Autonomous Vehicles. Clifford Winston

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      Introduction

      Transportation innovations and investments have contributed significantly to U.S. economic growth. They have enabled households to optimize their residential and workplace locations and their choice of employers; encouraged firms to increase the size and scope of their markets, reduce their inventories, and expand their choice of workers; and allowed consumers to benefit from greater competition among domestic and international firms and from more product variety. The motor vehicle, which has contributed greatly to those socially desirable activities, has been listed among the greatest human inventions of all time (Bowler 2017; Winston 2010).

      The increasing dominance of cars and trucks for transporting passengers and freight has evolved with the development of the U.S. public road system, which represents the nation’s largest civilian public investment and has become the arterial network of the U.S. economy. Today, some 90 percent of commuters use cars to get to work, 70 percent of travelers use cars for intercity trips, and 30 percent of shippers of intercity freight (measured in ton-miles) and nearly all of their urban freight is shipped by truck—all of those movements rely on a federal-highway capital stock that is valued at roughly $3 trillion (Winston 2013).1

      Given the importance for the U.S. economy of motor-vehicle transportation and the infrastructure that it uses, significant changes in the performance of either could have a large effect on economic growth. To date, however, the road network has been characterized by growing traffic congestion, СКАЧАТЬ