Every day we keep reading about new development for self driving cars. now our question is who will be decide when self driving cars are safe enough to be unleashed on our roads?
The companies
While companies like Tesla, Waymo, Uber, Volvo keep releasing egomaniac statement about their car is safer etc... and they will run an automated vehicle from coast to coast in the US by 2019, Not such interesting since we have run automated vehicle across the Nullarbor plains in Australia , from Adelaide to Perth over 5000 km of highway. What exposure to other traffic did we get? a few road trains, Kangaroos, but still 5000 km so does that count as as success story or a fund raising activity, to us an intent for fundraising, nothing for our technology to learn.
Some results
We get better results and can test our technology to the max. At the testing track at Philip Island Victoria.
- We have encountered many issues between Automated vehicles and normal vehicles, Fishtailing an automated vehicle can lead to tragic results.
- Tailgating an automated vehicles can be another issue.
There are many issues that need to addressed, Change of gradients in road intersection, Automated vehicle can get stuck there all day unless human intervention. so Unless a compromise between road infrastructure and Self driving technologies, it will be an IT race between highly funded research organization that will never reach the perfect goal.
Social Impact
Not forgetting the social economic Impact which looking at it is like :
- Loss of taxi driver jobs, Truck drivers & many more is to great to allow Driver-less cars
- We do However support Semi-Automated vehicles and full Automation on safety.
- From What we have seen only 2 Vehicles manufacturers have current models capable of semi automation.
- The only issue is road assets not up to standards for Semi Automation.
While Companies like Transurban here in Australia and Lexus are testing Automated vehicles on major Arterial s, The Automation requirement needed to operate on your major roads is the lowest level of automation. You can't go wrong there, there is a big difference in level requirements between inner city and freeway automation. I wonder if the purpose of doing this is to build social acceptance since most of those project are government funded?
