Public Acceptance of Autonomous Vehicles
There have been continuous efforts for developing shuttles that operate without a driver on board that took place worldwide. Despite this, people should accept the idea and its application to succeed and pervade across nations. A research conducted by Nordhoff et al. (2018), revealed that the majority of the surveyed sample of 7755 people across116 countries reported their willingness to take a ride in a driverless vehicle. The accepting respondents were reported to be domain-specific driven rather than socio-demographic factors driven.
The shared transportation systems used to transport groups of people rather than private vehicles represent a promising business. These shuttles are environment-friendly that avoids the shortcomings of today’s vehicles. Although, the public acceptance of such new transportation technology is essential and should take place at an early stage to enable governments to sustain it. In general, people from high-income countries are less accepting for this new technology (Favaro et al. 2017).
The following section provides an analysis of Oz-Car company aim of developing electric, driverless buses and introduces recommendations to the Australian government.
The technological development that took place over the past years resulted in integrating various functions of autonomous vehicles like cruise control, satellite navigation and automatic gearbox. This development led to lower control of the driver to the expense of the computer system that represent a cutting edge for full autonomous vehicle control. The fully autonomous vehicle is the one that can sense the surrounding environment, decide the best route of destination and reach it without the interference of human assistance. Complete autonomy of a vehicle ensures safe driving and careful monitor of the road during the journey. The passenger is the person who decides the destination and the computer system role is to ensure safety. The lowered number of accidents represent a good reason for developing and implementing autonomous vehicles. Adopting this new technology in the future will require governments to implement new policies and regulations to control it. Companies like Google, Tesla, Ford and Audi are testing their newly developed products under various conditions. Although, it is expected that the transition from high to full autonomy will take time. The autonomous vehicles need standardized levels of performance to ensure that the computers, sensors and software are well tested and act according to the quality and safety standers (Ark 2017).
There are many expected benefits for transitioning from the human driver to computer driver of vehicles, which led the big automotive and software companies to implement and proceed their production. A major benefit is the optimization of the passenger relaxation due to lower stress levels who will focus on issues other than their safety. The accident levels are expected to decrease because the computer system impeded in such vehicles will lower the human-made accidents and increases the safety level of the passengers. The lowered number of accidents will result in cost reduction and elimination of accident-related activities, including car insurance. The Australian government will be responsible for developing the infrastructure according to the new requirements. It has to prepare for the group of vehicles that will move at similar speed and distances in the predefined lanes that will solve the traffic jam problems and facilitate the peoples’ life. The expected reduction of the road capacity will result in lower infrastructure costs and enhance traffic management effectiveness. Also, the taxi services will reduce and freight transportation as well. People will not bear the responsibility of parking the car that will find a parking place by itself. The government will be responsible for providing enough parking places to keep the cars safe. In addition, autonomous vehicles will increase the citizens’ mobility, including people with disabilities and those who do not have driving licenses. Also, it is expected to lower the number of cars owned by families because the benefits of owing private cars will decrease. It is estimated that one car will be able to serve multiple family members by driving each member at a time to his desired destination (Isaac 2017).
Benefits of Transitioning to Fully Autonomous Vehicles
It is expected that the cost of transmitting to fully autonomous will be high due to the large scale of the advanced technologies that increase the vehicle market price. The integration between the telecommunication systems, GPS technology, security and navigation systems. Also, many other services will be required to deal with various conditions like rain, tunnels, high temperature and unpaved roads. The wireless control of the vehicle communication system is essential for communicating with maps, navigation and road conditions. The automated control of the vehicle requires special software and communicating with servers. This implies that the system error might lead to fatal disasters that require high-quality management system of production. This system should consider installation, repair, test and components maintenance. In addition, the GPS service will require a periodic subscription. The aggregation of technology and services required to introduce a safe product are likely to be high priced in addition to the regular maintenance cost. Autonomous vehicles numerous production will need time to achieve economies of scale that will result in cost and market price reduction. Therefore, the Australian government is required to address and implement the required preparations for the new vehicles. Developing new regulations is necessary to cover the new conditions and public investments and efforts should take place to ensure fast and efficient adaptation to the new vehicles (Bunghez 2015).
Risks of the autonomous vehicles are mainly related to the computer system due to the complicated technology utilized in their production. Although the risk of making accidents will be reduced because human failure like inability to see or drive under bad weather conditions will be eliminated but the system can fail. Another source of risk stems from the security and safety of the of the computerized traffic system. Autonomous cars will be operating in a big data system that integrates different technologies, like smartphones (Kennedy 2017).
It is possible that hackers access the traffic system and get personal data logs that threaten people data. That is why semi-autonomous vehicles where men and computers can operate the vehicle is less risky than the fully automated vehicles. An additional source of risk is associated with vehicle insurance that will be changed due to the basis of calculating the auto insurance that is associated with the driver behavior. Under the new conditions, the financial insurance is expected to shift to the auto manufacturing company and the companies authorized with managing infrastructure (Henderson & Spencer 2016).
Costs and Challenges of Transitioning to Fully Autonomous Vehicles
Currently, the autonomous vehicles are in the testing stage that involves a large number of prototypes. The autonomous vehicles produced by Google registered 70 thousand miles of completely autonomous driving. Also, Audi the RS7 model reached the speed of 150 miles/hour on circuit. Moreover, Nissan is planning to introduce its developed fully autonomous vehicle by 2020. These trials will increase during 2020 and 2035 by allowing an increasing number of people to access it. By 2040, it is predicted that autonomous vehicles will represent the main method of transportation. Changes will take place in terms of computer control of vehicles rather than the human control, low level of accidents, changes in the insurance system, increasing of the concept of shared vehicle and the changes in the car design itself that will be significantly changed due to the unnecessity of several parts, like the mirrors and pedals. It is expected to significantly reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that makes them environmentally friendly. Also, passengers might re-distribute their time due to their dependency on time-use data that will allow them to do other activities to offset the waste time in traffic jams (Das et al. 2017).
There is a potential scenario that the autonomous vehicles will not fully replace public transportation. It will be optional to use any of them, in the beginning, the traffic pattern will represent a big challenge due to the thousands of passengers that will be transported daily. Also, people who have private cars might choose the self-driving. (Harper 2016)
The European cities have outperformed other developed countries in urban mobility, led by cities like London, Amsterdam and Helsinki. The Dutch automobile association ANWB established its experiments in the autonomous and automated driving in 2015. Also, Ericsson implemented the project of connected urban transport (CUT) platform that represents Stockholm shuttles virtual bus driver. CUT is prepared to connect the stakeholders and exploit their data to introduce an enhanced service. The system is connected with a cloud platform associated with built-in modularity and scalability to be flexible and adapt easily to the environment. The UK has finished testing its autonomous vehicles with government support of GBP 150 million to continue its experiments until 2021. In Rotterdam, the city in the Netherlands, tests involved autonomous shuttle bus that connects between a metro station and an industrial park. The European Commission has a positive attitude towards the development of autonomous vehicles. Also, it has started preparing regulations for uniform technical standards and liability (Schaft 2018). Jaguar I-PACE, the Australian release in late 2018 represents its switch to the electric vehicle game, which means that the shift to newly developed autonomous vehicles is a must. Jaguar illustrates that this car will be able to move 100km/h in almost 4 seconds (Bowen 2017). Big oil companies accept the fact that electrified vehicles represent the future of transportation. That is why BP Venture invested in American EV charging in order to add charging points in its petrol stations (Huang 2018).
Current State of Testing and Development of Autonomous Vehicles
- The Government’s decision to establish Oz-Car provided confidence in the car industry by providing loans (Swan 2009a). Today, it’s the government responsibility to continue what it has started by giving support to Oz-Car and facilitate its new business (Swan 2009b).
- The Australian government should quickly respond to the changing conditions in the transportation technology development. Currently, Tesla is taking a voluntaryinitiative, it shares the cost of the power points with the Australian Electric Vehicle Association. Also, Oz-Car aims to design and build Australian driverless vehicles, which means that the space of autonomous vehicles development is increasing.
- It is essential that the government complete the preparation of the infrastructure by aligning its policies with the producing companies of the autonomous vehicles. (Graham 2018).
- The initiative of the French-designed Navya Arma driverless electric shuttle bus that is expected to carry public passengers in South Australia represents a five-year project of the autonomous vehicle supported by the state government. This trial is expected to last until the mid of 2019 represents a good initiation on the right track of shifting to the new transportation technology (Nott 2018).
Conclusions
The fully autonomous vehicle is the one that can sense the surrounding environment, decide the best route of destination and reach it without the interference of human assistance. Complete autonomy of a vehicle ensures safe driving and careful monitor of the road during the journey. The passenger is the person who decides the destination and the computer system role is to ensure safety. Autonomous vehicles will increase the citizens’ mobility, including people with disabilities and those who do not have driving licenses and the accident levels are expected to decrease because the computer system impeded in such vehicles will lower the human-made accidents and increases the safety level of the passengers.
Currently, the autonomous vehicles are in the testing stage that involves a large number of prototypes. Although the risk of making accidents will be reduced because human failure like inability to see or drive under bad weather conditions will be eliminated but the system can fail.
The Australian government is required to address and implement the required preparations for the new vehicles. Developing new regulations is necessary to cover the new conditions and public investments and efforts should take place to ensure fast and efficient adaptation to the new vehicles.
References
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Kennedy, C 2017, ‘New threats to vehicle safety: How cybersecurity policy will shape the future of autonomous vehicles’, Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review, vol 23, no. 2, pp. 343-356.
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Nott, G 2018, Adelaide driverless shuttle hits open road with public aboard, viewed 20 Jan. 2019, <https://www.cio.com.au/article/642645/adelaide-driverless-shuttle-hits-open-road-public-aboard/>.
Schaft, M 2018, Moving the masses: Autonomous vehicles in public transport, viewed 20 Jan. 2018, <https://www.roboticsbusinessreview.com/unmanned/moving-masses-autonomous-vehicles-public-transport/>.
Swan, W 2009a, Activation of car dealership financing special purpose vehicle (OZCar), viewed 20 Jan. 2019, <https://ministers.treasury.gov.au/DisplayDocs.aspx?doc=pressreleases/2009/094.htm&pageID=003&min=wms&Year=&DocType=>.
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