Engineering Social Justice into Traffic Control fo

Authors: Milos N Mladenovic Tristram McPherson

Publish Date: 2015/08/01

Volume: 22, Issue: 4, Pages: 1131-1149

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Abstract

The convergence of computing sensing and communication technology will soon permit largescale deployment of selfdriving vehicles This will in turn permit a radical transformation of traffic control technology This paper makes a case for the importance of addressing questions of social justice in this transformation and sketches a preliminary framework for doing so We explain how new forms of traffic control technology have potential implications for several dimensions of social justice including safety sustainability privacy efficiency and equal access Our central focus is on efficiency and equal access as desiderata for traffic control design We explain the limitations of conventional traffic control in meeting these desiderata and sketch a preliminary vision for a nextgeneration traffic control tailored to address better the demands of social justice One component of this vision is cooperative hierarchically distributed selforganization among vehicles Another component of this vision is a priority system enabling selection of priority levels by the user for each vehicle trip in the network based on the supporting structure of nonmonetary credits

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