AV is coming very fast now. It is so competive. Competition drives the pace in 2018

Autonomous Vehicles (AV) are the biggest disruptor to come along, ever.  Just think about it.  It will change so many industries.  It will change Traffic Engineering, and Transportation Planning, I can see that, and so I am looking at all of our technology and investment in how we see traffic, and it will all come undone. It will all become in years, irrelevant.  When humans are taken out of the equation for driving, everything changes. There is no more speed limit, for instance.  No more 85th percentile thinking. No more radar studies. No more accident history. No more guard rails, or pavement markings or signs as we now know them. No more need for signals, that's for humans too. What we will have are SYSTEMS, but these systems need to be developed with humans in mind, and transportation connectivity.  A whole new custom system for all cities, in all states and provinces, in every single country throughout the world. This is a huge industry in the making. It is not the end. It is a disruption, and we all need to adapt.  Taxi drivers, bus drivers, truck drivers will very soon be a thing of the past.  Schools will be different.  Cars will be different, will be a service industry.  Safety and security of these new systems need to be worked out. We would not send our kids on buses where we knew they might be kidnapped.  We would not want a woman to be alone in a AV POD with a group of menacing men, on a long ride to somewhere. We need to think all this through, in how to make this safe and harmonious.  There is a LOT more to think about and plan for, when we are talking about society.  Its not just about getting from point A to point B.  Soccer moms will no longer be driving their kids to the games, but maybe that introduces new problems.  Will the kids behave on the way? Will they get lost or miss their stop?  Who will help them in an emergency? Will the parents just ride with their children in an AV POD, or will they have their own AV POD?  There are thousands of questions on HOW it will roll out.

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Ford's Executive Chairman Bill Ford says Not so Fast...

You need more than just AV tech on the road, you also need smart cities... trust and ethics, job displacement, etc.
PRISM Engineering is also looking at the big picture from an Infrastructure Engineering and Transportation Planning standpoint, and understands the following:

1) In order for AV to be effective and yield safety results (VisionAV0) for cars, bikes, and peds, you need a new roadway INFRASTRUCTURE, a smart one, and that also separates the modes of travel.

2) No longer is it safe to mix pedestrians, bikes, and cars / trucks in the same real estate on the roads, without barriers or grade separations. Our accident rates and data prove this.  They are going up in recent years despite new traffic controls, and are currently unacceptable.  40K fatalities each year in the USA is a terrible statistic, unacceptable, and status quo is no longer acceptable especially when we CAN find a solution(s). 
3) New solutions are required. It will require planning and engineering coordination at all levels of government... civil engineering and transportation planning to bring this together in a meaningful and effective way.  While I don't necessarily agree with Bill Ford's assessment that this will take lots of time, it doesn't have to...because as a Traffic Engineer who's main goal is the safe movement of people, I want to see safety first, capacity and throughput second.  We have a huge safety problem NOW.  We need to take action for safety's sake, use the latest technology, not put lipstick on a pig, but redesign and retool our infrastructure in smart ways... and AV can help and is in fact, the answer to our safety problem.

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Daimler Mercedes Benz is one of the leaders in AV.  Thinking away ahead, and planning, implementing. Thinking society too.

Mercedes SMART car (AV) https://electrek.co/2017/08/30/mercedes-daimler-unveils-new-all-electric-autonomous-smart-prototype/

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"Who's afraid of defining the future?" asks Wilko Stark, the man tasked with pulling Daimler and its flagship brand, Mercedes-Benz, into the future.

from the article:
"Part of Daimler's future plans include an onslaught of 10 new electric models by 2022, and a fair bit of autonomy to with them.

Wilko Stark, in charge of this at Daimler says "We have a clear rollout plan in which kind of cities we’re going to enter. First of all, for self-driving cars, the weather conditions should be pretty good. It’s probably more in the South. And we have to build up a good relationship with the city; that’s quite important. They are all, everywhere, interested in self-driving cars. Everybody is knocking on our door, but they are of course looking for electric vehicles. And you have to build up a different approach from Lyft or especially Uber, because we want to define and develop a future together with the cities. In the next decade we will begin to see self-driving cars in major cities in Europe and the US."

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GM is Launching Robocars with NO STEERING WHEELS or PEDALS next year in 2019.

In case anyone is wondering how fast this is coming...  GM is also in the running.  But there many others.  In fact, ALL car companies are in on the action and are attempting to define how this is all going to play out, because their very existence depends on it.  And in their defense, they own it, they are in the driver's seat. They have the vehicle technology which is so advanced, that companies like Apple and Google are literally playing catch up. While Google and Apple think about and work on making software that controls some robotics in the car, the real tech is in the engine,

from the WIRED article:
"After more than a century making vehicles for humans to drive, General Motors has ripped the heart out of its latest ride, and is now holding the grisly spectacle up for all the world to see: A car with no steering wheel. And it plans to put a fleet of these newfangled things to work in a taxi-like service, somewhere in the US, next year.
And no, this robo-chariot, a modified all-electric Chevrolet Bolt, doesn't have pedals either. This is GM's truly driverless debut, a car that will have to handle the world on its own. No matter what happens, you, dear human passenger, cannot help it now.
Terrifying? Maybe. But it's also a major step in GM’s aggressive bid to maintain its big dog status as the auto industry evolves away from individual ownership and flesh-and-blood drivers. And it’s just the beginning for the Detroit stalwart. “We’ve put together four generations of autonomous vehicles over the course of 18 months,” says Dan Ammann, GM’s president. “You can safely assume that the fourth generation won’t be the last.”
While Waymo, Uber, and others in this..."   (read more at WIRED.COM)

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