The year 1896 is generally regarded as the year in which the first fatal automobile accidents were reported in both the USA and the UK, though there have been non-fatal accidents much earlier. The car was still in its infancy in that year and there was an outcry against the automobile.
But what if the authorities stopped the development of cars at that stage citing that it could pose a danger to the public? We would still be going about in horse-driven carriages. Fortunately, nothing of the sort happened and automobile companies actually made cars safer for both drivers and pedestrians over the years. Innovations such as traffic lights also resulted from this safety drive.
Today, we have come full circle as we enter the next stage of the evolution of the car – the driverless, fully autonomous car.
Two recent accidents again threaten to derail the development of autonomous cars. In the first accident, pedestrian Elaine Herzberg, 49, was killed when she was struck down by a self-driving Uber Volvo XC90 in Tempe, Arizona. The incident happened at night. Although there was a human “safety driver” in the Volvo, it was fully autonomous at the time of the accident.
Non-fatal ones
In the second accident, which occurred days after the first one, an engineer working for Apple was killed when his Tesla which was in the fully autonomous mode crashed into a concrete barrier. The electric car maker said the driver did not have his hands on the steering wheel for six seconds before the crash, despite several warnings from the vehicle.
Tesla tells drivers that its Autopilot system, which can keep speed, change lanes and self-park, requires drivers to keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel to take control of the vehicle to avoid accidents.
But here is the million dollar question: Should these two accidents as well as some non-fatal ones reported recently lead to a halt on the development of autonomous cars? Again, we go back to 1896, when good sense prevailed. It should be no different this time. The industry and regulators have to identify the shortcomings that led to these accidents and take remedial action. (Accordingly, Uber has suspended its self-driving car programme for the moment.) The autonomous car project should go ahead afterwards.
Here we are debating two accidents caused by robotic drivers, but do we pause to think about the millions of accidents caused by human drivers ? Around seven people die in Sri Lanka every day as a result of motor accidents. Worldwide, more than one million people die every year in road accidents, with an equal number injured or disabled.
Most, if not all, accidents are caused by driver error such as DUI, falling asleep at the wheel, speeding, wrong manuevores and breaking road rules. But a robotic driver will not get tired, hungry, angry, emotional or sick.
Fully autonomous cars will one day be able to talk with each other and interact with road signage while correctly identifying all moving and non-moving obstacles including animals and pedestrians.
The challenge before autonomous cars is not a technical one per se – Level 5 autonomy, where the car handles all the driving functions, is already possible, although the regulatory framework is not quite there yet.
But the main challenge is a moral one – can a robotic vehicle solve an ethical dilemma? You are driving around 70 Km/h on a good road, when suddenly an eight-year-old boy and an 80-year-old man walk onto the road virtually from nowhere.
You can only save one of them the way you are driving. Who do you save ? Most of you will say the boy, because he has his whole life ahead of him, but there might be drivers who will opt for the 80-year-old. Either way, it is a moral decision that only the human brain is so far equipped to take.
Cost-effective
Can a robot or Artificial Intelligence device make such a life-or-death decision? What it its moral reference or framework? There are other questions that are yet to be answered like exactly who is responsible for an autonomous vehicle crash – is it the human passengers, the carmaker or the software maker ? Insurance companies are already grappling with such concerns in the aftermath of the Uber accident.
In the meantime, autonomous vehicle research must be intensified. There are reports that Uber reduced the use of certain components in their test car, which led to the accident. In 2016, Uber decided to shift from using Ford Fusion cars to Volvo XC90s for its self-driving car program. When it did so, it made big changes to its sensor design: the number of Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) sensors was reduced from five to just one – mounted on the roof – and in their place, the number of radar sensors was increased from seven to 10. Uber also reduced the number of cameras on the car from 20 to seven.
Engineers say removing LIDAR sensors from the front, back and sides and replacing them with a 360-degree sensor on the roof is more cost-effective but results in a blind spot low to the ground all around the car.
Other companies running self-driving programs use significantly more: Google-owned Waymo has six on its cars; General Motors uses five. Moreover, the manufacturer of the software running in the car, and of radars and sensors used on self-driving cars, Aptiv said in a statement that its safety systems had been disabled on the vehicle that killed the pedestrian.
No easy task
If all this is true, Uber and other self-driving car companies must draw a lesson - that no corners should be cut when it comes to public safety.
A robot needs every technology at its disposal to drive a car, which is no easy task.
There is however no doubt that these technologies will get more advanced in the future, where it might indeed be possible to have fewer but much more effective components.
Companies such as Uber and Lyft have completely changed the way we travel. Hailing a car 24/7 is now a piece of cake and if you optimize your rides, there is no need to own a car at all. Take it one step further and imagine a self-driving car coming to your doorstep and picking you up.
This is the future. Indeed, established car makers such as BMW and Daimler (Mercedes Benz) are putting their rivalries aside to develop such mobility solutions because very soon, car ownership will be a thing of the past.
Companies that are paving the way for this future must not be discouraged at this critical juncture.