AV planning needs more attention to disabilities, report says

If automakers and tech companies are to uphold lofty promises of using self-driving technology to deliver new mobility options for elderly people and those with disabilities, they need to act with urgency.

A report to be released today, April 1, by the Intelligent Transportation Society of America spotlights the opportunities to unlock new ways for more than 56.7 million Americans who report having disabilities to get around, and it warns of the pitfalls ahead if inclusive blueprints aren't started soon, as the vehicle designs for an automated future are underway.

"There's been some progress made, and there's been some bumps in the road," said Steven Bayless, a co-author of the report, titled "Driverless Cars and Accessibility." "The next step would be to learn from mistakes in the past, and push forward with a deliberate addressing of the issue — unlike in the past, when it's been treated as a problem for someone else to solve."

The report encourages officials across the transportation, health care and consumer electronics industries to push manufacturers to produce accessible vehicle designs, provide user-experience features that ensure that occupants with disabilities can interact with vehicles and consider how riders who rely on human help during their journeys might need additional support once human drivers are no longer behind the wheel.

Since the inception of self-driving technology, its developers have inspired hope among elderly people and those with disabilities that autonomous vehicles can liberate tens of millions of Americans with limited mobility options.

First glimpses of the then-Google self-driving car project highlighted Steve Mahan, a legally blind California resident, going about his daily errands and stopping at a fast-food drive-thru with the support of a self-driving vehicle, a transformative development.

"Being limited in your mobility, you become restricted to your easy chair," Mahan said. "It strips people not only of their independence, it strips them of their pride."

The Intelligent Transportation Society of America report warns of "real risks that industry will widen the accessibility gap with new vehicle technology, not close it."

The society is a Washington trade organization that counts Ford Motor Co., General Motors and Toyota Motor Corp. among its members, along with a broad range of others from the public transportation, academic and insurance industries.

"This is a transformative time in transportation — everything is changing," said Shailen Bhatt, CEO of the society. "As automakers plan for automated vehicles, this is the perfect opportunity to reimagine and design cars in a way that makes them accessible for all potential users."

Challenges start with accessibility features that often have been retrofitted onto conventional vehicles by aftermarket suppliers. Although there are exceptions such as Local Motors, which designed a fully accessible autonomous shuttle, there's little to suggest a broad industry effort to change the way vehicles are designed for a self-driving era.

"There's a lot of surface-level storytelling that is floating around out there, and everyone has this in some flavor in their public narrative, that this is important and will unlock great possibility for people who are left out today," said Christian Lorenz, director of Volkswagen Group's advanced user-experience studio in Belmont, Calif. "It's important to understand the details and really dig deep."

For Lorenz, that includes thinking about the door-to-door journey. It uses principles of universal design, focusing on all users and not just "average" ones. It involves systematically documenting "exclusions," mismatches between human capabilities and vehicle functions. He wants to create trackable performance indicators over multiple generations of vehicles so accessibility can be measured over time.

Further, he says the challenge is more complex than merely spurring automakers to action. Standards bodies, wheelchair manufacturers and insurance companies that pay for paratransit services should be aligned.

"We don't want to admire the problem and revel in the potential," Lorenz said. "We want to do what we can to get meaningful things underway, so we don't look back in a few years and look at the missed opportunities because the homework wasn't done."