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Report analyses effects of non-drivers on self-driving cars

The University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute has published a new report which analyses the expected changes in the amount of driving and trip-length distributions by personal vehicles, should completely self-driving vehicles become widely available. The analysis is based on two key observations: the large percentage of young adults between 18 and 39 years of age who currently do not have a driver’s licence; a recent survey which provides information about the reasons for not having a driv
December 7, 2015 Read time: 1 min
The 5647 University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute has published a new report which analyses the expected changes in the amount of driving and trip-length distributions by personal vehicles, should completely self-driving vehicles become widely available.

The analysis is based on two key observations: the large percentage of young adults between 18 and 39 years of age who currently do not have a driver’s licence; a recent survey which provides information about the reasons for not having a driver’s license, some of which would no longer be applicable with self-driving vehicles.

The research finds that the availability of self-driving vehicles would increase the demand for private road transportation by up to 11 per cent and range anxiety with battery electric vehicles is unlikely to change substantially with the addition of new users made possible by self-driving vehicles.

The report abstract is available %$Linker: 2 External <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary /> 0 0 0 oLinkExternal here Download pdf page false http://www.umich.edu/~umtriswt/PDF/UMTRI-2015-39_Abstract_English.pdf false false%>.

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