Before COVID-19 took center stage, popular news rang with impending promises of autonomous vehicles. It seemed they would benefit everyone, poised to help businesspeople work en route to the office, decrease traffic and emissions with less time in transit for the average passenger, and provide more equal, if not equitable, access to transportation. The presence of COVID-19 is accelerating what was likely to be a more protracted process of emergence. Necessary measures like delivering supplies or transporting test samples are becoming dependent on immediate use of autonomous vehicles, enabled by unusually fast-paced legislation. But the pace of these changes, through…
John Lunsford
PhD Candidate at Cornell Communication. I study the societal work of emerging technology and the complexity of transitioning from one way of doing to another.
