Quotes from Karl Iagnemma

When I first started writing, I didn't write about scientists at all. I think I wanted a break from that part of my world.

It's important for automated cars to be able to drive in a human-like fashion - and that does mean adapting to the driving patterns around you.

When a driverless car looks out on the world, it's not able to distinguish the age of a pedestrian or the number of occupants in a car.

We are all vulnerable to the tendency to overestimate the likelihood of vivid, cognitively available risks rather than statistically likelier, but less salient, risks.

It's challenging to drive in a way that's human-like.

You put a car on the road which may be driving by the letter of the law, but compared to the surrounding road users, it's acting very conservatively. This can lead to situations where the autonomous car is a bit of a fish out of water.

It's a cultural question. Will people want to share cars?

You have to force yourself to give up and to move onto something else. That's the way you grow as a writer, by trying new things and tackling new subjects. But it's difficult. There's part of you that doesn't want to give up because you realize that, in some way, you're surrendering.

If you're a large organization, you may welcome a bit of regulation to keep the small guys out.

The fundamental problem here is that humans and automation approach the driving task differently.

I love driving through Western Massachusetts, out through the Berkshires, when the road is empty and it's a nice day. I don't like driving home on Memorial Drive at 5:45 or 6:45 at night when it's crowded and stressful. I think that's true of most people, and the goal of automated driving is to take the stressful part of driving out of the task.

Even if trolley problems were a realistic concern for AVs, it is not clear what, if anything, regulators or companies developing AVs should do about them. The trolley problem is an intensely debated thought experiment precisely because there isn't a consensus on what should be done.

For better or worse, we have to bridge this divide between developing cars that drive by the book and cars that drive how you and I drive.

All the technology going into self-driving cars is robotic technology. It's not automotive. That explains why some of the traditional automotive players didn't develop this technology.

For self-driving cars in particular, there are lots of dimensions of this technology beyond just impact on labour. There is a massive potential improvement in public health.

Writing, for me at least, takes a lot of concentrated work and effort. It takes dedication and the willingness to do the work even when that feeling of inspiration isn't there at all.

Everybody likes driving through scenic, winding roads. It's hard to find people who like sitting in traffic in cities.

The AV ecosystem is constantly evolving, and no single winner will be crowned.

To the extent that trolley problem scenarios exist in the real world, AVs will make them rarer, not more frequent.

We want to develop a technology that's globally applicable, that's not customized for a specific city or a specific country. The only way to do that is to be able to test every day in a diversity of environments.

Our first iteration of driverless cars kind of drove like trolleys on a track. This uncanny notion threw people off.

It's funny how life works. You end up sometimes back where you started.

My stories often begin with a situation or character rather than an insight about the human condition. It's always been difficult for me to write from an abstract idea, no matter how interesting or compelling I feel the idea might be.

Cities like New Delhi for example, where traffic is dense and it's a more fluid driving environment, that's hard for self-driving technology to deal with.