In recent months Google has begun testing self-driving cars in Austin, and General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co. have begun working on their own plans for vehicles that do not require a human driver behind the wheel. The technology’s progress and challenges were discussed March 15 at the South by Southwest Conferences & Festivals in Austin. Johanna Zmud (left), senior research scientist with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute; and Gretchen McFarlan, vice president of business development for transportation firm C3 Group, an organization that advocates for the use of technology to solve transportation issues, discussed self-driving cars at South by Southwest Conferences & Festivals March 15.[/caption] Self-driving cars, which would be operated by computers connected to a series of cameras and sensors, have the potential to change the way people travel, the way cities are built and the spending habits of consumers. Johanna Zmud, senior research scientist with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, said people may decide to start living farther from urban areas because they will not have to spend as much time sitting idly in traffic if they are not responsible for operating the vehicle. Commutes could instead be spent reading or catching up on work. Additionally, families may determine they only need one car, she said, because as soon as one person is dropped off at work or school, the car could return home to take another family member to the doctor, work or the gym. “Those benefits will only be achieved if these vehicles are adopted and used,” Zmud said. “The Texas Legislature has to be interested in what is going to adopt and use these vehicles.” Zmud said her organization has researched drivers’ attitudes regarding self-driving cars, and the results indicate the population is split with about 50 percent saying they plan to use a self-driving car when they become available and 50 percent saying they do not plan to use the technology. “What this says to me is that people are sort of on the fence,” Zmud said. “People are looking at the technology and waiting to see what the experience is for them [and] how they can benefit from it. Whether this shifts with higher acceptance depends on how these vehicles roll out and how people are educated about them and their benefits.” Zmud said cities and municipalities in the United States are driving much of the discussion about self-driving cars. In Europe the federal government has played a much stronger role in determining uniform regulations for self-driving cars. No states in the U.S. have laws on the books outlawing self-driving cars, she said. “Most state regulations are very vague, so they don’t necessarily call for a driver to be behind the wheel," Zmud said. "They never thought when they were developing their motor vehicle regulations that they needed to specify whether a driver needed or didn’t need to be behind the wheel. They never thought we’d have a time like we have now where actually you have no driver.” Companies are approaching self-driving car technology in two distinct ways, Zmud said: revolutionary, which is how she characterized Google's approach of fully autonomous vehicles; and evolutionary, in which automakers adopt automated features incrementally and gradually over time. Ford and GM have adopted both strategies at the same time as a way of “hedging their bets,” Zmud said. They are unsure of what the future of the technology holds and whether more drivers will express willingness to adopt it. Ford and Google are working on a self-driving version of its Fusion sedan, Zmud said. GM recently purchased Cruise Automation, a self-driving vehicle technology company, and is working with Lyft on a full autonomous vehicle. “They’re not sure which way this is going to go,” Zmud said. “They don’t know what the policy arena is going to go, but they want to be players in that space, so they’re taking both approaches.”