TODAY’S DRIVER-ASSISTANCE SYSTEMS ARE BUILDING BLOCKS TOWARD FULLY AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES
The all-new Ford Fusion’s Active Park Assist can identify a suitable parallel parking space, calculate the trajectory and steer the car to properly position it within the spot. All a driver need do is operate accelerator and brake pedals.
Recently, it seems that the mainstream media has become infatuated with the prospect of autonomous cars — vehicles that can drive themselves. That infatuation is due in large part to things like Google’s experiments with autonomous technology and Elon Musk’s bold proclamation that Tesla will build a self-driving car within three years.
If one were to believe some headlines, we’ll all soon be chauffeured around in driverless cars, if not tomorrow then at least by the day after. But, as is often the case, the hype is way ahead of the reality.
Which is not to say that autonomous cars are a pipe dream. Far from it. The fact is, such vehicles have been quietly evolving for years. Technically, they are feasible now, at least in experimental form, as automakers such as Audi, General Motors, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Volvo have all demonstrated to varying degrees.
Some mainstream automakers have stated that they’ll have autonomous cars in production by 2020, if not sooner, and that prediction seems solidly founded — from a solely technical perspective. But there is more involved than just the technology in the car.
DRIVING FORCE IS SAFETY
The driving force behind the push towards autonomy is safety. Approximately 33,000 lives are lost in traffic crashes each year in Canada and the U.S. combined.
Making the cars capable of avoiding many — perhaps ultimately all — of those crashes is a realistic goal. As one expert in the technology field put it, “cars can see better, react faster and make better decisions, based on physics, than typical drivers can in many situations.”
Many of the safety-oriented technologies that will lead us on the road to autonomy are already available in a broad range of vehicles. They’re lumped collectively into a broad suite of features called driver-assistance technologies or driver aids. They include things like adaptive cruise control, auto braking, collision warning and avoidance, lane departure and blind-spot warning and correction, cross-traffic alert and intervention, parking assist and even self-parking.
The list is extensive, it’s growing at an almost exponential rate, and it’s not restricted to just premium-priced vehicles. Many of these features are now available right down to the compact-car level.
The now widespread use of electrically assisted power steering, and in the case of Infiniti’s new Q50 the industry’s first production steer-by-wire system, is helping accelerate the transition to vehicles that can steer themselves in limited circumstances.
Among the newest technologies are those that enable one car to follow another in traffic, speeding up, slowing down, stopping and restarting and steering itself. Another maintains a vehicle’s path within a driving line without any steering input from the driver. It’s a relatively small step from that level to full autonomy in technical terms.
REGULATORY AND SOCIAL ISSUES
While many of these advanced technologies are now available in other markets, such as Europe and Japan, they’re not all available here. Not just because of manufacturers’ reluctance to offer them but because of regulatory restrictions. Even such seemingly innocuous features as progressively dimming headlamps and sequential tail lamps, available elsewhere, are forbidden by Canadian law. A lot of changes will be necessary to accommodate fully autonomous vehicles.
Beyond just regulatory constraints, there are other issues, such as liability, that must be resolved before we go much further down the road to autonomy. In the event of a collision involving an autonomous, or even semi-autonomous vehicle, who is liable? Is it the driver, who wasn’t in fact driving? Is it the vehicle manufacturer? Or will an insurance company simply eat the cost? (Not likely!) One industry executive has suggested that the automakers themselves may have to include insurance as an integral part of vehicle ownership.
There are potentially significant economic considerations associated with increasing levels of vehicle autonomy as well. In a crash-free traffic regime, would there be any need for auto insurance at all? In the same vein, if the number and severity of crashes is substantially reduced, what effect would that reduction have on the medical industry?
Closer to home, if autonomous vehicles are successful in ultimately preventing vehicle-to-vehicle crashes, what will happen to your collision shop business? Well before that end-point, will the increasing adoption of driver-assistance technologies have an effect on that business?
There are still more questions than answers, but what is certain is that the industry is committed to providing increasing levels of driver-assistance technology and the inevitable end-point is full autonomy. The biggest remaining question is just how long it will take to get there.
