My son’s 17th birthday, on earth, will be in the year 2029 and I believe that the only way he will be able to travel on any of the world’s roads will be in an autonomous vehicle that would be very different to the vehicles we see on our roads today.
Earlier this year Elon Musk announced that by the end of 2018 Tesla will have developed a completely autonomous car. If you consider there is currently six levels of ability for autonomous vehicles and that we are currently only at level 3, for some, vehicles I am sure you’ll agree that the rate of advancement is accelerating phenomenally fast.
What are the 6 levels of ability for autonomous vehicles?
Level 0: Automated system issues warnings and may momentarily intervene but has no sustained vehicle control.
Level 1 (”hands on”): Driver and automated system shares control over the vehicle. An example would be Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) where the driver controls steering and the automated system controls speed.
Level 2 (”hands off”): The automated system takes full control of the vehicle (accelerating, braking, and steering). The driver must monitor the driving and be prepared to immediately intervene at any time if the automated system fails to respond properly.
Level 3 (”eyes off”): The driver can safely turn their attention away from the driving tasks, e.g. the driver can text or watch a movie. The vehicle will handle situations that call for an immediate response, like emergency braking. The driver must still be prepared to intervene within some limited time, specified by the manufacturer, when called upon by the vehicle to do so.
Level 4 (”mind off”): As level 3, but no driver attention is ever required for safety, i.e. the driver may safely go to sleep or leave the driver’s seat.
Level 5 (”steering wheel optional”): No human intervention is required. An example would be a robotic taxi.
If Tesla and Elon Musk achieve their objective of Level 5 autonomous vehicles by the end of 2018 you might understand, and maybe even agree, why I am predicting that my son will never receive or need a driver’s licence.
A big part of my reasoning for this prediction is that it would be impossible, in my opinion, for human driven vehicles to operate on the same roads as autonomous vehicles. We as humans are capable of errors and impulsive decisions that could result in accidents and a wide range of legal issues from involving liability. A natural transition from today would be lanes, similar to those for bikes, but for autonomous vehicles only. I recently read an article where Waymo’s head of systems engineering, Jaime Waydo, articulated the risk of human error on our roads through some very alarming stats. He said “1.2 million people die on the road each year, equivalent to a 737 plane falling out of the sky every hour. In 94% of the cases, the cause is human error.” Alongside this we could also see a housing boom in areas close to major road systems. This would be as a result of a decrease in cumulative pollution, noise and traffic. Researchers from MIT demonstrated this in a visual presentation that went as far as predicting the end of the traffic light system.
For me, a current driver of non autonomous vehicles, this transition would feel strange but for my son who will potentially know no other way of road transportation, this will be as close to normality than walking.
