for general speeches at 10:00 a.m. and homeland security bills at noon. the senate continues work on judicial nominations at 10:00 a.m. on c-span3, alex azhaar, the nominee for hhs secretary and 3 p.m., governor jay delivers his state of the state address at 3:00 p.m. next, we'll hear from automakers and government regulators as they look at the safety framework for self-driving cars at a technology conference in los angeles. this is about two hours. >> good afternoon, everyone. thank you all so much for coming. it's great to have all of you here. my name is david murphy, the founder and ceo of tech fire. we have done almost 30 events over the years. i have to say this is the one i'm most excited about.

a tremendous and incredible line of speakers joining us from washington, d.c., from california, everywhere in between. i've seen council members attending from across the country and delight to have all of you in the room and watching from c-span as well. we're at a moment now, a time that doesn't happen for all generations. for the moment maybe equivalent to the horse and buggy, the automobile. it's a true revolution we're about to experience. it's going to be coming sooner than any of us realized. people like chris urmson have been leading the revolution realize it. things will be changing for the better very soon in ways we haven't started to think about. we wanted to bring people together to look at not only the

exciting areas around the benefits of self-driving cars, traffic safety, at the top of it, also the implications and how we need to think about redoing the urban landscape and think about economic needs of the workers who will be displaced and various impacts and benefits and problems that come with this incredible revolution that will transform our society. we're so excited to have all of you here. thank you for coming. i want to give you an overview of the day and thank those who made this event possible and invite a few people for remarks and get into our great lineup of speakers. first, i want to acknowledge the fact that this event would not be happening at all without the office of los angeles mayor garcetti. for those who have flown in or joining us from outside of l.a., you may not know what a special mayor this man is.

he is someone actually endorsed by tech when he was running. he's been tech savvy from his days before running his office. someone who has been a bit like an obama or bill clinton, you know, in l.a. in that he's hired the best staff and hired a lot of smart people expanding l.a.'s horizons in new and interesting ways. the fact we're here today is a sign of that. we're bringing you these incredible people here. without any further adieu, let me welcome to the stage, jason, from the mayor's office of technological development for a welcome. jason. [ applause ] >> good morning, everyone. how are you doing? i guess it's afternoon now. thank you so much for hosting this event at city hall. i think for the next round of

the tech fire summit focused on innovation and transportation, you should really kick it off with your rendition of sam cook, "change will come," get a gospel choir behind you an liven things up a ton. it will be a great start. on behalf of mayor eric garcetti, it's my pleasure to welcome you all to the l.a. city hall. the city of los angeles has sought to be at the forefront of the transportation renaissance. in a city where 70% of communities drive to work, 90 hours of traffic spent sitting in their cars and nearly $3.7 billion in parking costs paid, we are ready to forge a new path here in the city, one that brings together leaders in the auto industry, tech innovators, planners from the city, and policymakers, to solve the

mobility challenges brought on by population growth and pockets of dependency spread across our sprawling region. just last year, the department of transportation released its mobility plan entitled urban mobility in a digital age," making l.a. the first city to actively and specifically address the city around self-driving vehicles. the future is now, ladies and gentlemen. eric garcetti, you have a leader, along with his administration that wants to serve as a partner to you all, ready and excited to explore the capacity of technological advancement like autonomous vehicles, to solve one of the region's most pressing challenges. thank you to techfire and david, for all the hard work you've done to bring this day together. thank you to the honored guests here including council member

mike bonin. thank you for joining this conversation and rec nice to the association of governments and their support of this event as well. we're excited to be hosting. thank you, everyone. [ applause ] >> thank you so much, jason and everyone with the mayor's office. they've been fantastic to work with, norma and billy, thank you. i want to pick up on what jason said. big thanks are do to the association of governments, sky. i should say many years ago i was working with an l.a. business group that inspired me to get more focused on the transportation world and ran a project by musk because i was so scared by the statistics of the numbers put into the sky regional transportation report years ago realizing how things were already quite bad in l.a. and would get worse if we didn't

all come together. sky plays a really critical role not only supporting this event today but leading all of us to think big and deeply. they've done great reports about autonomous vehicles. thank you, hassan. and i'd like to invite a sky board member from san bernardino county. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you, david. it is an honor to be here with all you bright people here about the future of transportation. i get to represent not only as a transportation chair but san diego county, the largest county in the united states. a lot of space to work out there. it's important we work together because we need to plan for what transportation is about.

we want to be your partner going forward and be in lock-step for the future of our smart transportation systems. thank you for having me here as well. >> thank you very much. i look forward to having self-driving car companies work in los angeles. i want to acknowledge our event partners as well. mobility one. they are stuck in traffic and have done great work, david, come up from washington, d.c., at their events of autonomous vehicles and we're happy to have them as event parters? . i want to reflect on this moment.

we had our experiences over the years and los angeles across the world. we sometimes forget what a dangerous thing it is. driving is something we have to do. we have to put up with it. we humans are not perfect at the wheel. we've come to accept what isn't acceptable. the number of highway deaths 1.25 million around the world. 2.2% globally. the "new york times" had a great column this week saying maybe driverless cars will finally kill off the world's most deadliest invention. even in the u.s. alone, 37,461 people were killed in motor vehicle deaths in 2016, like a 737 aircraft falling from the sky every working day.

imagine for those of you who flew out here perhaps, if we had an airline coming down every working day, we would say, gosh, flying is unacceptable, too dangerous, immoral, the number of deaths per day and that's what's happening on the road. when very soon it becomes possible to have driverless cars, self-driving cars take away these deaths because they really will be much safer than humans as much as we like to think we're the best, we're actually not very good drivers after all. maybe some day we will be at the point it becomes immoral to allow humans to be at the wheel. something like getting a pilot's license, not something everyone has to do and maybe something we look back on like cigarettes, a real public health risk, how did we ever allow that. it will be fascinating to see how society changes, obviously

not annuals through deaths but the suffering involved from injuries and all the costs involved and accidents, you know, huge impacts. also, of course, there will be challenges that come with self-driving cars. we will see the labor market disrupted and seen incredible political problems, in some parts automation. we will have great impacts to truck driving, taxi driving and even ubers and lyfts of the world will not need drivers as much or maybe not as many er doctors, police and firemen and insurance adjustors, all sorts of impacts we hadn't thought of or car dealerships will scale back, we won't have the used car salesman or body shops. a little bit looking back, we have the horse carriage industry

go away, all these new areas came to fill the job market. we have to be sure as a society how people will lose their jobs and economic disruption, something like universal basic income. we tend to not be able to have these deep long term policy discussions in this country right now. we have to find a way to do that and realize, this is coming sooner rather than later. we think things are disrupted politically because of economic suffering. we need to be careful because there's a lot more on the road ahead. a lot of things to think about. i don't mean to be too negative. i am incredibly excited about the benefits it will bring not only traffic safety.

convenience. warner brothers just announced, in l.a., wouldn't it be great to watch a movie instead of sitting on the 405 in frustration? take a nap. the blind being able to drive. our parents or grandparents that can't safely drive. all sorts of benefits as well as costs come down for deliveries, new startups that will transform society and services we can't imagine. it's incredibly exciting. i hope in l.a. we make sure we have this alternative car companies come down and test things in l.a., the city more than anywhere else our car culture, it's definitely time we make sure l.a. is the forefront of this revolution. without any further adieu, i want to introduce someone who is really i think more so than just

about anyone in the world, responsible for driving this revolution, no pun intended. chris urmson directed the google self-driving project. they're already announcing hitting the streets in phoenix with the technology. this happened super fast. some people even said because of the work that google did with chris, they had kick started earlier than other companies we may see 2 million lives saved because this is happening faster than it otherwise would. it's incredible, an incredible thing for the betterment of humanity. the silicon valley of l.a. wants to change the world. saving 2 million lives by bringing autonomous vehicles more quickly, that's changing the world, folks. chris urmson these days is leading what "fortune" magazine

calls the startup with the best find. the secret. and the reporter who wrote that article is in the audience and will be excited as all of us to learn some of those secrets about the innovation. this is an amazing company which has indeed not only chris at its helm but top minds from uber, from tesla, from others leading us to days ahead. chris has a great history we'll get into in our discussion with the challenge in his days in southern california. we're really excited to have him back here. without any further adieu, let me ask all of you to give a very warm welcome to chris urmson. [ applause ] >> chris, thank you so much for

being in l.a. take us back 10 years ago, you were here for the challenge and tell us for those who don't know how it was the kick-off for the modern revolution. thank you. and thank you for today and the mayor's office for hosting us. for that introduction. it's not sure if i will get my head out through the door after all of that. 10 years ago, even longer now, i guess, 14 years ago the defense department announced the first grand challenge. the idea was to drive a car from los angeles to las vegas across the desert and do that without remote control and do it without a midget hiding inside, wrapped in aluminum foil or anything. the idea at the time was can we help our young men and women in harm's way driving supply convoys across the deserts in unpleasant places in the world. back then it was announced as the grand challenge, akin to

lindbergh crossing the atlantic. no one believed we could actually do it in a time frame that was meaningful. we went out for the first challenge. it was about 150 miles. we went about 7 miles. the team i was the technical director for, we got stuck up on a berm and basically went into flames, that was it, after we drove through three fence posts. it was an all around awesome day. we did drive at 40 miles an hour across the desert. we did do that with nobody on board. while the media said this is a disaster and those part of it kind of felt the same way that day, the defense department had the wisdom to say this is a pretty big step forward. come back a year from now and see how you do then. back in 2005, they had the second challenge. this year, five teams met that challenge and we got on our

soapboxes and said, this is coming and we can go do something meaningful with it one day. >> in the media, didn't you have various challenges your car would flip over the night before? >> i see, you give to the ego and you take away. absolutely. this was one of the tougher parts about it, these were out in the desert on some of the rough roads. this was very experimental. the first year we were out there trying to get the vehicle to drive 150 miles for the first time. we had it on this oval track. we did some very simple math. we said if we drive it 30 miles an hour, to drive 150 miles it will take 5 hours. we drive it 50 miles an hour, 150 miles will take 3 hours. we picked 50 miles an hour. that seemed better. about two laps into this thing, it hit a soft patch of dirt,

tripped over itself and rolled over and crushed i don't know $50,000, $100,000 worth of equipment on it. we were graduate students and we had a bunch of people there and we got the thing turned right way up and entered it into the competition. probably parts of the reason why i drove through three fence posts before bursting into flames. we did this again a year later. we got smarter in many ways. this time the vehicle actually finished a 150 miles an hour loop around the course and couldn't chase wit normal suvs anymore and had to chase it with humvees because the ground was too rough. it finished the 150 miles and the team out testing it said it's been going well, why don't we have it drive itself so we can more easily take it back to base. part of the way through that it got wide in the turn and hit a ramp and basically did a "dukes of hazzard" barrel ramp on the roof. we haven't parked anything on

the roof in more than a decade, my team, so things are looking good. >> you guys won a million dollar prize as part of that, right? >> yeah. that second challenge actually a team from stanford won. i was at carnegie mellon out of pittsburgh, pennsylvania. we went home with a nice job, guys. they got a giant million dollars novelty check. a year and a half later the defense department had a third competition, this one out at victorville, at the old air base there. this time the vehicles actually had to drive on their side of the road not just on the road. they had to stop for stop signs. they paid a bunch of stunt drivers to drive cars around to create traffic the vehicles had to interact with. this was really exciting for us. our team did win this. we won $2 million actually and we came first that year. we got to witness the first robotic car crash so cornell and

mit crashed into each other about 3 miles an hour. i guess it was an historic day all around for self-driving cars. >> that environment, as an econom academic environment back then, did you have any sense you would be already at this point we're seeing these things not just in the realm of academics but transform the automotive industry, did you think it would happen this fast? >> it's tricky because back then we didn't really understand the implications what this could mean for improving lives, safety on the road and everyday, the visceral benefit it will have to folks who don't have to sit in traffic or better yet, can get from a to b when they never used to be able to. it's funny because this happened very quickly on any reasonable scale.

when you start at this you don't really understand how hard it is. our aspiration was to do it even more quickly than this. looking back that was very naive. turns out this is a very hard problem and incredible to see how the world has changed over the last even 5 years. >> to go from that world of academia to the commercial world, tell us, for those who don't know, the audience, how you've been approached by google and how this got started and how long you were doing things behind the scenes before the public announcement. >> i was a professor at carnegie mellon. google -- this was back when google was just a search engine and didn't have android and i don't know all the other amazing things the company does. i was approach and said, hey, would you like to come to google and do self-driving cars. my reaction was, why? you're a search engine, why would you ever want to do anything in this space. through spending some time with them understood they're really

an engineering company and want to solve important problems and this really comes from larry and sergey at the top. i joined the company in 2009. we didn't talk at all publicly about what we were doing until late 2010, almost 2011. over the last -- over that 7 1/2 years period i was there from 2009 to 2016, i guess that's what the math says, we were able to push the technology. i think we helped change the perception somewhat that this technology, when it could happen and what it could mean to people. now, i'm on to a new adventure with an exciting company that's helping the automotive world come to terms and advance their ability in this space. >> i'm glad you mentioned it. tell us about it and the full stack solution you'll be providing. what secrets can you reveal? >> yeah. not sure what secrets, but so

it's been amazing to see the way the automotive industry has started to embrace this. for many years this was really perceived as science fiction, something that couldn't happen. gone from that's silly. to wow that's kind of interesting. to holy crap that's really important we should do something. at automotive industry is really. there's a lot of popular press about the battle between detroit. and the old.

it's just mind boggling. but, it also requires a very specific type of processes and a very specific type of commitment to make that happen. and that kind of commitment and process is isn't particularly compatible with doing really new innovative software. this is where aurora can help. we have an immense amount of respect for what it takes to build an automobile and ship the products. a comes off the line with that many parts. basically once every two minutes. and it works for 50 years. i can't imagine an app from silicon valley doing that. we would like to bring the software side of the house that understands how to go after the complicated machine learning problems and partner with companies. our company will provide the software that will work with

those vehicles. and they will go and deliver the voeks to customers to realize how the benefits of safety and mobility that we see. >> as you think about the culture that's required. it's obviously something where these two cultures are very different. we see that public conflict talked about. isn't it really fair to say and perhaps the reason you're doing this, it's been tough for the big automakers to attract engineering talent. that you attract at google. and people are breaking down your doors wanting to join the team? >> yeah. i think that's really comes back to the process that you have to have in place. to deliver the vehicles. it leads to a certain type of culture that's productive. it doesn't lend itself to the software talent that we need to have to solve the problem.

by building this independent company we're able to attract that talent and lead it. motivate it and guide it. compensate it in the way that makes it exciting to be there. we can marry the best of both worlds. the joan genius in the automotive sector. and the tech to make this happen. >> i'm curious to have tell us the story about how you came together with sterling and drew. and how you decided to do this. how did you come together what's the story? >> it's exciting. the company was founded by three of us. drew in pittsburg. sterling anderson in california. and myself. and it turns out drew and i have

known each other for 18 years. we went through grad school together. and while wint off to play with self-driving cars he spent the last 18 years really pushing the state of the art in machine learning and robotics. and reenforcement learning. when you think about the core technology for self-driving vehicles it really is that deep understanding of machine learning aplied to real world data. and sterling is a phd from mitt. he went into the consulting world. and led autopilot at tesla. and pulled him off to program manage model x. and get that out the dor. and put him on autopilot. he has the experience of shipping something. the thing closest to a self-driving car that's out there in the world today. when efs trying to figure out what to do next. i talked with companies and was not clear that the right thing

was to start a company. when i found they might be interested and their experience complicated my own so well. it seemed an amazing foundation for a company to build from. since then we have been able to attract an amazing group of talent. that buys into this vision of what this can mean for the world and why it's important to do. >> hopefully you'll be opening an engineering office. in l.a. at some point. we have great talent. our next speaker is a kal tech graduate herself. speaking about l.a. and here we are in the city famous for its car culture. it's a prime example as you look in the observation tower that we have surrounding the room. you see parking lots everywhere. can you talk about how self-driving cars will remake the urban landscape. >> i think behind the massive safety benefits and the mobility

benefits for people who wouldn't otherwise be able to get around. the opportunity to reclaim our city is profound. l.a. is 30 to 40% of the space is car space. part of that is roads. an awful lot is storage. for vehicles. and today in america the there's three spots for every ka. parking spot at home. parking spot at work. and at a shopping center somewhere. if we can come up with shared mobility systems that are enabled by self-driving technology. we can reclaim that landscape. we can deploy them as parts of smart public transportation net works and use high density mobility systems like light rail. like rapid transit bus. and feed the last mile with smaller vehicles that are cost effective to operate. and both provide better transportation at a lower cost.

and take those urban eyesores. parking is important. but anyone who really lovings kind of a urine soaked tower of concrete is probably a sick person. if instead we can turn that into park space or residential space. imagine the social good of that and the financial implication of that. and the opportunity for cities to be productive and livable. it's profound. >> california infamous for traffic. also for housing crunch. and silicon valley, san francisco. l.a. too. the affordable housing crisis. opportunity for more housing and parks and everything else. talk about what excites you most right now. about what's going to change, what's going to be transformed because of the revolution. >> i think -- i'll dodge a

little bit. one of the most exciting things for me is that we we kind of grasp this important. if you think about transportation it is so fundamental to the society. you either anything that you're wearing you eat, you use in your housed was dug out of the ground or grown. and put on a vehicle and moved somewhere. and so transportation is fundamental to the society. if we can find ways to reduce the cost. improve the safety of that. then we can have a just -- it's hard to imagine the implications how broad the implications will be of this. if you look at a similar reduction in another space. if you look at the order of magnitude reduction in the cost of communication. the that came through the internet. and look today at the business that boomed because of that. the convenience we have in our lives. the benefit and access to

information. think about that happening in the physical world. and that gives you an idea about how profound the change can be we're going to be moving through. >> karen swisher had a great pod cast about talking about some of the economic impacts to workers. to jobs. i know you had an eloquent answer. any further thinking about how we do navigate the disruption that will occur? >> i think it's a really very difficult social society problem that we face. we faesed it through globalization. that i think if you take a step back and take a world view, globalization has done an amazing thing for the global economy and reducing conflict. tieing communities together through commerce. has had a positive impact.

but, at the same time it's left behind pockets of our country pockets of other countries. and we're seeing some of that in the politics that are playing out today. and i think that's not because globalization is a bad thing. it's because we didn't succeed as a society in managing it well. we have to have folks in government and legislation in the legislature, folks in technology and others getting together to think hard about this and manage the introduction. it's easy to talk about the job losses. but if you look at the cost of those losses in terms of lives, it's probably something like ten jobs per life lost. sdp that is in my mind a socially unacceptable status quo. and so we need to attack that. and think thoughtfully about it

broadly. >> i'm so glad you mentioned that. thank you everyone for baring with us for the challenges. we're ahead perhaps on the other autoanonymous vehicles. thank you for baring with us. that safety issue. that is just something which i don't think we have wrapped our mind around. these numbers. the amount of death, injuries are too hard to imagine. and our next speaker is going to get into that. she's the top person in the nation focussed on the issues. we want to give to heifr. join me in giving a big thank you to chris. we look forward to having you open up an engineering office here in l.a. thank you. >> again. i just want to thank her for

flying out here. she's the deputy administrator. and has been tasked with leading us on this most important of issues. the safety of all of us. on these quality roads that we have. in l.a. and across the nation. and she's also the first few months been responsible for the administrator as well. national highway traffic administration. very businey role. very important role. the role of regulation is crucial for protecting the safety of us. and something where we're hearing folks talk about how it's important to have the federal government play a role. and coordinate across the country. so we don't have conflicting state regulation. or laws. which make it even more

complicated and confusing. we're all very eager to hear. about the leadership and leading role you're doing. we're glad to have you back here in los angeles. where you went to college. join me in giving a very warm welcome to heidi king. >> good afternoon, everyone. difficult for me to find word to describe how happy i am to be home in california. i am the native californiaen. and like most californiaens i fell in love with cars and innovation both. and i couldn't ask for a greater honor to be here. thank you tech fire for making me welcome. to talk about this very wonderful tone we have the love of cars and innovation come together. and can unlock so much opportunity for us. economic opportunity. mobility opportunity. and opportunity to save lives.

as david mentioned i am deputy administrator for the highway administration. we're responsible for saving lives due to traffic collision. that result from traffic crashes and responsible for reducing the economic cost that result from traffic crashes. automotive crashes took the lives of 37,461 of the our friend and neighbors last year. i look this morning at some of the populations of towns in california and other places. it's stunning what when we think about the number of people lost in one year through something as simple as necessary to our lives as transportation. one has to wonder why. as many of you know, the studies have shown several studies about

94% of these traffic collisions result from human error. human mistakes, human bad judgment. drinking and driving. drugs and driving. distracted driving. failure to put on seat belts chlts human as big ass a human diecisions and human factors. the increase the proportion increase in death last year from the prior year. was historic. the last two years we saw a larger increase in traffic deaths in the united states. than we have seen in my lifetime. i'm not young. that's a significant factor. so again here i sit. i'm new to the job of deputy administrator. with the burden on my shoulders on your shoulders. to address the increase in traffic fatality.

and welcome safely technology that can help us not only unlock the economic opportunity. but also to help us reduce the injuries the deaths and the losses. the economic losses. to bring mobility to more people. to bring back more useful time in the day. i don't know about you. all of us hate 405 southbound on a friday afternoon trying to get home. or the beach on the weekend. national highway traffic safety administration ha begun the journey through a series of guidance. this past september we published a vision for safety. it is a voluntary guidance. that asks that manufacturers provide a voluntary safety self-assessment. a voluntary assessment that helps individuals helps our communities, helps us. helps policy makers. helps their neighbors in manufacturing. to address 12 safety design

features. including cyber security. human machine interface, post crash ads maibehavior and other factors. it's a voluntary guidance. and ask that individuals involved in the manufacturer the preparation of automated driving systems for the roads begin to prepare these assessments and make them publicly available for you and for me. for all of us to understand the journey together. the technology is changing rapidly. communication with one another is a key part of understanding the risks, both the risk that we're going to be reducing with the new tech nol and risks that may emerge. that we won't understand until we see them. nhtsa is a regulatory agency.

why voluntary guidance. the answer is simple. we have thought quite a bit about technology development. we have had the blessing of watching the internet grow and emerge and become a huge part of our lives. as for myself i think back to about 2000. i was employed as a research scientist. if you're familiar with the name it's a part of old bell labs. which it was broken up this was the software component. fairly smart people used to dealing with emerging technology. in those days you andfy we had a mobile phone it was cell phone technology in a flip phone. type a letter and push a number three times to get the right letter. it would be a slow process texting. there wasn't much in the way of internet access on the phone. so we would imagine the future. we looked at the emerging technology in wireless. 3 g and 4 g was right around the

corner. and thought what would mobile phones become? in a world where we had such great broad band wireless technology. we imagined cameras on our front door. i could get an internet signal on my phone and know somebody was there. look at the camera and see who was there. maybe an app where i could unlock the door and let somebody in. because it was a service appointment and i was busy. we imagined and i at the time thought it was a silly idea, we could order food. take out food on our phones. why would anyone want to do that we can call the restaurant. why do i need an app for that? we imagined there could be refrigerators with a camera inside. do i have something to eat for dinner? so all of these things are things you and i either have in our homes now or could have. products that come to market,

products that work. products i take for granted. there was a lot that we missed. in talking about what technology would bring to us. i don't recall any of us understanding the enormous explosion in online commerce that we would see. the fact that much of shopping would happen on our phones. we didn't anticipate the impacts social and otherwise associated with being able to text and communicate in realtime. with friends and neighbors and other languages around the world. instant communication with friend. i get a text from europe and asia. photographs from my brother in hong kong. we didn't anticipate groud funding. crowd funding. many of the things that we take for granted now. our phone is very much a part of our person. i don't carry a wallet anymore. i carry a phone and credit card. so with that experience that being my own experience. each of you has your own

experience with changing technology. how it affected your life. i take that i have learned consumer adoption matters. we were as i mentioned thinking about refrigerators with cameras inside. and thinking about the apps that could order food. it was the apps where you could order dinner that matter. we come tired from work. we'll see cameras in refrigerators they are in the market. they haven't taken off quite as much. consumer adoption matters. they test a technology and see what works. they figure out ways to make it work for their lives that we sometimes don't anticipate. i learned perfect foresight is unlikely. we need to be flexible and adapt. we plan and dream. especially in the engineering community. what we think would be great and cool. there will be other people who may not be engineers who find

create i have uses or social benefits that we don't imagine. it's important to be flexible. and to not anticipate our forecast of where the technology will go are the only answer. the right answer. so issuing the voluntary guidance a vision for safety we're trying to address the two points. by asking for voluntary safety self-assessment. we're seeking to create a community in the united states that offers transparency into the developing technology. that allows for consumers to explore and learn how safety is designed into autoanonymous. -- consumers, manufactures. sharing best practices.

voluntary guidance system. voluntary self-disclosure. one step in opening up the dialogue as we step forward on the tremendous journey. as for foresight, guidance is a flexible approach. allows us to evolve and how we think about the risk and adapt to the rick. in step with technology and what we learn. step by step we will identify emerging technology and opportunity. step by step through the information we disclose and share we can foresee risk before they merge, find ways to mitigate the risk and see the technology deploy. safely. to see it developing safely. it allows us to learn from one another. in a coordinated approach by fostering a dialogue. so david and chris mentioned some of the promise of the developing technology. we're all excited of course to

not have to sit in traffic on 405 and stop go stop go. or the belt way. where i live in washington dc. we have all been very happy to think about the access that ads technology offers to the elderly and people under served in transportation. in particular in communities such as in the west. where neighborhoods were designed and built after the invention of the automobile. the communities aren't as walkable in certain parts of the country as others. the opportunity for people who are -- impairments that prevent them from driving normally or driving at certain parts of day. to live lives that allow them to spend time with loved ones to work. to play. to be as mobile as anyone else. the economic benefits the time regained. i'll touch on the environmental benefit. it's a long way off. imagine a world in which cars

don't crash into one another. we're saving lives reducing injury and. imagine the fuel official si gains if the cars don't have to be 8,000 chunks of medal. cars don't need to be that heavy and strong. we can improve fuel efficiency. reduce emissions into the environment. benefits are stunning. and well worth investing in. so while we walk the jour know towards safety, toward emerging technology and in a flexible way, we remain on duty. we're asking for voluntary safety self-assessment and as described in the guidance vision for safety, we do still have the traditional defects authority in place. on duty. we assure safety and transportation in the united states. at the same time we're working on the next round of guidance. we're already writing our

guidance 3.0. with received comments on this guidance. we're reading comments now taking them into account. and preparing the next step in the dialogue the next step in what we'll ask in assuring a path that's safe. but allows the technology to develop in ways we probably don't understand yet today. so today what's happening. we're implementing a vision for safety. we continue to enfourge folks to work on voluntary safety self-assessment. the first was submitted. we're appreciated to see the first one. we look forward to seeing more. as manufacturers, as developers work on the self-assessments, we stand ready to hech. we stand ready to offer advice or guidance. the public comment period on a vision for safety 2.0 is closed, comments are welcome.

this is a injury knee a dialogue. we have years to go. it's exciting it's worth it. and it's fun. so we look forward to hearing your comments and other comments. at public meetings or writing. or call us. meanwhile, i think you and i will be working together, dreaming about the future before us and future in which we don't have to talk about 37,000 deaths in a given year. if people trying to get to work. to see friend to get to the doctor office. the promise of safety, the promise of economic gain. makes this exciting future well worth the time and work ahead of us and the disruption. i look forward to working with you and hearing from you. and the exciting years we have before us. i couldn't be more pleased but to have the honor to be here today. and be at nhtsa during this exciting time. thank you very much.

>> thank you, so much. we're so grateful to have someone at the wheel this important issue. being the federal leading the way for us. and we have heard today from perhaps the top private sector leader. sel self-drive cars. self-public leader. next we'll hear from a man who i think is the leading visionary on transportation issues. in los angeles. he's taken to heart this issue of automotive pedestrian, bike safety human safety. for all of us. on the roads. and has led us toward vision for zero deaths and injuries down the line. something that is so important and something in this region that's so famous for car

culture. where those of us who -- i have had couple cases where when i was biking i have been hit by cars. the form e mayor had himself hit when he was biking on the l.a. here in l.a. we have had a tough record. the past sometimes and council i admire your leadership so much. for leading us toward safer tomorrow. and along with all of your leadership there's a metro board member, and chair of the los angeles city counsel transportation committee and bringing us to having the fully built mass transit system. which the region deserves. as well as of course improvements on the roads and highways. and everything else as well. and i just want to say, we're so lucky to have such a visionary mayor and his team and again thanks to deputy mayor. and his team.

and just fantastic. but when you have someone who sort of makes it their man tra representing us. across the issues and so many tech companies are -- when you have someone who really becomes the leading expert and visionary. leading l.a. had on transportation issues. it's a wonderful thing in the era of term limits where you don't see enough experts leading the way. so without any further adieu. join me in giving him a warm welcome to the podium. >> thank you. for those of you from out of town welcome to los angeles. before you leave ploez step outside and get the 360 degree view of this amazing city. thanks soft for being here for the conversation.

david i appreciate the intro-. as being a visionary. i have bad visions and i have good visions. and this is a subject on which i have both. as a local elected official, here in the city of los angeles i represent neighborhoods. i look at the decisions i make in the policies we consider from a very granular and human level. as we deal at the loat the loca level with the promise and potential. i this my colleagues and mayor look at it not so much technology. but people. and of places. and as we wrestle with the policy questions and the regulations that must come, we asked ourselves a number of different questions. we have to ask yourselves what will it mean for the streets and neighborhoods. and our families. what will this do and mean for our gathering places and for

environment? our built environment and natural environment. and how we answer the questions and the decisions we make from those answers, skb how we implement what we decide will really make the difference between whether or not the promise of autonomous vehicles. it depends on whether or not we have this technology work for us. or we adapt to this technology. and we have done technology particularly in transportation. wrong in the past. i think this city this car culture city is glaring example. when the great revolution of the internal combustion engine came about we decimated our communities. in order to accommodate the automobile. we destroyed many of our public

gathering places to make room for the lanes of traffic. going down what was a potentially or previously quiet enjoyable neighborhood. we built an interstate freeway system. which literally ripped some cities apart. and displaced people. it contributed to the urban sprawl. which has caused so many environmental problems. in this country. and that's because we just let cars dictate what we want to do. as we wrestle with the vehicles and their coming. we need to make sure what we do has them working for us. and not us regenerating everything we do. the way with live and get around. the way we communicate and interact with each other based on service of that technology. so at the local level there's this four questions that we sort

of ask ourselves. the first one is will self-driving cars solve our problems? the answer is some of them, yes. and some of them no. it will create additional problems that we cannot anticipate. we all hope that the vehicles will help us get out of gridlock. we are fairly certain that the vehicles will help us be liberated from the frustration of being in gridlock. we can watch a whole season of game of thrones through a long commute. but we are not certain yet about what the impact will be on gridlock. the rosy scenario is because we're not getting in a bunch of car accidents and the cars are self-regulating and drive closer together. everything will flow much more smoothly. that's the rosy situation that we so desperately dream for. in los angeles. we have to worry about the

potential of induced demand and more people adding more and more vehicles to our freeway. and to our streets. will people no longer have the disincentive to drive. will that add to more sprawl in l.a.? we have the predicted benefit of giving access to seniors and the disabled. we have the predicted impact which i hope comes true that we'll have much less of need for parking. but if we have everybody taking their own vehicle and not using it as a service, but a possession. do they go to the local market and say dear robot car please keep circling around while i'm in here? second question. are they going to be for most of us a possession or going to be a service. it is going to be something

where everybody is going to have their own vehicle? or i represent some wealthy parts of l.a. are people going to have several of their own vehicles? the party vehicle the office vehicle. or are people going to use sdmeez share these collectively? if they become the majority of them become possessions, we'll have more problems than we have now. if we can adapt the technology to use for us and have it implemented in the way that the chris was speculating. and having them be a service. something that is shared use. it will help us solve a lot of problems. it will give us the opportunity to free up the parking space. to create affordable housing. to create micro businesses. to create more open space. places where we can gather. like in latin america. where every three feet people

are gathered together in the wonderful community place. here in los angeles county we have 200 square miles of parking. 200 square miles. if we use shared use mobility if the service that's stuff that can be repurposed. if we also use autonomous vehicles. one of the moes pressing problems we have. that is the incredible inequity between neighborhoods and between different subgroups of los angeles and between income. i serve on the metro board. most of the people who use the metro system, two-thirds live in poverty. two-thirds of them. they cannot afford a vehicle. if they have access to shared use mobility, vehicles ta are shared use. their lives can change.

right now you can get to 12 times as many jobs by an individual car. than you can by mass transit here in l.a. shared use mobility if automated can help us address that. it also gives us the opportunity to shift how we think about the cities that we live in and the roads we drive on. right now everything is gored towards the driver. we have signage that indicates how people should go when they go further. that's to the driver. not relevant to the passenger. everything is set up from the mentality of the driver. the speed of the road. everything like that. if we begin to think about things from the perspective of the passenger or the nearby pedestrian. or the nearby cyclist. we have a different and whole listic way of looking at what

happens in the city. another question is who pays? who will pay for the implimtation of the technology? if this is done right, and the vehicles are sharing the data with the cities and vice versa, that's if that's done right. there will be to be a significant investment in technology. we'll have to do a lot more than we're doing now. that's something that will have all sorts of untold benefits for society. it's an investment we need to make. our roads will be used differently and designed differently. and reconfigure them. who will be paying for those changes. and a not inconsiderable thing for cities like los angeles is if the rosy scenario comes true and we eliminate tons of parking and hope that happens, we're going to have a deep hole in the budget. because cities rely a lot on parking revenue. either from parking tickets or people paying at meters.

we greft knew from moving violations. that will be a big hole in our city budget. and how to deal with that. one of the things we may wind up doing and i don't see ha san here, if we have a proliferation of the vehicles as a result of the automate td vehicles and some are shared use mobility and some are people having possession, this maybe the kind of thing that the city of los angeles puts us to the tipping point of congestion pricing. we're allowing the vehicles with lots of people into the central core and telling people driving a single occupy si vehicle you have to pay extra to come in there. who makes the rules? i was encouraged to hear the focus on safety from heidi it's so vitally important. we have an epidemic of death

here. the people who toend get killed are seniors and kids and people who are disabled. people from lower income communities. this is a huge opportunity to address that problem. but if local governments are denied the ability to make their own rules, and govern the use of automated vehicles. we'll have a lot of problems. we are the ones who send the fire department officials the paramedics and the police officers out to respond to crashes. we're the ones who have to design the roads. we do the planning and land use around our streets that will make mobility succeed. or fail. and we need to have a role in the rules. david seemed very eager for not having a different collection of rules from municipality.

there's a real value in us having that. as this technology rolls out. title of this is the sell driving car revolution. after a revolution, you need a constitution. some revolutions work out well. ours worked out well for 240 years until a year ago. and no offense. and the french lucian didnrevolt work out so well. the russian revolution didn't work out so well. our needs here are different than the needs in fresno or even in new york or boston. historically the rules for regulation of transportation and automobiles have really had much more of a prism and mind set to them for sub burr ban communities an urban

communities. and los angeles is a place that's on the cusp of a transportation transformation. we are really trying to prepare ourselves for the new world of automated vehicles. and a multi-modal type of city. i imagine everybody in the room is an advocate of net neutrality. every service provider and every service to have equal access to the internet and to them. what we have done here in los angeles is we have designed a system that we do not have mobility neutrality. we have one service provider that we exalt above others. that's the automobile. if we don't approach automated vehicles as a piece that can be added to a multi-modal future and continue to use it as an

opportunity to exalt the single occupy vehicle. wooe continue down a road that will lead us to demand and gridlock. a key to getting us out of gridlock. we have to do it right. the way in los angeles we hope to do it and trying to do it is we're investing in a system that relies on connectivity and slarsla shared data. we and the automobiles communicate with each other. we'll get crash data chl they'll get traffic data from us. and share information back and forth. we're banging on this being a shared use opportunity. this is value added to our mobility system. by getting people to not be in single occupancy vehicles. we hope it's an electric system. so that we can reduce emissions here. even further. those are some of the three

under pinnings of what we're trying to do. connect and share. in order to facility that we can the improved the mobility plan. and we have approved a document called urban mobility l.a..com. check it out. which sets us up to prepare for this. and prepare for shared use of all types of mobility. we have bike share that we have launched. we have launched the first in the nation shared car electric vehicle car share that is being targeted specifically for piloting in low income communities. to help us address theic wity issue. it's going to be a big challenge here. it will be a contest for us. between cultures. not a a war between the car culture and innovation. if we can continue to worship

the single occupancy vehicle we're screwed. if we allow the innovative spirit to be unleashed and lead us into a connected shared use mobility system, we're going to be much better off. i'm banking on innovation winning here. thanks everybody for being here. >> didn't i tell you he's a visionary? aren't we lucky to have someone steering us near l.a. who has done so much deep thinking about these issues. i do think that's important when you have the right people leading the way that you have that regulatory or law making power. we want to make sure or interests are looked out for. this is not something we're doing just for the sake of corporate profit. this is something for all of us. we trust the government to regulate the way to safety.

so whether it's councilman putting these thoughts into action through laws here locally. or on the federal level. clearly we need to safety consideration and everything else to be in place. so i want to right now take a moment to go back up to northern california. with our next speaker. with randy who is the executive director of the transportation authority. that they are one of ten federally designated proving grounds for autonomous vehicles. has been yubsed by quite a few of the major automakers already. and they also have other interesting projects in the works. i'll let him come up here and share his plans with you.

which we'll bring on the screen. give him a very warm welcome. randy. >> i'm savoring the moment. i don't get invited to l.a. very often. i'm from northern california i used to work for kal transfor 27 years. so i want to take you and give you an over view of what we're doing to try to innovate mobility or redefine mobility. where ever i go in the world i promise our board that i would tell you about who we are and what we do. we're a sales tax authority. for the staff of 20. we're also why do you have a test bed? we're a congestion management agency for law. we measure congestion at about 140 different intersections. because we want to make sure the

investments are paying dividends. i'll talk about the planning process. there we are. northern california. one of nine bay area counties. one of 24 counties in california that uses sales tax to pay for transportation in california. we have a thriving economy. and we have a diverse population. here's the things we do. when the board asks you. that's what we do. on construction we manage the planning the environmental clearings the design. and we manage the construction on the state highway system. we control cost better. we fund a number of initiatives. i think when you talk about one of the more innovative programs we have a bus pass program for under privileged kids. we fund bus passes for kids if they get a free lunch. we fund local streets and roads.

potholes. we fund bart. that's the sub way system. a lot of bus service. and safe routes to school. so we have a sweet of different strategies. not just build, bid, build. we're trying to manage our way out of congestion. not build out of congestion. we're a double a plus in wall street. we sell taxes. on wall street to accelerate a construction program. we deliver about 25 years of construction and ten years. the reason why we do that we don't gain any benefits of us talking about a project. you gain benefit when we build a project or sundayfund a service. we're capped at 1% for over head. and our last bond sale $100 million it was 2.71%. good interest rates out there.

mayor i read his speeches. a very innovative mayor. i like reading elected officials. he coined the term with kevin johnson the term city 3.0. we buy into that. a connected city. leveraging technology to reduce the cost. we went back and want to remind voters why transportation is important. cities were formed around ports. ocean ports. why? goods in goods out. people in people out. important to remind voters about the importance of the things we maintain and operate. eisenhower said we'll build an interstate system. will will be a defense system. the economy of the united states grew leaps sp bounds in those days. it was a fantastic era.

for highway building in the united states. mayor, mayor johnson. city 3.0. a connected city. we're excited about this. we said if we can place the subs transcription based transportation system we would get city 5.0. we skipped 4.0. i love hawaii 5.0. it sound really good. city 5.0. it's 5 g. fifth generation is coming our way. it has a lot of promise. widespread connectivity. we're excited about 35 g. we're excited about dedicated short range community contaminatiocommunit communication. i want to add that. for the deputy administrator.

imagine a day when you're city provides your communication stm provides you with better information to make better decision. that's what we want to do. this is just the smart energy. imagine the grid tells you before it goes out instead of that whole neighborhood is dark. smart buildings. hvac systems will go out. why autonomous vehicles. we said over and over safer roads. about 50% of the congestion in california is non-recurrent. special events. weather. the first time it rains a lot of accidents. the system will get more efficient if cars refuse to crash. air quality was mentioned before. and i have a slide on increase accessibility. we're focussed on that.

that was mentioned before. it's got to be true if nhtsa says it. you're all safe drivers i appreciate that. the highest percent increase by fatality rate is bicycles and pedestrians. this technology has the ability because we're asking people to walk for health bicycle for health. and fatality rate is going up. we need to do something about that. to protect the vehicle and bicycle and pedestrians. the study was done by texas transportation they studied a autonomous vehicle carrying four passengers se passenge passengers self-driven. it gets rid about 9.4 vehicles. if the regulatory environment is correct, you'll get a better less congestion and better

quality. af comment on that. that was a study done. i read the study. study shows that if you don't have accessibility to mobility, you're out look for economic vitality is not too good. so we're trying to get to the under served with this technology. this was mentioned before the handicap. the old people like me. we're changing the way we plan the future. if you think in terms of long range transportation plans you generate 30 year plans. if you take today's technology model the future. a 29% population growth. you have a real problem. what we have done is broken our county into four sub regions. our deputy executive director is here today. she's done a great job. we changed the way with e approach the public together to get information. normally you have a public hearing here. you get 20 people. ten consultants and ten people that are angry at you. you don't get good information.

this cycle she used social media. she used facebook and the web site. she gave you an allocation of the the coins. and you got to choose. normally a telephone town hall is i'll run for governor. i'm not really. but let's say i was. i'll call to a million people. this is my message. please vote for me come november 2. whatever the next election is. we inverted that. we called 15,000 people in each four sub regions. and we asked them to tune in to call in on the friday evening at 5:00. and we will answer questions live. through that process we got more comments in this one cycle of update than the previous 25 years combined. we did polling questions. we know voters don't like potholes. you don't like the red lights at

midnight when nobody else is riding. you want a better bart. the fourth thing was interesting. we want to use transit but we can't get there. 2,000 vehicles per lane per hour. we're increasing that. we know by 2040 your roadways will be more efficient. you want to make sure you're investing dollars correctly. that's what we're trying to do is changing the way we model the the future on capacity. columbus day how many of you get the day off? i do. a couple of us. freeways operate better. even with three of us with the day off. a small percentage they don't go to work the same day you do. columbus day think about that. modelling greenhouse gas reduction. in my county by the year 2040 wi knew 58%, emission fleet turn

over. to get to the 80% reduction by the year 2050. we need a slight reduction in per capita. about 15%. if we'll have a 58% fleet of 0 emission vehicles we're developing -- we're roll out a gred of electric vehicle charging stations. otherwise no matter how many electric cars there's not enough infrastructure to support that. these are just questions. i don't know. 12 foot lanes. imagine strucks on the outside 12 foot inside two 12s. you have 3 eights. you improved capacity. cars will stay centered in the lane. we're trying to use the outside shoulder. for buses to keep the buses on schedule. to make them more reliable. and more lovable for the commuters. so they're on time. and we're worried about bicycles and pedestrians.

we're going and developing complete streets. making sure it's safe for bicycles and pedestrians and vehicles. we created five years ago one of our board members, she was supervisor. she wrote assembly bill. which exempts us from a steering wheel and broke pe dal. and wrote the uber insurance bill. you need to go to the and figure out creating smart jobs. i said why is that my job? nobody else will do it. go get it done. i took a ride out there and it's 5,000 acres. about the fifth the size of san francisco. this facility is about 7 miles by one and a half miles wide. we have a permit from the u.s. navy through the city who is a great partner. open for business and innovation. 2,100 of the 5,000 acres. so what you see in the bottom

part -- let's see if i can do that. that's bunker city. so you have 1.2 mile long roads. with roads. we can roads. t-intersections. hondas testing there. looking at temporary signal. their sensors are looking at the color currently. and then there's a mini city up in here that has a buildings, trees, fire hydrants. perfect place for testing, in my opinion. it reason we created it, smart jobs. we wanted to bring a few of the smart jobs to contra costra county. enhanced safety. safety was our top priority and healthier if environment. so we're one of 10. thank you to the usdot for naming us. that's san diego.

arch enemy. not arch enemy, sorry. that's michigan. we just signed a four-country agreement to look at share autonomous had vehicles low speed. the country of new zealand, country of contra costra. that was a joke, by the way. what sets our test bid apart is the pavement is old. so if you want to test your sensors, vehicles, weeds are coming up in the middle of the pavement so we have to mow the concrete. it striping is not that good but american roadways, the condition and surface is not that good. so do you want to test on a brand new pavement or an old pavement? because a contract can bring that up to standards but difficult to build a road that looks just like this. it was rumored we don't have tunnels. that's not true.

we have two 1400 foot long steel arch tunnels. but you lose sensor. your sensors lose connectivity. undercrossings, the center bent doesn't have guardrail and it's not standard. but you might have it somewhere where you know the striping's warn out. parking's going to get affected. your existing parking structures will get more efficient. it doesn't snow at concord. so we have to go to norway or michigan to test snow because i understand it does snow 10 months out of the year in michigan. these are our testing partners. triple a northern california. we love southern california as well. we love you guys. just want to say that. easy mile. amber, we're going to roll out a mass of mobility as a service.

we're going to roll out 50 electric cars and we'll announce that. uber freight is testing. second generation of ai and toyota research are going to test their ai as well. so this is our shared autonomous vehicle project. thank you to nitsa for giving us a a waver. we're under the production units averaged or two years. we're testing it at bishop ranch. we're working with the dmv to run this vehicle on public streets. stan tech is our truteejic partner. easy miles is the technology. bishop ranch, that's where we're testing. if you contract out the bus service, they think this is the future. we have cities open for

business. so five of our cities have endorsed proclamations. come to contra costra and test your technologies. this will be our fourth. hopefully chris will come and speak. i know i haven't asked you but be there now in san ramon. thank you very much for your kind attention. [ applause ] >> well, thank you very much. for all the start ups in l.a. that need a spot to test their self-driving vehicles, we have a good spot in mind and actually there are some companies in southern california. we have an attendee, julie from strobe whose company was acquired by gm cruise. so southern california is already part of this scene and we may not have our own testing ground quite yet. so we know where to go when we're ready. so like to take a moment now to

have us all just step back and we've really gotten into the grannialer here. we've explored different aspects from how this revolution has been done technologically. what the regulatory and safety considerations are. what the city level impacts are and what the testing process and the transportation policy implications are. and i want us to step back and think really big picture. how was this revolution going to transform society for the better? what are the problems we haven't talked about yet? who here like me already watched ted's talk? and i think it's responsible for waking up the auto makers several years ago and realizing how close this revolution is coming. and today we're extremely lucky to have him joining us.

we've actually spoken before at our burbank tech comp series and one of my favorite speakers we've ever had. i think you'll find his former president walt disney r and, d and acquired minds and companies from general motors to ones who he can't talk about but suffice it to say he's on advisory boards for the u.s. strategic command, just about every other agency out there as well. fast company named him one of the 100 most creative people in business and we're so lucky to have him had be a part of the business community here in southern california bringing his if sites to bear for clients all across the country and the world but today bringing his if sites to all of us. so without any further ado, won't you join me in getting a very warm welcome.

[ applause ] >> thank you. >> well, rarlts pleasure to ber. it's a little bit like déjà vu evac evachgs allizing about this. and i remember late nient'90s t to get companies to take seriously this thing call the internet because it might have some value to the entertainment industry and i can only suffice to say that it was a little like imagining yourself at kitty hawk on a cold december day trying to convince the wright brothers that frequent flyer miles was the seek troot their industry. their focus was getting a tomato soup can to function as a

carburet carburetor. that's where this notion -- i say notion because it is an industry. it isn't an industry yet but it will be. and it's changing. as chris pointed out executives are going from don't care, not in my career lifetime, which is generally the way executives look often at things, especially next quarter managed public companies. to looks like something is happening. this will be a feature we need to incorporate at some point to uh-oh and where are we going to get the talent to do it? this is the first fundamental change in the automobile in 100 years. and it effects everything, especially because our cities are designed for automobiles. our live are designed for automobile and many of the speakers have talked about this but it has traditionally been

lonely trying to get people to be serious about things which they think are far enough in the future that it doesn't effect their livelies and i'd like to talk about that. lives, quality of life, what's this do. i think the interesting transition for the automotive companies is the heart and soul of automobiles for 100 years has been it drive line. it's been the ifgen and how you get power down to the wheels, down to the road and then performance and how the car handles. so heart and soul i remember once of the many faux pass i commit internationally. once at m.a.n. in germany and talking to them about how i wanted to but an electric power plant in a vehicle they built for a special application and you could see the look on their face pointing out that one of their earlier employers was

diesel and they invented the diesel ingen and they're not interested in continuing the conversation. you tend to hire people who agree with you because the other ones are annoying and as a result most companies end up being a product of thinking the same. the future of the automotive industry -- and i heard a number of colleagues talk a number of years ago is soft ware and not drive train and they're completely unprepared for that. the soft ware in your vehicle has the most moving parts, it is the hardest to test, the hardest to find talent to be able to develop and the hardest to integrate in a way that doesn't make you crazy at the same time but it's trying to keep you alive. and you know, i think we have to think carefully about what we're trying for in cars. i don't think the future of cars is about mult multiple people in

one car. i think that's a future of cars. personal empowerment has always been a big portion of what cars are and that you may want to get from one place to the other without having a bunch of people with you as a driver in the past. we can't take a monochromatic view of the future. those that have had the particularly experience of having to take the car keys away from one of your aging parents, understands the feeling of disempowerment that creates, let alone getting older. the fact that you can actually not waste minutes, hours, days, years of your life that you're never getting back is not an insignificant factor. when you're a kid you don't think about that. about 15 minutes before you drop dead, it takes on a whole new

meaning and we've created things called hospitals that give you time for money. that's what hospitals do. they will give you time in exchange for money. and we have to think about not just a single driver but at a system level of society and cities and how they work and function. so it's nice to say electric vehicles are zero emission. they are remote emission vehicles. the same energy has to be put into it. the electricity is just a way of storing energy. and somewhere you have to make it and whether you're making it with nukes or with solar, it's completely nonthing. what did it take to make the solar cells? did you make them with solar energy? and the answer is no. this stuff is complicated. so when we look at easy

solutions for complex problem you seldom end up in a good place. the challenge we face is this is really important stuff. getting this whole self-driving thing more terrible than not. i happen to like driving and i think it's fun to drive. at the same time i don't think it's fun to sit in traffic and i'm perfectly happy to have it do it while i text. maybe it can texet for me. but part of the challenge is having flexibility and empowering people's lives and understanding that cars are not just about basic transportation, they're about passion, they're about empowerment, self image and if you ignore those things, you're going to have a hard problem here because that's the way the communities view them. now many young kids, millennials, don't feel that way and they think it's about transportation which is why the

big auto makers are thinking about transportation services as one part of their future or perhaps their entire future and i look at the gee if cars can't be crashed into. so this nur virvana that a car never going to crash, that's not going to happen. on one level that says i can make the car lighter so it's more energy efficient. well, i gain efficiencies of having cars drive maybe 90 miles per hour with 10 feet in front of them, one drafting in the other and exhibiting safe behaviors, getting the packing density up on the roads. on one level we think about well, we won't fill all the garages. no, you need to design autonomous parking garages, which are six feet high, aren't

lit, four inches between the vehicle and pack them solid so you get six times the number of cars in the same spot. there's no simple way of looking at complex systems that's meaningful as a road map. all we can do is the best we can. and not wait till we really ask ourselves all the questions and then move forward because we're in the feeding frenzy at the moment where everybody's interested or moving forward so quickly that they're not necessarily asking the right questions and that includes cities. the good news is the technology will be extraordinary in how they impact things. we start by talking about need. the needs of a society, the feed of transportation. well, what about desire? our lives are based not just on need but on desire. and i remember a kid i went to mit with and we were having a

c c conversation. he was thinking about having a family and in fact got married. we were talking about what kind of car he was going to buy. and this is when mini vans were beginning to be started and fuel economy is really important. put that whole thing together and left to his own devices, which he was, he bought a porsche. it's because desire usually wins and why does one spend $1,000 for a cell phone when one for free will do what you need? because you desire it and desire has always been a part of civilization and will continue to be so and by the way this revelation is going to empower that too. because if you don't have to design safe survivable objects and decorate them to look okay and you could go back to

designing beautiful cars because you can make them curvy and swoopy and a whole bunch of things. of all the classic cars we look at gee, why don't they make that anymore? because we don't know how to make them safe. so it's a multidimensional safe and the power from autoonomy is not just about saving lives which is important. at the same time let's have societal context in the same year we lose 40,050 lives from car accidents and a staggering number from hospital infekdss. my point is we have to look at society and technology at a systems level. these things are all interconnected. you can't solve the problem for one narrow element of it without looking at the rest. the fact is you can but you'll get a less desirable result.

and if you look at some of the great accomplishments of this country it has been insistm engineering and design. it's what got us to the moon. it's what did a whole bunch of things that said you have to step back and look at it. it future of intelligent cities is looking at them as a system and self-driving cars are a subsystem as part of that. if you think about it as a system level, it sensors will be shared across a variety of systems and services. is this a perfect nirvana moving forward? we've talked about the impact on changing cities and redesigning them. of course there will be problems and sometimes the problems will be things we intentionally put in the vehicles because we think it makes them safer. you probably don't want a

vehicle to run you over. that same time if you're on a street on a dark night and someone is trying to rob you and the way they do is by having their friend just drive in front of your car while they rob you, you probably don't think that's a great feature as compared to driveing it yourself and get out of harm's way. are these problems solvable? they absolutely are but they're complicated. i would urge you that as we're thinking about this to look at the human dimension, about the passion, the art, the beauty, the design that has brought us to where we are. the cities that have evolved as a result of passion. but the best and this is a wonderful city. this is a great city. i lived here for 25 years. i enjoy it. i think it's thoughtful. i think it's a very apt view of the american city of the future with cultural diversity and all

forms of diversity in an exciting way and i think this is an exciting place to see these things develop. the challenge though is not to take a monochromatic view. it's not just about mass transportati transportation. will personal cars be where we see level five ougautoonomy happening? trucks, deliveries, all of that. yeah, you think about a truck, it's a mistake in the navigation or guidance, traveling at 70 miles per hour. has significant impact. you need to be thoughtful about that and understand the mount of damage that system can do if it behaves badly are solvable systems. what's it take to solve them? in my view there are two kinds of people in the world. people who think there are two kinds of people and people who don't.

but there really are two kinds of people that are driving this revolution. on the one side there are requirements people and their view is we have to set out a set of rules, regulations, requirements that will establish the road map forward and then we will all follow this, optimize it, move forward and we will reach an optimal solution. in the film business we have these kinds of people and drooer industry we have these kinds of people. the notion is let's get together, let's talk to the customer, let's gather information. let's look at the research. develop a set of requirements. requirements organizations tend to be metric oriented. so let's set a set of metrics by which we orient progress. by the way you continue to evolve this forward.

you generate something, you produce it, you launch it in the world and wait and see if it's a success. along the way requirement organizations give high points for freezing requirements early because the term of art when you allow things change over time make things expensive and they don't work. so you kind of punish bad behavior. net result, you end up with something you take a long time to do it because these organizations want to be risked averse and they want to get it right and have a process in place. they're very process oriented. it's how most of the automotive industry works and how all of government works. there's another process i would call big idea people process. which basically says forget all of that. i just have a vision for the future and i'm just going to do it and try to stop me. and the film business, which i

came from is a big idea business where you don't go to the audience and ask them what kind of movie they would like the see. in fact, people do that every so often. a bean counter arrives on it scene and says let's find out the highest grossing films of all time. what do they have in common? a boat rk, blue people, leonard dicaprio, special effects all of that. great, go ask the audience what kind of movie they want to see. you get exactly what you find if you ask what they want in a phone. how many expert blackberry users would have said make sure the battery isn't interchangeable and what i really want is apps and you say what are apps? and they say i have no idea but i'm going to be desperate for them and in fact i want them so

badly youicide build a store in the device so i don't have to go somewhere to get them. you don't get a lot of people, just like you're not going to get people who are eether the users, designers of current vehicle wheres the fuch of vehicles are. the way these things happen is you pick people with a track record of succeeding. you back them. just as in a movie. you have the director. it is the director's movie and the director's empowered to make that happen. they attract and aggregate great talent and if it hits, it's a hit. and it's in fact anchored a lot of its past, including triumphed in the aerospace industry, entertainment industry, etc. on the idea to do big idea thinking. a guy whose name was on the door at my earlier job was walt

disney and he dade pretty good job of inventing a future nobody had had had seen and created an entire industry. i would put forth to you that to succeed at this vision of self-driving cars and again i'm humbled by the people assembled together here. a great event. that we need to do big idea thinking. you have to dream about a vision of the fufuture. how it will instill passion. how it won't be about gee, i want a steering wheel but how does this change our lives? and at the same time you're going to need a requirements driven prosacy for the regulatory, manufacturing and to insure quality. what's the problem? get the big idea from this side of the room and the requirements people from this side of the room and put them together. these people hate each other.

you basically look at the requirements people think these big idea people are babe aides, unrealistic, spoiled, over paid, dress funny. there's an endless number of things but basically they shouldn't be trusted with any m impo important job. they think the requirements people drain the life force out of the room by merely showing up. they don't have to say a word and it precludes the opportunity of a createdive outcome. we need to get both working together. there's still separate groups. visionary plan here. unrealistic they'll never do it. requirements here. that's nice we'll all be dead by the it time the third draft is written. if we get the two working together and take the skills -- and one of the things great about california is it actually has those skillsets together and merge them with detroit and

other areas and put a process in place where there's mutual respect. why would they do this? work with someone who have a different dna? simple because they will both fail if they don't. and so once you get scared enough to realize you're future depends on collaborating with people who have a different way of thinking about the world than you do, then you have a basis to move forward. what's exciting is that's starting to happen now, which is good for the future of self-driving cars. i was out last weekend with my perfect 8-year-old daughter and we were driving out sort of daddy and keira day or keira and daddy day, depending on who you c ask, to get a pizza which is our usual ritual. and i said sweet heart, would you like me to teach you how to drive and what the controls mean? and she said no, it's okay, dad.

i understand how to do are had that. i just have to wait for my feet to reach the pedals. so apparently she's ready without any further input. however, when my daughter gets in her first car, i sure hope it's an autonomous car with active safety systems that know how to keep her safe, keep her where she should be driving, not get lost, have her not get er d herself in trouble by traffic accidents or texting or any of the new technological marvels coming ahead that will distract people's attention. i think you have to think about it as if you're in a car with an intelligent partner and this partner is very aware. they're very smart. they know a lot. they have an inpsycholupedic knowledge of the world and everything around.

they know you and your desires. they know your capabilities and they're your partner and you can ignore them. just partner, sit in the seat and we're going to go for a drive through the mountains and have a wonderful time with our daughters as we've always had in the past or it's going to do it for you because you've had a long day at work or you want totects or whatever combination and when it sees a hazard it will take control and save your life and my daughter's life and her friend's life in a way we can only dream of now. this is not 20, 30, 60, 80 years away. if the people in this room agreed to come up with a mutual respect to get both ways of thinking get together, i would argue it's going to be ready by the time my daughter's legs are long enough to reach the pedals.

thank you so much. [ applause ] >> thank you so much. i think they would agree when they chose three awardees last year. truly a visionary. we're so honored to have you bring it home for us today. thank you all so much for coming. those in the room, thank you all. those watching on c-span at home, i hope you all have come away like i have inspired by our speakers. we're so grateful for flying in or joining us locally. and i hope those in the room will enjoy the reception that will follow down stairs. a chance to reflect and work together across lines. and i just want to inkrj those of you watching as well.

check out tech fire co. we have an exciting initiative having to do with self-driving cars that we'll be announcing later on. so stay tuned. still secret for now. but just hope that are had of us can come away reedy to lead our cities, our nations, our start ups towards this revolution in a safe way, in a smart way that brings the benefits that is mindful of the challenges and that leads us ahead to a better tomorrow. so thank you all for being here and thank you again to all of our speakers. how about one more applause. thank you. [ applause ] see you at the next event. thank you.