Driverless cars must hurdle key automation issues to be ready for widespread use: Safety expert – Law Times

The same questions apply for automation in road vehicles, Hart writes. Hence, despite the substantial potential life-saving improvements of removing drivers from cars, driverless cars probably will not achieve public acceptance for widespread use until car automation designers can answer those two questions.

Hart adds that developing autonomous vehicles (AVs) is more challenging compared to automation in commercial aviation, as airplanes operate in a less complex and more structured environment than streets and highways.

Aviation experience has demonstrated that automation concerns include inadequate consideration of human factors in designing automation, automation failure and automation in situations not anticipated by the designer, he writes. To avoid a skeptical public delaying acceptance of AV automation the AV industry would do well to learn from the aviation automation experience to avoid similar mistakes.

Hart notes that although the reliability of automation is improving, any system that is designed, built and maintained by humans will fail sooner or later. He adds that one of the major design challenges is ensuring that failures in automation will not endanger the lives of the passengers or those outside the vehicle, including other drivers, cyclists and pedestrians.

Two common AV industry concepts for automation failure are to pull off to the side of the road or stop in the lane of travel. But these may not always be the safest options, Hart writes. A human driver may assess options in the moment to come up with a safer course of action. Consequences of accidents due to driverless vehicles elicit more negative reactions than those caused by human error only time will tell whether that public attitude will change.

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Driverless cars must hurdle key automation issues to be ready for widespread use: Safety expert - Law Times