Thank you, Madam Chair, and members of the committee for this invitation to be here.
Self-driving cars have tremendous benefits for Canada and for Canadians. Unfortunately, when I look around the world, and especially at the G7, we in Canada are dead last in getting ready for self-driving cars. We're way behind the other six countries. Let me just give you a quick thumbnail sketch here.
The first generation of self-driving cars is already with us. These are low speed, limited capability, but they're working now. A client of mine has a fleet of six fully automated driverless shuttle buses, electric, operating in Civaux in France. The second generation of self-driving cars will arrive in about 2020, as will drivers' taxi applications. These will not be the ultimate, but they will be fully self-driving cars. Through the 2020s we're going to see a gradual increase in capability and speed, and by 2030 our world will look very different from the way it does today.
One of the two biggest impacts will be safety. A joint study we published a year ago with the Conference Board of Canada predicts that with full deployment in the future we can prevent 80% of the present traffic collisions, deaths, and injuries, a huge improvement. Second, the arrival of driverless taxis in the 2020s will have a big impact on many aspects of our lives—on our cities, on parking, on policing, on health care. The auto sector is prepared for a massive disruption. Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors, has said, and I agree with her, that the auto industry will change more in the next five to 10 years than it has in the last 50. This will be very disruptive. There will also be a big impact on infrastructure.
Anthony Foxx, the secretary of transportation in the Obama administration, wrote an article that was published about a year ago. He said that with a combination of autonomous and connected vehicle technologies we can increase the traffic-carrying capacity of our existing highway and road infrastructure by a factor of five. That's huge. To be honest, I don't believe Secretary Foxx, but if we can increase the traffic-carrying capacity of the roads and highways by a factor of two or two and a half, I wonder how much of the planned and future infrastructure build we really need. We'll need some of it to do repairs, but we need to plan infrastructure for the arrival of the AVs.
Also, it will have a big impact on transit, and hence on transit infrastructure. About a year ago, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the OECD, published a report, which is free and public, predicting from a European perspective that self-driving taxis could completely replace the need for traditional transit in small and medium-sized cities.
A year ago, I published a white paper for the federal government with 30 recommendations. I don't have time to go through all of that. Let me pick out two recommendations that are particularly relevant to your committee.
First, I made a recommendation that any application for funding for infrastructure for transit or transportation should come with an analysis of the impact of autonomous vehicles on the business case and the design. I've told the Ontario government the same thing.
Second, there's a lot of focus nowadays on smart cities and smart infrastructure. I'm recommending that part of the infrastructure spend be not just on asphalt and concrete but also on smart infrastructure. We can achieve a lot with that and it will be a lot cheaper—following on with what Secretary Foxx said—to increase the capacity of the highways with smart infrastructure rather than with more asphalt.
Thank you for your time.