When 20 automakers announced this spring that they would include automated emergency braking systems as devices in all cars, they took advantage of autonomous vehicle technology, a Chicago expert said Monday.
Currently introduced as an option in some cars, automated braking systems use many of the same parts as fully autonomous vehicles, said Jim Barbaresso, national leader of the Intelligent Transportation Systems practice at infrastructure design firm HNTB. So, as they are the norm in all cars, the self-generating load will decrease.
“It’s surprising because it’s a key function of autonomous vehicles, the ability to stop the car before you hit another car that’s in front of you,” Barbaresso said at a forum sponsored by the Active Transportation Alliance in Chicago. It will be offered on all vehicle models and will be affordable to the general public. “
Cars with automatic braking systems use radar, lasers, or cameras to monitor the distance to the elements in front of them, and when those elements get too close, they warn the driver, slow the car, or automatically warn.
“The value of sensors and everything that’s built into a self-driving car is rapidly decreasing,” said Barbaresso, who is also director of the World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems.
The value of Lidar sensors used in Google’s self-driving cars has risen from $75,000 less than a decade ago to perhaps $5,000, with models under $500 in development. When automakers incorporate them into a new model, those values are expected to fall further.
“This goes back to the days of Henry Ford, when he made a car — back then a horseless car — so affordable for everybody,” Barbaresso said, noting that automakers have followed popular autonomous braking “without any regulation or regulation. “””.
The 20 automakers reached a voluntary agreement in March with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that “accounts for 99. 6% of all new cars sold in the United States,” according to NHTSA Director Mark Rosekind.
They set the 2022 deadline to allow automakers to integrate braking systems into the design cycle of new models, but automakers are coming up with the systems on all models that emerge before then. They will merge on the roads with fully autonomous cars that are expected to be widely used from 2018.
Participating automakers are Audi, BMW, Fiat-Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar Land Rover, Kia, Maserati, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Mitsubishi Motors, Nissan, Porsche, Subaru, Tesla Motors Inc. and Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo.
The Active Transportation Alliance hosted Monday’s forum to read critically about the potential negative effects driverless cars can have on walking, biking, public transportation and suburban sprawl.
“If we make driving that easy,” said Ron Burke, director of the Active Transportation Alliance. “For example, you can sleep in the back of your car, you can eat breakfast while driving. In general, if you make driving easier, other people will drive more. And what does this mean for cities if this situation happens?”
But most panelists were positive about autonomous vehicles, predicting that they would create more space and safer situations for pedestrians and cyclists, and that they would make public transportation more available during the ultimate “first and last mile” challenge between transit stops and passenger routes. Destinations.
The most critical speaker was Joe Schwieterman, a professor at DePaul University, who said that more and more commuters are using public transportation in recent years because connectivity and generation allow them to be productive on buses and trains. Driverless cars will now share this advantage.
“The ultimate meaningful opportunity to drive is to be unproductive,” Schwieterman said, “and all of a sudden, that time becomes productive time. So I’m worried about what all of this might mean for the marginal traveler. “who asks if they deserve to drive or use public transportation. “
But Schwieterman softened when other speakers, Sharon Feigon of the Center for Rideshare Mobility and Ron Henderson of the Illinois Institute of Technology, touted the prospects of driverless electric car-sharing: reduced costs, reduced traffic congestion, reduced emissions, more space, increased safety. and greater mobility for the poor, the sick and the elderly.
“There’s something American about getting in a car, going anywhere I want, I can get in the car and they can’t tell me where I can go, they can’t rate me by the mile, that’s my right,” Schwieterman said. at some point.
“But I see,” he said moments later, “how eventually we’ll see intercity bus services, van services, roaming self-driving cars powering that mobility network, and that may be a democratic thing, I guess, where you can get around without having a car. “