A few months ago, a self-driving Uber test-vehicle killed a pedestrian. According to the New York Times, it is the “first pedestrian death associated with self-driving technology”. This again sparked a discussion on the safety of autonomous driving. In a recent consumer study conducted by Deloitte, only 48% of people in the US market trust a self-driving car (1).
However, in my point of view, this distrust is unfounded. One has to keep in mind that the maximum level of automation has not even been reached yet (for an explanation of the different levels of automation, click here). When Tesla introduced the autopilot in their vehicles, Musk warned drivers to fully rely on the technology and had a good reason to do so since the “autopilot” was only on a level 2 automation (2). It can therefore not be considered a self-driving car and thus should not have fostered the fear in the opponents of fully-automated vehicles. Even when Uber’s self-driving car (supposed to be on level-4 automation) killed a pedestrian, the emergency brake function was switched off – a human mistake. The car itself noticed 1.3 seconds before the collision that there was a danger approaching (3).
Already nowadays, there are discussions on whether fully-automated vehicles are safer than cars being driven by humans. Unfortunately, it is hard to put that in numbers for comparison since there are many outside factors that play a crucial role in accidents (weather, road condition etc.) (4).
It is certain though, that this will be the case in the near future if it is not already the case now. Once a single car is communicating with all other cars on the road, with the infrastructure (traffic lights etc.), pedestrians and the cellular network (all together called the V2X technology), the car is ultimately safer (5).
People might think that it will still take a long time until the car is fully-automated. However, this is not true. Already in a few years, we could be the first consumers of self-driving cars. Many car manufacturers (e.g. BMW, Mercedes, Ford) claim that they will sell a car with level 4 automation by 2021 (so no human interaction is needed anymore in predefined conditions and familiar environments) (6). So how long will it then take until cars with level 5 automation are emerging? And will there still be such a big number of people distrusting the technology? Only time will tell and it is going to be a very interesting change for us.
1 https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/deloitte-review/issue-20/winning-consumer-trust-future-of-automotive-technology.html
2 https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/28/16059954/tesla-model-3-2017-auto-industry-influence-elon-musk
3 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/24/emergency-brake-was-disabled-on-self-driving-uber-that-killed-woman
4 https://theconversation.com/are-autonomous-cars-really-safer-than-human-drivers-90202
5 https://www.roadtraffic-technology.com/comment/future-autonomous-vehicles/
6 https://www.techemergence.com/self-driving-car-timeline-themselves-top-11-automakers/
