Charts of the week: Autonomous vehicles, mobile money, and biases in online courses

Click on any of the charts or links to access the full research.

WHICH STATES HAVE CONSIDERED AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE LAWS?

Darrell West and Jack Karsten note in their research on policy developments around self-driving cars that road-testing for this emerging technology continues despite several fatal accidents earlier this year. Citing data from the National Conference of State Legislatures, they examine which states have enacted autonomous vehicle legislation and how those policies were passed: “twenty-two states and the District of Columbia have passed laws and an additional 10 state governors have issued executive orders regarding the operation of autonomous vehicles, while ten other state legislatures have considered legislation and the remaining eight state legislatures have not considered any.”

Their research also shows that In California, the state with the most companies testing self-driving cars, automotive vehicles drove over a million miles in just two years.

EXPANDING ACCESS TO CELL PHONES IS HELPING LINK FARMERS TO FINANCIAL RESOURCES

The use of cell phones has risen dramatically in Africa and improved rural farmers’ ability to communicate and access mobile money services. Roy Parizat and Heinz-Wilhelm Strubenhoff explain why lending to farmers has been difficult in the past and describe how using big data to link poor, rural farmers to finance could increase their incomes and yields. The chart below is from their study and illustrates the number of registered mobile money accounts in sub-Saharan Africa.

WHITE MALE STUDENTS RECEIVE THE MOST ATTENTION IN ONLINE CLASSES

In a post for the Brown Center on Education Policy, several professors representing universities across the country analyze the state of equity in online classrooms, a medium that in the minds of many has the potential to democratize education. They find evidence of racial and gender biases persisting in online courses and that instructors are nearly twice as likely to respond to a comment posted by a white male than other race-gender combinations.