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Google's self-driving car prototype (image via Google Blog)DfT to study impact of self-driving cars on cyclists and other road users (+ videos)
Driverless cars and other vehicles are set to bring a “sci-fi” revolution to Britain’s streets, a government minister said yesterday as she outlined progress being made in implementing the technology, as well as plans to study their interaction with and acceptance by other road users, including cyclists.
Claire Perry, Conservative MP for Devizes and parliamentary under-secretary of state for transport, was speaking yesterday in Thatcham, Berkshire, at a conference on driverless vehicles organised by the Parliamentary Advisory Council on Transport Safety (PACTS).
She said the technology, being developed by vehicle manufacturers including Audi, Volkswagen and Volvo, as well as Google, “has the potential to revolutionise transport – and particularly road transport – in our modern world.”
The minister acknowledged there were challenges in convincing people to embrace the technology, saying that “the idea of tech-enabled driving feels a bit weird,” and that “getting people to embrace and trust something that at first may feel alien.”
Noting that 90 per cent of collisions were due to driver error, she highlighted that much of the technology behind driverless vehicles was already in everyday use, such as “anti-lock braking, adaptive cruise control, automated parking and “has the power to profoundly change our lives.”
After outlining the potential for the technology to be embraced by bus operators, particularly in rural areas – one nationwide operator is already said to be exploring its use – and HGV owners, with the prospect of “platooning” vehicles on major trunk roads, she spoke about the government’s plans.
Among those is a trial programme the Department for Transport has established with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills that will see the vehicles demonstrated in a number of towns and cities.
She also highlighted that in July, “that a £10 million fund was launched for collaborative research and development projects to look at how driverless cars can be integrated into everyday life in the UK,” which “has the potential to support up to 3 projects starting on 1 January 2015.”
Further details of those trials, which will last between 18 months and three years, will be announced in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, the DfT is undertaking a review of regulations and legislation “to ensure there is a clear and appropriate regime for the testing of driverless cars in the UK, whilst also ensuring public safety.”
It will “establish what issues must be addressed to enable the testing of such technology on UK roads whilst maintaining existing high levels of road user safety,” and “look further ahead to the implications of potential use of fully autonomous vehicles.”
Announcing that she had asked the DfT to undertake a study of the behaviour of drivers and other road users, Mrs Perry said: “Driverless technology is the future.
“We can’t avoid it and I don’t want us to: I want the UK to learn as much as we can and as quickly as we can. And that includes understanding how these vehicles interact with society and other road users.”
She said the study “is important as a means to reassure the public that we are careful of the risk, but also recognising the need for progress.”
The minister said the technology could ultimately help motorists with disabilities become more mobile and mentioned a video from Google that showed a man with 95 per cent impaired vision being driven in one of its cars.
But she emphasised that the DfT review will cover situations “where there is an individual in the vehicle who is qualified and capable of taking control of the car,” adding that “this individual will be sitting in the conventional driving position.”
David Davies, executive director of PACTS, said: “It's not pie in the sky. But if this technology spreads, as it looks like it will, drivers will need to be retrained to use it. Technology is not the barrier. It's how people cope with it.”
Combined with other technology being developed such as Volvo’s cyclist detection system, driverless vehicles do appear to have the potential to significantly reduce road traffic casualties, especially among vulnerable users such as bike riders and pedestrians.
More recently, the Swedish company’s Volvo Trucks Division unveiled a similar system for lorries.
In April, Google released a video showing its driverless car on the streets near its headquarters in Mountain View, California, including how it interacts with cyclists.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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22 comments
I just hope and prey these vehicles become mandatory in East London as soon as possible. "Third world" does not sum up the standard of driving in East London adequately.
The so called cycle super whatever on the Mile End road between Bow and the city is little more than blue target.
Am I the only one who thinks that using the word IMPACT in the headline was either tongue in cheek or a bit of a gaffe.
To antigee, I can't see driverless home delivery anytime soon when you consider that on any given day 10-20% of delivery attempts are to houses where no one is in, necessitating trying to deliver to an obliging neighbour.
And yes, I am a home delivery courier.
Its not unlike the airline industry. Air accidents were 90% human error, 10% system failure. So they automated the cockpit with autopilots and reduced the accident rate dramatically. But accidents are still 90% human error, 10% system failure. Somehow though people don't like the thought that the plane is being flown automatically and are comforted that there are two pilots sat up front (most of the time doing nothing much because its running on autopilot) but the thing you most have to fear in an aircraft is the pilot switching the autopilot off and flying manually.
I suspect though it will happen by stealth. We already have cars with adaptive cruise control and lane control, car that can park themselves, automatic headlights, windscreen wipers etc etc. We are gradually handing over to automation and before we know it we'll have handed it all over.
I for one would welcome that not only as a cyclist but also as a driver. I think there is no greater waste of time than spending hours holding a steering wheel. I'd much rather take the train so I can read, watch a video, listen to music etc but when I can't I'd rather still be able to do that than sit holding a steering wheel.
The Self-Driving Google Car May Never Actually Happen
Google is over-confident about the hurdles it needs to pass to make the autonomous car 100% road-worthy. The govt can take their time, like a decade or two at least.
Their cars can't yet recognise a traffic light or a pot hole, when asked would the car slow a lot if a ball bounced into the road, they didn't answer. The cars rely on an extreme level of mapping to work, every line, every curb etc, a level of mapping which is not practical everywhere, especially when details change.
From your link qwerky I found this interesting:
"We still have lots of problems to solve, including teaching the car to drive more streets in Mountain View before we tackle another town"
Does that mean it depends upon location specific knowledge? Maybe it's much less independent than I thought. Obviously a human can drive around aimlessly in any unseen locality, doesn't sound like the current approach could do that (not necessarily aimlessly).
Legislation would need review but IMO the sooner driverless technology can be introduced the better.
Software bugs? I'm sure they're there, but the technology is not exactly competing against perfection. Driver error accounts for at least 90% of casualties.
Car-less drivers running on UK roads would be a better thing. Yet another technofix to problems that could be solved more easily, with no thought for the other problems caused.
Driverless cars have actually been running on British roads for a few years now. The TRL developed one in partnership with Ford a few years back. The reason I know about it is because I've been in it. It had a lot of shortcomings but as a pilot project it was interesting. There have been other prototypes in tests as well.
In my opinion, people can't be trusted to drive safely and carefully, so if the technology is good enough, let's use it.
That doesn't mean I'm in favour of the smug superiority and patronising attitude of the person on the Google video.
How about the cyclists that cannot be trusted to ride safely? Or does that not count?
You know there are some as the BMX kicking someone off a roadie shows, where oddly enough it was a lesson in how not to use the road from both sides.
This cannot happen soon enough.
The problem (besides pollution and space utilisation) of current vehicle technology is the wetware.
Humans are by default not well equipped to handle tonnes of fast moving metal boxes in close proximity of each other and other people without armour.
which ignores the potential implications of driverless school runs, driverless home delivery etc etc
edit
by which i mean technology impacting society can make changes happen faster than just thinking about reviewing legislation can deal with it
They don't have to be fully autonomous to realise a lot of the safety benefits.
All the technology that is used to track moving objects around the car can be used for "driver assist" applications - taking over at times when the car would otherwise be involved in an accident.
Its already on the market for pedestrian collision detection, but could be expanded, for instance, to stop drivers passing too close to cyclists..
At present a manufacturer defect that kills only one person ever is grounds for a recall of all vehicles (plus the lawsuit). With that tolerance for error we are still a long long way from seeing these on our roads. A dynamic road environment is a far cry from a built for purpose test track. Media ahead of themselves as they were on flying cars 40 years ago.
They are being trialled on UK rorads from January. They are already being trialled on US roads. No-one is ahead of themselves
Yes I've heard that. Anything can be "trialled". I just watched an Indian truck driver hop outside, cross the windscreen, and re-enter via the passenger door. He did that, but I don't believe authorities are anywhere near legalizing it.
That's one way to see it and you might be right that we are a long way off.
My thoughts along those lines are that there is little desire in society to address peoples bad driving. I guess this is because ultimately people are fault prone and changing peoples behavior is a monumental task.
However as you have pointed out, societies reaction to corporates who cause people harm is much more severe. Nobody sheds a tear for VW if they have to recall cars to fix faults and pay compensation. And car companies do have to recall and pay compensation with some frequency.
Someone might argue that a life should not be reduced to a compensation claim and while I agree morally I would argue that no action taken after a death will bring the person back. So if a person is killed by a driver there is still nothing that can be done to reverse that.
Furthermore it appears impossible to stop people having motor accidents so there is not much that can be done to prevent it either as long as the roads are shared with people behind the wheel.
When cars are controlled by machines then the ability to change the decision making is relatively easy and can be rolled out to all cars. The task of changing the behavior of every driver today and in the future is impossible.
Cars can be made that drive themselves well but people cannot be made to drive well.
Every driver has the occasional lapse of performance but I would argue that statistically the vast majority of drivers drive adequately and without serious incident. The assumption that there is no desire to improve bad driving simply isn't true. We have traffic laws, penalties, enforcement; all of which are under constant review.
What I suspect you mean is society isn't quite willing to adopt your standard of improvements, which is an entirely different matter.
With regards compensation; when someone is killed, their right to compensation dies with them. So life isn't reduced to a compensation claim but injury is. Compensation is possible when it can be shown that someone owes you a duty of care and that the duty was breached in someway resulting in your injury.
Well statistically road traffic accidents will always occur but that is true of any system that has the potential to fail. The assumption that nothing can be done to mitigate accidents is again overstating the matter. Manufacturers have, for a variety of reasons, developed technology that reduces the consequences of accidents as well as technology to improve the avoidance of them. Much of this safety technology will no doubt be employed within these driver-less cars. Anti-lock brakes, improved tyre compounds, automatic braking, speed control based on conditions, collision detection systems, passenger restraint, passenger deceleration devices, all will be found on these cars.
Will they be perfect? Probably not but if you can design an aircraft to effectively take off, land and fly a course automatically, and most modern fly by wire aircraft can do that already, a car is a doddle. It won't get rid of accidents though but reducing the deaths and serious injuries is what matters.
If there were a desire to improve bad driving then where is the proof of that, because there is very much proof of the opposite, more drivers, less police, more lenient sentencing and nothing to remedy these facts. Reality does not agree with you. We could easily be raising billions and preventing speeding in cities with today's technology and it could be done fairly, but we're not and we don't appear to be trying at all. The car is king and politicians are too spineless to deal with traffic offences properly even though that could be a massive cash cow.
http://www.ctc.org.uk/which-police-force-has-seen-biggest-drop-in-traffi...
Google's self driving cars have been on the road for years. This is well beyond the test track and already working well on the dynamic roads of several countries. Their prototypes have already clocked up a million kilometers without an accident caused by the system*.
See http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/the-latest-chapter-for-self-dri...
I for one welcome a world where I can cycle without worrying about distracted drivers, drunk drivers, aggressive drivers, careless drivers, impatient drivers, tired drivers, incompetent drivers, psychotic drives etc.
* 2 recorded accidents, one while the driver had manual control and one where the car got rear ended.
Flying cars were in the news just this week. The media love this sort of stuff.