a great overview of the self-driving car discussion:

“Why You Shouldn’t be Allowed to Drive” (February 2016, TIME; currently subscriber only)

_ Architectural Record also looks at the topic, but from an urban and architectural standpoint:

“The Road Ahead: Driverless Vehicles, Cities and Architecture” (September 2016, Architectural Record)

_ Are you a data geek? Here are a couple studies on just what people are doing while behind the wheel:

“Evidence Humans Shouldn’t Drive” (May 2015, WIRED)

 

// Experimenting with self-driving vehicles //

_ Perhaps an ideal place to start with autonomous driving is with industry and the trucking business:

“Why Self-Driving Trucks May Be the Next Big Thing on the Road” (September 2016, TIME)

_ Ride-sharing company Uber launches self-driving taxis in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – but riders are putting their lives on the line:

“Uber’s Self-Driving Car Passengers were Signing Their Lives Away” (September 2016, Gizmodo)

_ Researchers are looking not just at the “smart car,” but at the larger scale of the “smart city”

“Making Cities Smarter” (June 2016, MIT News)

_ A humorous reflection on one lucky person’s ride in a Google self-driving car:

“6 Things I Learned from Riding in a Google Self-Driving Car” (The Oatmeal)