Self-driving like Knight Rider? London teens don’t get the reference
Stardate March 2025. A joint venture between vehicle fleet management provider Venson Automotive Solutions and Tiffin School has led us to a classroom of intelligent looking 16-17 year-olds primed to discuss self-driving.
Encouragingly, although none have yet encountered one, they are all familiar with the concept of robotaxis. Some are aware of the global leader, Waymo, the company formerly known as Google’s Self-Driving Car Project. This is more than can be said of the 1980s television series Knight Rider, which is apparently not a good reference point for the children of millennials!
Following a brief overview of the situation – Waymo has completed over 20 million miles of autonomous driving in America, reportedly with 73% fewer injury-causing crashes than human drivers, while tech giant Baidu is leading the way in China, and the UK government is preparing to authorise on-road testing without a safety driver – the debate sparked into life.
Self-driving debate
“Robotaxis will presumably work like Uber, right?” ventured our first student speaker. “You’d call down a car from your position, it will take you to your destination, and companies will compete for the fastest arrival times. If these self-driving cars are constantly moving, won’t that lead to more cluttered roads?”
A second student quickly retorted: “Self-driving will be a new way of getting about. At the beginning, like all new technology, there will be problems like congestion, but over time people are probably going to find less need to have their own car, less need for parking spaces.”
It was a strong start. Interesting that we began with traffic flow rather than safety, but that vital topic soon reared its head: “Initially with self-driving cars, it’s going to be hard because people might not feel particularly safe, potentially don’t have control.” Around three quarters agreed they’d only go in an automated vehicle if their friends did.
One incisive interjection followed another…
“I know that Waymo and Tesla, even though they’re industry leaders, have both had incidents. A Waymo in America just started doing circles. There was a Tesla that didn’t recognise cones.”
“On these kind of edge cases, over time, companies like Waymo and Tesla will collect millions of miles of data – that’s going to be used to train the machines here to get better. With the growth of AI, it’s going to exponentiate. It might not be in two years or five years, but I think we can expect good results.”
“Maybe younger generations put emphasis on productivity, on being able to do two things at once. If your car is self-driving, you can scroll on TikTok.”
“Our generation will likely to be more open to the idea of AI taking control in more aspects of our lives. We will sort of become conditioned towards it.”
“If you look at current AI models like the transformer architecture, the technology is past what anyone could have thought. I think the likelihood of deaths will be very low. Instead, we can save lives.”
Wider context
In under an hour, the students covered a lot of the key points repeatedly raised at future mobility events.
On private ownership: “It’s actually better to not own a car because maximising the amount of people we’re carrying around is just so much better for the environment.”
On sustainability: “For powering electric cars, the source needs to be clean otherwise it defeats the entire objective.”
Final question, by show of hands: How many of you are more interested in the motor industry than you were when you walked in? Answer: 100%.
Alison Bell, Marketing Specialist at Venson Automotive Solutions, commented: “As set out in our recent white paper, The Journey Towards Full Driving Automation, driverless cars promise to transform fleet operations.
“Some incredible new technologies are now very close to being market-ready, and the legislative framework is taking shape. It was reassuring to discover that the Tiffin students were not only well-informed about self-driving but actively excited by the prospect. Their knowledge was impressive and their positivity inspirational.”
Please note: the author produced an earlier version of this article for The Institute of the Motor Industry’s MotorPro magazine.
