Driverless vehicles may seem unfamiliar now, but over the coming years
you'll start to encounter - or even use them - on a daily basis. Will it
mean the end of the driving licence and changes to the rules of the
road?
It's not uncommon to see a squat white droid trundling along the streets
of Greenwich, south-east London, as it delivers takeaway food to the
borough's residents at 4mph.
In Paris and Helsinki, robot buses are shuttling passengers along city
streets, while in Colorado an 18-wheeler truck drove beer 120 miles down
a highway - without a driver.
Around the world, projects like these are under way to help develop the
technology that will ultimately bring driverless cars and other vehicles
to our roads.
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But alongside the issue of whether they will work is another big
question: how will pedestrians, cyclists and human drivers be kept safe?
A world without eye contact
Sales of self-driving vehicles are currently in the thousands, but some
estimates suggest that they could reach 10m worldwide by 2030.
But that's just a tiny fraction of the more than one billion cars
already on the road.
So, the challenge is figuring out how to accommodate both humans and
driverless vehicles on roads, pavements and bike paths.
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We've got several years, even decades, to get this right and
self-driving vehicles that can operate without any human input at all
are not on the immediate horizon.
Engineers are still working out how to handle some of the most difficult
challenges.
Think about what happens at crossroads - when drivers and pedestrians
arrive at the same time and use a combination of eye contact, gestures
and intuition to navigate the junction safely.
This type of reasoning stretches the abilities of machines.
Other challenges include weather conditions that disrupt sensors.
And driverless vehicles will need to learn when to disobey traffic rules
- for example, when an emergency vehicle needs everyone to move out of
the way.
Right now, autonomous vehicles are still very much in the testing phase,
"learning" how to deal with the unpredictability that is endemic to
driving.
It's not something they have mastered and it's not uncommon for humans
to have to take control in road tests to avoid accidents.
There have been a handful of high profile incidents, including a
fatality involving a semi-autonomous Tesla car, with most down to human
error - such as running a red light.
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Driverless vehicles around the world
There are plans to test driverless cars on UK roads and motorways from
2019
The UK already has a shuttle bus, supermarket delivery van and cars
Driverless taxis are in Singapore, Uber cars in Pittsburgh and a convoy
of trucks has crossed Europe
Google cars in California are averaging over 5,000 miles between human
drivers taking control
Volvo's sensors can spot Sweden's moose, but struggle with Australia's
kangaroos
India has decided not to allow driverless cars, to protect jobs
Hundreds of billions of miles
Officials are trying to get some ground rules in place for testing in
public spaces, but even this may not be enough.
It would take hundreds of years of road tests, over hundreds of billions
of miles, to prove beyond doubt that driverless vehicles will cause
fewer fatalities than human drivers, experts at think tank the Rand
Corporation have argued.
Instead, we may have to allow driverless vehicles in some circumstances,
while they continue to learn.
So far, there is no international safety standard for driverless
vehicles - each country is responsible for writing its own rules.
There are also questions about whether rules for driverless vehicles
should be national - making it easier for companies to comply, or on a
more local level - so that cities can tailor them to their residents'
needs.
This variety could speed up the process of learning about what works and
what doesn't.
Finding an agreement is difficult.
Some possible consequences of driverless vehicles
People may give up their own cars, using on demand vehicles instead
Fewer vehicles on the road could free up land for more parks and housing
Using driverless cars for everything could increase congestion and
pollution
On demand vehicles could improve transport for those on low incomes
Cities may lose revenue from fines as robot vehicles obey the rules of
the road
People now working as drivers may need help finding new jobs
Keep the driving licence for now
Another issue without a clear answer is around the ethics that
driverless vehicles should adopt.
Put simply, in the case of an unavoidable accident, should a fully
autonomous vehicle be programmed to career off the road, risking the
lives of the four people inside, or continue into a parent and child
crossing the road?
Because human drivers make split second, instinctual decisions, we can't
look to human behaviour to come up with the right answer.
The shift from cars doing all the driving in predictable, stable
conditions with humans as back-up, to a time when they make all the
decisions will be gradual.
Until cars are fully automated and don't need human input, manufacturers
won't be able to dispense with steering and braking controls.
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People will still need driving licences and they'll have to ready to
take control at short notice - so challenges like distraction and
drunkenness will remain.
It's likely we will always need seat belts: autonomous vehicles have the
potential to dramatically reduce crashes, but no technology is perfect.
The peril of driverless vehicles is that we will repeat the mistakes
we've made over the last century - like rushing to build new roads that
destroy neighbourhoods and creating out of town shopping centres that
only cater to drivers.
But if we learn from our mistakes we could reduce congestion, pollution,
and inequality.
When it comes to the self-driving vehicles, people will still have to be
in the driver's seat.
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