Summary
Most traffic accidents are caused by human error. Engineers are designing vehicles with built in sensors that send messages to other cars, trucks, bikes and even pedestrians, to prevent collisions happening. The idea is to make the vehicles react to whatever's going on faster than the human drivers.
Jack Stewart drives around the university town of Ann Arbor, in Michigan, in some of the many vehicles that are fitted with experimental devices in the world's largest connected vehicles project. He finds out how the system works from researchers at UMTRI, the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute, including the director, professor Peter Sweatman and human factors expert Dr Jim Sayer, Kirk Steudle, Director, Michigan Department of Transportation and a resident who has had her car fitted with an experimental device.
(Photo: Right hand wing mirror, Nevada, USA, BBC copyright)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm Rory Stewart and I grew up wanting to be a hero and I'm still fascinated by the ideas of heroism. |
| 0:08.9 | In my new series, I'm taking in the long sweep of history from Achilles to Zelensky and asking, what is a hero? |
| 0:16.2 | Simply doing your job, being a decent human being. |
| 0:20.0 | A true hero is someone who just kind of shines by their own light, |
| 0:23.9 | and that light is to be recognised by others. |
| 0:26.5 | The Long History of Heroism with me, Rory Stewart. |
| 0:29.5 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.6 | Thank you for downloading from the BBC. |
| 0:35.4 | For details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use, |
| 0:39.5 | go to BBCworldservis.com slash podcasts. |
| 0:44.8 | The 120 years old automobile was pretty much was the same design DNA |
| 0:50.3 | as the automobiles that existed when Carl Benz and Henry Ford were doing their |
| 0:54.7 | innovation a century earlier and began thinking about that. |
| 0:58.8 | Why haven't we seen a radical transformational change in mobility the way other industries |
| 1:04.9 | have changed dramatically, whether it's photography or print media, television or computers |
| 1:10.3 | and began thinking about what might |
| 1:13.1 | really bring about the kind of change that is going to be beneficial from a sustainability |
| 1:18.5 | standpoint. And the whole notion of driverless vehicles captured my attention. |
| 1:24.4 | Larry Burns, formerly head of research and development for General Motors. His 40 |
| 1:29.3 | years with GM, one of the largest automakers in the world, led him to believe that in the future, |
| 1:35.4 | cars will drive themselves. He isn't the only one who's thinking seriously about autonomous cars. |
| 1:41.3 | I'm Jack Stewart, and in this edition of Discovery from the BBC, we're going to |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.