Risk Adverse Society

Abstract

In the last few months, unmanned cars have made the headlines throughout the world, showing for instance fascinating Google or Mercedes Benz prototype cars. The reality is that driverless vehicles have been already part of our daily life but most ordinary citizens just didn’t know it. Because these vehicles were hidden behind unmanned metro operational center or were restricted to a few worldwide PRT driverless car systems, the idea that cars could be driven by a computer came as a surprise. Unmanned cars still have a long road to go before they become generalized on our roads. Before this, a continuum of new technologies will be brought to the market, creating increasingly more autonomous cars. Although some of automotive manufacturers are already picturing their cars as completely autonomous, we don’t believe that such a model will prevail. We strongly believe that the same model that is now applied in railways or PRTs will need to be adopted for unmanned cars to be successfully implemented. A system approach will be required based on safety standards, which will need to be homologated like in the railway sector. In fact, we will show that this industry throughout its history has dealt with safety and railway engineers have come up with four safety concepts, which will need to be applied: block interlocking, block signaling, integrity, and interoperability. We will describe thoroughly these principles and how the newer railway technologies, such as moving block, fulfill the safety requirements. In a second step, we will show the parallel between the two industries and how the railway principles need to be adapted to the specific technologies being developed for the automotive industry (i.e., VANET, WAVE, or CALM). In a system approach, we will portray the communication concepts (i.e., V2V, V2I, and V2C), network types (i.e., mesh), and communication technologies (802.11p; DSRC, 4G, or even 5G), which will allow all cars to communicate together and with the infrastructure. Besides these “automotive signaling” concepts, we will introduce sensors and explain the operating principles that will allow cars to maintain a virtual moving interlocking blocks, as well as integrity, a concept fundamental in platooning technology. In the last portion of this chapter, we will show what the blocking points to the adoption of driverless technology are. A long-term cost analysis of these technologies is made to find out when cost will stop being a barrier to adoption. Legal issues will also be addressed and we will suggest solutions to promote the advent of driverless cars. We believe that this advent is inevitable as it will reduce millions of deaths and injuries and will be plebiscited by a society increasingly risk adverse, especially in environments prone to fatalities such as roads.

Company or Brand Names Stated in the Chapter

• UITP (Union International des Transport Publics)

• Matra (technology later purchased by Siemens)

• VAL now part of Siemens’ portfolio of product

• Westinghouse Electric Corporation

• Volvo Group/AB Volvo

• Audi AG

• BMW

• Mercedes Benz is a Trademark of Daimler AG

• Google Inc.

• Ultra Global PRT

• Uber Inc.

• Axa S.A.

• Ford Motor Company

• OnStar^TM system: trade mark of General Motors

• Street Views a trade mark of Google

• General Motors Company

• Toyota Motor Corporation

• Chery Automobile Co. Ltd

• Model i3 brand from BMW

• Model S-Class: Trademark of Mercedes Benz

• HIS Automotive

• Navigant Consulting

• Strategy Analytics

• ABI Research

• PricewaterhouseCoopers

• Ferrari S.p.A.

• Erickson

• Cisco System Inc.

• Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.

• Robert Bosch GmbH

• Xerox Corporation

• Econolite