There have been a few of the senior managers/executives in some car companies coming our recently indicating that driverless cars are still decades away…
Audis and Mercedes heads views from their recent visit to Australia:
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I would like to know who really believed the various claims that such were 3 years away, just around the corner and here before you know it. A list of those people would be quite a valuable commodity in some circles.
Apart from solving a whole lot of technical problem satisfactorily and ramping up production so that they are not a rarity there is the question of getting legal approval to have them on the road. This will have to be fought out in each jurisdiction, one by one in the early days, as few will want to go first.
I can see as soon as there is a concrete proposal to permit them a whole lot of people will suddenly get cold feet including State governments in Oz. There will be committees formed, studies commissioned, yada yada. A lot of promises to usher in a brave new world while hastening slowly. Not that some caution is wrong in this case.
A factor that will make these vehicles kryptonite in the early days is excessive outrage every time there is an accident. Even if it is possible to show that the advent of robot control actually does cut the road toll a huge amount, the outrage heat will be crashing social media servers. Think anti-vaccs mentality on steroids.
Given that much of the evidence for safety and efficacy is statistical how will enough data on public roads be collected in the early days to aid decision making? I was taught that live testing software is very foolish; that has a new meaning in this case. I presume you send out a whole lot of vehicles all over the place with no passengers and hope they don’t do too much harm to other vehicles with passengers. Maybe there will be play days for AVs on certain roads at certain times with no humans permitted.
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Or perhaps each autonomous vehicle could be preceded by a person carrying a red flag.
An alternate scenario.
For future fully autonomous vehicles? Will the local roadworks contractors need to add a local roadside 5G data network to their traffic controls. A roadworks to Autonomous vehicle system that overrides all other systems of comms to ensure your 100% reliable Uber does not go at high seed under the drum of a road roller? Or down a construction vehicles only exit, so it can play chicken with the big Tonka toys moving the dirt?
P.S.
It is worth noting pavements for temporary road diversions often lack lane markings, may not be sealed, and have alignments that can change daily, or even during the day.
Of course roadworks are such a rare thing to find when travelling Australian highways and main roads, right?
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And of course, one’s GPS still displays the temporarily reduced speed limits for road works many moons after completion.
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It seems unlikely to me that the Global Positioning System is loaded with local and temporary data such as roadworks or traffic conditions, I thought it was a network of satellites that supply signals that enabled devices to fix their location.
Perhaps the local traffic conditions are supply by your phone navigation app or dedicated device like TomTom. It’s data set of mapping and other local details may not match reality for a variety of reasons. When is the last time you connected it and updated it?
I am referring to roads such as between Charters Towers and Emerald where it is visibily obvious that road upgrades have been carried out but the GPS is still showing roadwork speed limits.
I always update our Tom Tom before departing on long trips and I don’t use my mobile for navigating, and in any case, there is no coverage in many of these regional areas.
It is possible that other Tom Tom users have updated the maps when the roadworks commenced but no one has changed them back to the normal speed limits.
There are also sections between Charters Towers and Emerald where the 110 kmp/h has been reduced to 100 km’h where the roads have degraded but the Tom Tom still reports the speed limit as 110 kmp/h.
GPS maps regardless of vendor are notoriously inaccurate for speed limits, points of interest, and sometimes school zones. It has little to do with the how recent a change was made re the map since seeing the same errors after 17 years and counting is all too common. Reporting errors is difficult enough to be a major disincentive and the GPS companies as well as the companies who do the maps don’t seem to be overly bothered by accuracy beyond correct road paths. Re the POI’s, it would be amazing if they could accurately track the comings and goings of businesses and get that right, but not holding my breath.
That being written this study identifies a number of issues.
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Came across this about the flying taxi industry. Brought a smile.
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No one riding shotgun with this autonomous vehicle
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No “Concept Car” ever arrives in the showrooms?
More chance you will be able to buy a real bat mobile with turbine power before any AI concept gets a run. Ideas - Yes, reality Not!
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At least one of TV’s Batmobiles was a modified Chrysler turbine car. So there was a time when you could buy a Batmobile (or at least the foundations of one).
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Stanford University has created an autonomous hoon. The technology is now perfect. 
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How to take the fun out of life? For those who drift responsibly.
What other human pleasures might technology aim to supersede next? 
P.S.
Yes, I can also appreciate the more valuable side of the technical achievement featuring the DeLorean. Being all electric adds another dimension and begs the question as to whether it has capacitors installed.
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2016
2018
The message is autonomous vehicles are just around the corner, and might stay there for the foreseeable future. Doing a once off is not so hard; doing it for the millions of vehicles cohabiting the roads at once, over prolonger periods a bit more difficult.
Are these fails any worse or more dangerous than the outcomes of human drivers doing penultimate stupid things? Maybe not, yet they will be portrayed as the ultimate bogeyman in many discussions.
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The answer to that is in one of the comments on the Insurance Journal article:
The technology’s fine. People are obsolete. 
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Two ways to interpret that? 
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The man/women to machine interface remains a challenge for automotive designers. 
As a stepping stone to full autonomy many new vehicles have various ADAS features (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems). EG lane guidance warnings, emergency braking, self parking etc.
From an AAA (America report) recycled by the RACQ and doubtless it’s interstate cousins.
But do drivers understand the limitations of the systems and features and know how to use them safely?
A survey by the American Automobile Association (AAA) found most drivers liked ADAS features, however many didn’t understand the driver assist features and 25-30 percent used the assist features in potentially unsafe ways.
One would hope that full autonomy ensures some protections against ignorance. Although the RACQ’s head of public policy said.
These survey results highlight that education about limitations and safety operations is critical.
Perhaps Dr Rebecca Michael expectations of the learning abilities of drivers on our roads are greater than experiences might suggest. Not withstanding the reliability of her viewpoint, the actual consumer test data is based on driving on the wrong side of the road as the norm.
