Are accident free roads in our future?

The humble automobile has come a long way since the first public test – which saw the very first car, crash, into a wall, due to human error. Our cars have become increasingly more complex over the past 100 years, but that original point of failure still exists today: The ‘problem’ of human capability, writes Matthew Duke-Woolley, an analyst with Beecham Research.

Manufacturers have adopted new materials to protect and shield vehicle occupants. Invested in functionality such as ABS brakes and technology to enhance traction control, efficiency and a variety of other factors. In fact technology inside the vehicle is becoming far more important to the consumer than engine specifications and handling. And the next evolution in automobile technology is well under way; to connect cars with the outside world. 20% of new vehicles sold every year are now connected to the internet.

A connected car is able to provide innovative new functionality. The technology companies in Silicon Valley are looking at connected car as the next place to extend their interaction with consumer lifestyle. Apple and Google both are poised to become common names in this market. Connected cars currently enable full integration of smart phone features and applications.

But this is not the only story to tell about connected car. The biggest incentive of connecting our cars is public safety. Safety is the driving force behind the big changes in the automobile market. Road accidents are the leading cause of fatalities for 16-21 year olds in the US. If we allow our cars to share telemetry data, with each car giving information about the environment, then we no longer have to rely on our perceptions and reaction speed at all. We no longer need to rely on our eyes to warn us of dangerous situations on the road. Our eyes don’t judge distances or changes in speed and acceleration particularly well because we operate at much slower speed than these machines.

Traffic jams are a well-known phenomenon. Touching the brakes on a busy motorway can cause a butterfly effect of ‘slowing down’ which propagates through the traffic as drivers react to the changing circumstance. This situation becomes worse with a higher throughput of vehicles. These jams happen all the time, clogging road systems. They are caused by minor mishaps and can turn into major accidents. There are plenty of reports where fatigue has caused major incident.

Communication between our cars enables the sharing of traffic/road condition data and paints a picture about what is happening ahead of the vehicle. The implication for road safety is vast. The accuracy of computer predictions increases with the number of vehicles communicating, building a more detailed picture together. The software is fully capable of operating on the roads right now. So why don’t we have it yet?

Digital security has been a major concern for the automobile industry in 2015. A Jeep hacked on the highway sounds extreme until you realise how much effort was required to get at the data. Security and privacy concerns have temporarily removed the trust in automobile OEMs. The future of the automobile market is sharing data between vehicles. But currently the tech companies are pushing ahead with driver assist and driverless systems that do not need to communicate with other vehicles or road infrastructure.

Tesla has primarily focused on replacing the combustion engine. It also has sophisticated driver assist features that have seen some big publicity at the end of 2015 when some owners uploaded a video of the car preventing an accident. Another Tesla owner successfully modified the driver assist feature to autonomously park his car.

Google received recognition from the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for their work with self-driving cars. The NHTSA will interpret the ‘driver’ as referring to the self-driving system and not any of the vehicle occupants. Recognising the self-driving system enables Google to get it on the road faster. Google has their focus set on fully autonomous.

Currently there is much work being done in improving the way computational systems perceive the world. If we could just fix the digital security and privacy issues to enable the widespread sharing of vehicle telemetry – then our roads would be much safer.