The latest in a long line of breezy promotional videos from Google has landed. This time, it was the company's self-driving vehicle project that took centre stage. Although the car's dinky, bubble-like design was mocked by some, its announcement has also been widely understood to signal the fact that autonomous vehicles are now entering the next level of testing and development.
Google's cars will, for now, be limited to trials in the Palo Alto firm's home state of California. So what about driverless transportation in Europe? Is the EU ready to embrace this technology, or is it about to be left in the wake of another American innovation?
At first glance the situation seems a little murky. Both BMW and Daimler AG, which owns Mercedes-Benz, have been working on autonomous vehicle concepts for years, such as BMW's self-driving 5 Series.
However, spokespersons for both companies have admitted to Wired.co.uk that marketable products in this category are a long way off. The reason? Simply put, it's because the legal framework that would enable the sale of such vehicles is more or less absent. "The legislation is just not in place for us to be able to put these vehicles on the market," explains a BMW spokesperson.
Essentially, EU law has not yet worked out applicable assumptions and rules that would apply to the kind of intermittently autonomous vehicles currently available, never mind the sort of design just shown off by Google -- which lacks a steering wheel.
The UN Convention on Road Traffic was until very recently considered a major stumbling block to European progress in this area. Based on a 1968 agreement, the original ruling demanded that a driver be in control of his or her vehicle "at all times". Now that's been changed to allow for autonomous systems but the law still stipulates that the human driver be able to retake control at any moment. Cars without steering wheels aren't coming to the EU any time soon.
But a closer look at the situation reveals some surprising advantages that makers of autonomous vehicles have in the EU when compared to their American counterparts. For one thing, the European Union has for years supported a number of large, politically impactful projects which have sought to explore the viability of self-driving cars and shuttle services.
The SARTRE project demonstrated how "road trains" -- convoys of self-driving automobiles led by a human driver in the leading vehicle -- were relatively easy and safe to deploy. Around the same time, the Citymobil initiative, which included the autonomous pods at Heathrow Terminal 5, brought three distinct driverless shuttle programs to European locations.
A public report produced at the end of the Citymobil project stated, "Until a set of generally accepted certification guidelines exist, it will be difficult for system developers to convince authorities and operators that automated systems are safe."
However, Citymobil2 was launched in September 2012 and is currently exploring what a future certification framework for European shuttle systems might look like.
It turns out that there are many who feel that the EU has both a more established track record in developing this class of autonomous vehicles and that its overall approach to the subject is more sensible.
Nathan Koren, an urban design and planning consultant based in London, says notions about cars which drive themselves and never require human control are fanciful. "What's known as Type 4 automation is automation which replaces all of driver intent all of the time. That appears to be the sort of thing Google is demonstrating in its prototypes," Koren says, "but the thing is, Type 4 automation doesn't exist."
Moreover, Koren applauds European schemes, which have traditionally focussed on autonomous vehicles operating in restricted geographical areas, or along guideways, and usually at supremely low speeds. "The reality is, Europe has a big technical lead on this," he comments.
Bryant Walker Smith, a Fellow at Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, has written a string of blog posts on the legal and regulatory headaches facing the roll-out of driverless vehicles in the US. Regarding the advanced state of certain European projects, Smith wholeheartedly agrees with Koren.
For one thing, America's state-by-state law varies dramatically.
Smith points out for example that Michigan law does not currently allow for general consumer use of self-driving cars and that no state has fully determined how existing traffic laws should apply to autonomous vehicles. "In contrast the European Union has looked at automation much more broadly in the context of economic development and mobility,"
Smith notes, "and when you're thinking about it in those terms suddenly these vehicles make a whole lot more sense."
European efforts aren't just limited to shuttle services and airport transit pods, either. At the end of 2013 Volvo announced Drive Me, a joint project with the Swedish transport authorities which will see self-driving cars take to public roads in Gothenburg in 2017. Prototypes are already being tested by Volvo engineers, but eventually 100 of these vehicles will be handed over to members of the public.
Erik Coelingh, Technical Specialist at Volvo and former contributor to the SARTRE project, says the goal is to develop cars which are autonomous during the most mundane part of a city worker's commute. "We think people would sometimes like to do something else behind the steering wheel and that is what this will allow -- but only on specific roads," he explains.
Coelingh admits that the company is not yet sure how Swedish law might need to be changed in order to enable the public to take part in Drive Me, and adds that without legislative clarity the launch in 2017 won't be able to go ahead. "That's the way it is," he says.
While Europe has certainly not been left behind in the race to develop advanced autonomous vehicles, the pressure is now rising for lawmakers and manufacturers tasked with addressing legal and regulatory questions which, until recently, have been left unanswered.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
