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Driverless Cars: Balancing Safety, Ethics, and Economic Impact

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Introduction, safety and efficiency: a paradigm shift, challenges and ethical considerations, economic and social impacts.

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Self-Driving Vehicles—an Ethical Overview

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February 3, 2018

Are Autonomous Cars Really Safer Than Human Drivers?

Most comparisons between human drivers and automated vehicles have been at best uneven—and at worst unfair

By Peter Hancock & The Conversation US

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The following essay is reprinted with permission from  The Conversation , an online publication covering the latest research.

Much of the push toward self-driving cars has been underwritten by the  hope that they will save lives  by getting involved in fewer crashes with  fewer injuries and deaths  than human-driven cars. But so far, most comparisons between human drivers and automated vehicles have been at best uneven, and at worst, unfair.

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The statistics  measuring how many crashes occur  are hard to argue with:  More than 90 percent  of car crashes in the U.S. are thought to involve some form of  driver error . Eliminating this error would,  in two years , save as many people as the country lost in  all of the Vietnam War .

But to me, as a  human factors researcher , that’s not enough information to properly evaluate whether automation may actually be better than humans at not crashing. Their respective crash rates can only be determined by also knowing how many non-collisions happen. For human drivers is it one collision per billion chances to crash, or one in a  trillion ?

Assessing the rate at which things do not happen is extremely difficult. For example, estimating how many times you didn’t bump into someone in the hall today relates to how many people there were in the hallway and how long you were walking there. Also, people forget non-events very quickly, if we even notice them happening. To determine whether automated vehicles are safer than humans, researchers will need to establish a non-collision rate for both humans and these emerging driverless vehicles.

Comparing appropriate statistics

Crash statistics for human-driven cars  are compiled from all sorts of driving situations, and on all types of roads. This includes people driving through pouring rain, on dirt roads and climbing steep slopes in the snow. However, much of the data on self-driving cars’ safety comes  from Western states  of the U.S., often in good weather. Large amounts of the data have been recorded on unidirectional, multi-lane highways, where the most important tasks are staying in the car’s own lane and not getting too close to the vehicle ahead.

Automated cars are  rather good at those kinds of tasks  – but then again, so are humans. The data on fully automated systems will naturally expand to cover more roads as  states allow automated vehicles  to operate more widely. But it will take some time before self-driving cars can cover as many miles in a year and in as many circumstances as human drivers presently do.

It is true that self-driving cars don’t get  tired, angry, frustrated or drunk . But neither can they yet react to uncertain and ambiguous situations with the same skill or anticipation of an attentive human driver, which suggests that perhaps the two still  need to work together . Nor do purely automated vehicles possess the foresight to avoid potential peril: They largely drive from moment to moment, rather than thinking ahead to possible events literally  down the road .

To an automated vision system, a bus shelter full of people  might appear quite similar to an uninhabited corn field . Indeed, deciding what action to take in an emergency is difficult for humans, but drivers have  sacrificed themselves for the greater good of others . An automated system’s  limited understanding of the world  means it  will almost never  evaluate a situation the same way a human would. And machines can’t be specifically programmed in advance to  handle every imaginable set of events .

New tech brings new concerns

Some people may argue that the promise of simply reducing the number of injuries and deaths is enough to justify expanding the use of driverless cars. I do agree that it would be a great thing if tomorrow were the dawn of a new day when a completely driverless roadway killed or injured no one; although such an arrangement might  suck more of the enjoyment  from our everyday lives, especially for those who love driving.

But experience from aviation shows that as new automated systems are introduced, there is  often an increase in the rate of adverse events . Though temporary, this potential  uptick in the crash rate  may cause concern for the general public and then politicians, lawmakers and even manufacturers – who  might be discouraged  from sticking with the new technology.

As a result, comparisons between humans and automated vehicles have to be performed carefully. This is particularly true because human-controlled vehicles are likely to remain on the roads for many years and even decades to come. How will people and driverless cars mix together, and  who will be at fault for any collisions  between them?

To fairly evaluate driverless cars on how well they fulfill their promise of improved safety, it’s important to ensure the data being presented actually provide a true comparison. Choosing to replace humans with automation has more effects than simply a  one-for-one swap . It’s important to make those decisions mindfully.

This article was originally published on  The Conversation . Read the  original article .

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Driverless Dreams: Technological Narratives and the Shape of the Automated Car

In this work Erik Stayton examines dominant and alternative paradigms of ground vehicle automation, and concludes that current and imagined automation technology is far more hybrid than is often recognized, presenting different questions about necessary or appropriate roles for human beings.

Automated cars, popularly rendered as “driverless” or “self-driving” cars, are a major sector of technological development in artificial intelligence and present a variety of questions for design, policy, and the culture at large. This work addresses the dominant narratives and ideologies around self-driving vehicles and their historical antecedents, examining both the media’s representation of self-driving vehicles and the sources of the idea, common both among the media and many self-driving vehicle researchers, that complete vehicle autonomy is the most valuable future vision, or even the only one worth discussing and investigating. This popular story has important social stakes (including surveillance, responsibility, and access), embedded in the technologies and fields involved in visions of full automation (machine vision, mapping, algorithmic ethics), which bear investigating for the possible futures of automation that they present. However, other paradigms for automation exist, representing lenses from literature in the fields of human supervisory control and joint-cognitive systems design. These fields—compared with that of AI—provide a very different read on what automation means and where it is headed in the future, which leads to the possibility of different futures, with different stakes and trade-offs. The work examines how automation taxonomies, such as that by the NHTSA, fail to account for these possibilities. Finally, this work examines what cultural understandings need to change to make this (cyborg) picture more broadly comprehensible, and suggests potential impacts for policy and future technological development. It argues that a broader appreciation for our hybrid engagements with machines, and recognition that automation alone does not solve any social problems, can alter public opinion and policy in productive ways, away from focus on “autonomous” robots divorced from human agency, and toward system-level joint human-machine designs that address societal needs.

About Erik Stayton

Erik St. Gray (né Stayton) is a technologist and anthropologist of technology who shapes the future of human relationships to technology by studying and critiquing their past, their present, and conventionally accepted visions of their future. He received his dual-degree Sc.B. from Brown University in physics and English literature before completing his Master's and Ph.D at MIT on the social and cultural context of automated cars, and the practices of autonomous vehicle development, respectively. Erik is a senior researcher in user experience and human-centered design at the Alliance Innovation Lab, a research center of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi automotive alliance.

Thesis: Driverless Dreams: Technological Narratives and the Shape of the Automated Car

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Why We Don’t Trust Driverless Cars — Even When We Should

• Kartik Hosanagar
• Imran Cronk

A review of the research on automation.

On May 7th, 2016, Joshua Brown, a 40-year-old entrepreneur and technology enthusiast from Canton, Ohio, was sitting behind the wheel of his Tesla Model S sedan when a tractor-trailer turned across his path. The Tesla, which was engaged in its self-driving Autopilot mode, failed to register the white tractor-trailer against the bright, sunny Florida sky. Mr. Brown also didn’t engage the brakes in time. His Tesla crashed into the truck at 74 miles per hour, killing him almost instantly.

• KH Kartik Hosanagar ( @khosanagar ) is a professor studying technology and digital business at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and faculty co-lead of its AI center. His current research focuses on AI-human collaboration and AI and creativity. He is the author of “ A Human’s Guide to Machine Intelligence .”
• IC Imran Cronk is an analyst at Mount Sinai Health System and co-founder of Ride Health, an early-stage startup.

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• Published: 20 April 2023

Autonomous vehicles

Moving toward safer driverless vehicles

• Fernando Chirigati 1  

Nature Computational Science volume  3 ,  page 279 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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There has been substantial progress made in the development of autonomous vehicles (AVs) within the past two decades, but the dream of having fully driverless cars has not yet become a reality. As a matter of fact, the safety performance of AVs has not reached the same level as that of cars driven by humans, in part because safety validation in naturalistic driving environments (NDEs) is inefficient and expensive. While artificial intelligence (AI) systems can be used for training in safety-critical scenarios, looking for these events in the training data is like searching for a needle in a haystack: there is a relatively small number of safety-critical events compared to a large amount of non-safety-critical data, given that the occurrence probability of the former is rare. As such, there is not sufficient data for an AI system to learn how to react under unsafe conditions.

In a recent work, Henry X. Liu and colleagues developed a test environment that makes use of a dense deep-reinforcement-learning (D2RL) approach to improve the safety validation of AVs. In a nutshell, the D2RL approach edits the Markov decision process by removing the non-safety-critical states and reconnecting the safety-critical ones, meaning that the neural networks are trained on the critical states only. In this case, the reinforcement learning has a ‘dense reward’: the reward function gives value to most of the transitions, and thus the system receives feedback at almost every time step, becoming better at distinguishing between safe and non-safe situations. In addition to conducting simulation experiments, the authors also conducted field experiments in physical test tracks. Of particular interest, the authors developed an augmented-reality testing platform that made it possible for a real AV in the test track to interact with virtual ones for testing. The experiments demonstrated that the D2RL approach is more efficient than the NDE one, meaning that it requires a substantially smaller number of tests — sometimes on the order of 10 5 more efficient than NDE — both in simulated and real scenarios. Overall, the proposed framework has the potential to accelerate training and testing of AVs, hopefully making us one step closer to the dream of having fully driverless cars.

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No wheel but a dial: why and how passengers in self-driving cars should decide how their car drives

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• Published: 17 October 2022
• Volume 24 , article number  45 , ( 2022 )

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Much of the debate on the ethics of self-driving cars has revolved around trolley scenarios. This paper instead takes up the political or institutional question of who should decide how a self-driving car drives. Specifically, this paper is on the question of whether and why passengers should be able to control how their car drives. The paper reviews existing arguments—those for passenger ethics settings and for mandatory ethics settings respectively—and argues that they fail. Although the arguments are not successful, they serve as the basis to formulate desiderata that any approach to regulating the driving behavior of self-driving cars ought to fulfill. The paper then proposes one way of designing passenger ethics settings that meets these desiderata.

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Autonomous cars: in favor of a mandatory ethics setting.

Consideration of the Relationship Between Autonomous Vehicles and Ethics

Ethics of Self-driving Cars: A Naturalistic Approach

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By “self-driving cars,” “autonomous vehicles” or “automated vehicles” (AV) I understand individually-owned passenger vehicles with automation levels 4 or higher according to the SAE definition. I concentrate on cars owned by individuals, in contrast to corporate-owned cars.

For arguments in favor of the relevance of trolley scenarios, however, see Lin ( 2017 ), Keeling ( 2020 ) and Awad et al. ( 2020 )

The nomenclature is from Gogoll and Müller ( 2017 ). The distinction between PES and MES depends on whether a passenger can meaningfully control a vehicle’s driving style and macro path planning. The expression “meaningful control” is central to the ethics of robotics.

In addition to arguments that address PES directly, I also review related arguments that can be applied to the issue of PES (Bonnefon et al., 2016 ; Millar, 2014a ; 2015 ).

My discussion here is prompted by comments by a peer reviewer for a different journal.

Tesla’s cost function for path planning minimizes traversal time, collision risk, lateral acceleration, and lateral jerk—the latter as a measure of comfort (Tesla, 2021 ). The behavior of Teslas is hence governed via deliberately designed properties of the cost function.

Technical and normative issues are not independent: Technological choices constrain the ethics of a system. This is an important insight in the value-alignment literature (cf. Gabriel, 2020 ), of which the debate on the ethics of self-driving cars can be seen as a part.

Things are actually more complicated because it is not clear whose proxy the cars ought to be—there is thus a “moral proxy problem” (Thoma, 2022 ). Depending on whether cars are proxies for individuals or aggregates (such as developers or regulators), they should make risky decisions very differently (ibid.).

What these limits should be and what considerations should guide our delineation of limits is often not clear. But see Contissa et al., ( 2017 , p. 374) and Etzioni and Etzioni ( 2017 ).

Of course, there could be a collective decision in favor of PES; but this is not how PES are usually defended.

I take the name for this argument from the title of a paper by Bonnefon et al. ( 2016 ), who present the empirical finding that motivates the argument that I present here (The main idea in the argument is also called the “ethical opt-out problem” (Bonnefon et al., 2020 )). However—to avoid misattribution—the argument I present here is not theirs. The argument is hinted at by Contissa et al., ( 2017 , p. 367) who write that “[i]f an impartial (utilitarian) ethical setting is made compulsory for, and rigidly implemented into, all AVs, many people may refuse to use AVs, even though AVs may have significant advantages, in particular with regard to safety, over human-driven vehicles.” Bonnefon et al. ( 2020 , p. 110), however, advance a similar argument. They write: “[I]f people are not satisfied with the ethical principles that guide moral algorithms, they will simply opt out of using these algorithms, thus nullifying all their expected benefits.”.

Similarly, Ryan ( 2020 ) writes: “Very few people would buy [a self-driving car] if they prioritised the lives of others over the vehicle’s driver and passengers.”.

The social dilemma argument is motivated by an empirical finding: Although a majority of people agree that a driving style that maximizes overall welfare or health in a population is the preferable driving style from a moral point of view, many people would not actually want to use or buy a vehicle that drives in this way (Bonnefon et al., 2016 ; Gill 2021 ). This is the social dilemma.

What I describe is only an extreme version of an egoistic car. In fact, as has been argued, there could be a continuum (Contissa et al., 2017 ).

A prisoners dilemma is a two-person symmetric game with two pure strategies, “cooperate” and “defect”, in which the payoffs of the four different outcomes satisfy the condition T > R > P > S, that is, t emptation to defect against a cooperator has a strictly greater payoff than r eward of mutual cooperation, p unishment for mutual defection, and the so-called s ucker payoff for cooperating with a defector.

This is acknowledged by some (Bonnefon et al., 2016 ).

Respondents in China would find it “tolerable” if self-driving cars are four to five times as safe as human drivers and “acceptable” if the cars were safer by one to two orders of magnitude (Liu et al., 2019 ).

For context: These are data from US participants. US participants can be expected to have relatively unfavorable attitudes towards AVs compared to India or China. A study in 2014 found that only 14% to 22% of respondents in the UK and US respectively hold very positive attitudes towards automated vehicles compared to 46% and 50% in India and China (Schoettle and Sivak, 2014 ).

The Kelley Blue Book calls these “value shoppers” (KBB Editors, 2022 ).

This is not a crucial assumption: Even if the nominal insurance costs might be higher, especially in the short term, they could be decreased by policy to make self-driving cars attractive (Ravid, 2014 ).

Moreover, it would likely take decades to be able to have sufficient exposure to measure (as opposed to simulate or estimate) the safety of self-driving cars (Kalra & Paddock, 2016 ).

I concentrate on this argument because it is a recent and the best developed one.

By “best interest of society” the authors mean that traffic injuries and fatalities are minimized in a given population.

This differs from the social dilemma argument which assumed that purchasing decisions are a PD instead of traffic being a PD.

I write “emerge” and “stable” to indicate that the game is played repeatedly. Even if players will not cooperate in one-shot games, the prospects for achieving widespread cooperation look much better when PD is played repeatedly.

It could be said that the traffic game is embedded in other games within the political structure.

Of course, also MES could incorporate a concern for pluralism. But, arguably, PES are more responsive to occupants’ preferences. On PES, the average distance between behavior and preference will likely be narrower than on MES.

Another illustration of this conflict between others’ interest and your interest is, of course, in trolley cases and collision scenarios such as in the Tunnel Problem where a car needs to choose between running over a pedestrian or running the car into the wall of a tunnel (Millar, 2014a ).

By “mobility” I understand the time required to get to a destination. By “safety” I understand the absence of risk, defined as a function of the probability of a hazardous event and the harm to the occupants and others. It should be noted that I understand both “mobility” and “safety” impartially as everyone’s mobility and safety and not just those of vehicle occupants.

Assume also that this situation occurs in a location that does not prescribe a minimum lateral distance for safe passing.

Of course, the details of this would have to be worked out by operationalizing these value conflicts and by studying the user interaction design (cf. Thornton et al., 2019 ).

This is a matter of how the one dial trades off between the mobility–safety conflict and the other for the self-interest–other-interest conflict. How the one dial makes this tradeoff—the path of the indifference curve though the space of parameter combinations—is an important question for ethics and design.

Another problem with this objection is that it considers frequency but not stakes. It might be true that there are more opportunities for mobility and few for safety. But the stakes for safety might be much higher than those for mobility: Safety is about avoiding injuries and physical harms but mobility only about getting to a destination faster.

Shariff et al. ( 2017 ) discuss the importance of “virtue signalling”, however, not in the context of PES but instead as a psychological mechanism to exploit (in advertisement and communication) to increase AV adoption.

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I am grateful for thoughts and comments I received from Johanna Thoma and Sebastian Köhler, from students at Sonoma State University, from participants and the audience at the Automated Vehicles Symposium 2019 in Orlando, as well as from an anonymous reviewer for this journal.

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How To Write an Essay About Self Driving Cars

Understanding self-driving cars.

Before writing an essay about self-driving cars, it's essential to comprehend what they are and the technology behind them. Self-driving cars, also known as autonomous vehicles, are cars or trucks in which human drivers are never required to take control to safely operate the vehicle. These vehicles use a combination of sensors, cameras, radar, and artificial intelligence to navigate and drive. Begin your essay by explaining the technology that enables these cars to operate, including machine learning and sensor fusion. Discuss the different levels of vehicle automation, from partially automated to fully autonomous, and the key companies and players in the field.

Developing a Thesis Statement

A strong essay on self-driving cars should be anchored by a clear, focused thesis statement. This statement should present a specific viewpoint or argument about autonomous vehicles. For example, you might discuss the potential impact of self-driving cars on safety and traffic, analyze the ethical implications of autonomous driving decisions, or explore the challenges facing widespread adoption. Your thesis will guide the direction of your essay and provide a structured approach to your analysis.

Gathering Supporting Evidence

Support your thesis with relevant data, research, and examples. This might include studies on the safety of self-driving cars, surveys on public opinion regarding autonomous vehicles, or real-world data on traffic efficiency and environmental impact. Use this evidence to support your thesis and build a persuasive argument. Remember to consider different perspectives and address potential counterarguments to your thesis.

Analyzing the Impact of Self-Driving Cars

Dedicate a section of your essay to analyzing the potential impact of self-driving cars. Discuss various aspects, such as the implications for road safety, changes in transportation infrastructure, and effects on industries like insurance and logistics. Explore both the potential benefits and drawbacks, ensuring a balanced view. For instance, consider how autonomous vehicles could reduce accidents caused by human error but might also lead to challenges in cybersecurity and data privacy.

Concluding the Essay

Conclude your essay by summarizing your main points and restating your thesis in light of the evidence and discussion provided. Your conclusion should tie together your analysis and emphasize the significance of self-driving cars in shaping the future of transportation. You might also want to highlight areas where further research or development is needed, or the potential for societal changes driven by the adoption of autonomous vehicles.

Reviewing and Refining Your Essay

After completing your essay, review and edit it for clarity and coherence. Ensure that your arguments are well-structured and supported by evidence. Check for grammatical accuracy and ensure that your essay flows logically from one point to the next. Consider seeking feedback from peers or instructors to further improve your essay. A well-crafted essay on self-driving cars will not only demonstrate your understanding of the topic but also your ability to engage with complex technological and societal issues.

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20 Pros and Cons of Driverless Cars

Believe it or not, driverless cars are not a recent invention despite the push to incorporate this technology into the modern vehicle. The concept was first introduced in the Futurama exhibit at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City. General Motors offered a display that reflected what they though their vision of the world would be in the next two decades. It included an automated highway system which would guide driverless vehicles to their destination.

General Motors would eventually build a working vehicle in 1958 after providing an electric model that was guided by radio-controlled electromagnetic fields for their ’39 exhibit.

This idea was improved upon about 20 years later when Japanese automakers realized that they could use camera systems to relay data to an onboard computer that would process images of the road and create responses. This vehicle had a maximum speed of 20mph, which didn’t make it very practical. As the industry worked on this issue, German manufacturers came up with a system that could safely drive at 56mph.

Although we do not have robotic vehicles or driverless cars filling our roadways as of yet, the modern car does contain numerous autonomous features that make driving easier and safer than ever before. Some models offer assisted parking or braking systems that activate automatically if they sense an issue. Vehicles can sense lane position and make adjustments there as well.

List of the Pros of Driverless Cars

1. This technology would likely reduce the number of accidents that occur on roadways. When we are riding along in a driverless car, then what happens on the road is no longer subject to the numerous bad behaviors that human drivers exhibit as they attempt to reach their destination. Over 80% of automobile crashes are as a result of human error. If computers are in more control, then there could be fewer road rage incidents, insurance costs that are associated with damage, and several other benefits that could potentially help to reduce overall driving times.

2. It would help individuals with disabilities to have more independence. Although vehicles can receive modifications that make it possible for some people with disabilities to have movement independence, driverless cars would make this possible for many more people. That means there could be less dependence on the public transportation systems that can sometimes offer unpredictable schedules. There would be less of a need to rely on others to get around, which means more people would have additional mobility without requiring significant lifestyle changes to make it happen.

3. Driverless cars could work with higher speed limits. As human populations move toward the use of driverless cars, it may become possible to raise the speed limit that vehicles can drive on extended trips. The computers would calculate the operations of the automobile to ensure the occupants remain safe. That means passengers could take care of other needs while the vehicle does the work of transportation without compromising the safety of the people who are on the roadways.

4. It could reduce the amount of fuel that we consume for transportation needs. Computers would make it possible for driverless cars to maximize the fuel economy of every trip in multiple ways. Platooning would allow for the vehicles to draft with one another to reduce the effort that the engines would need to work while on the road. Real-time updates to driving conditions could help automobiles avoid high-traffic areas, places where weather disruptions are possible, and other potential hazards in the road. Because these vehicles would likely communicate with each other while on the roadway, they could ensure that everyone reaps these rewards of this advantage while still providing a higher level of safety.

5. Driverless vehicles could reduce commute times. Because a driverless car would likely communicate with the other vehicles around it and the roadway, it would know where to maximize speed and movement to ensure the quickest possible commute. Other automobiles would react when a vehicle needed to exist a highway, for example, preventing the need to force oneself into lanes, cutoff drivers, or miss an exit. Vehicles could travel in bumper-to-bumper platoons while automatically merging to accommodate oncoming traffic.

Although this benefit would eventually be limited by the available infrastructure in each city, this option would make it a lot easier for workers to commute every day.

6. It would help people become independent even though they hate driving. There are plenty of people out there who find driving to be an enjoyable exercise, even if there is the occasional person who cuts them off or creates the potential for an accident. The time spent in a vehicle is not always an enjoyable experience. Even people who don’t like the idea of driving could spend the time in the vehicle watching television, shopping online, or catching up on some work. You could hop into your car, place an order for groceries that you could pick up, and then have them ready by the time you reached your destination.

7. Self-driving cars could reduce the number of automobile thefts. We are already using biometric technologies that can recognize fingerprints and faces to use as our passwords for our devices. This technology could also apply to self-driving cars that only respond when programmed passengers enter the vehicle. These automobiles are self-aware on some level thanks to this potential advantage, which means it would refuse to start or immediate shut down if someone else tried to use it. Alarm systems could even alert law enforcement automatically when an individual would try to remove parts from the vehicle.

Owl cameras help to provide a level of security that could be incorporated into future driverless technologies already. It features dual HD AI smart cameras that access and send video through a 4G LTE connection. You have a 14-day encrypted video history that stores images based on movement detected in the vehicle. You can access information in real-time as well through your smartphone with views from anywhere, with alerts to crashes, dents, and break-ins.

8. It would allow drivers to continue traveling despite distractions or fatigue. Even if our driverless cars become more of a hybrid system than something that is 100% automated, we could still use this technology to support a reduction in distracted or fatigued driving incidents. Drivers who are intoxicated could still use their vehicles to make it home because it would be the computer driving instead of the human with the reduced perception window and reaction time. If you got tired during a trip, you could place the vehicle into an automated mode and catch a quick nap without stopping.

Because this technology wouldn’t forget about driving rules, miss a stop sign in a new community, or weave in and out of traffic like an intoxicated driver would, the potential for fewer accidents is significantly reduced by taking advantage of this option.

List of the Cons of Driverless Cars

1. The human factor may never be completely eliminated from driving. Even if you owned and operated a self-driving car that could provide you with every advantage listed here, you would still need to know how to operate the vehicle in emergency situations. All drivers would likely need to go through an education course to learn how the technology works, how to use it to their advantage, and what it would take to disengage the self-driving mode. You would also be required to maintain the vehicle properly (oil changes, tire rotation, etc.) to ensure that it remains safe to use.

2. It places the decisions in the hands of the computer. There are times when split-second decisions are necessary because of rapidly changing circumstances. What would a driverless car decide to do if it encountered an individual crossing the street? Would it run into that person or decide to take the vehicle off-road, placing the occupants at a higher risk for harm? There are times in our society where we are more comfortable with a human behind the wheel because we have an instinct to find a third alternative that artificial intelligence does not necessary use. Until we can program this feature into computers, the future of this technology will always be in question.

3. There are security issues to consider with driverless cars. We already have computers operating numerous facets of the driving experience today that are susceptible to hacking. People can access specific control mechanisms in some makes and models to the extent that the driver loses control over their automobile. This disadvantage would rise to a new level with driverless cars. There would need to be new levels of security installed as a firewall around the vehicle to ensure it would not be used in an inappropriate manner.

Although we could program computers to stop potentially violent actions, such as a vehicle attack, there would be a risk that terrorists could program a driverless car to engage in such actions without the permission of the owner too.

4. Self-driving cars would collect a lot of personal information. If you were to use a self-driving car, then the computer would store information about your trip. It could keep records about your destinations, such as the stores you prefer to visit, the restaurants you like, or even how much you’re willing to spend on snacks. This data would be a treasure trove of info that marketers would want to use to create individualized advertising. Unless there are privacy protections in place that would prevent automobile manufacturers from selling this data to third parties, this technology could further erode what few protections are already available.

5. There are no legal precedents about accident responsibility with driverless cars. Although a driverless car system would likely reduce the number of accidents that occur on roadways, they will not completely remove this threat from our transportation grids. In 2018, Uber experienced the first known fatality involving a self-driving vehicle in Tempe, AZ, when their car struck a pedestrian. The driver is looking down at her lap when the accident occurs, with the vehicle stopping at the moment of impact.

An evaluation of the system showed that the driverless car detected the pedestrian just 0.9 seconds before impact, giving it 50 feet to stop. The car didn’t slow or swerve, impacting the person at 38 mph. This incident grounded the fleet of driverless vehicles until the issue can come to a suitable resolution.

6. Current technologies may prohibit safe use in challenging weather conditions. There are times when human drivers would still be required to navigate roads that are in poor condition. Snowy roadways where chains are required may not provide enough visual resources for the sensors on the vehicles to operate properly. When there are heavy rains occurring, then serious problems with the laser sensors mounted on the vehicle can occur. That means humans would be responsible for navigating through potentially severe issues, which means there must still be a skill taught for driving even if we fully adapt to this technology.

7. Driverless cars cannot interpret human traffic signals with current technologies. Our current use of driverless cars operates using a system of cameras, radar, and lidar sensors. This technology makes it possible for the computers of the vehicle to “see” the environment around them, detect traffic, or stop when it encounters an obstacle. There are times when emergency situations require law enforcement, utility workers, firefighters, or other first responders to direct traffic using hand signals. If a driverless car were to encounter such a situation, then it wouldn’t know what to do.

8. We must have access to accurate mapping systems for this technology to be successful. The success that we currently experience with driverless technologies relies on updated GPS systems and mapping that can direct the car to where it is supposed to go. We have all heard stories about how drivers followed instructions from this equipment to turn the wrong way on a one-way street or go into an area where a roadway doesn’t exist.

In 2012, students from Tokyo who were visiting Australia were following the instructions provided by their GPS and drove themselves right into Moreton Bay as they tried to navigate between two islands along a channel route. A 17-year-old driver in New Jersey made an illegal left turn following the advice of the GPS, leading to a four-car accident. These issues could become more prevalent if we rely on the automated functions of a driverless car.

9. It may create a net loss of jobs in society. As driverless cars approach the market as a legitimate option, there is a similar threat faced in society for employment that is similar to what artificial intelligence causes in other industries. It is very possible that this technology could slowly put the people who operate transport vehicles for a living out of business. Anyone who drives a tax, delivers food, or even works for Uber could be impacted in negative ways. Driverless trucks could even transport goods across the country without needing someone behind the wheel to guarantee the delivery.

10. The cost of driverless cars is still prohibitive for the average person. Driverless cars use technologies that cost an average of $100,000 per vehicle as of 2018. Although that price has come down in recent years, that is still a cost which is outside of the realm of ownership possibilities for the average family. We are still several years away from having an auto manufacturing incorporate these options in ways that can help us to be completely hands-free as a society. Until then, we will need to settle for the autonomous features that automakers are slowly infusing into the driving experience for all of us.

11. It wouldn’t stop traffic jams. You are still going to have plenty of vehicles on roadways when using driverless technologies. Highways are only capable of handling a certain amount of traffic. You will still encounter stop-and-go driving conditions in major metropolitan areas even with this option simply because of the number of people who are traveling.

12. Rural communities would likely be the last to receive this benefit. Like most new technologies that get implemented in the world today, it would be the wealthiest and most populous regions of the world that would receive driverless options first. This process would create a series of hybrid driving scenarios where some vehicles would operate automatically, and others would still provide the traditional user experience. It could take several years for a full implementation in the developed world, while developing countries would likely be decades away from being able to experience the benefits of this technology.

The pros and cons of driverless vehicles show us that we still have a lot of room to grow with this technology, even as it slowly begins to approach its 100th birthday as a practical idea. New advances in the field of artificial technology provide us with hope that it could become a reality one day. There are also questions about ethics and responsibility to consider when employing this technology on a larger scale than what we have already tried.

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• 3. Americans’ attitudes toward driverless vehicles

Table of Contents

• 1. Americans’ current experiences with automation and other workforce technologies
• 2. Americans’ attitudes toward a future in which robots and computers can do many human jobs
• 4. Americans’ attitudes toward robot caregivers
• 5. Americans’ attitudes toward hiring algorithms
• Acknowledgements
• Methodology

Driverless vehicles are among the most visible and potentially disruptive examples of the coming wave of automation in daily life. To proponents of this technology, autonomous vehicles offer a wide range of potential benefits, such as reducing traffic accidents ; allowing cities to be rebuilt on more human- and pedestrian-friendly scale; or helping the elderly and disabled live more independent lives. At the same time, their widespread adoption would pose an enormous economic challenge to the millions of Americans who currently make their livings driving people or goods from one place to another.

In light of these potential social and economic impacts, the survey included a series of questions about public attitudes toward driverless vehicles. It finds that the vast majority of Americans are at least somewhat familiar with the development of driverless vehicles and that a majority expect them to become widespread within the next half-century. Even so, more than half of the public would not want to ride in a driverless vehicle today if given the opportunity. And many have significant concerns about turning life-or-death driving decisions over to machines, while expressing support for various policies restricting or limiting the use of this technology.

Most Americans are aware of the effort to develop driverless vehicles and express somewhat more worry than enthusiasm about their widespread adoption

The vast majority of Americans have at least some familiarity with the effort to develop autonomous vehicles: 94% say they have heard something about this issue, with 35% indicating they have heard “a lot” about it. Awareness of driverless vehicles is high across a range of demographic groups. Still, a larger share of men than women are following this issue closely (44% of men and 26% of women have heard a lot about it), and college graduates are more likely than those with high school diplomas or less to have heard a lot about it (43% vs. 25%).

Of those who are familiar with this issue, a majority (66%) says they have been exposed to a mix of positive and negative coverage about the impact of driverless vehicles. Around one-in-five (22%) have heard mostly positive things, while around one-in-ten (12%) say they have heard mostly negative things. Americans who have been following this issue closely are relatively likely to have heard positive coverage: 34% of Americans who have heard a lot about driverless vehicles say that most of what they’ve seen or heard has been positive, but that share falls to 15% among those who have only heard a little bit about them.

As is true of a number of the concepts examined in this survey, more Americans express worry than enthusiasm about the development of driverless vehicles: 40% are at least somewhat enthusiastic about this development, while 54% express some level of worry. Comparable shares of Americans describe themselves as being “very enthusiastic” (11%) and “very worried” (14%) about the development of driverless vehicles, but twice as many describe themselves as being “not at all” enthusiastic (22%) as opposed to not at all worried (11%).

Men are a bit more likely than women to say they are enthusiastic about the development of driverless vehicles (46% of men and 34% of women are at least somewhat enthusiastic). But women are notably more worried about this prospect: 63% of women express some level of worry, compared with 44% of men. College graduates are also more enthusiastic about driverless vehicles compared with Americans with lower levels of education, and those under the age of 50 are more enthusiastic than those ages 50 and older. But even so, only around half of college graduates (49%) and those ages 18-49 (47%) describe themselves as enthusiastic about the development of driverless vehicles.

When asked for their own views on how long it will be before most vehicles on the road are autonomous, a majority of Americans (56%) anticipate that this will happen in the next 10 to 49 years. Roughly one-in-ten (9%) expect that most vehicles will be autonomous in fewer than 10 years, but a comparable share (8%) expects that this outcome will never happen.

Just over half of Americans would not want to ride in a driverless vehicle if given the opportunity; a lack of confidence/trust in robotic decision-making and general safety concerns lead their list of worries

A Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2014 found that Americans were relatively divided over whether or not they would want to ride in a driverless vehicle, and this survey finds continuing evidence of this ambivalence. Just over half (56%) of Americans say they would not want to ride in a driverless vehicle if given the opportunity, while 44% say they would do so if they had the chance.

Interest in riding in an autonomous vehicle varies by a number of demographic factors. It is higher among men than among women; among those under the age of 50 than among those 50 and older; among those with four-year college degrees than among those with lower levels of education; and among urban residents than among those living in the suburbs or rural areas. It is also highly correlated with Americans’ overall familiarity and awareness of driverless vehicles more broadly. Among those who have heard a lot about the development of driverless vehicles, nearly six-in-ten (57%) would ride in one if given the opportunity. That share falls to 38% among those who have heard a little about this issue and to just 23% among the relatively small group of Americans who have not heard anything about driverless vehicles before.

When asked to describe in their own words why they would not be interested in riding in an autonomous vehicle, respondents overwhelmingly bring up two major and often overlapping concepts. Some 42% of those who would not want to ride in an autonomous vehicle express a general lack of trust in the technology or an unwillingness to cede control to a machine in a potentially life-or-death situation, while another 30% specifically mention safety concerns of one type or another.

Many of these respondents express doubts that machines could ever handle the unpredictability inherent in driving; worry about ceding their agency to a process they do not fully understand; or simply view humans as uniquely well-prepared to handle unexpected situations on the road:

“I want to be in control and not have the machine choose what’s best for me.” – 25-year-old woman

“I don’t even like being a passenger in a driverful car.” – 43-year-old man

“What if the vehicle malfunctions? So we all just crash and die I guess?” – 32-year-old woman

“I believe that judgments rely on human sympathy and feeling, rather than on the calculations a machine would make. Do you swerve into oncoming traffic to avoid hitting an old guy in the crosswalk?” – 64-year-old woman

“I test drove a Tesla. When I let go of the steering wheel and gave control to the ‘machine,’ I almost peed my pants!” – 55-year-old man

These concerns about safety and lack of control are by far the most prominent motivations offered by Americans who would not want to ride in a driverless vehicle. However, 9% say that they would not want to ride in one of these vehicles simply because they enjoy the physical act of driving. In addition, 3% say they might want to try them in the future but simply think that the technology is not sufficiently developed yet, while 2% express specific concerns that these vehicles might be hacked.

Meanwhile, those Americans who would want to ride in a driverless vehicle if they had the chance bring up several different factors driving their motivations. The largest share – representing 37% of this group – expresses a love of technology and/or the desire to try an exciting and novel experience:

“Just for the sheer pleasure of feeling I’m in the future one step beyond The Jetsons.” – 65-year-old man

“Because … why not!” – 30-year-old woman

“Curiosity mainly, to see how it drives and interprets situations differently than a human.” – 24-year-old woman

“Just for the experience … like my grandfather paying $1 (a day’s pay) for his first horseless carriage ride in the early 1900’s.” – 84-year-old man

Another 17% of this group would like to ride in a driverless car because they feel that these vehicles will be safer than those driven by humans. In contrast to the safety concerns of those who are more skeptical of autonomous vehicles, these respondents actively look forward to a world in which machines have taken over for cognitively limited – and frequently distracted or impaired – human beings:

“Because an autonomous vehicle, if properly programmed, has no ego. It does not feel road rage or impatience.” – 62-year-old man

“Drunk drivers. I want my children safe and too many people in the USA get behind the wheel when over the limit, or too tired and distracted by phones.” – 47-year-old woman

“I live in Florida, and traffic signs here seem to be a ‘suggestion’ to most drivers. Many drivers here are bullies on the road … it is horrible. Perhaps having vehicles that are made to obey the laws will eliminate this trend towards using your car/truck as a lethal weapon!” – 65-year-old woman

“I think it will be safer. We accommodate a large number of traffic deaths because they come in very small numbers. Very different from the way we see airline crashes with hundreds dead in a single incident. Automated driving will be safer and faster.” – 52-year-old man

“Take out the ‘human error’ factor and the frequency of accidents will plummet.” – 54-year-old man

Comparable shares of this group say they would like to ride in a driverless vehicle because they would be able to do things like sleep or be productive while in the car (15%), or because it would be generally less stressful than driving (13%). And a small number mention factors such as greater independence for people who have difficulty driving on their own (4%), greater convenience (4%) or the fact that autonomous vehicles would be especially appealing on long trips (2%).

Many Americans would personally feel unsafe sharing the road with an autonomous vehicle; they are divided on whether these vehicles would ultimately increase or decrease accidents but express strong support for various practical restrictions on their use

Public attitudes are split in other ways when it comes to the perceived safety of driverless vehicles. For instance, a plurality (39%) anticipates that the number of people killed or injured in traffic accidents will decrease if driverless vehicles become widespread. But 30% of the public expects that traffic fatalities will actually increase if driverless vehicles become more common – and another 31% expect that they will neither increase nor decrease.

In addition, Americans also express concerns about their own personal safety if they were to share the road with autonomous vehicles – especially autonomous freight trucks. In total, 65% of Americans would feel unsafe sharing the road with an autonomous freight truck, with 32% indicating they would feel not at all safe. A larger share of the public would be comfortable sharing the road with a driverless passenger vehicle. But even so, nearly one-in-five Americans (17%) would feel not at all safe in they found themselves in this situation.

Along with these general concerns, the public is strongly supportive of several rules and restrictions governing the use of driverless vehicles. Most prominently, 87% of Americans favor (with 53% favoring strongly) a requirement that all driverless vehicles have a human in the driver’s seat who can take control in an emergency situation. A similar proportion of Americans (83%) favor requiring driverless vehicles to travel in dedicated lanes, with 47% supporting this strongly. A slightly smaller share – although still a substantial majority at 69% – supports restricting autonomous vehicles from traveling near certain areas, such as schools. Although there are modest differences in support for these policies, each is favored by a majority of Americans across a wide range of demographic groups.

Public anticipates a mix of positive and negative impacts if driverless vehicles become widespread

Americans expect certain outcomes to be more probable than others in the event that driverless vehicles become widespread. In terms of positive impacts, 75% of Americans anticipate that widespread use of autonomous vehicles will help elderly and disabled people live more independent lives than they do today. However, just 28% of U.S. adults anticipate that driverless vehicles will lead to reduced levels of traffic in major cities.

In terms of negative outcomes, roughly eight-in-ten Americans (81%) expect that this development will cause many people who currently drive for a living to lose their jobs. This view is held by a substantial majority of Americans across a wide range of demographic and attitudinal characteristics – men and women, young and old, those with greater and lesser levels of educational attainment, and those with varying levels of awareness of this issue in general.

The public also offers somewhat conflicting expectations toward the nature of car ownership in a world of driverless vehicles. Seven-in-ten Americans expect that most people will never learn how to drive on their own if these vehicles become widespread. Simultaneously, fewer than half (43%) expect that owning a car will become less important to people than it is today.

Driverless vehicle enthusiasts have dramatically different views from those who are more hesitant to use one themselves

Across numerous questions in the survey on this subject, Americans who themselves would like to ride in a driverless vehicle stand out by substantial margins from those who would not want to do so. They express greater levels of enthusiasm and lower levels of worry about the ultimate impact of this technology, and they are more likely to say they would feel safe sharing the road with both autonomous cars and freight vehicles. They also anticipate a wider range of benefits from the development of autonomous vehicles – such as reduced traffic, fewer people injured or killed in traffic accidents, and increased independence for the elderly or disabled. Simultaneously, they are less likely to strongly favor various rules or policies that restrict the everyday use of driverless vehicles compared with those who would not wish to ride in a driverless vehicle themselves.

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Articles on Driverless cars

Displaying 1 - 20 of 135 articles.

Driverless cars still lack common sense. AI chatbot technology could be the answer

Alice Plebe , UCL

Bringing AI up to speed – autonomous auto racing promises safer driverless cars on the road

Madhur Behl , University of Virginia

Driverless cars: stopping dead seems to be a default setting when they encounter a problem — it can cause chaos on roads

Barry Brown , Stockholm University

Tesla’s recall of 2 million vehicles reminds us how far driverless car AI still has to go

Prof Saber Fallah , University of Surrey

Driverless cars could be a revolution for people with disabilities – but they also have good reason to be worried

Rohini Vijaygopal , The Open University ; Rita Kottasz , Kingston University , and Roger Bennett , Kingston University

How the UK is getting AI regulation right

Asress Adimi Gikay , Brunel University London

We were told we’d be riding in self-driving cars by now. What happened to the promised revolution?

Neil G Sipe , The University of Queensland

Companies oversell the self-driving capabilities of their cars, with horrific outcomes

Francesco Biondi , University of Windsor

Driverless cars: what we’ve learned from experiments in San Francisco and Phoenix

Jack Stilgoe , UCL

Drivers of self-driving cars can rely too much on autopilot, and that’s a recipe for disaster

Brands matter! Why trusting an existing brand can lure you into buying a driverless car

Riza Casidy , Macquarie University

The self-driving trolley problem: how will future AI systems make the most ethical choices for all of us?

Jumana Abu-Khalaf , Edith Cowan University and Paul Haskell-Dowland , Edith Cowan University

Who’s to blame when a self-driving car has an accident?

Autonomous cars: five reasons they still aren’t on our roads

John McDermid , University of York

Autonomous cars could revolutionise transport for disabled people – if we change the way we design

Paul Herriotts , Coventry University

Linking self-driving cars to traffic signals might help pedestrians give them the green light

Lionel Peter Robert Jr. , University of Michigan

Autonomous vehicles can be fooled to ‘see’ nonexistent obstacles

Yulong Cao , University of Michigan and Z. Morley Mao , University of Michigan

Huawei and 5G: UK had little choice but say yes to Chinese – here’s why

Greig Paul , University of Strathclyde

Self-driving cars will not fix our transportation woes

Cameron Roberts , Carleton University

Driverless vehicles and pedestrians don’t mix. So how do we re-arrange our cities?

Peter Newman , Curtin University

Related Topics

• Artificial intelligence (AI)
• Autonomous vehicles
• Driverless transport
• Road safety

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Senior Research Scientist, Texas A&M Transportation Institute, Texas A&M University

Associate Professor in Urban Planning, The University of Queensland

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Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia

The capital city of Sverdlovsk oblast: Ekaterinburg .

Sverdlovsk Oblast - Overview

Sverdlovsk Oblast is a federal subject of Russia, the largest region of the Urals, located on the border between Europe and Asia in the Urals Federal District. Yekaterinburg is the capital city of the region.

The population of Sverdlovsk Oblast is about 4,264,300 (2022), the area - 194,307 sq. km.

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Sverdlovsk oblast coat of arms.

Sverdlovsk oblast map, Russia

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History of Sverdlovsk Oblast

The first people settled here in the Stone Age. At the end of the 16th century, the Russian kingdom gained control of the region. In the 17th century, the most significant stage of the initial development of this area happened, when Russian settlers began a massive advance to the east. In 1598, the first settlers founded the town of Verkhoturye on the territory of the present Sverdlovsk region.

Verkhoturye became the first capital of the Urals because of its strategic location on the Babinov road - an important crossroads of trade routes. Sverdlovsk oblast acted as a transshipment base between the central part of the country and the actively developed regions of Siberia and Central Asia.

The presence of strategic reserves of iron and copper ore, as well as large forest areas, predetermined the specialization of the region (ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, wood processing, mining, etc.). Exploration of minerals in the Sverdlovsk region began at the end of the 17th century.

In the 18th century, the Demidov dynasty founded several plants in the region that turned into large production and economic complexes. The local industry was characterized by a high level of technological development. The blast furnaces of the Ekaterinburg, Nevyansk, Tagil iron-making plants were superior in performance to the best European models of that time, and their products were the leading item of Russian exports.

More historical facts…

The launch of the Trans-Siberian Railway became a landmark event in the life of the Middle Urals, allowing large-scale export of plant products. Between 1920 and 1930, the Urals was able to once again take its place as the leading industrial region of Russia by strengthening its mining industry, creating new production facilities, developing energy and mass urban construction.

In the years of the first five-year plans, along with the reconstruction of old enterprises, several new large industrial facilities were opened: Uralmashzavod, Uralelektrotyazhmash, tool and ball bearing plants in Sverdlovsk, Uralvagonzavod and Nizhny Tagil metallurgical plant in Nizhny Tagil, pipe plants in Pervouralsk and Kamensk-Uralsky, copper smelters in Krasnouralsk and Sredneuralsk, the Ural aluminum smelter in Kamensk-Uralsky and others.

On October 3, 1938, the territory of Sverdlovsk Oblast was finally formed. During the Second World War, from July 1941 to December 1942, more than 2 million people came to the Urals region, of which more than 700 thousand stayed in Sverdlovsk Oblast.

In the postwar period, Sverdlovsk Oblast continued to develop as a major industrial center of the Urals. The industry of the region was a supplier of the most important types of machinery, products of ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, chemical, electric power, light, and food industries. Mechanical engineering and metalworking retained their leading place in the structure of the local industry.

Being one of the most important industrial and defense centers of the Soviet Union, the Sverdlovsk region remained closed to foreigners until 1991.

Beautiful nature of Sverdlovsk Oblast

Forest stream in Sverdlovsk Oblast

Author: Vlasov Pavel

Sverdlovsk Oblast nature

Author: Oleg Seliverstov

Sverdlovsk Oblast is rich in forests

Sverdlovsk Oblast - Features

Sverdlovsk Oblast received its name from its administrative center - the city of Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinburg). The name appeared on January 17, 1934, together with the formation of the region. After renaming Sverdlovsk back to Yekaterinburg, the region was not renamed and retained its Soviet name.

The territory of Sverdlovsk Oblast stretches from west to east for 560 kilometers, from north to south - for 660 kilometers. The climate is continental. The average temperature in January is about minus 16-20 degrees Celsius, in July - plus 19-30 degrees Celsius.

The Sverdlovsk region, being one of the oldest mining regions of Russia, is rich in a variety of natural resources. Today, the local mineral and raw materials base provides a significant part of the production of Russian vanadium, bauxite, chrysotile-asbestos, iron ore, refractory clay. The region is the main raw source for Russian aluminum industry.

There are significant reserves of nickel ores, precious metals, mineral and fresh groundwater, practically unlimited reserves of building materials. There are deposits of stone and brown coals, chromites, manganese and certain prospects for discovering oil and gas fields. Forests cover about 80% of the territory.

Sverdlovsk Oblast is an important transport hub of Russia. The Trans-Siberian Railway passes through its territory. Koltsovo is a large international airport located in Yekaterinburg. The largest cities and towns of Sverdlovsk Oblast are Yekaterinburg (1,493,600), Nizhny Tagil (340,700), Kamensk-Uralsky (162,500), Pervouralsk (117,700), Serov (93,900), Novouralsk (79,000), and Verkhnyaya Pyshma (76,400).

Sverdlovsk Oblast is known for its traditional International exhibition of armament in Nizhny Tagil, annual Russian Economic Forum in Yekaterinburg. Yekaterinburg is the 4th largest scientific center in Russia after Moscow, Saint-Petersburg and Novosibirsk.

It is one of the most important industrial regions of Russia. The structure of the local industrial complex is dominated by ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, enrichment of uranium and iron ore, engineering.

The largest enterprises of ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy are the Nizhnetagilsky Metallurgical Combine, the Kachkanar GOK Vanadiy, VSMPO-Avisma, the Pervouralsky Novotrubny Plant, the Bogoslovsky and the Ural Aluminum Smelters, the Kamensk-Uralsk Metallurgical Plant, the Sinarsky Pipe Plant, the Seversk Pipe Plant, as well as enterprises of the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company (Uralelectromed, Sredneuralsky Copper Smelting Plant, Metallurgical Plant named after A.K. Serov, etc.).

The most important enterprises of the machine-building complex are Uralvagonzavod, Ural Heavy Machinery Plant, Uralelectrotyazhmash, Uralkhimmash, Ural Turbine Plant, Ural Civil Aviation Plant. Uralkhimplast, which produces synthetic resins, is the largest chemical plant in Russia.

Attractions of Sverdlovsk Oblast

Coniferous forests and numerous rivers make the nature of the Sverdlovsk region attractive for tourists. There is a number of reserves and nature parks: Visimsky State Nature Reserve, Denezhkin Kamen National Nature Reserve, Pripyshminsky Bory National Park, Oleny Ruchi Nature Park, Chusovaya River Nature Park, Bazhovskiye Places Nature Park, Rezhevskoy Nature and Mineralogical Reserve.

Some of the most interesting sights located outside of Yekaterinburg:

• Nevyansk Tower - a leaning tower in the center of the town of Nevyansk, built by the order of Akinfiy Demidov, the founder of the mining industry in the Urals, in the first half of the 18th century;
• Cathedral of the Savior’s Transfiguration in Nevyansk;
• Battle glory of the Urals - an open-air museum of military equipment in Verkhnyaya Pyshma;
• Automotive equipment museum in Verkhnyaya Pyshma - one of the largest collections of Russian cars, special equipment, motorcycles, bicycles;
• Obelisk symbolizing the border between Europe and Asia in Pervouralsk;
• Verkhoturye - a historical town with a kremlin and a lot of churches called the spiritual center of the Urals. The Cross Exaltation Cathedral of the St. Nicholas Monastery is the third largest cathedral in Russia after the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow and St. Isaac’s Cathedral in St. Petersburg;
• Mount Kachkanar located near the border between Europe and Asia. At the top of the mountain there is the Buddhist Monastery of Shad Tchup Ling;
• Monastery in the name of the Holy Royal Passion-Bearers on Ganina Yama standing on the site of the extermination and the first burial of the remains of the family of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II and his servants;
• Museum Complex Severskaya Domna in Polevskoy, 52 kilometers from Ekaterinburg - an industrial and architectural monument (1860);
• Open-air museum in Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha - Ural wooden architecture and the richest collection of the Ural house painting;
• Severskaya Pisanitsa - a monument with rock paintings and images of the Neolithic Age located near the village of Severka.

Sverdlovsk oblast of Russia photos

Pictures of the sverdlovsk region.

Sverdlovsk Oblast scenery

Author: Anatoliy Kislov

Bridge in Sverdlovsk Oblast

Author: Igor Romanov

Road in the Sverdlovsk region

Sverdlovsk Oblast views

Field of dandelions in Sverdlovsk Oblast

Winter in Sverdlovsk Oblast

Author: Isupov Sergei

Churches in Sverdlovsk Oblast

Abandoned church in the Sverdlovsk region

Author: Timofey Zakharov

Wooden church in Sverdlovsk Oblast

Orthodox church in Sverdlovsk Oblast

Author: Kutenyov Vladimir

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YEKATERINBURG: FACTORIES, URAL SIGHTS, YELTSIN AND THE WHERE NICHOLAS II WAS KILLED

Sverdlovsk oblast.

Sverdlovsk Oblast is the largest region in the Urals; it lies in the foothills of mountains and contains a monument indicating the border between Europe and Asia. The region covers 194,800 square kilometers (75,200 square miles), is home to about 4.3 million people and has a population density of 22 people per square kilometer. About 83 percent of the population live in urban areas. Yekaterinburg is the capital and largest city, with 1.5 million people. For Russians, the Ural Mountains are closely associated with Pavel Bazhov's tales and known for folk crafts such as Kasli iron sculpture, Tagil painting, and copper embossing. Yekaterinburg is the birthplace of Russia’s iron and steel industry, taking advantage of the large iron deposits in the Ural mountains. The popular Silver Ring of the Urals tourist route starts here.

In the summer you can follow in the tracks of Yermak, climb relatively low Ural mountain peaks and look for boulders seemingly with human faces on them. You can head to the Gemstone Belt of the Ural mountains, which used to house emerald, amethyst and topaz mines. In the winter you can go ice fishing, ski and cross-country ski.

Sverdlovsk Oblast and Yekaterinburg are located near the center of Russia, at the crossroads between Europe and Asia and also the southern and northern parts of Russia. Winters are longer and colder than in western section of European Russia. Snowfalls can be heavy. Winter temperatures occasionally drop as low as - 40 degrees C (-40 degrees F) and the first snow usually falls in October. A heavy winter coat, long underwear and good boots are essential. Snow and ice make the sidewalks very slippery, so footwear with a good grip is important. Since the climate is very dry during the winter months, skin moisturizer plus lip balm are recommended. Be alert for mud on street surfaces when snow cover is melting (April-May). Patches of mud create slippery road conditions.

Yekaterinburg

Yekaterinburg (kilometer 1818 on the Trans-Siberian Railway) is the fourth largest city in Russia, with of 1.5 million and growth rate of about 12 percent, high for Russia. Located in the southern Ural mountains, it was founded by Peter the Great and named after his wife Catherine, it was used by the tsars as a summer retreat and is where tsar Nicholas II and his family were executed and President Boris Yeltsin lived most of his life and began his political career. The city is near the border between Europe and Asia.

Yekaterinburg (also spelled Ekaterinburg) is located on the eastern slope of the Ural Mountains in the headwaters of the Iset and Pyshma Rivers. The Iset runs through the city center. Three ponds — Verkh-Isetsky, Gorodskoy and Nizhne-Isetsky — were created on it. Yekaterinburg has traditionally been a city of mining and was once the center of the mining industry of the Urals and Siberia. Yekaterinburg remains a major center of the Russian armaments industry and is sometimes called the "Pittsburgh of Russia.". A few ornate, pastel mansions and wide boulevards are reminders of the tsarist era. The city is large enough that it has its own Metro system but is characterized mostly by blocky Soviet-era apartment buildings. The city has advanced under President Vladimir Putin and is now one of the fastest growing places in Russia, a country otherwise characterized by population declines

Yekaterinburg is technically an Asian city as it lies 32 kilometers east of the continental divide between Europe and Asia. The unofficial capital of the Urals, a key region in the Russian heartland, it is second only to Moscow in terms of industrial production and capital of Sverdlovsk oblast. Among the important industries are ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, machine building and metalworking, chemical and petrochemicals, construction materials and medical, light and food industries. On top of being home of numerous heavy industries and mining concerns, Yekaterinburg is also a major center for industrial research and development and power engineering as well as home to numerous institutes of higher education, technical training, and scientific research. In addition, Yekaterinburg is the largest railway junction in Russia: the Trans-Siberian Railway passes through it, the southern, northern, western and eastern routes merge in the city.

Accommodation: There are two good and affordable hotels — the 3-star Emerald and Parus hotels — located close to the city's most popular landmarks and main transport interchanges in the center of Yekaterinburg. Room prices start at RUB 1,800 per night.

History of Yekaterinburg

Yekaterinburg was founded in 1723 by Peter the Great and named after his wife Catherine I. It was used by the tsars as a summer retreat but was mainly developed as metalworking and manufacturing center to take advantage of the large deposits of iron and other minerals in the Ural mountains. It is best known to Americans as the place where the last Tsar and his family were murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918 and near where American U-2 spy plane, piloted by Gary Powers, was shot down in 1960.

Peter the Great recognized the importance of the iron and copper-rich Urals region for Imperial Russia's industrial and military development. In November 1723, he ordered the construction of a fortress factory and an ironworks in the Iset River Valley, which required a dam for its operation. In its early years Yekaterinburg grew rich from gold and other minerals and later coal. The Yekaterinburg gold rush of 1745 created such a huge amount of wealth that one rich baron of that time hosted a wedding party that lasted a year. By the mid-18th century, metallurgical plants had sprung up across the Urals to cast cannons, swords, guns and other weapons to arm Russia’s expansionist ambitions. The Yekaterinburg mint produced most of Russia's coins. Explorations of the Trans-Baikal and Altai regions began here in the 18th century.

Iron, cast iron and copper were the main products. Even though Iron from the region went into the Eiffel Tower, the main plant in Yekaterinburg itself was shut down in 1808. The city still kept going through a mountain factory control system of the Urals. The first railway in the Urals was built here: in 1878, the Yekaterinburg-Perm railway branch connected the province's capital with the factories of the Middle Urals.

In the Soviet era the city was called Sverdlovsk (named after Yakov Sverdlov, the man who organized Nicholas II's execution). During the first five-year plans the city became industrial — old plants were reconstructed, new ones were built. The center of Yekaterinburg was formed to conform to the historical general plan of 1829 but was the layout was adjusted around plants and factories. In the Stalin era the city was a major gulag transhipment center. In World War II, many defense-related industries were moved here. It and the surrounding area were a center of the Soviet Union's military industrial complex. Soviet tanks, missiles and aircraft engines were made in the Urals. During the Cold War era, Yekaterinburg was a center of weapons-grade uranium enrichment and processing, warhead assembly and dismantlement. In 1979, 64 people died when anthrax leaked from a biological weapons facility. Yekaterinburg was a “Closed City” for 40 years during the Cold Soviet era and was not open to foreigners until 1991

In the early post-Soviet era, much like Pittsburgh in the 1970s, Yekaterinburg had a hard struggle d to cope with dramatic economic changes that have made its heavy industries uncompetitive on the world market. Huge defense plants struggled to survive and the city was notorious as an organized crime center in the 1990s, when its hometown boy Boris Yeltsin was President of Russia. By the 2000s, Yekaterinburg’s retail and service was taking off, the defense industry was reviving and it was attracting tech industries and investments related to the Urals’ natural resources. By the 2010s it was vying to host a world exhibition in 2020 (it lost, Dubai won) and it had McDonald’s, Subway, sushi restaurants, and Gucci, Chanel and Armani. There were Bentley and Ferrari dealerships but they closed down

Transportation in Yekaterinburg

Getting There: By Plane: Yekaterinburg is a three-hour flight from Moscow with prices starting at RUB 8,000, or a 3-hour flight from Saint Petersburg starting from RUB 9,422 (direct round-trip flight tickets for one adult passenger). There are also flights from Frankfurt, Istanbul, China and major cities in the former Soviet Union.

By Train: Yekaterinburg is a major stop on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Daily train service is available to Moscow and many other Russian cities.Yekaterinburg is a 32-hour train ride from Moscow (tickets RUB 8,380 and above) or a 36-hour train ride from Saint Petersburg (RUB 10,300 and above). The ticket prices are round trip for a berth in a sleeper compartment for one adult passenger). By Car: a car trip from Moscow to Yekateringburg is 1,787 kilometers long and takes about 18 hours. The road from Saint Petersburg is 2,294 kilometers and takes about 28 hours.

Regional Transport: The region's public transport includes buses and suburban electric trains. Regional trains provide transport to larger cities in the Ural region. Buses depart from Yekaterinburg’s two bus stations: the Southern Bus Station and the Northern Bus Station.

Regional Transport: According the to Association for Safe International Road Travel (ASIRT): “Public transportation is well developed. Overcrowding is common. Fares are low. Service is efficient. Buses are the main form of public transport. Tram network is extensive. Fares are reasonable; service is regular. Trams are heavily used by residents, overcrowding is common. Purchase ticket after boarding. Metro runs from city center to Uralmash, an industrial area south of the city. Metro ends near the main railway station. Fares are inexpensive.

“Traffic is congested in city center. Getting around by car can be difficult. Route taxis (minivans) provide the fastest transport. They generally run on specific routes, but do not have specific stops. Drivers stop where passengers request. Route taxis can be hailed. Travel by bus or trolleybuses may be slow in rush hour. Trams are less affected by traffic jams. Trolley buses (electric buses) cannot run when temperatures drop below freezing.”

Entertainment, Sports and Recreation in Yekaterinburg

The performing arts in Yekaterinburg are first rate. The city has an excellent symphony orchestra, opera and ballet theater, and many other performing arts venues. Tickets are inexpensive. The Yekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theater is lavishly designed and richly decorated building in the city center of Yekaterinburg. The theater was established in 1912 and building was designed by architect Vladimir Semyonov and inspired by the Vienna Opera House and the Theater of Opera and Ballet in Odessa.

Vaynera Street is a pedestrian only shopping street in city center with restaurants, cafes and some bars. But otherwise Yekaterinburg's nightlife options are limited. There are a handful of expensive Western-style restaurants and bars, none of them that great. Nightclubs serve the city's nouveau riche clientele. Its casinos have closed down. Some of them had links with organized crime. New dance clubs have sprung up that are popular with Yekaterinburg's more affluent youth.

Yekaterinburg's most popular spectator sports are hockey, basketball, and soccer. There are stadiums and arenas that host all three that have fairly cheap tickets. There is an indoor water park and lots of parks and green spaces. The Urals have many lakes, forests and mountains are great for hiking, boating, berry and mushroom hunting, swimming and fishing. Winter sports include cross-country skiing and ice skating. Winter lasts about six months and there’s usually plenty of snow. The nearby Ural Mountains however are not very high and the downhill skiing opportunities are limited..

Sights in Yekaterinburg

Sights in Yekaterinburg include the Museum of City Architecture and Ural Industry, with an old water tower and mineral collection with emeralds. malachite, tourmaline, jasper and other precious stone; Geological Alley, a small park with labeled samples of minerals found in the Urals region; the Ural Geology Museum, which houses an extensive collection of stones, gold and gems from the Urals; a monument marking the border between Europe and Asia; a memorial for gulag victims; and a graveyard with outlandish memorials for slain mafia members.

The Military History Museum houses the remains of the U-2 spy plane shot down in 1960 and locally made tanks and rocket launchers. The fine arts museum contains paintings by some of Russia's 19th-century masters. Also worth a look are the History an Local Studies Museum; the Political History and Youth Museum; and the University and Arboretum. Old wooden houses can be seen around Zatoutstovsya ulitsa and ulitsa Belinskogo. Around the city are wooded parks, lakes and quarries used to harvest a variety of minerals. Weiner Street is the main street of Yekaterinburg. Along it are lovely sculptures and 19th century architecture. Take a walk around the unique Literary Quarter

Plotinka is a local meeting spot, where you will often find street musicians performing. Plotinka can be described as the center of the city's center. This is where Yekaterinburg holds its biggest events: festivals, seasonal fairs, regional holiday celebrations, carnivals and musical fountain shows. There are many museums and open-air exhibitions on Plotinka. Plotinka is named after an actual dam of the city pond located nearby (“plotinka” means “a small dam” in Russian).In November 1723, Peter the Great ordered the construction of an ironworks in the Iset River Valley, which required a dam for its operation. “Iset” can be translated from Finnish as “abundant with fish”. This name was given to the river by the Mansi — the Finno-Ugric people dwelling on the eastern slope of the Northern Urals.

Vysotsky and Iset are skyscrapers that are 188.3 meters and 209 meters high, respectively. Fifty-story-high Iset has been described by locals as the world’s northernmost skyscraper. Before the construction of Iset, Vysotsky was the tallest building of Yekaterinburg and Russia (excluding Moscow). A popular vote has decided to name the skyscraper after the famous Soviet songwriter, singer and actor Vladimir Vysotsky. and the building was opened on November 25, 2011. There is a lookout at the top of the building, and the Vysotsky museum on its second floor. The annual “Vysotsky climb” (1137 steps) is held there, with a prize of RUB 100,000. While Vysotsky serves as an office building, Iset, owned by the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company, houses 225 premium residential apartments ranging from 80 to 490 square meters in size.

Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center

The Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center (in the city center: ul. Yeltsina, 3) is a non-governmental organization named after the first president of the Russian Federation. The Museum of the First President of Russia as well as his archives are located in the Center. There is also a library, educational and children's centers, and exposition halls. Yeltsin lived most of his life and began his political career in Yekaterinburg. He was born in Butka about 200 kilometers east of Yekaterinburg.

The core of the Center is the Museum. Modern multimedia technologies help animate the documents, photos from the archives, and artifacts. The Yeltsin Museum holds collections of: propaganda posters, leaflets, and photos of the first years of the Soviet regime; portraits and portrait sculptures of members of Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of various years; U.S.S.R. government bonds and other items of the Soviet era; a copy of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, published in the “Novy Mir” magazine (#11, 1962); perestroika-era editions of books by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Vasily Grossman, and other authors; theater, concert, and cinema posters, programs, and tickets — in short, all of the artifacts of the perestroika era.

The Yeltsin Center opened in 2012. Inside you will also find an art gallery, a bookstore, a gift shop, a food court, concert stages and a theater. There are regular screenings of unique films that you will not find anywhere else. Also operating inside the center, is a scientific exploritorium for children. The center was designed by Boris Bernaskoni. Almost from the its very opening, the Yeltsin Center has been accused by members of different political entities of various ideological crimes. The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday, from 10:00am to 9:00pm.

Where Nicholas II was Executed

On July, 17, 1918, during this reign of terror of the Russian Civil War, former-tsar Nicholas II, his wife, five children (the 13-year-old Alexis, 22-year-old Olga, 19-year-old Maria and 17-year-old Anastasia)the family physician, the cook, maid, and valet were shot to death by a Red Army firing squad in the cellar of the house they were staying at in Yekaterinburg.

Ipatiev House (near Church on the Blood, Ulitsa Libknekhta) was a merchant's house where Nicholas II and his family were executed. The house was demolished in 1977, on the orders of an up and coming communist politician named Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin later said that the destruction of the house was an "act of barbarism" and he had no choice because he had been ordered to do it by the Politburo,

The site is marked with s cross with the photos of the family members and cross bearing their names. A small wooden church was built at the site. It contains paintings of the family. For a while there were seven traditional wooden churches. Mass is given ay noon everyday in an open-air museum. The Church on the Blood — constructed to honor Nicholas II and his family — was built on the part of the site in 1991 and is now a major place of pilgrimage.

Nicholas and his family where killed during the Russian civil war. It is thought the Bolsheviks figured that Nicholas and his family gave the Whites figureheads to rally around and they were better of dead. Even though the death orders were signed Yakov Sverdlov, the assassination was personally ordered by Lenin, who wanted to get them out of sight and out of mind. Trotsky suggested a trial. Lenin nixed the idea, deciding something had to be done about the Romanovs before White troops approached Yekaterinburg. Trotsky later wrote: "The decision was not only expedient but necessary. The severity of he punishment showed everyone that we would continue to fight on mercilessly, stopping at nothing."

Ian Frazier wrote in The New Yorker: “Having read a lot about the end of Tsar Nicholas II and his family and servants, I wanted to see the place in Yekaterinburg where that event occurred. The gloomy quality of this quest depressed Sergei’s spirits, but he drove all over Yekaterinburg searching for the site nonetheless. Whenever he stopped and asked a pedestrian how to get to the house where Nicholas II was murdered, the reaction was a wince. Several people simply walked away. But eventually, after a lot of asking, Sergei found the location. It was on a low ridge near the edge of town, above railroad tracks and the Iset River. The house, known as the Ipatiev House, was no longer standing, and the basement where the actual killings happened had been filled in. I found the blankness of the place sinister and dizzying. It reminded me of an erasure done so determinedly that it had worn a hole through the page. [Source: Ian Frazier, The New Yorker, August 3, 2009, Frazier is author of “Travels in Siberia” (2010)]

“The street next to the site is called Karl Liebknecht Street. A building near where the house used to be had a large green advertisement that said, in English, “LG—Digitally Yours.” On an adjoining lot, a small chapel kept the memory of the Tsar and his family; beneath a pedestal holding an Orthodox cross, peonies and pansies grew. The inscription on the pedestal read, “We go down on our knees, Russia, at the foot of the tsarist cross.”

Books: The Romanovs: The Final Chapter by Robert K. Massie (Random House, 1995); The Fall of the Romanovs by Mark D. Steinberg and Vladimir Khrustalëv (Yale, 1995);

See Separate Article END OF NICHOLAS II factsanddetails.com

Execution of Nicholas II

According to Robert Massie K. Massie, author of Nicholas and Alexandra, Nicholas II and his family were awakened from their bedrooms around midnight and taken to the basement. They were told they were to going to take some photographs of them and were told to stand behind a row of chairs.

Suddenly, a group of 11 Russians and Latvians, each with a revolver, burst into the room with orders to kill a specific person. Yakob Yurovsky, a member of the Soviet executive committee, reportedly shouted "your relatives are continuing to attack the Soviet Union.” After firing, bullets bouncing off gemstones hidden in the corsets of Alexandra and her daughters ricocheted around the room like "a shower of hail," the soldiers said. Those that were still breathing were killed with point black shots to the head.

The three sisters and the maid survived the first round thanks to their gems. They were pressed up against a wall and killed with a second round of bullets. The maid was the only one that survived. She was pursued by the executioners who stabbed her more than 30 times with their bayonets. The still writhing body of Alexis was made still by a kick to the head and two bullets in the ear delivered by Yurovsky himself.

Yurovsky wrote: "When the party entered I told the Romanovs that in view of the fact their relatives continued their offensive against Soviet Russia, the Executive Committee of the Urals Soviet had decided to shoot them. Nicholas turned his back to the detachment and faced his family. Then, as if collecting himself, he turned around, asking, 'What? What?'"

"[I] ordered the detachment to prepare. Its members had been previously instructed whom to shoot and to am directly at the heart to avoid much blood and to end more quickly. Nicholas said no more. he turned again to his family. The others shouted some incoherent exclamations. All this lasted a few seconds. Then commenced the shooting, which went on for two or three minutes. [I] killed Nicholas on the spot."

Nicholas II’s Initial Burial Site in Yekaterinburg

Ganina Yama Monastery (near the village of Koptyaki, 15 kilometers northwest of Yekaterinburg) stands near the three-meter-deep pit where some the remains of Nicholas II and his family were initially buried. The second burial site — where most of the remains were — is in a field known as Porosyonkov (56.9113628°N 60.4954326°E), seven kilometers from Ganina Yama.

On visiting Ganina Yama Monastery, one person posted in Trip Advisor: “We visited this set of churches in a pretty park with Konstantin from Ekaterinburg Guide Centre. He really brought it to life with his extensive knowledge of the history of the events surrounding their terrible end. The story is so moving so unless you speak Russian, it is best to come here with a guide or else you will have no idea of what is what.”

In 1991, the acid-burned remains of Nicholas II and his family were exhumed from a shallow roadside mass grave in a swampy area 12 miles northwest of Yekaterinburg. The remains had been found in 1979 by geologist and amateur archeologist Alexander Avdonin, who kept the location secret out of fear that they would be destroyed by Soviet authorities. The location was disclosed to a magazine by one his fellow discovers.

The original plan was to throw the Romanovs down a mine shaft and disposes of their remains with acid. They were thrown in a mine with some grenades but the mine didn't collapse. They were then carried by horse cart. The vats of acid fell off and broke. When the carriage carrying the bodies broke down it was decided the bury the bodies then and there. The remaining acid was poured on the bones, but most of it was soaked up the ground and the bones largely survived.

After this their pulses were then checked, their faces were crushed to make them unrecognizable and the bodies were wrapped in bed sheets loaded onto a truck. The "whole procedure," Yurovsky said took 20 minutes. One soldiers later bragged than he could "die in peace because he had squeezed the Empress's -------."

The bodies were taken to a forest and stripped, burned with acid and gasoline, and thrown into abandoned mine shafts and buried under railroad ties near a country road near the village of Koptyaki. "The bodies were put in the hole," Yurovsky wrote, "and the faces and all the bodies, generally doused with sulfuric acid, both so they couldn't be recognized and prevent a stink from them rotting...We scattered it with branches and lime, put boards on top and drove over it several times—no traces of the hole remained.

Shortly afterwards, the government in Moscow announced that Nicholas II had been shot because of "a counterrevolutionary conspiracy." There was no immediate word on the other members of the family which gave rise to rumors that other members of the family had escaped. Yekaterinburg was renamed Sverdlov in honor of the man who signed the death orders.

For seven years the remains of Nicholas II, Alexandra, three of their daughters and four servants were stored in polyethylene bags on shelves in the old criminal morgue in Yekaterunburg. On July 17, 1998, Nicholas II and his family and servants who were murdered with him were buried Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg along with the other Romanov tsars, who have been buried there starting with Peter the Great. Nicholas II had a side chapel built for himself at the fortress in 1913 but was buried in a new crypt.

Near Yekaterinburg

Factory-Museum of Iron and Steel Metallurgy (in Niznhy Tagil 80 kilometers north of Yekaterinburg) a museum with old mining equipment made at the site of huge abandoned iron and steel factory. Officially known as the Factory-Museum of the History of the Development of Iron and Steel Metallurgy, it covers an area of 30 hectares and contains a factory founded by the Demidov family in 1725 that specialized mainly in the production of high-quality cast iron and steel. Later, the foundry was renamed after Valerian Kuybyshev, a prominent figure of the Communist Party.

The first Russian factory museum, the unusual museum demonstrates all stages of metallurgy and metal working. There is even a blast furnace and an open-hearth furnace. The display of factory equipment includes bridge crane from 1892) and rolling stock equipment from the 19th-20th centuries. In Niznhy Tagil contains some huge blocks of malachite and

Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha (180 kilometers east-northeast of Yekaterinburg) has an open air architecture museum with log buildings, a stone church and other pre-revolutionary architecture. The village is the creation of Ivan Samoilov, a local activist who loved his village so much he dedicated 40 years of his life to recreating it as the open-air museum of wooden architecture.

The stone Savior Church, a good example of Siberian baroque architecture. The interior and exterior of the church are exhibition spaces of design. The houses are very colorful. In tsarist times, rich villagers hired serfs to paint the walls of their wooden izbas (houses) bright colors. Old neglected buildings from the 17th to 19th centuries have been brought to Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha from all over the Urals. You will see the interior design of the houses and hear stories about traditions and customs of the Ural farmers.

Verkhoturye (330 kilometers road from Yekaterinburg) is the home a 400-year-old monastery that served as 16th century capital of the Urals. Verkhoturye is a small town on the Tura River knows as the Jerusalem of the Urals for its many holy places, churches and monasteries. The town's main landmark is its Kremlin — the smallest in Russia. Pilgrims visit the St. Nicholas Monastery to see the remains of St. Simeon of Verkhoturye, the patron saint of fishermen.

Ural Mountains

Ural Mountains are the traditional dividing line between Europe and Asia and have been a crossroads of Russian history. Stretching from Kazakhstan to the fringes of the Arctic Kara Sea, the Urals lie almost exactly along the 60 degree meridian of longitude and extend for about 2,000 kilometers (1,300 miles) from north to south and varies in width from about 50 kilometers (30 miles) in the north and 160 kilometers (100 miles) the south. At kilometers 1777 on the Trans-Siberian Railway there is white obelisk with "Europe" carved in Russian on one side and "Asia" carved on the other.

The eastern side of the Urals contains a lot of granite and igneous rock. The western side is primarily sandstone and limestones. A number of precious stones can be found in the southern part of the Urals, including emeralds. malachite, tourmaline, jasper and aquamarines. The highest peaks are in the north. Mount Narodnaya is the highest of all but is only 1884 meters (6,184 feet) high. The northern Urals are covered in thick forests and home to relatively few people.

Like the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States, the Urals are very old mountains — with rocks and sediments that are hundreds of millions years old — that were one much taller than they are now and have been steadily eroded down over millions of years by weather and other natural processes to their current size. According to Encyclopedia Britannica: “The rock composition helps shape the topography: the high ranges and low, broad-topped ridges consist of quartzites, schists, and gabbro, all weather-resistant. Buttes are frequent, and there are north–south troughs of limestone, nearly all containing river valleys. Karst topography is highly developed on the western slopes of the Urals, with many caves, basins, and underground streams. The eastern slopes, on the other hand, have fewer karst formations; instead, rocky outliers rise above the flattened surfaces. Broad foothills, reduced to peneplain, adjoin the Central and Southern Urals on the east.

“The Urals date from the structural upheavals of the Hercynian orogeny (about 250 million years ago). About 280 million years ago there arose a high mountainous region, which was eroded to a peneplain. Alpine folding resulted in new mountains, the most marked upheaval being that of the Nether-Polar Urals...The western slope of the Urals is composed of middle Paleozoic sedimentary rocks (sandstones and limestones) that are about 350 million years old. In many places it descends in terraces to the Cis-Ural depression (west of the Urals), to which much of the eroded matter was carried during the late Paleozoic (about 300 million years ago). Found there are widespread karst (a starkly eroded limestone region) and gypsum, with large caverns and subterranean streams. On the eastern slope, volcanic layers alternate with sedimentary strata, all dating from middle Paleozoic times.”

Southern Urals

The southern Urals are characterized by grassy slopes and fertile valleys. The middle Urals are a rolling platform that barely rises above 300 meters (1,000 feet). This region is rich in minerals and has been heavily industrialized. This is where you can find Yekaterinburg (formally Sverdlovsk), the largest city in the Urals.

Most of the Southern Urals are is covered with forests, with 50 percent of that pine-woods, 44 percent birch woods, and the rest are deciduous aspen and alder forests. In the north, typical taiga forests are the norm. There are patches of herbal-poaceous steppes, northem sphagnous marshes and bushy steppes, light birch forests and shady riparian forests, tall-grass mountainous meadows, lowland ling marshes and stony placers with lichen stains. In some places there are no large areas of homogeneous forests, rather they are forests with numerous glades and meadows of different size.

In the Ilmensky Mountains Reserve in the Southern Urals, scientists counted 927 vascular plants (50 relicts, 23 endemic species), about 140 moss species, 483 algae species and 566 mushroom species. Among the species included into the Red Book of Russia are feather grass, downy-leaved feather grass, Zalessky feather grass, moccasin flower, ladies'-slipper, neottianthe cucullata, Baltic orchis, fen orchis, helmeted orchis, dark-winged orchis, Gelma sandwart, Krasheninnikov sandwart, Clare astragalus.

The fauna of the vertebrate animals in the Reserve includes 19 fish, 5 amphibian and 5 reptile. Among the 48 mammal species are elks, roe deer, boars, foxes, wolves, lynxes, badgers, common weasels, least weasels, forest ferrets, Siberian striped weasel, common marten, American mink. Squirrels, beavers, muskrats, hares, dibblers, moles, hedgehogs, voles are quite common, as well as chiropterans: pond bat, water bat, Brandt's bat, whiskered bat, northern bat, long-eared bat, parti-coloured bat, Nathusius' pipistrelle. The 174 bird bird species include white-tailed eagles, honey hawks, boreal owls, gnome owls, hawk owls, tawny owls, common scoters, cuckoos, wookcocks, common grouses, wood grouses, hazel grouses, common partridges, shrikes, goldenmountain thrushes, black- throated loons and others.

Activities and Places in the Ural Mountains

The Urals possess beautiful natural scenery that can be accessed from Yekaterinburg with a rent-a-car, hired taxi and tour. Travel agencies arrange rafting, kayaking and hiking trips. Hikes are available in the taiga forest and the Urals. Trips often include walks through the taiga to small lakes and hikes into the mountains and excursions to collect mushrooms and berries and climb in underground caves. Mellow rafting is offered in a relatively calm six kilometer section of the River Serga. In the winter visitor can enjoy cross-mountains skiing, downhill skiing, ice fishing, dog sledding, snow-shoeing and winter hiking through the forest to a cave covered with ice crystals.

Lake Shartash (10 kilometers from Yekaterinburg) is where the first Ural gold was found, setting in motion the Yekaterinburg gold rush of 1745, which created so much wealth one rich baron of that time hosted a wedding party that lasted a year. The area around Shartash Lake is a favorite picnic and barbecue spot of the locals. Getting There: by bus route No. 50, 054 or 54, with a transfer to suburban commuter bus route No. 112, 120 or 121 (the whole trip takes about an hour), or by car (10 kilometers drive from the city center, 40 minutes).

Revun Rapids (90 kilometers road from Yekaterinburg near Beklenishcheva village) is a popular white water rafting places On the nearby cliffs you can see the remains of a mysterious petroglyph from the Paleolithic period. Along the steep banks, you may notice the dark entrance of Smolinskaya Cave. There are legends of a sorceress who lived in there. The rocks at the riverside are suited for competitive rock climbers and beginners. Climbing hooks and rings are hammered into rocks. The most fun rafting is generally in May and June.

Olenii Ruchii National Park (100 kilometers west of Yekaterinburg) is the most popular nature park in Sverdlovsk Oblast and popular weekend getaway for Yekaterinburg residents. Visitors are attracted by the beautiful forests, the crystal clear Serga River and picturesque rocks caves. There are some easy hiking routes: the six-kilometer Lesser Ring and the 15-kilometer Greater Ring. Another route extends for 18 km and passes by the Mitkinsky Mine, which operated in the 18th-19th centuries. It's a kind of an open-air museum — you can still view mining an enrichment equipment here. There is also a genuine beaver dam nearby.

Among the other attractions at Olenii Ruchii are Druzhba (Friendship) Cave, with passages that extend for about 500 meters; Dyrovaty Kamen (Holed Stone), created over time by water of Serga River eroding rock; and Utoplennik (Drowned Man), where you can see “The Angel of Sole Hope”., created by the Swedish artist Lehna Edwall, who has placed seven angels figures in different parts of the world to “embrace the planet, protecting it from fear, despair, and disasters.”

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Federal Agency for Tourism of the Russian Federation (official Russia tourism website russiatourism.ru ), Russian government websites, UNESCO, Wikipedia, Lonely Planet guides, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Bloomberg, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Yomiuri Shimbun and various books and other publications.

Updated in September 2020

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THE 10 BEST Yekaterinburg Sights & Historical Landmarks

Yekaterinburg landmarks.

• Points of Interest & Landmarks
• Monuments & Statues
• Architectural Buildings
• Churches & Cathedrals
• 5.0 of 5 bubbles
• 4.0 of 5 bubbles & up
• 3.0 of 5 bubbles & up
• 2.0 of 5 bubbles & up
• Budget-friendly
• Good for Kids
• Good for a Rainy Day
• Good for Big Groups
• Good for Couples
• Good for Adrenaline Seekers
• Honeymoon spot
• Adventurous
• Hidden Gems
• Things to do ranked using Tripadvisor data including reviews, ratings, number of page views, and user location.

1. Visotsky Business Center Lookout

2. Church on the Blood

3. Ganina Yama Monastery

4. Sevastyanov's House

5. Chertovo Gorodische

6. Vaynera Street, Yekaterinburg

7. Rastorguyev-Kharitonov's House

8. Yekaterinburg War Memorial

9. The Church of Ascension

10. The Monument to Vladimir Vysotsky and Marina Vlady

11. Yekaterinburg State Circus

12. Sanduny Ural

13. The Obelisk on the Border Between Europe and Asia

14. Vodonapornaya Bashnya Na Plotinke Museum

15. QWERTY Monument

16. Embankment of Working Youth

17. New Tikhvin Nunnery

18. Monument to Soldiers of Ural Voluntary Tank Bulk

19. 1905 Square

20. Cathedral of St. Alexander of the Neva

21. Talc Quarry Old Lens

22. Monument to the Inventor of Bicycle Efim Artamonov

23. Love statue

24. Historical Park Rossiya - Moya Istoriya

25. Statue of Gena Bukin

26. Monument The Beatles

27. Monument to Michael Jackson

28. Marshal Zhukov Statue

29. Romanov Family Memorial

30. Light and Music Fountain in the Historical Park

What travelers are saying.