185
5
who DRIvEs thE CaR?
5.1 Introduction
Can a car read a trac sign?
Can it shut its grill vents to save fuel?
Can it stop itself to help prevent an accident or park itself in a tight spot?
With a host of technologically advanced features, this one can.
e all-new Ford Focus: Start more than a car.*
Making the car more intelligent—in other words, car robotization—
has taken o in recent years. e development of smart driver assis-
tance systems in cars is currently rapidly progressing. In part, this is
caused by the decrease in the price of the required components, such as
video cameras, microprocessors, and sensors. erefore, such systems
are no longer just built into expensive car models but are also increas-
ingly tted in middle-class models. In addition, car manufacturers
especially compete with each other in terms of comfort and safety,
because there is actually not much more to improve in the quality of
cars (Gusikhin, Filev, & Rychtyckyj, 2008). Intelligence, therefore,
becomes the unique selling point for a new car, as we can see from
the advertising text of the Ford Focus. Future systems will evolve
from “driver assistance” to “fully automated (autonomous) driving,”
completely piloting a car along highways and through urban environ-
ments. Although the idea of driverless cars on the road may seem
futuristic, industry leaders anticipate that autonomous cars will hit the
road within the next decade. is projection is due to the fact that the
majority of the technologies necessary to build a fully autonomous car
already exist (Pawsey & Nath, 2013). is vision of the path toward
fully autonomous cars assumes that car robotization is a continuum
between conventional, fully human-driven vehicles and vehicles that
*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXDTgmm2iak.
186 Just ordinAry robots
require no driver at all. Actually, it is an ongoing automation and
interconnection of single vehicles and trac’s infrastructure that
aims at fully self-driving or autonomous cars. e National Highway
Trac Safety Administration (2013) developed a ve-level hierarchy
to conceptualize this continuum as guidance “to help states imple-
ment this technology safely so that its full benets can be realized”:
• Level 0 (no automation): e human driver is in complete con-
trol of all functions of the vehicle.
• Level 1 ( function-specic automation): One control function is
automated.
• Level 2 (combined-function automation): More than one con-
trol function is automated at the same time (e.g., steering and
acceleration), but the driver must remain constantly attentive.
• Level 3 (limited self-driving automation): e driver functions
are suciently automated so that the driver can safely engage
in other activities (e.g., reading a paper).
• Level 4 (fully self-driving automation): e car can drive itself
without a human driver.
e automation of control functions started with the features of con-
venience and safety, such as cruise control in 1958* and anti-lock
braking system (ABS) in 1972
†
(level 1). Automation of multiple and
integrated control functions, such as adaptive cruise control with lane
centering, has become more common recently. ey are classied as
level 2, because they still allow the driver to override them: the driver
is responsible for monitoring the roadway and is expected to be avail-
able for control all the time. e next step in this continuum is taking
over driving tasks through cooperative systems—in conjunction with
trac management (level 3). Ultimately, it is expected that this will
lead to autonomous vehicles (level 4).
In this chapter, we dene car robotization as a combination of
developments in the following technologies: driver assistance systems,
trac management, and cooperative systems. In fact, these technolo-
gies are the building blocks for the fully autonomous car, which we
*
http://www.conceptcarz.com/vehicle/z5628/Chrysler-Imperial-D-Elegance.aspx.
†
https://history.gmheritagecenter.com/wiki/index.php/1972,_First_Automotive_
Anti-lock_Brake_System_%28ABS%29.
187who drives the CAr?
will call the “connected autonomous car,” since this car is connected to
numerous information and communication networks through naviga-
tion systems, roadside systems, and trac services.
ere is also a second path toward fully autonomous cars, which
does not adhere to the ve-level hierarchy proposed by the National
Highway Trac Safety Administration. Instead of trying to gradu-
ally integrate the technology, these cars sense their surroundings with
techniques such as radar, lidar,* global positioning system (GPS),
and computer vision, and do not depend on cooperative systems. e
Google car is an example of following this path (see Section 5.5.1).
e Dutch Institute TNO (the Netherlands Organisation for
Applied Scientic Research) describes car robotization in the twenty-
rst century as a gradual but revolutionary process, but as one that is
making irreversible changes to the role of the driver and the impact
of information and communication technology (ICT).
†
TNO expects
that the autonomous car will appear on the market in about 25years
from now. Big automobile manufacturers expect the autonomous car
already by 2020: Nissan plans to have commercially viable auton-
omous-drive vehicles on the road by 2020
‡
; Daimler, the maker of
Mercedes-Benz and Smart cars, has announced that it will start sell-
ing a self-driving car by 2020.
§
e rst changes are already visible.
Increasingly, the driver is supported in driving tasks, and it will not
be long before the driving tasks of motorists will be taken over. In this
chapter, we explore the social and ethical issues that await us with
the advance of the intelligent car. To this end, we outline in Section
5.2 problems relating to modern road trac; it is expected that the
robotization of the car will present a major contribution to solving
these problems. We then present car robotization in terms of the lev-
els of autonomous vehicles: driver assistance systems (levels 1 and 2)
in Section 5.3; limited self-driving automation (level 3) in Section
5.4; and autonomous cars (level 4) in Section 5.5. In Section 5.4, the
*
Lidar is a remote sensing technology that measures distance by illuminating a target
with a laser and analyzing the reected light.
†
www.tno.nl/content.cfm?context=thema&content=inno_case&laag1=
894&laag2=914&item_id=852.
‡
http://www.nissanusa.com/innovations/autonomous-car.article.html.
§
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2418526/Self-driving-Mercedes-
Benz-sale-2020-unveiled.html.
188 Just ordinAry robots
autonomous car is central, being the most far-reaching form of car
robot control. Social and ethical issues of car robotization are dis-
cussed in Section 5.5. We will end with some concluding observations.
As we have pointed out in the introduction, car robotization is
developing along three lines: driver assistance systems, trac man-
agement, and cooperative systems. In this section, we will discuss
developments and gain an insight into some of these applications and
how the car is gradually developing into a more “intelligent” vehicle.
5.2 Problems for Modern Road Trac and the Costs
Road trac leads to negative eects in terms of trac accidents,
congestion, and environmental pollution. e costs of these nega-
tive eects during the last few years for the United States are
roughly estimated to be $800 billion/year (Morgan Stanley, 2013,
see Section 5.5). erefore, it pays to reduce these costs. Salvation is
largely expected from car robotization. e European Commission
(2010) mainly encourages the robotization of the car in terms of
safety. e Commission aims to reduce the number of fatalities by
half by 2020 by ensuring the safety of vehicles and also by promot-
ing intelligent transportation systems, which communicate between
vehicles and between a vehicle and the infrastructure.* In this section,
we briey map these three negative eects of road trac.
5.2.1 Trac Victims
In 2012, 27,700 people were killed in the European Union (EU) as
a consequence of road collisions, and around 313,000 people were
recorded by the police as seriously injured (Jost, Allsop, & Steriu,
2013). In the United States, 32,000 people were killed in trac
accidents in 2011 (Anderson etal., 2014). Approximately, 1.24 mil-
lion people globally die every year as a result of car accidents (World
Health Organization, 2013). For every death on the roads, there are
*
In addition, the European Commission is funding numerous research projects, in
which both car manufacturers and research institutes are involved, with respect to
driver support systems, trac management, and cooperative systems. For an over-
view of European projects related to road safety see http://ec.europa.eu/transport/
road_safety/specialist/projects/index_en.htm.
189who drives the CAr?
an estimated 4 permanently disabled, 10 seriously injured, and 40
slightly injured people (European Commission, 2013; Mackay, 2005).
Speed and alcohol use are the primary factors determining the crash
fatalities.
After an increase in the 1950s and 1960s, the number of trac
accidents in Europe and the United States has shown a gradual, con-
tinuing downward curve ever since 1991. is downward trend is
attributed to a number of policies and measures in the elds of con-
struction and redevelopment and the management and maintenance
of infrastructure, such as the design of roundabouts and lower speed
limits on some roads. It is, furthermore, also due to vehicle develop-
ments such as Electronic Stability Control (ESC), airbags, safety cer-
tication, and EuroNCAP—a standard crash tests for cars—improved
training being required to gain car and moped licenses, law enforce-
ment, and communication and behavioral changes. Proportionally,
the number of fatalities among car occupants has decreased more than
that among pedestrians, moped drivers, cyclists, and motorcyclists.
Furthermore, the aging world is mirrored in the road safety statistics
of the European Commission (2014), with the elderly making up an
increasing share of the total number of road safety fatalities.
More than half of all serious injuries occur in urban areas, espe-
cially aecting pedestrians and vulnerable road users: children, the
elderly, and young drivers. Road trac accidents are a major cause of
serious head and brain injuries. Accidents involving cars and powered
two-wheelers are the most dangerous in this respect (World Health
Organization, 2013).
5.2.2 Trac Congestion
Trac congestion has long been at the center of attention, both in
politics and in society. According to the European Commission, con-
gestion is one of the worst transportation problems. Congestion costs
Europe about 1% of its gross domestic product (GDP) every year
and also produces large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO
2
) and other
unwelcome emissions (European Commission, 2013). A study of the
Texas A&M Transportation Institute shows that congestion costs
are increasing every year in the United States: the cost of extra time
and fuel in 498 urban areas was U.S. $121 billion in 2011, $94 billion
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