Last year I was in The Hague, Netherlands, and I remember my surprise when the friend I was staying with pointed out a driverless car parked on the road outside a house. To me, driverless cars are items from fiction or films, like in Batman, The Minority Report, Logan or even perhaps some of you remember Herbie the Beetle in the Walt Disney movies, who was capable of driving himself? In fiction, autonomous or self-driving cars have often been a common theme in science fiction literature. And now here in 2016, I was actually seeing a driverless car physically on the road (albeit parked, fortunately)!
Of course in Spain I have not seen one since, but the fact is driverless cars do exist, they are driving around in various countries and they are going to start becoming more and more commonplace in a few years time, very much like the incredible rise of the mobile phone in the 1990s from rarely seen to widespread and part of our daily lives.
So, are driverless cars legal yet?
The answer is that besides from in the US (who have been testing driverless vehicles for some time), you will find that in Europe several countries including Germany, Sweden, the UK (and Spain are working on it) have conducted a review of their legislation and driverless cars. In Germany, driverless cars did not comply with their current laws, so they were busy drawing up new guidelines and earlier in 2017 they passed laws under which a driver must be sitting behind the wheel at all times ready to take back control if prompted to do so by a driverless vehicle, so this is permitting now development and testing of driverless cars. This is the position that many countries are initially taking.
German car manufacturers are some of the most sophisticated in the world and so they have been busy developing prototypes. At a trade show in 2016, BMW demonstrated their new driverless concept car to rave reviews, although BMW has said its cars won’t be ready until sometime after 2020.
In Sweden, not only are driverless car trials taking place but Volvo is using families to gather data about their driving habits during their daily lives with their children as part of a programme whereby gradually they will be introduced to more advanced automation and eventually a driverless car. At the moment they are currently driving special Volvo XC90s with data logging all that they do plus additional automated driving assistance.
In the UK the recent Modern Transport Bill details steps that are being taken to ensure the UK remains at the forefront of autonomous car technology. Also the 2017 Budget declared that £150million will be ploughed into new job training and self-driving research projects and the Chancellor aims to have fully autonomous self-driving cars appearing on the roads by 2021. Seeing is that in my opinion, the transport infrastructure in the south of the UK is already creaking at the seams I am not sure this is going to help at all. With regard to the car in the Netherlands that I saw, autonomous car tests have been possible in the Netherlands since 2015, though a driver is required to be in the driving seat at all times.
Spain
In Spain, the government is working on changes to traffic legislation that will allow testing of driverless cars but with a driver in the vehicle, as many other countries are doing. In July 2017, the head of the Directorate General of Traffic (DGT) in Spain, Gregorio Serrano, announced that the DGT will work with the relevant authorities on new legislation to regulate driverless cars. According to Mr Serrano, Spain is a frontrunner in technology and innovation for driverless vehicles and should, therefore, also be at the forefront of legislation in this area. Interestingly, Spain did not ratify the United Nations Vienna Convention on Road Traffic (1968), which expressly required, until March 2016, the presence of drivers in cars. This allowed testing of driverless cars on Spanish roads quite early on and has enabled Spain to become ahead of other countries in terms of testing.
Mr Serrano intends to further Spain’s already strong position to be ready for these cars to become commonplace on roads in future years. He is also one of those who has raised the ethical considerations for driverless vehicles, as for instance what happens if a vehicle is put in the situation of making a choice between veering off course and hitting an obstacle (risking the life of a person in the vehicle) or for instance hitting a pushchair that has rolled into the road or a child running after a ball. This is only one of the problems being looked at with regard to this technological development becoming a reality.
Of course, as you can imagine countries like Dubai have very ambitious plans for autonomous vehicles, intending that 25% of vehicles on their roads will be driverless by 2030 and no doubt they will be Ferraris and Lamborghinis too (I have not looked these manufacturers’ plans though)!
Ranking of Driverless Cars
The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) has set a level system for the ranking of driverless cars, whereby the levels range from 0 to 5, with Level 0 being no automation at all and Level 5 being completely driverless. At the moment testing seems to be in the main phase of between 2 and 3 with moving to Level 3 almost certain for 2018. It is being talked about that 2020 will see level 5 and driverless cars much more a reality but in the meantime, there is the race for the production of the vehicles with not only major manufacturers interested, but of course also technology companies such as google (who have been at the forefront of developing new technology for some time) and also Apple as their CEO has said that Apple is developing “autonomous systems” used in self-driving cars, but it has not been decided what the company will do with regard to the products. However, with a whole new technology market open to them I believe that it would be unlikely that they do not produce something. This is a very interesting article on the different cars currently in testing by different manufacturers: driverless cars
Development
The Sun newspaper in the UK recently identified these stages of development are likely:
2017: Many cars today are fitted with cameras and radars that monitor the road ahead and warn of hazards.
If a driver fails to react to something in the road, the car can suddenly slam its own brakes down. This technology can also drive a car at low speed, control steering, the accelerator, and brakes.
2018: This is predicted to be a landmark year as regulations permit hands-off driving on the motorway for the first time.
2021: It is predicted that fully driverless cars will be a reality in five years. It will allow people to read, send messages, eat, paint their nails, whatever while “driving”. Legislation will need to be updated to allow these cars on the road.
2025: By then, driverless cars should be quite common. This means cars will be able to negotiate traffic lights, junctions, and roundabouts. Drivers will not need to touch their controls for the entire journey.
In this particular field of automation, the coming years are going to be very interesting with a lot of developments in the areas of motoring manufacturing, technology, motor legislation, as well as probably providing a nice boom for the insurance companies and automobile manufacturers.
Maybe for January 2018, you should be making a prediction for how soon it will be before you will be in the driving seat of a driverless car…
Amanda