The first thing to explain is that what the British government is talking about doesn’t even come close to autonomous driving. The consultation focuses on automatic lane maintenance formulas (ALKS), which are a more complex essential edition of the cruise that can influence both orientation and speed. As roads become increasingly congested and dotted with medium speed limit sections, the cruiser becomes an essential service to relieve traffic pain. A fundamental formula simply adjusts your speed to maintain a fast speed of km/h. More complex adaptive editions such as Mercedes’ DISTRONIC PLUS use sensors to trip the vehicle forward and apply the brakes automatically if you approach a predetermined distance. It is safer and more relaxing.
ALKS goes further and will drive your vehicle for you. Many cars now have assistance staying in the lane, but only detects road markings and warns you if you’re moving away from the edge. Sometimes it’s just an audible reminder, but Vauxhall’s new electric Corsa-e, for example, gives the guide wheel a little flavor to make sure you’ve noticed it. However, with ALKS, the car will use its detection of adjacent cars and road markings to spin for you, so you’ll have to do even less with the vehicle. Tesla Autopilot already includes this capability, even if you intend to keep your hands on the guide wheel at all times. A guy from Hertfordshire was banned from driving for abusing the role, and there have been a number of injuries in the United States because other people dined or drank while the autopilot was on. A Tesla driving force even released a video of himself eating a burger without his hands near the guide wheel.
It deserves to be discussed at this point that there are five degrees of driving automation, or six if it comes with Level 0, which means the car has no automation. Level 1 comes with adaptive cruise control and assist functions to stay in the lane discussed above. Interestingly, Euro NCAP has been testing Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) since 2014, and now it is highly unlikely that you will get a five-star rating without this feature. Level 2 is described as “partial automation” and that’s where ALKS is. The driving force deserves to keep its hands on the guide wheel, in a position to take control if necessary, but the car can control the speed and guide, even in corners. In addition to Tesla’s autopilot, Volvo Pilot Assist and Audi Traffic Jam Assist fall into this category.
Level 3 is where we begin to move towards autonomous driving. It will only be in ideal situations such as motorways and at safe speeds. The driving force will still have to be in a position to take control if it is mandatory, but you do not want your hands on the guide wheel. Level four is close to full autonomy. You can enter your forehead and the car will pass there unaided. This has been demonstrated in verification situations, but regulations still save you from publication. Level five is like point four but without mandatory human interaction, so there is no need for guide wheels or pedals in the car.
As the UK government’s consultation argues, ALKS and other autonomous technologies have the potential to improve road safety, for car buyers, the main merit is traffic stress relief. There were 1,870 road deaths in the UK in 2019 and 38,800 incredible car accidents in the US. Anything that can help reduce this can only be welcome. But the jump of this independent function from Level 2 to Level 3 and beyond is much more vital than would imply undeniable virtual increments.
ALKS, like the less complicated cruiseArray bureaucracy, simply maintains the course a human has selected. It will not replace lanes, it will simply keep you in the same lane, stick to the dynamics of the road and check to maintain the distance you have selected from the car in front of you. In an emergency, human driving force is destined to interfere to make complicated decisions. However, grades 3 and above the car much more proactively. This proactivity is accompanied by decision-making, duty and (dare I say so) ethics. This is a significant replacement and that’s why grades 3 and above will take much longer to arrive than in 2021.
The challenge is not technical, or at least not primarily. Although some cases have been widely publicized, Waymo self-driving cars have been affected by very little injuries on their 20 million kilometres on the road, only 11 in California in 2018, for example. Interestingly, many of them were collisions by range. The evidence means that self-driving cars did something unforeseen that caused a human driving force to strike them, especially by braking unexpectedly. This kind of thing already happens with autonomous emergency braking, which can react several times faster than maximum humans and will drive the brakes regardless of the distance you follow.
The broader challenge here is similar to that of synthetic intelligence in general. The word “synthetic” is there for a reason. An autonomous vehicle is not a human being, and even if it can only be trained and programmed, it will not yet drive as such. The classic cliché here is what a child can face on the road: kill the child or load the car by killing the occupant? Above is the consultation of who is guilty of the deaths caused by an autonomous vehicle. The owner/human driver, the supplier of the autonomous formula or else?
These are incredibly sensitive legal and moral issues. It will take a lot longer to paint than the generation will want to paint. In the first DARPA Grand Challenge 2004, none of the self-driving cars in question successfully completed a 150-mile un features-free desert road. In 2005, five did and we now have cars in towns with very few incidents. Technically, we are very close to fully autonomous cars, if not in one position. But society, law and morality are not in a position and will not be in a position for many years. While protection innovations like ALKS will continue to disappear, the fully autonomous journey that takes us from A to B while we sleep is still a long way off. Maybe decades.
I’m the editor of the independent electric vehicle WhichEV. I have over 25 years of experience as a generation journalist and a great love of automobiles.