I came away from Toyota’s Advanced Safety Seminar convinced that there will be dramatic changes in the automobile in coming years. As John Lee from the University of Wisconsin said, there will be more sweeping changes in the interaction between car and driver in the next five years than there have been in the past 50 years.
Google’s vision that driverless cars should hit the road today is premature. Yes, the technology is rapidly evolving. And the goals are noble–how do we save lives and how do we allow mobility for populations that are currently cut off such as seniors, the blind or the physically challenges?
But right now, the limitation is how fast people and governments can respond to the opportunity.
Journalists at the seminar maintained a healthy dose of skepticism. What will a driver’s license mean anymore? If we potentially have cars without steering wheels or accelerators, are they really cars at all? How will we create a communications system that supports Vehicle-to-Infrastructure communication and vice versa. And who will pay for that? And what about vehicle-to-vehicle communication? Will I be able to blast a message to the car in front of me, demanding “Get the hell out of my way?” (The answer to that one is that there will be a menu of approved messages that can be approved and nothing more.)
The list goes on: if there is an accident, how will anyone know who to blame? Clearly the insurance industry has got to figure out a new liability scheme. Will these advanced features be limited to high-end cars, thereby depriving the people who really need them? It is assumed that teens are one of the most at-risk populations of drivers, so they need these systems more than a 60-year-old who can afford them. (Toyota’s answer to that question is that they are determined to push new features into their entire fleet, not just Lexus.)
One of the biggest questions is whether the U.S. government can create a regulatory structure to govern and encourage the trend toward more autonomous vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is the lead agencyand its former administrator, David Strickland, was at the event. He notes that it takes two years to issue any new rule because of the sheer complexity and that we as a nation will have to lay a solid foundation for the waves of technology are coming. Standards should be established, for example, governing how cars made by different manufacturers embrace new features. If adaptive cruise control works one way in a Chevy, it should work the same way in a Toyota.
So yes, there are a lot of questions, but it’s like arguing about global climate change. Will it happen or won’t it? It seems to me that it is already happening and we have to learn to manage it as best we can. Auto manufacturers are putting enormous money and energy into creating increasingly intelligent vehicles, and the entire automotive research establishment is supporting them. We are entering a period of rapid change. The more informed we all are about it, the better our decision-making will be.
