New priorities in an upended world

By Alexander Corne

The world has been turned upside down and had the last few coins shaken out of its pants, by the COVID-19 virus.

Aside from the human suffering, the economic shellacking, and the social dislocation, or possibly as a result of it, in most countries, we have actually wound the clock back almost a century to a time when value was placed on learning, knowledge, concern for others and a degree of humility.

In other words, the Me! Me! Me! Instant Gratification Generation has been plundered, punctured and punted into touch.

Who would you rather pay a weekly salary of $850,000 to now? A young man who is good at kicking a ball into a net or over sticks, who can run for 90 minutes without getting puffed out, or a specialist researcher identifying and formulating a vaccine to cure the virus? Just think about that for a minute.

In every western culture, the deity of sport has been deposed. Almost soundlessly. Practically effortlessly. Religious extremists of every stripe have joined the sports folk, kicked unceremoniously to the kerb. No-one on a ventilator has been saved by a Shaman of any colour.

And in the epicentre of world entertainment, Las Vegas is shut and Hollywood’s great names are unmasked as nothing more than a sideshow when the matters are life-and-death.

It seems we don’t need Hollywood’s uber-liberal mavens to entertain us when the SHTF.

Scale up a few notches to bear witness to globalism melting faster than the polar icecaps. The splintering of the UK from the EU has raced to become a chasm separating the EU’s rich and sophisticated northern kingdoms from their poverty-stricken southern neighbours.

Borders are back in fashion, and EU members were not even up to sharing masks or gloves. Reckon they’ll pony up their armed forces if one of their number gets eaten alive by the hungry bear to the east?

The irony of the entirety of Europe being dependent on PPE being flown in from China appears to have been lost on folks, from national government and EU ministers down.

Hopefully Australia will be a bit more savvy, in its post-cataclysmic reconstructionist phase, and finally realise that it must not be wholly dependent on China to make everything it needs in the pursuit of life, love and happiness. Just as we can’t rely on the US to warehouse our liquid fossil fuel energy security stockpile, offshore and across the Pacific.

For fun, why not extrapolate the events of the past 8 weeks and just imagine how vulnerable we would all be this time next year, if a black hatted player (pick one: there is no shortage of unprincipled states and terrorist organisations) decided to let loose a new and similarly murderous concoction at the Olympics or World Cup soccer finals.

The ‘dry run’ when Bergamo played Valencia certainly shows how effective a sports crowd is at spreading a virus across two nations, without even trying. Ramp it up a few notches and you have World War III declared, run and won without a shot being fired.

So the take-out is that we all, individuals and businesses, must lobby our elected representatives to ensure that we are better prepared next time. For example, the last pandemic drill run in Australia was in 2008. We must tell our ‘leaders’ not only to gameplay the scenarios, but actively prepare, stockpile and train. Because if they don’t, the wilderness beckons.

RMK+A is highly experienced in government relations and in assisting businesses and organisations in engagement with policy makers.

 

The brave new world – well, not just yet

If we listen to some of the futurists and tech pundits, very soon, we will all be sitting back in the driver’s seat and letting the autonomous car do all the work. In this brave new world, there will no road fatalities, traffic will flow smoothly and we will all arrive at our individual destinations relaxed and on time.

Like all utopian dreams the impact of the single most troublesome variant is often omitted. Humans. Humans with individual needs, desires, objectives, with their capriciousness, unpredictability, selfishness, inattentiveness and competitiveness. All of which any autonomous vehicle system will have to cope with.

Even if we were to ban all direct human control of motor vehicles (and that’s just not going to happen) humans will still share spaces with such vehicles, interact with them and come up with incalculable variations as to what they expect such vehicles to do for them. Otherwise they will not be individual vehicles at all, they will be public transport – with all the predictability yet limitation that entails.

The technology to allow vehicles to be partially, even largely, autonomous already exists. What does not is an agreed public policy and regulatory framework for the operation of such vehicles nor the closed systems within which they can operate free from the risks of human vicissitudes.

In an ideal scenario autonomous vehicles will talk to each other, operate within a network that has infrastructure also providing interactive information, plan and execute trips based on individual choice yet consistent with capacity, and prioritise user and community protection. Never mind that there can be cases where that last dual requirement is not easily reconciled.

No road fatalities, even within an autonomous system, is impossible. Yet the argument runs that the fatality cases will be so few that the larger gains justify the far lesser exceptions. But who makes that ethical judgement? Moreover, who takes responsibility when things inevitably, go spectacularly and tragically pear-shaped.

One of the luxury car companies recently issued a very brave statement saying that they would take full responsibility for any failure, causing accident, of one of their vehicles operating in autonomous mode. Quite apart from the lawyer’s picnic that can be had from the effort to define both failure and cause, any company with international exposure would soon find even a tiny percentage of incidents within their global fleet enough to drown them in claims.

The truth is that fully autonomous private motor vehicles (that is running all the time autonomously) is as much science fiction as the flying cars of the Jetsons. Yes, there will be more and more sophisticated ‘driver aids’, many of which will allow full autonomous operation in certain circumstances, under certain conditions and with certain supporting infrastructure. Yes, there may even be closed systems – such as inner city grids – where only vehicles that can be switched to autonomous mode will be allowed to enter. There may well be a day when all new cars and heavy vehicles will have such capability. However, so long as there are humans in the mix, there will remain the need for personal responsibility and ultimately, intervention and control.

The more likely outcome is a sensible combination of both improved vehicle capability and improved infrastructure allowing for opportunities to decrease road trauma whist increasing efficiency. To say nothing of better driver education and increasingly convenient public transport options.

We already have a closed system mass transport platform where the operating vehicles can perform the tasks assigned to their human controllers, without intervention. The air transport system. Yet pilots not only remain in the cockpit they also continue to carry individual responsibility for controlling their aircraft. At all times! Can’t see that changing anytime soon.

RMK+A consults widely to automotive businesses on matters of vehicle industry and transport public policy and government engagement.