For the sake of argument this time I am going to play the devils advocate and see what will be the obstacles and what could slow the implementation of this technology.
Firstly a couple of notes.
As most people these days accept, autonomous vehicles will happen.
China for example has massive transport issues and sees this as a way out, probably also giving them more control over the populace at the same time but that is another issue. They will pursue this much faster than the west will because they can do so far easier and the west will be watching and learning from their problems.
More than 90% of vehicle incidents causing death or injury are caused by the driver.
Ok so what could go wrong?
The major issue will be people. Many people inherently distrust technology and a very real human trait is to resist change. Fear of the unknown means that education has to be the key if government wants to implement this technology and by building up the main advantages (saving lives) and guaranteeing the reliability of the software would go a long way to addressing this. People need to feel comfortable that they can watch a movie, read a book or work in the car, secure in the knowledge that they are not going to end up as an impromptu barbecue on the side of the road.
Once this tech hits the road we have to do everything in our power to ensure that the technology is so good that the road toll reduces significantly before there is a death that can be attributed to an automated vehicle because if that happens early it will be used to discredit the whole concept.
Undoubtedly deaths will occur, no system is perfect, and of course no road death is acceptable. When the road toll is reduced by a very significant amount we can learn from those unforeseen incidents that do occur. The great advantage is that we will be able to do something about it easier than we can now as the data from incidents can be analysed in depth. Each and every death or injury will mean that others won't suffer the same fate as we find out why and stop it happening again.
Liability. Some governments are tackling this now, the UK is putting frameworks in place and talking options on insurance and liability already so they will have that in place before there is an explosion in affordable technology in this field over the next few years and people startg to seriously use it.
Here in Australia there appear to be very little happening at all. South Australia seems to be the only state looking at this seriously and is changing the law to allow testing on the road and are discussing liability. I don't want to keep flogging a dead horse but Australia really needs to have a coordinated approach or we could seriously lag behind the rest of the world - and South Australia...(WA humour).
Ethics, I personally don't see this as an issue due to the nature of the technology but there are many articles that discuss this in depth. The theory is interesting but if viewed in a real world and compared to the current reactions of drivers in dangerous split second decision scenarios, I for one, would be far happier for a vehicle to react for me. Given my reaction times and speed of thought, everyone would have a better chance of survival.
Cost. The cost of the technology may be a deciding factor in the initial uptake of the technology but it will drop as volume increases and it becomes more widespread as economy of scale kicks in. One of the major contributors to that will be the "Taxi" industry, if you can call it that, where Uber, Lyft and a raft of others will be early adopters and pour billions into having this available so they can get a lead on everyone else.
What they would like to see, and I believe is a reasonable assumption, that private ownership of vehicles will decrease as the "car as a service" becomes very affordable.
Government action. I feel this to be THE KEY and alluded to it earlier because if government is not ready for this technology to be used when it becomes available then there will a swath of differing technologies being used on the road by early adopters regardless of the law.
A framework must be developed at a federal level to standardise the technology and laws across the nation.
Lawyers. See above. If the law is not clear and unambiguous then it becomes open to legal interpretation and lawyers will have a field day. This in itself could become a huge impediment to a faster uptake and development of the technology. If car makers are reluctant don't have the protection of law and they find themselves being sued if their product is misused then they could be very reluctant to bring their products to market without a lot of locks and controls.
Improved sensors. The current technology appears to have reached the point of being practical and usable but needs to be extended for distance and weather conditions as they can become inaccurate and obscured by rain, snow and fog.
However this shortcoming can be overcome to a large extent by detailed GPS based mapping so that if the sensor lose real time visibility it could slow the vehicle and continue to run by utilising GPS coordinates and comparison to the stored visual data. This detailed mapping is being done now by the likes of Google.
Vehicle to vehicle and infrastructure communication. To allow a vehicle to know what is happening and to share information about road conditions, weather, roadworks or collisions and natural disasters it is essential to have real time communications between vehicles and infrastructure. This allows the cars to tell each other not only about conditions but also about what actions they intend to take in a given situation, ie emergency braking or avoidance. This needs to be standardised and implemented, but again, government has to have a major role in ensuring this works for interoperability between manufacturers.
A case could be made to fit ALL existing vehicles with this so autonomous cars know what manual vehicles are doing as well as alerting their drivers to dangerous conditions that other vehicles have reported. China is currently rolling out this before the autonomous cars hit the road in a proactive move, but again there could be other considerations to that in a totalitarian state.
Strangely enough, each time I look at the progress of automated vehicles I keep coming back to the same point.
We can't leave the development of such an important and social changing technology to the manufacturers alone.
Governments need to be involved NOW before its too late, at least in a standards framework design by manufactures and other stakeholders to come up with something everyone can live with (literally).
Autonomous vehicles in the new world - Who is driving? seems to be an appropriate sentiment.
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