The 25-Year Elevator Gap
What it takes for automation to erase a job
Before we begin, a programming note. On Thursday, 23 July at 1200h ET, my guest on the third episode of Changing Lanes Live will be Nat Beuse, Chief Safety Officer of Aurora, the world’s leading driverless-trucking company.
Few people have seen automated-vehicle safety from as many sides of the table as Beuse: he spent nearly two decades as an executive at NHTSA, where he oversaw the US government's work on automated driving, then led led the safety team at Uber's self-driving unit, before joining Aurora. We'll talk about how a company proves that a truck with nobody aboard belongs on a public highway, and who should get to decide. Subscribers will be notified when we go live; you may also sign up here.
Everyone who talks about automated vehicles (AVs) eventually brings up the elevator.
Once upon a time, elevators used to have operators. In time, the technology to automate the job developed, but riders were too nervous to ride alone, so the job persisted. Then, the story goes, a strike in 1945 forced the issue, and the operators disappeared. The moral for automated driving is that even when the technology is ready, public fear will hold it back. To normalize that technology, all that it takes is to address that fear.
It’s a good story, and it’s one I’ve told myself. That’s why I’m chagrined to learn that, having investigated it more closely, it’s not quite true.
The accurate history of the elevator operator is that there was indeed a twenty-five-year gap between the first elevator that could run itself and the first office tower that did, but it wasn’t a strike that closed that gap. Four ordinary forces had to converge…
