Regaining sight of humanity on the roadway towards automation

A primary goal of the auto industry is to revolutionize transportation with autonomous vehicles. Given the mammoth nature of such a target, success depends on a clearly defined balance between technological advances, machine learning algorithms, physical and network infrastructure, safety, standards and regulations, and end-user education. Unfortunately, technological advancement is outpacing the regulatory space and competition is driving deployment. Moreover, hope is being built around algorithms that are far from reaching human-like capacities on the road. Since human behaviors and idiosyncrasies and natural phenomena are not going anywhere anytime soon and so-called edge cases are the roadway norm, the industry stands at a historic crossroads. Why? Because human factors such as cognitive and behavioral insights into how we think, feel, act, plan, make decisions, and problem-solve have been ignored. Human cognitive intelligence is foundational to driving the industry's ambition forward. In this paper I discuss the role of the human in bridging the gaps between autonomous vehicle technology, design, implementation, and beyond.