Concerns with Mobility Experiments

What is the issue?

All over the world experiments in mobility of passengers is resulting in mixed responses.

What are the concerns with experiments in mobility?

• Many cities around the world have started pilot programmes for launching autonomous vehicles, which reduces man’s effort and time.
• But some experiments prove still more research needs to be done, before launching autonomous vehicles among the population as there is a threat of damage for life and property.
• Recently a self-driving autonomous SUV collided in USA and caused death of a person.

What are the implications for India?

• In India, autonomous driving as an option is a far dream as the traffic conditions around the country are still chaotic.
• The concern with India is that, there aren’t enough ongoing experiments on mobility which needs to move over a billion people every day.
• The reality of shortage of roads and parking are not being effectively tackled.
• Apart from this the steps for alternative policies taken by the respective government remains static.

What measures can be taken to address this issue?

• Policy measures needs to be taken to incentivise experimentation with mobility models.
• Models like vehicle sharing are likely to be the main focus of intelligent mobility efforts in the short term.
• Different models of vehicle sharing can be experimented and initiatives of few states like Delhi can be taken to bring in electric buses to replace inefficient vehicles.
• Electric Vehicle policies can be implemented for swapping 2 wheelers, 3 wheelers, even 4 wheelers carrying commercial load with electric vehicles.
• Experiments with bicycles for moving from specific point to point can be done, to understand the psyche of the people.

Source: Business Standard