NEW YORK, Dec 15, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – The first driverless cars were supposed
to be deployed on the roads of American cities in 2019, but just a few days
before the end of the year, the lofty promises of car manufacturers and
Silicon Valley remain far from becoming reality.
Recent accidents, such as those involving Tesla cars equipped with
Autopilot, a driver assistance software, have shown that “the technology is
not ready,” said Dan Albert, critic and author of the book “Are We There
Yet?” on the history of the American automobile.
He questioned the optimistic sales pitch that autonomous cars would help
reduce road deaths — 40,000 every year in the United States, mostly due to
human error — because these vehicles themselves have caused deaths.
As a result, self-driving maneuvers in the technology-laden vehicles are
limited to parking, braking, starting or driving in a parking lot.
– Are autonomous cars on the roads? –
Autonomous vehicles have only been deployed in limited test projects in a
few cities.
“When you’re working on the large scale deployment of mission critical
safety systems, the mindset of ‘move fast and break things’ certainly doesn’t
cut it,” said Dan Ammann, CEO of self-driving car company Cruise.
General Motors, Cruise’s parent company, had promised a fleet of autonomous
vehicles would be on the roads in 2019.
There are driverless shuttles running on specific routes on university
campuses, and Waymo, Google’s autonomous car division, has been offering
robotaxi service “Waymo One” for about a year around Phoenix, Arizona.
However, there is a trained driver in the cars to take control in case of
emergency.
Waymo is expanding that program, and since the summer it has offered truly
driverless service in some Phoenix suburbs that is free in the afternoon and
sometimes in the evening. The company is also teaming up with ride-hailing
app Lyft to expand to more areas.
– Is the technology ready? –
“Automation may be used in areas such as closed campuses, where speeds are
low and there is little or no interaction with other vehicles, pedestrians or
cyclists or inclement weather,” said Sam Abuelsamid, engineer and expert at
Navigant Research.
The big problem is “perception”: the software’s ability to process data
sent by the motion sensors to detect other vehicles, pedestrians, animals,
cyclists or other objects, and then predict their likely actions and adapt
accordingly, he said.
And that part is key, said Avideh Zakhor, engineering and computer science
professor at the University of California-Berkeley.
“The perception part is not solved yet. The most advanced publicly
available is 80-85 percent (reliable). That means that 15 percent of the
time, it’s going to hit objects and kill and destroy them,” she said.
– What are the obstacles? –
Laws in place in some 40 US states only allow testing of these vehicles.
The industry players hope the accumulation of thousands of miles traveled by
self-driving vehicles will reassure authorities the technology is safe.
Authorities also will have to adapt road signage to these smart cars.
Contacted by AFP, the main road transportation regulator, the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), declined to provide a status
update.
– When will autonomous cars be on the road? –
Not for a few years.
“We should see the deployment of autonomous fleets, likely at a regional
level, over the next five years,” according to Aurora, a start-up
specializing in autonomous driving supported by Amazon and Fiat Chrysler.
But Navigant’s Abuelsamid said driverless vehicles should be running soon
on a small scale.
“We may see some limited numbers in a few locations by mid- to late-2020
with increasing deployments in 2021 and beyond,” he said.
Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, said in late October that his cars will be
“able to drive from one’s house to work, most likely without interventions,”
although “it will still be supervised.”
Albert, the analyst, told AFP that Tesla may have overpromised, and he
cautions that customers who paid $3,500 in advance for the promised fully
autonomous features “effectively gave the company a no-interest loan.”