Building the UK vision of a driverless future: A Parliamentary Inquiry case study

This paper examines the UK House of Lords Science and Technology Committee's Inquiry into Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) to understand how it contributes to building a vision of a future AV world. Using content analysis and sociotechnical change theories, the authors find that the Inquiry corpus is dominated by actors committed to the AV project, marginalizing alternative or skeptical viewpoints. The public is largely represented as deficient – dangerous drivers, unaware of benefits, and unduly anxious. The pursuit of an AV future risks becoming a goal in itself rather than a means to broader societal goals like safety, affordability, access, and sustainability.

Chris Tennant, Susan Howard, Sally Stares