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The emerging body of literature on autonomous transport shows that as socio-technical innovation, the diffusion of various autonomous transport services would yield a number of benefits to society. This includes the possibility of improving accessibility of different groups of people, such as the aged and disabled individuals to urban opportunities, and providing safe, convenient, comfortable and flexible motorized mobility. Societal costs and challenges are also inevitable. Safety concerns and the ethical dilemmas around automating criticalsafety control functions of vehicles still remain unresolved. Like many other ICT-enabled sociotechnical innovations, autonomous transport will leverage mass communication and surveillance technologies, thereby posing potential threats to privacy and individual freedoms. Economic impacts, including potential job losses in the transportation sector are also expected as a result of automation. Perhaps, the most pertinent issue that has received limited attention in the literature is the equity implications of autonomous transport—how the potential costs and benefits will be distributed over different members of society.

This report presents a summary of an extended review on the social dimensions of autonomous transport. It identifies and categorizes the potential costs and benefits associated with this new mobility paradigm. The report ends with an outline of directions for future research on the social dimensions of autonomous transport.