Transportation Conversations: Sam Schwartz

Is our time at the steering wheel over? Will driving become illegal as cars learn to pilot themselves? Is this an impossible future, or a revolution just around the corner?

Sam Schwartz, America’s most celebrated transportation guru (and the man who introduced the term “gridlock” into the lexicon), looks at the revolution in self-driving cars in his new book, No One at the Wheel: Driverless Cars and the Road of the Future (PublicAffairs, 2018). The ramifications of driverless cars will be dramatic. They will overturn the job market for the one in seven Americans who work in the transportation sector. They will cause us to grapple with new ethical dilemmas, as driverless cars choose between who or what to hit. They will further erode our privacy as vehicles track our location, and, like every other computer-controlled device, are vulnerable to hacking.

Open House New York invites you to a presentation by Sam Schwartz on his newest book and the potential good, bad, and ugly outcomes of the autonomous vehicle revolution. A conversation with Gregory Wessner, Executive Director of Open House New York will follow.

This program is part of The Moving City: Transportation Infrastructures of New York, a year-long series of tours, conversations and debates about the future of transportation and mobility in New York City. Major support has been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and matching gifts from our 2019 Spring Benefit Donation Challenge supporters.