Tuesday, November 24, 2020

Adult Temper Tantrum Rant - Part 2: Separate Is Never Equal

I can supply quote after quote about how autonomous vehicles (AVs) promise to usher in an age of liberation for people with disabilities and older adults who do not drive. The Secretary of Transportation herself, Elaine Chao, introduced AV 3.0 by saying in part:

Automation has the potential to improve our quality of life and enhance the mobility and independence of millions of Americans, especially older Americans and people with disabilities.

Automated Vehicles 3.0 - Preparing for the Future of Transportation, US Department of Transportation (2018) (at p. ii). Another typical quote in the same vein delves a bit deeper and comes from a 2016 Rand report about AVs.

AV technology will also increase mobility for those who are currently unable or unwilling to drive. Level 4 AV technology, when the vehicle does not require a human driver, would enable transportation for the blind, disabled, or those too young to drive. The benefits for these groups would include independence, reduction in social isolation, and access to essential services. Some of these services are currently provided by mass transit or paratransit agencies, but each of these alternatives has significant disadvantages. Mass transit generally requires fixed routes that may not serve people where they live and work. Paratransit services are expensive because they require a trained, salaried, human driver. Since these costs are generally borne by taxpayers, substituting less expensive AVs for paratransit services has the potential to improve social welfare.

Autonomous Vehicle Technology: A Guide for Policymakers, Anderson et al. (RAND Corporation 2016), p. xv.

Potential ≠ Reality

But, thus far, except for public transit and its partnerships, which comprehensively serve a few very large cities and some university towns, the future appears grim for anyone who needs accessible vehicles and longs for the same quality of transportation as others enjoy. 

There's the rub. We underinvest in transit and there's no end in sight to that reality. Because of the costs, communities provide bare bones transit and paratransit. Hence, there is no equivalency for those who depend on transit or paratransit because the service is far from the comprehensive and immediate access to transportation that the average person take for granted with the private vehicle.

Since the private vehicle is not accessible, some persons with disabilities are unable to take an offered ride, or carpool, or use certain volunteer transportation in which people drive their own vehicles. What the lack of accessibility means is that many people with disabilities and older adults become socially isolated. We now all have experienced how that feels with COVID19 and no one wants to extend this grim period.

Not to worry, this post will find its way back to autonomous vehicles, but through more of this somewhat roundabout rant.

Transportation Was Just One Problem in a Basketful

A history of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) contains no mention of car companies; it was such a big lift to even require that public transportation and accommodations be made accessible for people with disabilities. The History of the Americans with Disabilities Act: A Movement Perspective, Arlene Mayerson (Disabilities Rights Education and Defense Fund 1992). It appears that no one raised the lack of accessibility of the primary mode of US passenger transportation - the car. Histories of the disabilities rights movement often end with the passage of the ADA and there is nothing in these histories about the lack of accessible taxis or cars. See A History of the Disabilities Rights Movement, Individual Abilities in Motion (2014); Disability rights movement, Wikipedia (2020) (also discussing post-ADA advocacy on behalf of people with particular disabilities, such as mental illness and autism).

Access to jobs, housing, education, even restaurants and movie theaters, were all in the basketful of needs expressed during the fights preceding and leading up to the ADA. 

Thirty years ago, the ADA constituted a good first step for ensuring some accessible transportation, but it certainly has never been a complete solution. But just like women needed more than the vote to achieve equality and formerly enslaved people needed more than emancipation, people with disabilities deserve more than the ADA.

Partial solutions show separate is not equal

I am reading a lovely, well done report by the Eno Center for Transportation entitled Toward Universal Access: A Case Study in the Los Angeles and Puget Sound Regions (Eno Center for Transportation (2020)). Lots of text about efforts in LA and the Puget Sound area to make microtransit pilots accessible and all I can think is that the problem is not how to expend - and have the money for - ever more effort to supplement transportation with accessible options; rather the problem is that we have established a separate-but-equal system under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) that does not work. 

We have a transportation system that, certainly prior to the ADA, was designed by men in their prime. There was no accessibility for baby carriages and strollers, let alone wheelchairs, or technology and design to assist people with visual and auditory disabilities. Even today, when your sweet infant is asleep, you cannot wheel that infant in the stroller right onto your car, SUV, or minivan (not without expensive aftermarket changes). You cannot wheel your shopping cart or luggage onto your vehicle. Just as in 1910, when you had to load and unload those groceries or sports gear into a car, over one hundred years later there is no improvement. Apparently, adding cup holders has been a priority, but expanding access and saving the backs of the American public has not been on the radar of vehicle manufacturers. 

Due to the ADA, however, you can wheel a wheelchair onto a public bus and use the wheels of your walker onto a low-floor bus to get on more easily, but forget any strides at expanding access to the car or SUV because there are none - and not because the know how doesn't exist. Some people with disabilities buy vehicles and pay for expensive aftermarket changes that can run into the tens of thousands of dollars. That's not equity either, however. That's a tax for being a person with a disability who wishes to get around on an equal basis in most of America outside of the five boroughs.

Congress is afraid of car companies and their employees

Can we expect Congress to act? On the one side are powerful car companies and the unions that represent the many men and women who work for them and their suppliers. On the other side is an American public, and people with disabilities in particular, who could be much better served. But why change a successful product design unless one sees multimillions of dollars in profits? And those dollars contribute to political campaigns. Obviously, with AVs, these companies see lots of dollars, a veritable pot of gold, that makes their AV research and testing costs seem worthwhile. 

None of these companies see profits in accessibility, but I beg to differ with corporate giants. I think that an accessible AV - with accessible interfaces - would be a highly profitable product. Think of every traveler who would not need a driver or concierge because one can roll one's luggage right onto the vehicle. Think of the happy stroller parents. And think of the growing numbers of people with disabilities who either do not drive or who drive less than they would like.

Hello  ðŸ‘‹  - big markets mean big money

All of those people and the ones who are unable to drive - and they are roughly 20 percent of the US population alone - will want accessible AVs. That is a big market. However, the current reality is that Congress is not going to act and the car companies see no reason to produce a different type of vehicle. It's like watching IBM turn down the personal computer or Blockbuster turning down the Netflix plan to go from mailing movie DVDs to streaming. And where is Blockbuster now? Bankrupt. And IBM? It certainly never saw on the horizon the profits of Apple or Microsoft, though it has managed to survive.

The question arises then of how these vague promises of AV liberation for seniors and people with disabilities is ever supposed to happen? I will tackle that question in part 3 of this rant. A good rant should go on for a while.

Thursday, November 19, 2020

Adult Temper Tantrum Rant - Part 1: We're Nowhere Near Total Accessibility

During this centennial year of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which granted women the right to vote, I have been reading and listening to podcasts about the many decades and twists of the women's suffrage movement that finally - and on the turn of a single state legislator's vote in Tennessee - resulted in ratification of the amendment. Basically, due to Jim Crow and other voter suppression as well as terrorism perpetuated against black communities, it was really only white women whose political power increased.

The disability rights movement was born of a different era and concentrated less on legalisms and more on the reality of results. People were being denied educations, physical access to transit and public accommodations, and jobs. The movie Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution does an excellent job of showing the rising consciousness among young people with disabilities and their increasing willingness in the 1960s and 70s to engage in peaceful protests and advocacy.

While no one would call the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) perfect, it created its own revolution in consciousness among the American public that accessibility could be provided, that it could be beautifully done, and that its benefits go way beyond those with disabilities.

BUT

But considering and mulling over the commitment of the disability community's fight and the fight for women's suffrage, I am struck by how little people with disabilities are afforded now, especially in terms of transportation, as if the ADA were a finish and not a start. 

If one harbors the assumption that in order for people to have equal rights they must have equal access to transportation, then leading a full life generally means getting out of the house.

And AV development is where accessibility matters most of all because the lack of need for a human driver can potentially liberate anyone who does not or cannot drive.

Beyond the ADA to Universal - Accessible - Design

Whilst the public sector does what it can with the little is has, sometimes going beyond the requirements of the ADA to improve sidewalks and public transit, the fact is that private sector sale and private ownership of cars, SUVs, minivans, and light trucks provide the overwhelming bulk of transportation. As long as we fail to mass produce accessible versions of these vehicles or - if necessary - fail to require their production, people with disabilities will remain second class citizens. See Toward Universal Access: A Case Study in the Los Angeles and Puget Sound Regions, Eno Center for Transportation (2020). 

This gets into deeper problems, which I will explore - actually, rant about - in a few future posts. Such inequity deserves some good rants. Perhaps when I am done with those, I will begin taking action and writing about that, because it appears that without bold advocacy we will not create legal requirements to provide accessible vehicles or our future AV transportation network.