Nick Hewer: Hello and welcome to the very first episode of Tomorrow. A podcast brought to you today with me, Nick Hewer and Allianz. Our job in this series is to explore the global trends that will affect and shape businesses and whole industries in the years and decades to come. The tasks are to establish exactly how such trends will influence businesses, identify the risks that come hand in hand and find out how all of us can either mitigate those risks or capitalise on the opportunities they present. In each episode we'll focus on a particular trend and speak to the experts who are leading the way in considering its implications. For this first episode our subject is the future of motoring and we're diving into the world of autonomous vehicles.
Whilst self driving cars may seem like something from science fiction they could be in circulation in as little as three years' time. That's the ambition of the UK government which is investing heavily in research and development to make the UK a world leader in this technology.
Greg Clarke the Business and Energy Secretary recently said that low carbon and self driving vehicles are the future and this revolution has the potential to be worth £52 billion to our economy by 2035. The opportunity to be at the fore front of this change is one we cannot afford to miss.
Car makers like Jaguar Land Rover have already been carrying out trials on the UK's roads and manufacturers including Toyota, Nissan, BMW and Ford have also ambitious timelines to get fully autonomous vehicles on the roads by 2020 or 2021.
So what will our towns and cities look like in the next few decades and what are the risks and benefits these vehicles could bring?
To discuss this fascinating subject are three of the UK's leading experts, we've got Glen Clarke, he's Head of Transformational Propositions at Allianz UK, how are you Glen?
Glen Clarke: Very well, very well, good morning.
Nick: And we're joined Glen by Tim Armitage, he's the Project Director at UK Autodrive, a consortium backed by the UK government that is trialling the use of connected and self driving vehicles and finally we've got Matt Hervey, he's Director of Intellectual Property at Gowling WLG, a law firm working on the UK autodrive project with a number of research papers in the paper, welcome to you Matt.
Matt Hervey: Thank you.
Nick: Now let's start with you Glen. What do we mean by driverless cars and how many sort of levels are there?
Glen: I think it's generally accepted now that we talk about five levels of autonomy and they range from what we've seen in cars over the last few years where there's levels of assistance that are supporting your driving at kind of the first couple of levels whether it be in aspects of braking or so on and so forth, so quite a lot of people have got autonomous emergency braking for example which can then take over braking if it feels that there is a forthcoming incident that you're not reacting to quick enough. I think where it's starting to get to now is that some cars on the road are now at a what we would call level three autonomy, and what that describes is circumstances where the primary driving controls of braking, accelerating and steering are controlled by vehicle in certain circumstances and where the driver is compelled to be fully attentive and able to take control of the vehicle at any time so there's cars on the road that can drive down motorways pretty much on their own now to a certain degree, but you are required to pay attention. I think where it gets interesting and what people's perception of what autonomous vehicles are is when we get to level four where you would be able to get full trips end to end in fully autonomous mode where the driver would be able to actually not take part in the driving experience at all, not be compelled to be monitoring that environment but there might be, that might be only under certain conditions in a level four vehicle so maybe in an urban area but not on a country road for example, and then I think the ultimate end game is then level five which is a fully autonomous vehicle where you could expect there to be actually driving controls in the car and the car is picking you up and taking you to a destination fully autonomously and there's no requirement on you to be able to drive at all.
Nick: So you and the passengers could be having a game of poker in the back as it were?
Glen: Exactly, yes.
Nick: And tell me this, it's inevitable now, now going back, we're on the road.
Glen: I think so, I think this is definitely the time where science fiction has become science fact and so I think if I think of the times when I first started considering the subject of autonomous vehicles it seemed like it was maybe in 2030 then a few years later more 2025 and now we might be talking something as early as 2021, so that date is only coming forward.
Nick: Technically it's still an open question. Everyone is working on it, everyone is investing vast amounts in it but no ones for sure that level five is technically possible?
Glen: I think Google is always a magnitude away from the levels of error it needs to achieve.
I think this is a complexity isn't it?
[unclear 05:19.4] technically possible.
It depends on the environment.
[unclear 05:25.6]
But I think that's the key to level five, level five is autonomy in any environment. Level four is autonomy in …
Certain environments.
… in certain environments.
Glen: I think the key thing here is that no one entity or Government or, can answer that question because it's actually a collaboration of a whole source, all sorts of different inputs whether it be infrastructure or telecommunications, road infrastructure, motor manufacturers, technology, artificial intelligence, legislative environments, a whole load of stuff has to be developed to make that a reality.
Nick: So we're moving into an uncertain period right, and an uncertain period of course poses all sorts of problems for you in the insurance industry and also for you in the legal profession too.
Matt: Yeah, it's very …
Nick: Difficult times.
Matt: And I'll give you an example of how well the law adapts to technology and this is from my specialist bill of IP. We all started buying video recorders and recording broadcast TV, that was technically copyright infringement for 13 years before they managed to change the law, so, the law doesn't tend to catch up with technology that well, but …
The law [unclear 06:31.0]
Matt: The UK government here in this field is so keen that they are, they're supposed to be having a rolling programme of legislative changes just in time, but, and of the reasons it's rolling is because they don't know exactly which way the technology will go.
Glen: The key part for me is, you know, for all entities that are involved in this process is that you have to become learning organisations and so that means that you are going to have to work out how you're going to spend your time and effort in collaborative kind of modes of working to really understand what you need to develop as a business to be able to both lead and support the emergence of this kind of new technology and it's going to be, it's going to be fast, fast evolving, you know, I think there is, I think there is a risk if you think that you can sit back and look from afar and let everyone else sort it out, there is a need to be involved on the inside and starting to shape how that future may look.
Tim Armitage: And I think there needs to be an acceptance that things are changing, sort of, from an automotive industry point of view, there isn't a traditional automotive supplier that isn't forming an alliance with a lift chair company or something like that.
Nick: What impact will it have on business do you think?
Glen: I think the, there's a couple of aspects of this, I think in broad terms there is the aspect of time and so the impact from productivity that could be regained by people being able to work when they're in a vehicle, there's obviously impacts on all sorts of industries related to the transport of people and goods that would be dramatic and I think there is a number of different sectors that could be affected by this and obviously motor manufacturers and insurers would be right in there in terms of how that would, these changes would affect their business going forward. The other aspect of that is productivity as well, if you think about commuting being a significant part of people's daily life, we may not be very long away from when companies will pay for your transport to and from work on the prospect that you'll be able to work efficiently and effectively as you would in an office environment to be able to increase productivity as well.
Matt: We need a survey as part of the UK autodrive of how people will spend their time in an autonomous vehicle and the overwhelming response was look out the window.
[laughter]
And that's right.
Nick: So, so Matt, tell us about the changes, the urban environment that you [unclear 08:58.3].
Matt: Oh, well we've been working on this with Transport for London and the Museum of Transport on our thought leadership programme and the dream is certainly that in an urban environment you get rid of privately owned cars, you'd have no cars parked on the streets bringing up space, you'd have a mixture of vehicle types, some small, maybe a sort of single person carrying vehicle, so you'd have, the dream is far less congestion, you'd have smooth and seamless multimodal transport with a healthy mix of walking and cycling to ensure people don't turn into blobs, but what we don't know is if we can actually reach a transition in any meaningful way with the sort of challenges of infrastructure that that would require to enable, and also if we have dramatically lowered mobility costs and there are predictions of 18 pence a mile, the induced demand may be such that so many people want to use ride hailing when they aren't currently using it that congesting will be worse than ever.
Nick: Extraordinary. It's breath taking. Tim, what sort of vehicles technology are already out there being used, not just here but, you know, across the world?
Tim: Well I think the earliest forms of vehicle automation could be found in some of the big mineral mines, out in Australia, in South Africa where big dumper trucks for example have been autonomous for a while, there is a lot of vehicle autonomy in port operations, container handling vehicles, but I think certainly in the UK and probably one of the first types of autonomous vehicles were the autonomous pods which run between Terminal 5 and the business parking at Heathrow which are autonomous within their own infrastructure and they've been operating quite successfully for about four years now and people who use them love them. These technologies are coming more and more into play with things like autonomous emergency braking which, and there's two interesting things around that, one it's mandatory for heavy goods vehicles in Europe now to be fitted with autonomous emergency braking because it's such a great safety feature so no longer should it be possible for a truck that's fitted with this to drive into the back of another truck and that's gonna save lives, you know, it's a great thing.
Nick: I know about this because I was on the M1 not that long ago, too close to somebody who braked and my car took over.
Tim: Yes.
Nick: Well it sort of increased my braking power.
Tim: Yes, yeah absolutely.
Nick: I was very grateful to it.
Tim: And within, yeah within new car developments there's an industry independent assessment of cars safety, it's called Euro NCAP, that's a new car assessment programme and to have the maximum rating under Euro NCAP which is the five star you now need to have autonomous emergency braking as part of your car's systems.
Nick: OK. Now, but it's happening, testing's well under way.
Tim: It's out there yeah.
Nick: So, UK Autodrive, give us a minute on that.
Tim: OK, UK Autodrive it was one of three programmes that are partly sponsored by government, partly funded by industry, which really kicked off the big impetus of these test and development programmes in the UK and Autodrive I can quite quickly describe as having three parts; we have a passenger car programme where we're working collaboratively with manufacturers who are based in the UK; we have a cities programme where the cities, we're based in Coventy and Milton Keynes for most of our work and the cities are learning what they need to do to enable connected and autonomous vehicles to operate effectively in their city, but also the cities are learning what the new technology might do for them in terms of enabling some of the mobility aspects that they're looking for for the future and then we have our last mile pod type vehicle, a bit like the Heathrow pods again but we're taking them out of their controlled infrastructure and letting them loose in the city.
Nick: Yes, Milton Keynes? I use that station, I'm going to be bullied by lots of autonomous vehicles before long then.
Tim: There's a chance.
Nick: You could have 40 of them running around the place.
Tim: That's the plan.
Matt: The bullying is likely to be the other way round.
[laughter]
Matt: This is a real issue, so the issue is that if a car, an autonomous vehicle has to stop, will people ever let it pull out of a junction, will they deliberately cut them up because they know they'll stop.
Nick: We were joshing around earlier on about people in San Francisco, people hurling rocks at them and bullying them and crashing into them.
Yeah.
Nick: It's a very interesting sort of psychological issue isn't it?
Matt: Well and driving behaviour is different in every country and so one of the technical challenges of autonomous vehicles is to train them to know how you behave in different cities, in different countries, so for example in London most junctions you won't get out unless you start to edge forward or pull out and they'll have to actually learn to behave to give the right signals to other road users.
Tim: The urban realm is both very complex but very changeable, so I think, you know, having done several laps of the same routes over different days in Coventry we didn't come across the same situation more than once. In terms of predictability of the road users in terms of vehicles are quite predictable but certainly pedestrians and cyclists are not.
Nick: Matt, this is more your area I think isn't it, because it's a minefield for lawsuits, people getting run over, people ….
[laughter]
Nick: You tell us.
Matt: Yeah yeah, well, the great hope and one of the reasons the UK government are so squarely behind this technology as well as trying to make sure it's part of our economy and we're exporting it rather than importing it, is the great promise that these cars will be significantly safer and the idea is you have an autonomous vehicle which never gets tired, never gets drunk, never gets distracted, can look a distance of maybe two football fields using radar in two or maybe even more directions at once, so the hope is they will be superior to us in every way when it comes to driving and therefore there'll be fewer accidents and actually less moments of liability. But from a legal perspective and I think insurance is a big issue here, we are moving potentially from a position where there are owner drivers of every vehicle on the road, to mobility as a service where there may not even be a steering wheel in the car, there won't be a driver, there won't be an owner in the vehicle and so when something goes wrong we're now in the realms of product liability and so insurance will have to adapt to this new model when that comes in and the idea is that the insurers will probably be still required so that there is rapid compensation when people are injured and this is critical to public acceptance of a technology but behind the scenes a very complex series of product liability trials may take place to establish what the law will be in this area.
Nick: So Matt we've already had a number of fatalities now, how should society, how should the manufacturers react to this now?
Matt: Well the most recent was the very tragic accident involving an Uber self driving vehicle which had a test operator inside the car but the car hit a pedestrian, I think wheeling a bicycle across the road and it is just awful to watch the video and Uber has quite rightly suspended its testing until it figures out what is going on. But we have to remember as we've already discussed, the promise here is that ultimately self driving cars are expected to be safer than human drivers and the background here is in 2016 in the US there were 40,000 road fatalities and 1,250,000 globally and so I really think that governments and manufacturers need to push on as safely as possible in order to reach those greater benefits of an over all fallen deaths ultimately and a comparison can be drawn with the development of the railways. When the railways were put in hundreds of workers died building these railways and they had the fact and subsidies from governments in order to make this new technology a reality.
Nick: And indeed when the first cars appeared on the road they were often preceded by a man with a red flag and then we had the cats eyes and then we had the speed limits and all the rest of it, nonetheless, as you say in the US 40,000 deaths.
Matt: Yeah in one year, yeah.
Nick: And the whole point of autonomous vehicles is to make it, the roads so much safer.
Matt: Exactly.
Nick: Now Glen, you're the insurance man, what does it mean to you and Allianz?
Glen: Well I think the, Allianz has got a wide ranging role to play in this as a global business we are certainly collaborating between different operating entities to face the challenge of what this brings and the opportunities that are afforded, we're working across this in many different ways whether that be looking at it from a kind of technical research perspective, through things like the Allianz Zentrum für Technik where we are testing these technologies, we have deep relationships with motor manufacturers, there are obviously some large effects on what the balance of fleet and personal Allianz business might look like in the future, what the balance of risks might look like in the future, the emergence of cyber and the emergence of product liability type aspects and so on and so forth and so there is a wide ranging number of topics that the company is actively investigating and supporting and we're very much looking forward to taking on that challenge and leading the way in that regard. And I think the direction of travel is that the kind of role of the primary insurer looks to be maintained and so the owner of that vehicle involved in a crash would then be making a claim very similar to what they do now and as we've said the complexity will then come around then determining the actual fault within the accident and whether that then would be something that would require subrogation from the manufacturer or the component supplier or whatever it may be, and so I think the key part around how the insurance model needs to develop is that we have the customer at the heart of it and so the affected parties have their issues resolved quickly and efficiently and then it's going to be the duty of the insurers and the manufacturers to make sure that we come up with a process that then is able to, I think behind the scenes as you say, recover and rectify the situation accordingly and this is something, I think the role of the primary insurer being maintained is obviously good news from an insurance industry, the complexity around then being able to work out whether the autonomous state or the way that the vehicle operated was at fault, then becomes more complicated because then it becomes about data, becomes about data access and that's one grey area that still hasn't been resolved really which is how does an insurer get fair and efficient access to the data in order to be able to ascertain what the circumstances of the accident were.
Tim: And there will be a lot of data, I mean from even from the last mile vehicles that we're talking about running in Milton Keynes we think we'll generate about a terabyte of data every day, so you know, in the event of an accident that information, we'll know exactly what happened.
Exactly.
Tim: But the issue yet to be resolved is who's going to have access to that data.
Matt: Well yes, it's even more complicated. One, there's all sort of legal challenges should this be disclosed, is it proportionate and the like if you've got terabytes of data to process, but the other thing is fundamentally we're moving from a system which has been written by a person and can be followed logically to an algorithm which has been developed by a machine and may have thousands of waiting, it's just a pile of numbers as some people describe it. And whether you can meaningfully audit what happened and figure out what went wrong is an open question.
Glen: And obviously this will be as a third, often a third party involved in an accident that may or may not be autonomous itself and so in that transitional phase there is the complexities of the different parties involved in the accident and then trying to get the right version of events which could be a combination of normal practice in terms of a human's view of what happened verses the data provided by one of the vehicles in the circumstance.
Nick: Let me tell you, I was the victim of a hit and run which wrote my car off, oh that I had a camera on the dashboard, now I have. Not only one that looks forward but looks back, in the hope that actually the next time somebody you know, decides to crash into me at least I'll have some evidence, but these vehicles, the autonomous vehicles will be absolutely packed with data, surely?
Matt: And sensors, yes absolutely.
Nick: Isn't that surely a great thing from your point of view because you should be able?
Glen: Absolutely.
Nick: Get an absolute handle on what happened.
Glen: Ultimately the vision would be that you would be able to settle claims in a more efficient way than you can now because we're not talking about humans' different versions of events and the kind of arguments that go on and it becomes something that's data driven and perhaps algorithmically processed to determine faults and so the prospect is that eventually that would be the case but I think there is quite a lot of work that needs to be done between now and then to get all parties involved in understanding how that process works and making sure it's fair and equitable.
Nick: And getting the data, is that a question for legislation?
Interesting.
Glen: I think so, I mean I think that's something that certainly Allianz has been looking at from a kind of lobbying perspective for some time, it's just exactly what the data provision will be and certainly there would be anxiousness if there was a perception that the motor manufacturers became the guardians of the data and were in control of its release, that would compromise the ability to deliver an efficient claims process I think.
Nick: And Matt, let's look forward say ten years, how do you reckon insurance is going to be working, how different will it be in ten years' time?
Matt: Well I think Glen is absolutely right that for the next step the plan from our government under the Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill which is in draft at the moment is just to carry on business as usual really, the insurance is focused on an owner driver but what Ford is saying, for example, is by 2021 they literally want to have fleets of cars without steering wheels on the roads, at which point there isn't a driver and we will in fact have to have a different business model and I think as we discussed this is going to be ultimately behind the scenes of product liability issue and speed of compensation will be critical, but insurance isn't necessarily the only model, so the EU parliament has looked at robotics generally and has proposed a tax on the use of robotics and a car would be a robot in this scenario, to create a central compensation fund to compensate people when harm is done by a machine, and in a more sci-fi way they're even talking about in the fullness of time the machines themselves having some degree of rights and responsbilities.
Nick: Oh really?
Matt: Oh really.
Nick: Now let me throw this in, cyber security, everybody's terrified, to what extent is it terrifying you guys?
Matt: Quite a lot I think is the short answer, the longer answer is it's already an issue for vehicles because increasingly vehicles are now connected to the internet in order to stream content, navigation and the like and certainly in 2015 Chrysler had to recall 1.4 million jeeps because it had been proven that they could be hacked remotely, even the steering and braking systems, so this is already an issue and these are cars which have 100 million lines of code as we speak, much of it a mix of legacy code and new code which would be incredibly hard to unpick now, but autonomous vehicles add all new layers of issues, so first of all they rely on sensors, they're also supposed to rely on incoming data about the location and speed of other vehicles, about infrastructure and the like, so even if somehow miraculously you could make your code tamper proof you still have the issue that your sensors can be fooled and fooled in ways that no human will spot because the AV will be sensitive, it will be interpreting the world in ways we don't quite understand, it can be fooled in ways we can't predict and also if you can spoof GPS data and the like you can trick a car into thinking it's somewhere it isn't and unlike a mere connected vehicle which at the moment you can swerve off the road if you really want because it knows how to drive, you can programme it or hack it to steal itself, to kidnap someone or to kill someone.
Tim: Yeah, I mean I think, when in the development of these systems what we will see and are seeing already are some quite independent systems within the vehicle and certainly some of the vehicles that we're dealing with at Autodrive have as much code in the vehicle trying to validate what the vehicle is doing under the control of its autonomous system as there is in the autonomous system as well, so there's more than one system in the vehicle and effectively one of those systems is vigilant within the vehicle saying well is this a sensible thing for the vehicle to be doing and if that isn't the case then the systems will close down, basically.
Nick: How concerned are you then back at Allianz?
Glen: I think this is obviously a primary area of concern in terms of a new and emerging risk that's connected to the development of these vehicles and so insofar that we have to develop our understanding as a business of what the scale and reach of this and what the consequences and how to react when a car has been comprised, and so I think this is very much a learning process and you know for an insurer that tends to spend a lot of time looking at the past to predict the future, you know, in terms of how traditional models will work, well then we're gonna have to start looking at ways of adapting our knowledge to accommodate new and emerging risks that became, that will develop very quickly over time, you know, as we've said, there are simply circumstances that we cannot foresee right now and because this is new, because this is emerging, because it is connected, because there are a variety of different parties involved, I think we're only at the very early stages really of being able to understand what those real cyber risks are and what the consequences will be.
Tim: And they will change over time …
Glen: Yeah.
Tim: … as the threat changes and those threats are not just to the world of connected and autonomous cars but it's to utilities and everything else in the world, you know, we're becoming very reliant on systems.
Glen: Yeah and I think that's the key point, and it was something you mentioned earlier Matt around this, that you know, this has already been in play for some time in terms of the, as cars have become less mechanical and more electronic we've already seen for example issues around security of vehicles being compromised and so you only have to go on YouTube and you can see examples of sophisticated criminals using technology to be able to steal a car as opposed to a crowbar and, you know, jimmying a door open, you know this is moving into a different realm.
Nick: I'm sure.
Let's get down to a sort of rather mundane level, what happens when things go wrong? Glen, a breakdown, what happens? Where are you then?
Glen: Yeah, I mean obviously as Allianz provides assistance services as part of our offering now and so certainly as an insurer understanding what happens when things go wrong is obviously a primary concern of ours and so obviously the ability to assure the safety and security of the passengers is paramount as well as then being able to recover the vehicle if it does become compromised and certainly from my perspective, you know, I'll be going to another meeting after this where I'll be getting an Uber across town or whatever it might be, if that was to get compromised and I can just get out and get into another one then that's probably not such a big deal, but if I was going to put my kids in an autonomous vehicle to take them to school or what have you then I would be very very, I would want to understand very clearly about what would happen if that vehicle was to become compromised and certainly if you had a vulnerable passenger in a car what happens if that vehicle does become compromised? So we've got to make sure those services exist.
Matt: One of the great dreams is, of course, that because these would be connected vehicles and with all this diagnostics that it will actually anticipate issues so just as your phone currently says would you mind if I updated the software between these hours while you're asleep, the car will say, if you own the car, will you mind if I just pop to the garage and have this repair done, because it's, this brake disc is looking a bit worn. Likewise if your car is beginning to breakdown and there are fleets of autonomous vehicles one would expect a new one will arrive very rapidly anticipating your need.
Glen: And I think there's obviously an interesting part there because there's a human involved in this, there's obviously technology that's working on its own and having processes in how that would understand, but there's got to be the human kind of machine interface to make sure that the people in the, in that situation understand what's going to happen next and understand how or what they can do and how they can behave and how their safety and security is being assured and looked after.
Tim: Yes and in terms of the technology there is a lot of work going on now which is from a, really a different perspective to how vehicles fail in an operational way so it's very much they won't be functioning perfectly but they will still have a degraded mode of operation which will enable them to be brought to a halt in a safe and secure place rather than just failing in the middle lane of the motorway or something like that.
Nick: I mean Matt you spoke very openly about the increase in passenger safety, you know, as you say people aren't, you know you could have a drink the back of an autonomous vehicle and not be worried about things, but there is an issue here about public perception, reassurance. How long is going to take to break through that so that people absolutely understand that driving or travelling in an autonomous vehicle is OK?
Matt: Well to give you an analogy the first autopilot systems in aviation were introduced in 1912 and so this is very mature technology but only last year there was a survey which showed that people would not accept a pilotless plane, even though that is a far easier task than a driverless car, so there is no guarantee that it will be accepted, however we've done quite a few surveys as a part of UK Autodrive and people readily can see the benefits of autonomous vehicles for other people, none of them seem to think it has any application to themselves but other people, what a brilliant idea. But I think the insurance, the rapid compensation it's going to be critical, I think cyber security is going to be critical and I know one of the issues is the extent to which car companies are cooperating on this and I can tell you that if cyber security becomes a selling point they have failed.
Glen: I think there's a simple question at the heart of all of this which is how safe is safe enough before you would approve these vehicles to kind of act in a fully autonomous mode and so what does that look like compared to the prevailing level of, you know, accidents and severity of accidents that occur now, is it going to be OK for autonomous vehicles to exhibit a level of accident risk which is equivalent to the prevailing norm of human drivers, is going to have to be substantially better, is it going to have to have the right types of accident, because if it had idiosyncratic accidents that would very much start to disrupt people's perception of whether these are things that they can be comfortable with so to a certain extent their comfort will be drawn from the fact that they seem to behave as though you would if you were the driver.
Nick: What about driving tests, is it cheerio to the old driving test, or …
Matt: Well I, there's been long term data of at least ten years that people are taking fewer driving tests and the young have far more choices as to how to spend their leisure time and the idea of having your own car is no longer critical to the enjoyable life. So I think this is a long term trend independent of autonomous vehicles and I think the availability of cheap ride hailing certainly in urban centres has also encouraged that, so I, you know, we certainly as a family are not sure we actually need a car now with current technology with what's available in the city, so driving tests may well be a thing of past.
Glen: And I think if you are at that stage of level five kind of full autonomy where there aren't any driving controls then of course you will not be required to have a driving test, or qualification in order to be in one of those cars and as you say if the utility of the options that are available to you are such that you can deliver your own mobility to your satisfaction and cost then that pattern of, will only accelerate, of people choosing not to drive in the future.
Nick: My sense is the youngsters these days, in my day were desperate to get a car and you had to have a car when you were 17 and passed your test. These days they're not interested and you as an insurance man may well noticed that, I don't know whether you've got the data with you now, whether the young people are seeking car insurance as much as they did ten or 15, 20 years ago.
Glen: Yes, I mean, I think the levels of car ownership and that you know that point around becoming 17 and you know discovering your freedom and the ability to be able to connect, we've obviously got very, much more many ways that people can feel connected to their friends now, you know the advent of social media and so on and so forth and the urbanisation of environment where people have got alternative modes of transport as we've talked about mean that the car is no longer the access point to becoming free, and so yes there is definitely a perception change and I think there's also just a thing about time, you know, most, I know a lot of people talk about their love of driving and they would never get in an autonomous vehicle or buy an autonomous vehicle because they love to be able to drive but the vast majority of the journeys that you take realistically are fairly mundane, you know in terms of the commute and so on and so forth. Now if someone said to me when I drive to the airport every week I could press a button and it would do it for me and I could get that time back to you know organise my day or organise other things or get my weekly shop done or whatever it might be, then that release of time back to you I think will become a very quick uptake of consumer behaviour change.
Nick: And positive changes for business and society as a whole, all three of you, what do you reckon, Matt.
Matt: Well I think the number one dream is more road safety and I think beyond that it's very hard to know if it's a net benefit or a loss just as the smartphone is a mixed blessing where you no longer have any damn time and people walk around with their heads down, so likewise they'll have wonderful access to mobility potentially, subject to huge congestion issues but it may be isolating if there's no human being with you in the vehicle.
Nick: And Glen?
Glen: I probably take a slightly more positive view so I think the outlook for me is that exactly how long this takes but I think this will be a highly transformative effect on society as a whole and probably one of the most significant things that will change in our lifetimes. It's such a, there's such a wide range of different aspects that could be improved through this but of course we have to recognise that there would be unknowns that have to be overcome, but generally speaking my perception to this is that will be overwhelmingly positive in the long term, but I think there will process to realise those benefits.
Nick: And finally Tim?
Tim: Yeah I mean I'm hopeful that it will be, will bring positive benefits and I think we'll need a lot of behavioural change which you know as human beings we're not particularly good at but, you know, I think the, you know the perceived benefits if we can realise those by far outweigh the dis-benefits.
Nick: And for those visually impaired I guess a huge …
Tim: Ah yeah, it's a great opportunity, we've engaged with Guide Dogs for the Blind for example who initially thought we were the worst thing that they'd ever heard of in terms of bringing our last mile pods into the cities because we were just going to import a new hazard into their already hazardous environment, but once we'd explained what the technology will do, that it will, the car, the vehicles, the pods will see them, they'll react accordingly, within the space of 24 hours we went from, you know, this is a real hazard this is going to be a nightmare, we don't want you anywhere near us to those groups saying this is fantastic, this is a new form of mobility, we're going to be able to drive and those groups have now engaged with us and their guiding the design of the vehicles to make them more and more accessible to them so certainly for people who are excluded from mobility now, some of the things that have developed will be fantastic.
Nick: Interesting. Now here's the big question, for all three of you, who's jumping into an autonomous vehicle without a thought or care in the world? What do you reckon Matt?
Matt: Absolutely and I expect Tim to extend an invitation to Milton Keynes tomorrow.
Glen: That sounds good, yes.
Nick: Is that right Tim?
Tim: Visiting day is Wednesdays.
[laughter]
Glen: Without a care in the world? I think I'd definitely jump in and I would be very keen to understand what that experience is like, whether I'd put my kids in one tomorrow, don't know, but me, yes I'd jump in.
Nick: And you wouldn't care that you're not in charge?
Glen: I don't think so, I think I've got level, you know, a degrees of autonomous control within my car at the moment and I'm quite comforted by how capable it is and that's with relatively simplistic technology so I suspect the speed with which you'll become, build trust and build confident will actually be fairly rapid but obviously we can see that, something unforeseen might happen and you might feel very differently so I think it will all be a personal experience.
Nick: From my part I'm a car person to my bootstraps and yet driving in this country can be such a bore, I would leap into one.
Glen: Yes I think that's true.
Nick: In heavy traffic and the commuting eye I think it is a great idea.
Nick: Well thank you very much to all three of my guests for exploring the world of automatic vehicles, they were Glen Clarke, Head of Transformational Propositions - Allianz, Tim Armitage - Project Director at UK Autodrive and Transport Systems Lead at ARUP and finally Matt Hervey - Director of Intellectual Property at Law Firm Gowling WLG. Thank you very much all three. That brings this first episode to an end but please do subscribe to the series through your podcast app, that way you will be sure of never missing an episode and we would really appreciate you leaving us a review too. We will be back to explore another major global trend in the next episode of tomorrow. In the meantime from me, Nick Hewer, it's goodbye.