Don't be surprised if, in the not too distant future, you are driving down I-35 on your way to work, and you look at the car in the lane next to you, and there is no driver at the wheel.
1200 WOAI news reports the City is embracing the coming technology of autonomous vehicles, by participating in a statewide alliance to support the development of autonomous vehicles, and by having Fredericksburg Rd. designated by transportation planners as a corridor for testing the technology.
Art Reinhardt, Assistant Directror of the city's Transportation Planning and Operations Department, told a City Council work session that the vehicles are coming in several stages, with many cars will into the opening stages with functions like lane assist and adaptive cruise control.
He says the City may have to take some additional steps in the coming years to stay on pace with the growing technology.
"There may be a point in the future that you have an automated lane only and you have a driver vehicle only lane," he said. "So there may be some infrastructure changes that we may have to be made."
Reinhardt suggested a couple of ideas on where vehicle San Antonio could test autonomous vehicles in the years ahead.
One is a shuttle transporting city workers from one of the city's many office locations to the other. He says the other could involve transportation in military bases.
"VIA does great work, but they have to stop at the gates, and those campuses are huge," he said. "Talking about a mile walk from where you are going to where your vehicle was. So there could be a circulator that could link people up within the base and to the gates, so that is a true issue to solve there."
Reinhardt says autonomous vehicles will require a major change in the way the city thinks about transportation in general.
"There are thoughts on no longer individually owning a vehicle, it would be a fleet, shared service approach," he said. "So gas taxes, registration fees, things that support our infrastructure development, what happens to all of that."
He said the Legislature has already authorized autonomous vehicles to drive on Texas roads, as long as they meet current safety requirements, are fully insured, and meet other requirement.
But Reinhardt told Council the payoff could be enormous, in tens of thousands of lives saved per year.
"Annually, about 40,000 people across the country die in roadway fatalities," he said. "The statistic is the 84% of that is driver error. So if we could take the driver out of that, we would expect that number to come way down."