Autonomous vehicles will eliminate death on the roads in Europe, says the Slovenian Minister – EURACTIV.com
The introduction of autonomous vehicles could reduce traffic by 90 percent and reduce the number of road deaths to zero, but serious technological barriers remain, said Mark Boris Andrijanič, Slovenia’s Minister for Digital Transformation.
According to Andrijanic, a former political adviser to the American car company Uber, the company’s broad shift to electric, autonomous and shared mobility will transform Europe, reduce household costs and increase security.
“Autonomous vehicles will provide affordable mobility for everyone, return valuable time, unclog our streets and hopefully save lives,” he said at a conference on self-driving vehicles organized by EURACTIV.
Andrijanić regretted the slow pace of technological development in Europe, which he said was lagging behind the United States.
“If you look at the top 10 companies when it comes to autonomous mobility, you can only find one European company – that’s unacceptable,” he said.
The Slovenian Minister called on EU and national policy makers to imitate the US approach by providing subsidies and tax incentives to companies working on autonomous technology.
“We need to ensure that European companies are innovative enough to catch up,” he said.
Approximately € 500 million is earmarked for autonomous vehicle research under Horizon Europe, the EU’s R&D funding program.
Security issues
Despite advances in automation, safety concerns remain in certain scenarios, making it unlikely that human drivers will be able to sit behind the wheel in the coming years.
This includes cars that are involved in complex traffic situations and respond appropriately to random events, such as a child fleeing to the street.
In the United States, tests of self-driving vehicles have resulted in deaths, with Uber selling its autonomous vehicle after a pedestrian murder.
According to dr. Maciej Wielgosz, a researcher at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, autonomous vehicles require more diverse simulation and training environments to cope with the unpredictability of human behavior.
“We were all kids, so we know how kids behave. So when we drive, we create a model of children’s behavior … But vehicles are deprived of such multi-domain information, “explained Dr. Wielgosz.
This need for more diverse data was supported by Geert van der Linden, an intelligent transport expert at the European Commission.
“For automated vehicles, they may have a lot more eyes, cameras, lidars than we do, and they may have better eyesight, but they don’t understand so well what they’re looking at,” he said.
For now, restrictions need to be introduced, van der Linden said, such as speed limits and ensuring that people can take over in complex situations.
Asked whether separate infrastructure would make autonomous vehicles more viable, van der Linden rejected this approach.
“If we have to create a parallel road network to make it work, then it won’t work because we don’t have the time, space or resources to build such a parallel road network,” he said.
“I don’t think we’re going to be able to separate automated vehicles from traditional traffic, not entirely.”
Common system
One of the most important changes in the mindset is to stop thinking about cars individually, but about them as part of the system, van der Linden said. This means that cars must be able to absorb information from their surroundings, as well as communicate with other vehicles they encounter.
To achieve this, road infrastructure such as traffic lights and street signs need to be digitized. This will provide cars with much larger data sets, which is crucial to achieving full autonomy, explained Johannes Springer, CEO of the 5G Automotive Association.
“Decision-making is about being aware of the situation. That is why we need to provide the vehicle with as much information as possible, “he said.
Job losses
Instead of driverless vehicles sharing the road with manually operated cars, automation is more likely to be a gradual process, Springer said, explaining that automation is likely to be limited in the short term, but will expand over time.
“A fully autonomous vehicle that drives us everywhere we want is really something that would be very ambitious,” he said.
“But having automated driving in confined areas, such as airport parking or public transport, which excludes the bus driver from the cost equation of public transport organization, is something I truly believe will happen in the foreseeable future. “
According to Springer, this type of automation could be available in two to five years
The issue of the impact of automation on professional drivers was discussed by Slovenian Andrijanić, who said that fears about technology were “wrong”.
“This transition will be gradual, which means people who drive for a living will also have plenty of time to basically adjust, retrain and find another job.”
[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]