Driverless technology: What are the positives and potential negatives?

As driverless car trials look set to begin in Victoria, experts weigh up the benefits and potential negative impacts of this technological advancement.

Victoria’s first automated vehicle (AV) will soon hit the road. German engineering and electronics company Bosch was granted the first permit to test its self-driving car in the state.

Bosch’s self-driving vehicle, sponsored by the Victorian government through its Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAV) Trial Grants Program targeting road safety, will become the first to be trialed on the state’s rural roads.

“The purpose of the trial is to really assess how the vehicle interacts with our Australian and in particularly our Victorian road infrastructure,” Bosch Australia’s Regional President of the Vehicle Safety Systems and Automated Driving engineering group Chris Woods told SBS Cantonese.

“We have laser scanners, radar and cameras that are continuously scanning the environment. We want to make sure that we can determine line markings correctly or read speed information signs correctly.”

Experts said rural roads are risky with poorer weather and road condition, which could be challenging for automated cars to determine line marking and road mapping.

The system Bosch is developing is one level above the state-of-the-art level 2 automated driving system, and would no longer require a driver to continuously monitor the system.

Mr Woods said it would take three to four years before a system was put into production and can be supplied to automakers.

Road safety expert Jerome Carslake of the national transportation research organisation ARRBsaid in the process of developing fully autonomy of AVs, companies should keep connectivity problems in mind, and highlighted a crash involving an Uber self-driving car.

The Uber vehicle was in autonomous mode, with an operator behind the wheel, when it hit and killed a woman walking in the street in the US.

“There’re a lot of things that need to be worked out. How the car sees when people’s cars cut in front, all those little bits of interaction which happen,” Mr Carslake said.

“That’s just all part of the journey, but overall the big picture is it will help reduce fatalities.”

Bosch states that in its 132-year history of developing automotive systems, safety is always first. Besides auto emergency braking assist that is already incorporated, another significant safety precaution is to apply two engineers, a driver, and an operator for the test vehicle.

“They’re trained specifically to handle critical driving situations but also observing what’s happening," Mr Woods said.

"We have the second person in the car that is an operator and they are viewing which objects are being detected by the automated vehicle, has everything been picked up accordingly and appropriately, and is it making the right decisions as it drives.”

The auto supplier has shown its interest in splitting the pie of the AV market with other tech giants such as Waymo, Tesla, and Uber.

Recently it announced a 4 billion euro (A$6.38B) investment plan into autonomous driving technology, and with robo-taxi testing kicking start in the US this year.

Researchers see inevitable effects automated ride-sharing service will have on professional drivers. In 2015, around 247,000 people were employed in driving trucks, buses, and taxis in Australia, Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development (DIRD) data shows.

Frank Black, a 58-year-old Brisbane-based truck driver, felt a threat of job loss. But he doesn’t believe driverless technology is going to replace human drivers.

“We’re going to be put out of work if they want to go with the technology,” Mr Black said.

“When you’re talking about vehicles driving on the road, with no driver in control, to take over, they have got to be fully proved safe.

“I think they’re at least 50 years away."

Frank Black, driving truck for 30 years, said people are “greedy” for driverless technology to save cost. But “it’s killing people,” he said.

Amid the possible impacts on the transport workforce, the Australian government is planning road infrastructure needs and traffic management to adapt to cutting-edge technology.

Melbourne recently ranked as the 7th worst city for traffic congestion among 38 major cities across the world, even behind New York; Sydney is a place ahead of Melbourne as 6th worst, on the Global Urban Mobility Index published by navigation data company Here Technologies.

Hussein Dia, a Swinburne University of Technology professor with three decades of experience in intelligent transport systems, pointed out that the real effect of the technology on road congestion was still unclear at this point.

He saw ride-sharing as a way to reduce congestion, which could be achieved not necessarily with automated cars.

The Australian government expected conditionally automated vehicles to be put on road before 2020 anfullyll automated operation onwards.

The federal infrastructure department noted that the future technology can potentially create more than $16 billion revenue by 2025 and cut down $27 billion cost of road crashes in Australia each year.

Reduced accidents, lower transport infrastructure costs, and increased demands of ride-sharing are what the government sees with huge economic benefits.

But Tony Sheldon, campaign coordinator and former secretary of the Transport Workers Union (TWU), said community interest was being overlooked by economic prospects.

“This is a real pressure on the government to look technology savvy, at the same time failing to meet the source of things that we would expect to the community: safety, security, and not putting it at risk.”

Cybersecurity concerns of automated cars was also a factor for Mr Sheldon who said the technology’s fallibility could be taken advantage of for terrorists.

Professor Dia said the problem can be possibly solved with a more robust security system on the car, which required more efforts from the tech companies.

Professor Dia said benefits of automated vehicles may be overestimated, but ultimately, it was up to the community to decide its vision for transport in a highly automated world.

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