Page 18 - Inventing Tomorrow

5
By the Numbers
$713
The yearly cost to each driver stuck in congested tra c.
David Levinson: Access for all
“One day, soon-ish, you will awake, give a voice command to a car, and never again touch a steering wheel, gears, accelerator or brakes. ...You
will step into your car, tell it where to go, and not think about traf c. The window in front of you will be a heads up display giving you information and entertainment, while allowing you to see the road coming up.”
If you love to drive, you might
nd this excerpt from “The End of Traf c and the Future of Transport” unsettling. If you love your life, it’s hopeful. But the book’s co-author, David Levinson, believes a world of autonomous vehicles is inevitable— and he’s looking forward to it.
“If you live in a city, you’ll be able
to summon a car in a few minutes, so you won’t need to own one,” said Levinson. “Single-passenger cars can be skinnier, lanes can shrink, and
4.3
seconds
million
The average time your eyes are o the road while texting. When traveling at 55 mph, that’s enough time to cover the length of a football eld blindfolded.
block area near the Vision Loss Resources centers in Minneapolis or St. Paul. Eventually, the system will incorporate bus stops and work zones using a Bluetooth low energy module.
It may also expand to subways. Recently, Liao presented the system to the New York City DOT and they expressed serious interest. “They’re watching the progress in Minneapolis to make their decision,” he said.
Beyond his research and testing, Liao learns a lot from casual conversations. Every other Monday, he volunteers
as part of a walking group for Vision Loss Resources clients. “We walk around in the mall and the clients discuss what’s happening in their lives,” he said. “Through this process, I see the need, and I’ve developed a love for the work.”
The number of visually impaired Americans who could bene t from a pedestrian app.
cars will be able to follow each other more closely. And we won’t consider time spent driving as onerous as we do today, since we can do work in motion.”
While robots are driving on the streets today, it will be a few decades before they replace all vehicles, and there
are transportation problems that
need attention now. So when he isn’t writing about the future, Levinson is informing decisions on how to solve today’s issues.
One of those issues is accessibility, or the ease of reaching our most valued destinations.
“Traditional transportation perfor- mance measures have looked at the speed of the network, but on its own, that doesn’t tell us very much,” said Levinson. “We always use the example of Manhattan, Kansas, versus Manhat- tan, New York. Obviously the network
Visit z.umn.edu/liao to view a one-minute video about Chen-Fu Liao's research.
18 INVENTING TOMORROW