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Researchers, industry executives, and government officials have long puzzled over how self-driving cars might change the planet. If you could do something else while stuck in traffic, would it change the way you use your car? Would you be willing to live farther from work? Alternatively, would the advent of shared self-driving cars prod you to ditch your personal vehicle for shared Ubers, making trips more efficient?
Self-driving cars aren’t here yet, and it will likely be years, or decades, before most Americans have access to the technology, which is still in development. But Scott Hardman thinks he’s found a way to peer into the future. He’s a researcher at the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies who looks at how people respond to new fuels and travel technologies. If you want to know how the humans of a decade from now might travel, he thinks it’s useful to study partially automated car features available now, such as Tesla’s Autopilot.