Autonomous driving (AD) has the potential to reduce the number of car accidents significantly, in some cases by up to 30 percent, according to independent research. To that point, up to 90 percent of all accidents are presently caused by driver error or distraction. This number can be hugely decreased with the use of autonomous vehicles (AVs).
Volvo has announced that they will begin testing AVs in London next year, but unlike most trials thus far, they’ll be using “real families” as opposed to engineers or dummies.
Starting with semi-autonomous cars, the program, dubbed “Drive Me London,” will begin on public roads in 2017, with the plan being to expand to more than 100 fully autonomous cars on the roads by 2018. The overall goal of the program is to improve driver safety, congestion, and pollution.
“Autonomous driving represents a leap forward in car safety,” said Håkan Samuelsson, president and chief executive. “The sooner AD cars are on the roads, the sooner lives will start being saved.”
Volvo will work with Thatcham Research to record and analyze data from drivers in order to develop AD cars that are suitable for real world driving conditions, rather than the more unrealistic conditions found on test tracks.
“Vehicle manufacturers are predicting that highly autonomous vehicles, capable of allowing the driver to drop ‘out of the loop’ for certain sections of their journey, will be available from around 2021. Without doubt, crash frequency will also dramatically reduce. We’ve already seen this with the adoption of Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) on many new cars,” said Peter Shaw, chief executive at Thatcham Research.
The benefits to having AD cars on the road are endless, and although trials like Volvo’s are informative and without a doubt worthwhile, it’s going to take a bit more to make AVs “happen.”
“Governments globally need to put in place the legislation and infrastructure to allow AD cars onto the streets as soon as possible. The car industry cannot do it all by itself. We need governmental help,” said Samuelsson.
