ARTIFICIAL intelligence is entering transportation faster than most governments can regulate it. Around the world, vehicles already carry automated braking, lane-keeping, driver monitoring and, in limited locations, higher levels of automated driving.
For Pakistan, the question is not whether fully driverless vehicles will become common tomorrow. They are unlikely to do so in the near term. Pakistan’s roads are more mixed and unpredictable than many cities where autonomous-vehicle pilots currently operate, and the economics of replacing a driver are different from highwage markets such as California. But Pakistan cannot afford to ignore the subject.
Al-enabled mobility is already entering Pakistan through advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and fleet telematics. The better question is whether Pakistan is building the safety, data, regulatory and business capacity needed before these technologies become more deeply embedded in our roads.
Road crashes already burden families, hospitals, employers, insurers and public finances; one regional profile places the cost of fatalities and serious injuries at roughly three per cent of GDP. Safer mobility is an economic issue, and its business case goes beyond reducing losses to creating new value.
As mobility becomes more automated, companies must prove their systems work beyond clean Iane markings and orderly traffic with evidence from complex environments: motorcycles, rickshaws, pedestrians, weak markings, dust, glare and monsoon rain.
Pakistan has these conditions every day. Governed responsibly, this complexity becomes a strategic asset. Pakistan can become a partner in the global Al mobility validation economy, not by rushing driverless cars onto public roads, but by building the datasets, scenario banks, simulation and safety-audit capacity advanced systems will need to credibly claim safety on real roads.
The central safety issue is what engineers call the Operational Design Domain, or ODD: the exact conditions under which a system has been tested and can safely operate, such as road type, speed, weather, traffic mix, lane quality and pedestrian behaviour. A system that performs well on a marked highway in California is not automatically safe on a mixed-traffic road in Lahore, Karachi or Peshawar. Safety cannot be imported. It must be validated where the system will operate.
Pakistan should not rush deployment, but build validation capacity fast. That capacity is itself the opportunity, in four forms.
The first is data. If Pakistani roads contain complexity global Al systems struggle with, that environment has value. Data collected here should be governed locally, licensed transparently and used to build domestic capability.The second is testing and validation.
Before any automated driving system claims to be road-ready for Pakistan, policymakers should require an ODD passport, a local safety case, scenario testing, transparent incident reporting and independent technical review, all of which could create demand for Pakistani universities, startups and engineering firms to provide these services.
The third is mobility-data infrastructure, valuable today: identifying dangerous corridors, unsafe fleet patterns, near misses and school-zone risks. That evidence reduces losses now and becomes the foundation for future scenario banks.
The fourth is human capital. Pakistan’s technology sector has shown export potential; the next step is specialised Al engineering through mobility safety, computer vision, simulation and validation.
A practical starting point is a Pakistan road-scenario bank that requires no driverless cars. Universities, the National Transport Research Centre, the Motorway Police, transport departments, insurers and Al researchers could jointly define a mobility safety dataset that turns real road conditions into structured safety evidence.
That evidence should feed into a regulatory sandbox a controIIed safety pathway, not a loophole for premature deployment.
Companies would first collect data, run simulations and test safety tools; later stages could add closed-course testing and, eventually, geofenced pilots under strict supervision. The principle should be that there can be no expansion without evidence.
Data governance is central. Shared without rules, Pakistan’s data becomes an asset it loses. A national framework should allow licensed access for research, testing and validation while protecting privacy, security and national interest.
Here, US-Pakistan cooperation could be valuable. The United States brings deep capability in autonomous systems, Al safety, simulation and standards; Pakistan brings complex roads, growing technical talent and urgent need. A partnership based on safety validation, not technology dumping, benefits both: US companies gain a high-complexity testbed; Pakistan gains research contracts, licensing, testing capacity and policy readiness.
The future of mobility will not be decided only by who builds the most advanced Al model, but by who can prove that model is safe in the real world. For Pakistan, the safest path is neither yes too quickly nor no too fearfully. It is to build the capacity to ask: safe where, safe for whom, under what conditions, proven by what evidence and how can Pakistan create value while protecting its citizens? Dr Muhammad Jamal Afödi is a US-based Al scientist with a PhD in Computer Science from Michigan State University and expedence at Ford Motor Company and 3M. Muhammad Mubashir Khan is a diplomat serving as Pakistan’s Deputy Consul General to the West Coast, covering Silicon Valley.