Solutions Please

Well... another day of Google Alerts and  other  media sources filling the information superhighway with "the ugly realities" of self-driving or autonomos vehicles.  Today's version is that a study  has shown that  driverless  vehicles(especially one owner/one passenger vehicles would likely add to the traffic congestion in a major city.. Washington D.C.

Well the trouble with there great majority  of these  reports is they  sell the potential  trouble far stronger and first in the news story.    The headline could read "The Value of Multi-Owner Low  Emission Vehicles  is highlighted by another  study.  Or it could read.  Innovative higher ed programs fusing transportation safety and urban planning  will provide  great job opportunities well into the future.     No we conjure up a horrific  image of robotic traffic jams crawling through  metro areas theater  already crowded and a bit daunting to  unfamiliar drivers.

So if I may be so bold as to suggest that some Higher ed. institutions  start offering a degree in this combination  of technology and planning and thus prepare  people to teach these classes and advise our current  cities. Can we get this cranked up  like  yesterday?  This fall is not too soon  for this type of academic training to  get launched and it is not  too much to ask from the industry and  government  to fully back these efforts perhaps offering scholarships and incentives galore.

Yes  and being a disabilities  advocate  I would that our State/Federal system start such programs if the  conventional system  does not....or maybe even if it does.  These types of jobs are going to exist very soon and  having qualified  consumers/clients ready to fill  the demand would be a very wise business move.

The good thing about  the news  today is that the  realities are being described fairly  clearly and are based on the "current thinking" in our culture.  Training then can redesigned to change  that thinking to a  more efficient traffic and mobility  model as long as providing  solutions to the difficulties as mobility evolves over the next quarter century.    I only would say that there is some urgency as the technology is already here.  The potential is ready for the unlocking... we  just have to apply the intelligence capacity in training and  design we have to  the current circumstances and to the process of building more effective  mobility  environments  in the near future.  So... change the headlines to solutions rather than problems and let's get the solution-based efforts underway.