Remembering the future: A study of work in street trials of driverless buses
The project funded by SNSF Spark focuses on past trials of automated vehicles for public transport in Switzerland. Through interviews with people involved in these trials, such as safety operators and technicians, its goal is to explore the everyday aspects and implications of automated mobility. It seeks to understand the narratives and practices surrounding the organization of pilot trials and the participants’ roles within them.
Involved members
In this one-year research project, we aim to uncover the tacit knowledge and practical experience gained by people who operated and maintained self-driving buses during street trials in Switzerland, with the wider aim of better understanding the social impact of automated technology.
Our study is based on the idea that, although these trials provided valuable technical information, there is often little detail about the practical knowledge gained by the people who actually carried out the trials, such as operators and technicians. Our main aim is to fill this gap by talking to the people who took part in the trials, addressing issues such as how the trials were conducted on a day-to-day basis, the type of knowledge acquired but not detailed in the official reports, and how it evolved over the duration of the trials. From a methodological point of view, we will use a combination of oral history (collecting personal stories) and structured interviews around specific topics, talking to former operators and technicians about their practical experiences with street trials. We will also use videos of these trials to help interviewees recall specific details.
Understanding the experiences and knowledge gained during the street trials of driverless shuttles can offer new insights into the impact of automated technologies on society. The results and methods developed may also be useful for studying other new technologies being tested in similar contexts.
