235who drives the CAr?
it restricts the freedom of the driver is not a strong one, since there
is no legal (and even moral) freedom to violate speed limits that
endanger other road users.
Policy makers should be aware that if they would like to i ntroduce
an intervention driver assistance system that controls automatically,
the penetration level should be sucient from the start to convince
others to adopt such a system. For example, in the Ghent ISA trial
in 2002,* it was noted that most of the drivers were convinced of
the eectiveness and were highly in favor of the intelligent speed
authority but they stated that they would only use this system fur-
ther when more or certain groups of drivers would also be forced to
use the system. According to Vlassenroot (2011), promoting such a
system by implementing it in certain types of vehicles, for instance,
busses, taxis, and lorries, may be helpful for the acceptance of such
a system.
5.7.2 Medium Term: Cooperative Systems (Level 3)
5.7.2.1 Expectations In addition to measures that focus on driver
assistance systems, science also points to the potential of coopera-
tive systems—in conjunction with trac management—through
connected navigation. Nowadays, much research is being executed
and many of the European research projects are funded by the EU.
e rst pilot projects have now been realized, and it is expected
that these cooperative systems will lead to less congestion and better
use of the road network. e European Commission will propose
short-term technical specications required to exchange data and
information between vehicles (V2V) and Vehicle to Infrastructure
(V2I) (European Commission, 2010). is proposed standardiza-
tion should become a push for the further implementation of these
systems. “Platooning” requires a cooperative driving electronics
standardization, so that dierent car brands can click into the “pla-
toon.” Despite the expected positive contribution of cooperative sys-
tems—in contrast to driver assistance systems—little research has
been done on the safety and possible side eects of cooperative sys-
tems. It will take some years before V2V and V2I communication is
*
https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/transa/v41y2007i3p267-279.html.
236 Just ordinAry robots
safe and reliable enough to be used in cooperative driving, starting
with long-distance haulage on highways.
5.7.2.2 Social, Ethical, and Regulatory Issues It is high time that par-
ties (governments, industry, research institutes, and interest groups)
considered the technical and legal aspects of cooperative driving, such
as legal authorization, system security, standardization, and liability
in case of malfunction. ese aspects require time to be dealt with
and, after all, would needlessly slow the introduction of cooperative
systems in a few years’ time if no moves are made now.
Some of the most pressing problems are going to arise in the short
term in the eld of privacy. Increasing the enforcement of road traf-
c regulations can be easily accomplished via V2I systems that can
monitor a driver’s behavior, allowing the owner to be ned automati-
cally for violations of trac rules. In addition, insurance rms may
introduce premiums for drivers who drive safely and use monitoring.
is is still considered an invasion of privacy, but the question is
whether in the long term trac safety concerns will take priority
over privacy concerns. erefore, the remaining question is whether
politicians can keep their promise that the eCall system will remain
“dormant” and that this system will not be used as an electronic
data recorder for tracking criminals or for ning drivers who violate
trac regulations. is danger is real, as shown by the example in
Section 5.4.2 of the CCTV cameras in Amsterdam that were only
supposed to be keeping an eye on polluting lorries, and were installed
for monitoring only those, but that were subsequently also used for
other purposes.
5.7.3 Long Term: Autonomous Cars (Level 4)
ere are many challenges ahead before the autonomous car can be
introduced into the commercial market: improving the reliability
of the cars and addressing daunting legal and liability issues, and
so on.
5.7.3.1 Expectations e development of cooperative systems will
contribute to the further implementation of autonomous driving.
Autonomous driving may have to be applied on highways with
237who drives the CAr?
cooperative ACC, for which V2V communication will be necessary.
e infrastructure will not need to change much, because drivers
can already get information about local trac regulations, trac
congestion, roadwork, and the like via the navigation system or any
other information source. Perhaps roadside systems could be placed
on the road to guide autonomous driving, especially on highway
ramps. is semiautonomous driving allows autonomous driving of
the car on certain roads with noncomplex trac situations, such
as highways, but not in places with more complex trac situa-
tions, such as cities. Scientists consider that this will be realistic by
about 2020 (Visbeek & Van Renswouw, 2008, see also the SATRE
Project). e expected result of this semiautonomous driving is that
road safety on highways will increase, that trac congestion will
be partly mitigated, especially in shock wave trac congestion, and
that cars will become more fuel ecient. During autonomous driv-
ing, the driver can read a book, use the Internet, have breakfast, and
so on.
Fully autonomous driving will not be a realistic picture before
2020, even though this is predicted by several car manufacturers.
For example, Nissan promised in 2013 to deliver the rst “commer-
cially viable” self-driving cars by 2020.* Given the development in the
eld of car robotics, it seems inevitable that the autonomous car will
become commonplace, but a more likely estimate is that these systems
will function around 2030. Signicant technical obstacles must be
overcome before the autonomous car can safely drive on public roads.
Operating an autonomous car on public roads is more complex than
ying an airplane, because there are more and closer interactions with
often unpredictable objects, such as nonautonomous cars, pedestrians,
cyclists, animals, trash, and potholes (Litman, 2014), and developers
have to solve the weather-related problems. A natural move toward
the introduction of fully autonomous vehicles will be the launch of
short-range vehicles that provide local mobility at low speeds and in
relatively controlled environments. Such an approach is planned by
Milton Keynes, a British city in which 100 electric autonomous vehi-
cles will be installed between 2015 and 2017 to run between the city’s
*
http://nissannews.com/en-US/nissan/usa/releases/nissan-announces- unprecedented-
autonomous-drive-benchmarks.
238 Just ordinAry robots
central train station, shopping center and oce parks. e autono-
mous pods will carry two passengers, plus shopping bags, luggage, or
a baby stroller, and will travel up to 20km/h (or 12 mph) in dedicated
lanes inside the city. Passengers will pay £2 (or U.S. $3) per trip and
summon their rides through a smartphone app.*
According to a study conducted by the automotive industry con-
sultant IHS Automotive (2014), autonomous cars that include driver
control are expected to hit highways around the globe before 2025
and self-driving “only” cars (with no human control) are anticipated
around 2030. In this study, IHS Automotive forecasts that total
worldwide sales of autonomous cars will grow from nearly 230,000 in
2025 (less than 1% of the cars expected to be sold globally that year) to
11.8 million in 2035 (9% of the global automotive sales expected that
year). In all, there should be nearly 54 million autonomous cars in use
globally by 2035. e study anticipates that nearly all of the vehicles
in use are likely to be autonomous sometime after 2050. e premium
for the autonomous car technology will add U.S. $7000–$10,000 to a
car’s sticker price in 2025, a gure that will drop to around $5000 in
2030 and about $3000 in 2035 when no driver controls are available.
Most of these sales will be in well-established automotive markets
such as the United States, Western Europe, and Japan.
5.7.3.2 Social, Ethical, and Regulatory Issues e study by the automo-
tive industry consultant IHS Automotive also notes some potential
barriers to autonomous car deployment and two major technology
risks: software reliability and cyber security. e barriers include
implementation of a legal framework for self-driving cars and the
establishment of government rules and regulations.
e social impact of the introduction of the autonomous car could
be very signicant. Visions of the future of the autonomous car now
lead to dierent scenarios, sometimes even diametrically opposed
ones. e benets of autonomous cars could be smaller and their
costs greater than the optimistic scenarios. erefore, policy mak-
ers and politicians must anticipate these possible scenarios. What
exactly will the implications be for public transportation, privacy,
*
http://www.wired.com/2013/11/milton-keynes-autonomous-pods/.
239who drives the CAr?
security, car ownership, road safety and road use, and so on? is
should be investigated for each scenario, so that policy makers and
politicians can design the road of the future and discourage undesir-
able developments promptly.
e autonomous car will force regulators to rethink the car and
driver relationship and will possibly place more emphasis on the regu-
lation of the car than of the driver. For instance, instead of certify-
ing that a driver can pass a road test, the state might certify that a
car can pass a test, upending the traditional drivers’ licensing system.
Questions also arise about liability for accidents, since the technology
that makes an autonomous car is an after-market system. So if it hits
something, does the fault lie with the manufacturer or the technology
company that modied the car?
Furthermore, the introduction of autonomous cars would become
a job-eliminating technology (Rotman, 2013). With the introduction
of autonomous cars, individuals whose income depends on driving,
such as taxi drivers or long-distance lorry drivers, may see reduced
opportunities for employment.
Finally, cars crash, even autonomous ones. A major challenge
is to eectively encode complex ethical reasoning into software so
that it can make decisions, in particular in relation to complex driv-
ing situations. Countries beginning to pass legislation concerning
autonomous driving should consider not only the technical pre-crash
behavior of autonomous cars but also the method of ethical decision
making in life-and-death choices, including issues such as discrimi-
nation and justice. is raises the question of whether we want to
leave decisions about life and death to a machine. So, the question is
whether we even want to have autonomous cars, since they will make
choices that have moral consequences. e answer rst depends on
the technological possibility of building moral machines. is will
be dicult, since an autonomous car, for example, should provide in
advance potential responses to all kinds of emergency situations. If
this attempt does succeed, the successful introduction of the moral
autonomous car would then depend on whether we are able to deal
with very dicult ethical questions, such as which ethical algorithm
should be implemented in an autonomous car and who should make
this decision?
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