The road map for autonomous vehicles has long been seen as a progressive path with driver assist features improving the driving experience and making it easier for the driver. This automation takes away many of the decisions, smoothes out the ride makes it all just that much safer.
This of course is a huge improvement and does make driving easier and safer but unfortunately with people being what they are there are unintended consequences emerging.
Once the novelty of the tech wears off, human nature kicks in and the little voices in our head say .. if the car can do it, has done it for months, therefore I trust it to keep doing it.
This mindset has proved fatal in one instance with a Tesla and has had many others blaming the vehicles because they, as the driver, weren't paying attention.
To be fair, this is a pretty valid argument. If the manufacturer has a feature it should work consistently, shouldn't it?
This is the catch 22. It is beta software in the Tesla and it does work but you do need to keep an eye on it all the time, just in case.
However drivers don't pay attention all the time even when driving without any driver assist features as the road toll and panel beaters will tell you. So with very sophisticated driver assist features people become even more complacent.
This is the core problem that Google has been talking about for some time and they have the philosophy that an automated vehicle should be fully automated, no pedals, no steering wheel and no way of the driver taking control.
Other manufacturers are starting to think along the same lines with Ford announcing they will have a fully autonomous vehicle for mass transport use on the road by 2021 and are looking to implement it through ride sharing services.
This is less than 5 years away.
This is a nice argument but does put a lot more pressure on the manufacturers because, once this is released there is no turning back and the technology has to be spot on right from the start.
Statistics will prove that the number of collisions, deaths and injuries will reduce significantly but even so, once someone dies in a fully autonomous vehicle all bets are off and the public trust will be severely eroded. At this point there will be a severe swing by the fringe to roll it back and there will be a lot of debate.
Many people are saying that this technology should be abandoned.
(Sorry ignore the previous line, I've just been reading US political stories).
So this is the conundrum....
Do we continue with driver assist and its limitations or do we go the big bang theory and get rid of all controls?
Interestingly enough some companies appear to be going this route now but keeping it simple and using it in controlled environments.
Companies such as Navya, Easymile and Ford have autonomous buses for use in private environments usually business parks or universities where the environment is more sedate, low traffic densities and the speed of the vehicles can be restricted. This gives a real world but much safer testing environment. However when this extends to road conditions it faces the same challenges as other autonomous vehicles although speed limitations conceivably could stay lower than normal traffic rates.
Whichever way it goes with automation, there will be a considerable overall reduction in road carnage either way and we have to hope that the big picture takes precedence over the hysteria.
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