However, before that is allowed, considerable testing still needs to be done. The European Commission published an independent expert report looking at some of the outstanding safety and ethical issues that still need to be addressed and how we can address them.
We spoke with three experts involved in the report about what steps they believe still need to be taken to make CAVs safe, what challenges still need to be overcome, and how we can prepare for a future where both computers and people have cars on our roads .
1. Autonomous vehicles and humans must be able to control each other
CAVs need to be able to understand the limitations of their human driver and vice versa, says Marieke Martens, professor of automated vehicles and human interaction at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. In other words, the human driver must be ready to take control of the car in certain situations, such as when it comes to road works, while the car must also be able to monitor the ability of the human in the car.
“We need systems that can predict and understand what people can do,” he said, adding that, under certain conditions, these systems could decide when it is better to take control or alert the driver. For example, if the driver is fatigued or not paying attention, he says, then the car “should notice and take appropriate action,” such as telling the driver to pay attention or explaining that some action must be taken.
Professor Martens added that instead of just a screen telling the driver that automated functions have been activated, it will be necessary to develop better interfaces known as HMI (human-machine interaction) to talk between the driver and the car ‘so that the person really understands what the car can and cannot do, and the car really understands what the person can and cannot do”.
2. We need to test them in more diverse environments
Much of the autonomous vehicle testing so far has been done in relatively easy environments, says John Danaher of the National University of Ireland, Galway, a law professor who focuses on the implications of new technologies. To show that they can be safer than human – powered cars, we will have to show that they can handle more demanding situations.
“There is some question as to whether they are really safe. You need to do more testing to really determine your true risk potential, and you also need to test them in more diverse environments, which is something that has not really been done (to a sufficient degree). in relatively controlled environments like freeways or highways, which are relatively more predictable and less prone to accidents than driving on wet and windy country roads. The jury is still out on whether they will be less damaging, but that’s certainly the marketing argument.” , continues the expert.
3. The private data of the people in the vehicle must be protected
When we talk about CAV, we often discuss how they share information with other road users. But, notes Professor Sandra Wachter of the University of Oxford, UK, associate professor in the law and ethics of artificial intelligence, data and robotics, that raises the important problem of data protection. “That’s really no one’s fault, it’s just that technology needs that kind of data,” he said, adding that we need to take privacy risks seriously.
That includes sharing location data and other information that could reveal a lot about one person when one car talks to another. “It could be things like sexual orientation, ethnicity, health status,” Wachter says, and things like ethnicity can be drawn from a zip code, for example. “Basically anything about your life can be inferred from that kind of data.”
Solutions include making sure CAVs comply with existing legal frameworks in other areas, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe, and deleting data when it is no longer needed. However, more safeguards may be needed to address privacy concerns caused by CAVs. “Those things are very important,” Wachter clarifies.
4. CAVs can predict the future, but humans cannot; we have to account for that
One of the main benefits of CAVs is that they can interact both with other cars and with the roads themselves, such as traffic lights, to provide a safer driving experience. But, Martens clarifies that in a world in which both CAVs and human drivers travel together on the roads, it will be necessary to take into account some limitations of human drivers.
“It is very important to make sure that (CAVs) blend naturally with the current traffic we have,” noting that initially they will need to be designed to act like humans. “A connected car has more information than a manually driven vehicle. They can start accelerating when a light is still red, because they know it will be green very soon.
Another scenario could be a crosswalk, where an automated car can stop more quickly than a human car, but pedestrians and cyclists will need to know that a car is automated to feel safe enough to cross. “I think that in the transition period of the next two decades, cars have to behave within specific limits that people are used to,” says Martens.
5. CAVs should allow a wider range of people to travel safely in vehicles.
CAVs could be used safely by people who are currently unable to travel by car. For example, elderly or disabled people who would have a hard time driving a car could now enjoy an experience used by many others, Wachter said.
“We want to make sure that technology improves accessibility. That means accessibility and mobility, for example, of people who right now cannot enjoy the benefits of driving. Designers (should) take this into account, which is actually the serving a larger community and not just a few people, “he continues.
“For the elderly, it could potentially be very useful, and for people who can no longer drive themselves, or someone who is injured right now, or children could be another group if those systems are safe. You could also think of carpooling opportunities that could have a positive impact on the environment, “concludes Wachter.