rules, duogo to our web site, studentcam.org. >> first lady, michelle obama will deliver her final remarks as first lady at a white house ceremony honoring the 2017 school counselor of the year. live at 11 a.m. eastern on c-span 2. in 2016, the highway established guidelines and examined the regulations and discussed the future of transportation. this is an hour. good evening and welcome to tonight's meeting of the commonwealth club of california.

the place where you and we are all in the know. we are online, at commonwealthclub.org, on facebook, twitter, and check out the commonwealth club youtube channel. i'm janette shaw. ceo of techolicy and your moderator for autonomous vehicles and the future of transport. i've been in technology for over 30 years. techolicy provides stake holder engagement to meet the needs of the individual sector such as autonomous vehicles. prior to techolicy, i worked for a fortune 500 company and chosen by kleiner perkins to establish tech net, otherwise known as technology network, an organization. and this evening, i am going to be honored to introduce such a wonderful panel and once i

introduce the panel, we're going to go ahead and review the definition of what an autonomous vehicle is, so we'll set the stage and then each panelist will have three to five minutes to talk about their vision and what the landscape looks to them for autonomous vehicles. following the panelist openings, we'll then have q and a and that will include audience questions that you'll have written on the cards and will be passed up. so with that, i'd like to start with and introduce emily castor. emily is the director of transportation policy at lyft. emily has been on the front of ride sharing policies since the birth of the industry. that's a long time. >> it's not so long. that's what's scary. >> in dog years maybe. she leads lyft's work with transportation agencies to integrate shared mobility and measure its impacts. emily believes lyft is a critical tool to expand

transportation access, reduce car ownership and cut carbon emissions. emily is an advisory board member at the institute of transportation studies at ucla on the sharing economy advisory network and on the leadership council of the national center for sustainable transportation among many other board positions. i also had the opportunity to ask each board member panelist about a fun fact about them and emily's fun fact is that she has a hidden talent for saying the alphabet backwards very, very fast. we need to have you do that at the end of the program. and she's also addicted to ice cream and can recommend at least five ice cream shops. ice cream bar, mitchell's, mr. and mrs. miscellaneous, buy right and smitten.

next is clair. she's at auto recently purchased by uber. she brings robotics to the team. after graduating from epsi in france with an ms in computer engineering, clair worked on autonomous cars and robots for tempura and ghostay. and several companies including next to robots, robotic valley. and most recently, a staff software engineer for google where she led several innovative robotic projects. i can only imagine what that would have been like. would be fun to be a fly on the wall. and younger, choosing between veterinary sciences and computer science. and despite her love of nature, she actually ultimately chose computer science and thankfully

because we have a robotics project today, so welcome. >> thank you. >> our next panelist, no stranger to the autonomous vehicle world is lauren isaac. the manager of sustainable transportation at w.s.p. parason springer hof. and involved in advanced technology products that can improve mobility in many cities and 2015, awarded the william barkley parsons fellowship for driving drive vrdriverless. in addition, lauren maintains the blog driving towards driverless. that's got to be a full-time job. and on this topic in more than .

she's been published in the chicago tribune among other publications. a master of engineering degree in operations, research, and industrial engineering and bachelor's degree in the same discipline from cornell university. the two engineers in the center of the panel and the fun fact about lauren as well, congratulations, just got married a few weeks ago. and she was on a mission to get a driverless vehicle at her wedding. emily was recently engaged, i think you'll have to do the same. at least you'll get there by lyft. and despite having multiple companies and people in the industry working hard to make it happen, seems she might have been just a little early. so a couple of the companies though thank through have promised her a driverless vehicle at the one year

anniversary celebration. and then our final panelist introduction is lindsey willis, the director of external affairs at contra costa transportation authority and lindsey is responsible for directing communication, advocacy, and community engagement efforts. her leadership has produced award winning public engagement, programs at international recognition for the innovative utilization of technology and if you haven't been on contra costa county authority transportation web site, i recommend it because the technology is amazing that lindsey has put together. lindsey is responsible for increasing brand awareness for the $1.3 billion in transportation programs including directing the launch of go momentum station in concord, california, the nation's largest secured connected vehicle in autonomous vehicle test bed.

got to be an amazing place to sit and watch. i'm sure you could watch autonomous vehicles go by. in prior to 2013, developed strategic partnership for the capital corridor joint powers authority. fun fact about lindsey, lindsey's first introduction to transportation other than sharing the backseat of a station wagon with her three sisters, had to have been exciting, was a train trip from california to vancouver for the 1986 world fair. many years later, her first job in transportation was with the capital corridor train service which is here in california. that is our panelists. so what is an autonomous vehicle? it has other names too such as driverless vehicle, self-driving vehicle, highly automated

vehicle, a new term we recently have seen from the federal government or robotic car. do you think of johnny in toelgt recall featuring former governor, arnold schwarzenegger, when you hear autonomous vehicle? that sometimes comes to my mind. so what is it? an autonomous car is a vehicle that's capable of sensing its environment and navigating without human interaction. they can detect their surroundings includes using a variety of techniques including radar, sensors and communication networks so now i'd like to go down the line starting with emily and if you could paint a picture of how to define and what you see in the future of autonomous vehicles looking alike. >> sure. well, i'm really excited to be here and share a little bit about lyft's vision for autonomous vehicles and i think it's easy to imagine an entry point into that because ride

sharing that started to lay the groundwork in that recession and mobility and next few years, autonomous. if you think about it, it's the beginning of a major transition away from the relationship with vehicles being one of ownership toward a relationship of transportation as a service. so lyft has taught people to have that kind of relationship over the last few years as we've rolled out on-demand mobility through a digital interface, tap a button, have a driver show up and there's not a huge difference between that behavior and the behavior of tapping a button on our phone and having an autonomous vehicle show up. you're not driving it, you're not owning it. you're accessing that when you need it and only when you need it. so we're excited about the fact that the network we built laid the groundwork for what can later be layered on top as autonomous technology becomes available and our founder, john

zimmer, spoke recently and published his thoughts recently about what we see as this coming transportation revolution. first, the country experienced was the development of trains and canals that facilitated interstate commerce and the second is the one that we're all living in now and grown up in of the automobile and cut up our cities and really change the relationship of people to the urban environment and what many might say was a negative way and what we experience now on the cusp of is an opportunity to reclaim the urban vitality we've lost to restructure our environment so it's no longer centered around car ownership and can take the space, devote it to new more productive uses. if you think about the parklets that proliferate and are wonderful in restoring common spaces, that's a small taste of what we expect we'll be able to

enjoy as cities, urban dwellers in the future as the need for parking is eliminated. the need for car ownership is eliminated and use it to build green space and this can be toward leveraging autonomous in many ways and a new mode that's available on top of lyft's existing platform and not an abrupt, but environment where is this is something we believe we can test successfully in the early deployments, there may be corridors, fixed routes or zones extensively mapped and monitored for the quality and capability of the infrastructure in the locations to make sure they're appropriate for autonomous in the beginning and generate consumer acceptance and then gradually expand it to the point where it's available anywhere and do so in a way you might

associate with wireless networks online and slow edge data connection and then it just dropped on the to your and then automatically tap into.

driver would be more than wa actually having the hands on the wheel. trying to keep focus for long hours without like anything changing in the landscape or happening. so that would have a tremendous

impact because with the driver, we can do, they can spend all of this time to do something else. i mean, i don't know. spend time with the family. it could be completely different and long-term, in like, say, i would say it's hard to give them an idea on the time but let's say 5 to 7 years and let's say that we worked very hard with the government and that it's very safe and equipped and couldn't guarantee the 199.99% o problems on the road. so highway would be very safe. well, in that case, it would probably mean you don't have to

get a driver in this but we can just let the car go by itself and with uber, driver like the truck out of the highway to wear it out. so it would mean, right now, one of the reasons why we have big trucks is because we don't have a lot of drivers. and make sure we put everything in the single convoy. we minimize the number of drivers. the minute you don't have a driver anymore, you have a smaller truck. and even more power and you can also rethink so you don't have to put like to belong just

because of the driver issue. you can be smart and plan differently how to go one place to another one. and when you start digging around the sufficiency and you start by putting the logistics and the change and how goods are transferred from one place to another one, you can see that there would be a tremendous impact on how efficient we would be in the future. how efficient good transportation can be in the future and i think even more than passenger because passenger is so easy. you like your cars. sure, a release of like bringing you to one place to another one, but when you have a nice car, don't you like driving? like on the highway? and gives you pleasure, right?

because like, it actually is linked everywhere into our economy. like every single you see here by a truck. so when you think you can make this more efficient, it's tremendous. think about respected nowadays. >>. >> not quite. >> after safety, efficiency is something that transportation professionals really have to look at and that's the efficiency of the whole system. not just the passenger vehicle. that's how you move freight and transit. and i think one of the big promises for autonomous vehicles is that you can move more things, more people, more cars, more goods through the existing

system safely and faster. if you think about it, if you've ever been stuck on i-80 or i-6/80 in bumper to bumper traffic, your car could follow a safe distance behind that's much closer than you might be able to follow as a human driver, you could get more cars through the stretch of freeway faster and smoother and that's something we're very interested in looking at, you know, the current highway capacikpacapacity cal t. think about how much more efficient that system would operate if you could bump that up by an extra thousand cars per lane per hour. smooth out the entire system and make it more efficient for everyone trying to get where they want to go. >> terrific. i'd like to remind our radio audience that this is the

commonwealth club of california and we're talking about autonomous vehicles and the t future of transport. lindsey wolf, director of external affairs for contra costa transportation authority. lauren isaac at wsp, parsons waker and then clair, cofounder of software engineering at auto. programs on the radio and you can see our program videos on youtube. catch us also on our web site as well as facebook and twitter. we've got it all. i'm janette morgan. with that, i'd like to, we've got a number of audience questions about jobs. in particular, you may recall that the government research director said connected vehicles will continue to generate new products and service, innovations and create new companies and enable a new

proposition in business models. we hear that a lot but we have several questions here about will drivers who drive lyft and other ride sharing companies, will they still be able to drive and what is the risk if this technology creates an appointment? >> this is a great question. this is something we really approach really seriously at lyft because frankly, we differentiate ourselves as a company that cares more about our drivers and have invested in great relationships with our drivers because we believe it translates into the passenger experience and that's at the core of what we offer. so we wanted to be really transparent in the way we talk about this transition and the fact it's coming. at the end of the day, this is something that's coming to our society. lyft cannot stop the arrival of this technology and incumbent on any entity in the transportation business today whether it's freight, public transit or automotive companies to be the

netflix in this situation rather than the bloc buster. we have to remain relevant and capable of making an impact with what we do, we have to participate in the technology to do that. that being said, it's not going to be an abrupt and immediate transition. it's important to understand how people participate in lyft driving. the vast majority who participate on a platform are doing it on a very part-time basis. fewer than 15 hours per week and even for the folks doing it on a more full-time basis, are not necessarily doing it for a long period of time. but say, hey, i have a job loss and need extra income right now. i'm in a life transition. i'm seeking an opportunity for flexibility in my life right now and that's exactly why they came to us in the first place because lyft driving is not structured with the rigidity and the perm

na, permanen permanence. however, we expect in the near term, the demand will increase in our platform as automation rolls out and that sounds counterintuitive but the reason why is what i described earlier. there's going to be an explosion in businesses like ours that are offering the service because all of the sudden, lyft will become so much more affordable people are able to use it more often and look at that calculation whether or not they want to own a car anymore and more of them will start saying no, we don't want to own a car. so we use lyft more than before and as we do that, sometimes, we'll get an automated lyft and other i'mtimes, a human driver ultimately, it will taper off as technology becomes more capable in a broader variety of geographic areas and that's a

transition that we'll be transparent and compassionate about in our driver community. >> i know i live with career technical education with science and technology, engineering, mathematics and then that's stem, and also steam where you add art, but individuals contacted by companies to go into learning how to do coding or software and eng mering so there's a whole host we get contact of companies that can't describe what tit is but for ne but i'd like to pass it on to. >> i think one of the places where we hear a lot of concern about the coming of automation is in the transit world. quite a few folks with your bart driver, the folks who help you where you need to go and worried

about the transition to driverless means for them and i think one of the things we have to be cognizant of is as we mentioned earlier, the state has some really ambitious climate goals and things here in california that we're trying to trying to achieve. and one of those is encouraging people to share vehicles, to start traveling together, to reduce greenhouse gases. and one of the things that we have been working really hard on is to encourage people to potentially use autonomous vehicles to get themselves to transit. these are great solutions for that first and last mile trip. how many times have you ever driven your car to try to park it at a b.a.r.t. station at 8:30 in the morning and you're circling and circling and circling and nobody is leaving and there is no spot and you drive to your ultimate destination. if you could get a ride, a shared ride, to that particular location, then maybe you would be more inclined to use public transit because it would take out the aggravation of trying to find parking. i think, too, when you think about autonomous vehicle and

shared autonomous vehicles, these will be large fleets. they'll need to be maintained. they're going to be monitored. those are jobs that are still going to have to be done by someone, potentially with transit or transportation experience. so there may be some opportunity to kind of retrain some of the existing workforce to take on some of those new duties. but i do think that transit, kind of as we nknow it, is realy going to benefit from autonomous vehicles. i think a lot of first trips that you'll start to see aren't going to be short trips to and from transit stations, trips when you have to take your mother to the hairdresser and don't want to drive her, you can put her in a car and let her go do it herself. you don't want to have the conversation flipping the coin with your sister to see who is going to drive grandma to the senior center. you'll see the short trips

happen first, though, i don't know, claire might be giving us a run for our money with long-term free hauling. >> yeah. i think it is -- i think it is going to be -- i think it is really going to be gradual. i really don't see it happening from the day, like, from just tomorrow. i know it is very exciting technology. but there is a lot of challenges that have to be solved. and a lot of things -- i mean, like that's a very good reflection, like very good -- the panel we have today, it is about a lot of things. it is about companies. we're operating in the public space or companies -- not in the public space, in, like, with consumers. auto was not uber before. so we were targeting a very dedicated problem and there is, like, government, problems and there is, like, a lot of issues in the future that we need to

plan and, like, think about. so there is, like, such a huge problem and then touch a lot of different aspects of the way we leave, like, our life in cities and, like, cities to cities. so i think it is going to take -- it is actually going -- for all these reasons to make it right, and to make it the right way, it will take a lot of time. and i think it is a lot of opportunities for a lot of these people to also, like, slowly graduating and to train and to learn other area and, like, all of this jobs that are around and what it means to get, like, autonomous vehicles all the time would have to be created. we will still need places to, like, recharge the cars or we will places to put the car at

some point, like at the end of the day. we will see with public transportation, because, like, if you still have a four-seat car, behind another car, you still take much more space than a bus. not that the bus cannot be autonomous also, but we have a fleet of, like, things that have to be coordinated together. it is not like -- it seems very threatening for just right now. but most of the time when things evolve slowly, it is not -- it is, like, we don't have a fracture -- full category disappears. things happen slowly and gradually and people find other, like, other areas of interest and just because, like, i mean, if a car drives better than me at some point i'm going to be bored anyway. even if i'm bored to drive it. it is not very fun. i can remember, like, the -- the

market, stock market. we have, like, beginning super exciting to be, like, to sell stock and everything and to be like a trader and the state of technology and everything. but then slowly, gradually artificial intelligence takes a step on it, like, and became more efficient than people. and so at some point, if, like, when you compare, like, yourself and see that it is better trader than you, you cannot compete. it doesn't carry any weight. >> i'll add one thing. because it is a little bit different lens on the equity impact piece. the labor piece is not the only equity question. another one is about mobility access. that's what i think is one of the most exciting benefits that can come from this. but it definitely is also hinging on shared versus owned

as being the model of how this rolls out. but frankly, i mean, transportation is a huge economic barrier right now in our country, especially with the reurbanization we have seen in major cities, the cost of housing in major cities going up, so precipitously, there has been a suburbanization of poverty that happened. it has pushed people out to the areas that have been least well served by transit and given them a huge transportation problem for the most vulnerable populations. and so now people have these super commutes where they're trying to piece together bus routes in frankly areas where it is not efficient to operate buses where point to point transportation saves people hours in travel time per day. and yet these are families who can't necessarily own the $9,000 per year cost of owning a car. i'm passionate about the fact that shared autonomous transportation can actually be affordable enough that it can be something that is accessible for those folks, and actually, you know, making it possible for more people to benefit from this technology who wouldn't

necessarily be able to buy an autonomous car, right? all kinds of technological pathways that can be established to make this available, even when people don't have bank accounts, when they don't have smartphones. these are things we're already working on with lyft and private public partnerships. there is sort of this elite lens that which we can look at all of this in terms of technological advancement, but also a real impact on people's lives and problems that we can solve. >> absolutely. and equity lines is an excellent opportunity to discuss that, and, lauren, you look like you're -- >> i always have something to say. >> i think there is some point that emily raised too, it is from the lens and there is opportunity for shared mobility that will impact equity. >> yeah. want me to go back to the jobs question? >> sure. that's where your head was nodding and bobbing. >> i completely agree, this is not going to happen overnight. that point has been made. and while i also agree that there will be job loss that comes from this technology, as

is what happens with any disruptive technology, we have seen it with countless industries already, at the same time there are going to be job opportunities created. and i think through things like s.t.e.m., like you were talking about, getting the younger generation going through college, getting them educated in the right fields, so things like data science, that's rich field right now because all of the technology will create a tremendous amount of data. from the government perspective, the government wants the data, emily hears this all the time how much the government wants the data. but they also need to be able to do something with it. so you need to have the right skill sets available. so there is this -- a transformation that will happen with the skills needed and as the job loss happens, there will be just as many kind of retraining opportunities, and the need to switch. and we're seeing it right now actually, among the automakers, we're seeing and the technology developers, all of the companies are buying out each other and

establishing partnerships and quite a few of them are citing that the biggest reason they're doing it is to acquire the talent in other companies. there is a dearth of talent in the field. i think we'll see more and more people getting into the right field and hopefully as the community colleges and colleges keep up with what the technology and company requirements are, we'll see that many more jobs created in this space. >> absolutely. and another in the news quite a bit is the hacking. there is a fear my car can be hacked. that has come up a number of different times in each of your industries. and, emily, is that something that comes to -- do you get lots of questions? >> it certainly is something that we have to be very cautious of. i think claire is probably smarter than i am on cybersecurity, engineering background. she may want to comment on that. but clearly that has to be a top priority. and if you think about it, there

san increasing integration within the different stack of technologies that is deployed in this. when you have an automaker, manufacturing of vehicle, then the self-driving system, then you have the consumer network, all of these are participating at some level in what the operation of that service will be, so there needs to be focus at all of those different levels to ensure there is security. do you want to comment at a greater technical depth? >> sure. i think -- well, the securities like would be some precaution for securing your phone, your computer, your car, or any piece of technology, right. so i think that there is ways to protect ourselves from hacking. and i don't think there is, like, amazing, like, ways to do

incredible hacking i would say or most of the time your car gets hacked, it won't start, it will sit there on the sidewalk and not start. so, well, it is very inconvenient and then aaa will probably like have a solution for that and take your car somewhere to fix it. but, like, any other piece of technology, there is a way to ensure that the -- that the technology is safe. so i think it is just, yeah, a matter of, like, working with also, like, government and, like, cities to make sure to define what is an acceptable behavior and what happens if, like, you have a problem with the car or with, like, a problem even with the sensor or something like that, where can you pull on the side, can the car pull automatically to the -- >> i think there is another opportunity there for career technology education to have a lot of folk goesing into

computer science. >> absolutely. >> that's a whole other career field that is ripe for opportunity. but, lauren, i know you -- >> krekcorrect. >> you also -- >> i don't have too much to say on this. the one really positive is that this is very much on the radar of not just the federal government, but every technology developer in this space. this is super important. it is an issue on all sides. no one wants to see a cybersecurity issue. so, you know, the federal government level, they actually just put out policy guidance that was really exciting, it covered a lot more than just cybersecurity, but they really became precedent setting by putting out federal guidance around driverless vehicles. this came out a week ago. and cybersecurity is one thing that is addressed. it is not in the level of detail, i think, that -- first of all, i don't know any of us would want to know the level of detail needed to address that, but it does start to dress it. and what we're seeing is coalitions form amongst

competing technology makers that are trying to address this as an industry. it is very much at the forefront of the av discussion nationally. i think that's a positive. >> you raised the recent regulations at the federal level that were promulgated and just discussed. there also has been some legislation in california, i'm looking to linsey, because just a few days ago, will federal law preempt state law? is that a discussion that is still being in the works? what is happening there? >> so i think that everyone, state, dots to auto manufacturers, we're excited to see the federal regulations come out because up until this point different states, even down to different jurisdictions, were putting in place kind of their own laws, and their own way of thinking about how autonomous vehicles could operate on their roadways. and we're starting to enter a situation where if you're

driving your car from california to nevada, nevada has different rules than california, you don't want your car to just stop at the state line because nevada doesn't allow it. so i think that it is really wonderful to see this federal regulations because they kind of set the framework for how states should be thinking about putting in place policies, and california's policy very much closely follows the federal guidelines and i think a lot of states will follow. in fact, part of those guidelines included a model state policy for states to consider, you know, adopting or basing their future policies on to encourage there to be some sort of kind of level playing field or platform across the united states so that auto manufacturers and different technology companies didn't have to do something different for every single state or every single jurisdiction. so i know that they, you know, so far i think people are really happy with them.

and i think it kind of remains to be seen how they get rolled out right now. they're just kind of guidelines. and they're letting everybody read them. they're going to take comment on them. same with california. i think the state is hosting a workshop on their proposed policy in a couple of weeks. but i really think that in terms of kind of the state versus federal, that the state will choose to follow the federal guidelines a little more closely than the ones they have developed. >> i would hate for the car to stop at the border. >> and then on the other side of the line. >> you'll be right there waiting. i love it. we had so many wonderful questions. and one that keeps coming over and over is will an autonomous vehicle or truck have a steering wheel? there is about half a dozen questions. lauren? >> as of a week ago, california was requiring that driverless vehicles had a steering wheel and it was very controversial. the california laws required that driverless vehicles had had

steering wheel, brakes and a licensed driver behind the wheel. and really this policy, which was truly precedent setting around the country and the world, watched very closely, it was extremely controversial and had had quite a few industry groups, technology developers, come out opposed to it because it was in theory limiting the development of the technology, the testing of the technology, and really not allowing some of the communities that would benefit most greatly from it to reap those benefits. so, but as of now, a week later, federal policy is out, california changed their guidelines or draft form, but actually eliminated the need for the steering wheel. very relevant question. >> any other comments? >> certainly, you know, the benefits i described, bringing down the cost of the service will not come if they're not fully driverless vehicles. that's our focus. and what would be a

transformative business model is to have a vehicle fully capable of that. in terms of the form factor, the design of the hardware, that's one of most exciting things is the opportunity to reimagine what this experience is like. having it be a hospitality experience, a service that you can have and maybe even customizations of what that is depending who you are, what kind of service you need, or what you experience you want in that moment. so i think that's where you'll see some of the brand differentiation come. people talked about how automakers are going to be xhod tiesed and lose that brand relationship they have now with the customer because there is going to be an intermediary of the network like lyft that has a relationship with the customer instead of the car company, selling someone a car. but i think there are new opportunities for creating consumer value and differentiation and that market. and it is something that we're excited to experiment with moving forward. >> we're excited to see it. >> we'll get you that.

>> we also have a number of questions of should i buy a new car soon or should i wait until the autonomous vehicle is out? so why don't you -- lauren, why don't you start with that and talk about time frames and i would like each one of the panelists to speak to it too. >> don't buy a car. pretty sure you agree with me, right, emily? >> i'm silent on that one. >> don't buy a truck. >> so pretty much every automaker and technology developer is promising a fully driverless vehicle in the 2018 to 2022 time frame. with the exception being porsche because they believe that people want to drive their vehicles. so -- >> i would like to drive a porsche. >> would you like one for your wedding? >> so, there are countless forecasts out there of when we're going to actually seat proliferation of driverless vehicles, but if i was going to generalize it, it would be about

30 to 40% proliferation in the 2030 time frame. that's what a lot of forecasts kind of glam around. but, you know, should you buy a car now? it is the same question of should cities build parking garages now. do we need to keep increasing our capacity? obviously it is unique to people's situations. what is exciting about today is we're seeing more and more mobility options come out, especially in dense urban areas and i think we're seeing more creative solutions in the suburban areas too. companies like lyft and uber have transformed how we get around cities and reduced the need for car ownership and add in all of the different mobilities of service options, car sharing, ride sharing, car pooling, and then all of the information technology that supports it with, you know, apps that tell you how to leverage a combination of them. so, i mean, the more we can reduce car ownership now, and the more we can encourage people to really do that ride sharing behavior today, it is going to be that much more important when

we have driverless vehicles on the roadways. in theory, selfishly, we all want to have a driverless vehicle that takes us wherever we want to go. like having a personal chauffeur. i use the example of an elliptical car -- an elliptical trainer in the back of my vehicle, coffeemaker and tv and desk and -- >> sign me up. >> why would i go in a shared vehicle, when i have my own personal hotel back there? that's a scary thing for our society if every single person had a vehicle like that. so i think it is important that we wrap our heads around this shared vehicle behavior, just because we don't want to be in a society of just parking lots everywhere we go. >> i'm going to take a little bit of an opposite view. i love being on stage with lauren because we rarely agree. we're still good friends. i would say -- i agree, i think most of the major car companies has said they could put an autonomous vehicle for sale in the next five years.

what i think we have to think about is that the regulations on the policy that govern you being able to use this are not going to move that quickly. as much as we want to see them tomorrow, as much as we know there are tremendous benefits, government does not move as fast as the private sector. and i don't foresee that changing anytime in the next year or two in order for everything to catch up and be able to buy an autonomous vehicle and roll it out on the streets. if you're not able to take advantage of a shared network, if you live in a county that has rural areas or you're car dependent, my advice is buy a new car. they are getting smarter and smarter every year, as claire mentioned, you know, your car can now do things for you. it can autonomously forward brake. it can park itself. it can help keep you in your lane. some of the newer cars can even tell if you're starting to get sleepy and alert you that you

need to pull over. we're putting the pieces in place to get those cars to become autonomous and there are cars being manufactured that could drive themselves. but unfortunately i don't think the regulations are ready to let you flip the switch in the next couple of years. >> we have so many more questions, so clearly we need to have a series of panels on autonomous vehicles including cars and trucks. we are at the point where we have reached the point in our program where there is time for just one last question, if we do a quick round. if you had advice to give to our presidential candidate, what would you want them to say about autonomous vehicles? one sentence or less. you want to start, lauren, and we'll work to linsey and claire and emily. >> i think it is super exciting what technology is presenting to us today. and i think it is only going to grow with the ideas and the potential, but it is also very important for government at all levels to be involved. so we need to have enabling

funding, policy, supportive regulations. nothing that slows it down. but yet still maintains the safety of our traveling public. >> and i would say fund transportation to its fullest in all forms including autonomous vehicle research because that's the way we're going to get to this scenario where you're able to ride in an autonomous vehicle if there is a collective effort and enough research for everyone to feel that it is safe. >> quick. >> so autonomous vehicles are coming. it is going to be a new class of vehicle in transportation. it is not going to be, like, anything that we know right now. it is going to change everything. and private sector cannot do it alone. it needs to be, like, well -- from, like, with everybody on board. private and governments. >> i would say the most

important thing that government can do is focus on performance based policies. because it is very hard to prescribe the house the mechanism of something you don't understand and haven't experienced before, i think the best thing they can do is to let the private sector innovate on the way to get to the desired policy outcomes of safety, of mobility, of environmental performance and in doing that, make sure their objectives are met while allowing innovation to flourish. >> absolutely. i'm going to make sure the candidates see this end of the clip. they get the advice. i'd like to thank our panelists, emily, thank you very much. director of transportation policy at lyft. claire, terrific co-founder, director of software engineering at otto. lauren, manager of transportation, wsp parsens brinckerhoff. and linsey for contra costa. thank you for your participation. i would like to thank the audience for their participation. you've been a terrific audience.

and good night. first lady michelle obama hosts the school counselor of the year event this morning. it was started by the first lady in 2015 and this is scheduled to be her final remarks. live coverage on c-span2 starts in about 45 minutes. and here on c-span3, live at 12:00, an inauguration logistics briefing as the mayor of washington, d.c., secret service and public transportation officials update preparations for january 20th. this weekend on american history tv on c-span3, saturday evening at 6:00 eastern, on the civil war, author william marvel on abraham lincoln's secretary of war edward stanton. >> of stanton, grand said the secretary was very timid, it was

impossible for him to avoid interfering with the armies. he could see our weakness, but he could not see that the enemy was in danger. the enemy would not have been in danger if mr. stanton had been in the field. >> and then at 8:00, on lectures in history, iowa state university professor tracy luke describes the careers and social pressures on pioneering women writers like nelly bly and dorothy dix. >> try to assign her stories about flowers and the stuff that would have made sarah joseph hail very happy but she kept busting out. she wrote stories about divorce laws, called for reform of divorce laws, largely because of her mother's experience. she wrote about conditions for women who worked in factories. she wrote about the medical treatment of the poor. >> sunday afternoon at 4:00 on reel america, the nasa film friendship 7 documenting astronaut john glenn's orbit around the earth. >> zero g and i feel fine.

capsule is turning around. oh, that view is tremendous. >> and at 8:00, on the presidency, constitutional law professor garrett epps talks about the passage of the 22nd amendment, limiting the number of terms a president can serve. >> no person shall be elected to the office of president more than twice. and no person who held the office of president or acted as president for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected president shall be elected to the office of the president more than once. >> for our complete american history tv schedule, go to c-span.org. last month, the supreme court heard oral arguments in bethune hill v. virginia state board of elections. a racial gerrymandering case examining how race can be taken into consideration when states draw district maps. in 2011, virginia lawmakers used the 2010 census to redraw 12

state legislative districts in which african-americans made up at least 55% of the eligible voters. black voters sued, arguing that by packing minorities into these districts their vote was diminished in other parts of the state, violating the 14th amendment's equal protection clause, which prohibits the government from using race as a predominant factor in redistricting unless it serves a compelling state interest. the court is expected to decide the case before the end of the term in june. >> the argument first this morning in case 15680 bethune hill versus the virginia state board of elections. >> the district court created a new legal standard that permitted virginia to apply a one size fits all, 55% racial floor to all 12 of its