Signal 5: Which one is better? A new driving license or new traffic rules?
My latest AV (autonomous vehicle) signal ends with a quote by Andrew Ng, the Machine Learning guru and a board member of AV startup, Drive.ai. He says that pedestrian behaviors need to change first in order to adapt to the driverless technology safely.[1] I would say that this is a legitimate point even now without many driverless cars on the road. Each day, we see pedestrians breaking traffic rules.
However, even if the government were to push pedestrians and bystanders to follow traffic rules more strictly and implement new rule sets tailored to AV, we may still have a missing part in our lovely driverless car puzzle: A new driving license. It could be our savior for this unprecedented technology at least in the shorter term. Indeed, UK lawmakers are preparing for this new move. Accordingly, UK drivers may be required to take another driving test and get a new licence to be able to operate and own a driverless car.[2]
The proposed idea has been brought to agenda this year especially after two recent fatal crash happened in AZ, CA. Although it’s a bit disappointment for the automotive and tech industries located in CA whose ultimate vision is a car with no steering wheel or pedals[3], it seems like a fair practice with the fact that fully autonomous vehicles won’t hit road before 2021 as earliest.
[1]https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/3/17530232/self-driving-ai-winter-full-autonomy-waymo-tesla-uber
[3]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/01/california-self-driving-cars-licensed-drivers
