British industry calls for regulation of autonomous vehicles
- Reference: 1678706892
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/03/13/uk_industry_calls_for_autonomous/
- Source link:
As various levels of automation are planned for modes of transport including cars, buses, delivery robots, trains and aeroplanes, the UK should create a legislative framework which captures them all said Siddartha Khastgir, head of verification and validation of connected and autonomous vehicles at Warwick University’s Manufacturing Group.
Parliament's Transport Committee [1]heard from Stagecoach, which is piloting semi-automated buses — that have a driver on board — and Starship Technologies, a manufacturer of automated delivery robots.
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Khastgir said: “You can take a similar approach to safety assurance, trying to prove Starship robots as safe [and] trying to prove Stagecoach buses are safe. The accepted level of safety for Starship robots would be very different as compared to the scenarios that we will test Stagecoach buses, but it's at one level of abstraction, the approach to safety assurance [we're] trying to prove can be the same.”
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He said bespoke safety frameworks for different use cases would confuse industry. “We want to create a level of abstraction that is same for all types of use cases.”
Differences in safety regulation would then apply to different operating domains — motor ways compared with pavements, for example — rather than individual technologies, he said.
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“Otherwise, you will need to start creating the regulations for every technology,” Khastgir said.
[6]Waymo robo taxis rack up a million miles without killing anyone
[7]Ford seeks patent for cars that ditch you if payments missed
[8]Tesla hits the brakes on rollout of Full Self-Driving code to new users
[9]Mobileye touts bright future while Nvidia, Qualcomm win over automakers
Lisa Johnson, UK director of public affairs for Starship Technologies, said the company would welcome regulation, particularly because the pavements upon which its robots operate were a legal grey area.
“There needs to be some sort of national regulation that underpins all decisions because we have invested a lot of time and energy in our safety case. If we don't have regulation, what's to stop somebody coming into the market who isn't as safe as us? We want some basic national standards that underpin what we do, that make people more feel comfortable that this is a regulated industry. We operate on pavements, and that's a very grey area. And we don't want a free for all,” she said.
Peter Stephens, policy and external affairs director, Stagecoach, said the firm was currently piloting automation, but there were no plans for driverless busses. “I think for the foreseeable future, we think there is going to be a driver on there because we have a very high safety bar that we have to meet,” he told MPs. ®
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[1] https://committees.parliament.uk/event/17350/formal-meeting-oral-evidence-session/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZA9WwFUHml2c4XFEFnadLgAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZA9WwFUHml2c4XFEFnadLgAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZA9WwFUHml2c4XFEFnadLgAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZA9WwFUHml2c4XFEFnadLgAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/02/waymo_robo_taxis_crashes/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/28/ford_self_repossessing_patent/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/28/tesla_has_to_fix_safety/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/06/mobileye_nvidia_qualcomm/
[10] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: We do not want "British" regulations
we're only going to get British regulations for a while.
Quite a lot of regulatory frameworks are national or groups-of-nations specific; harmonisation between these groups to common purpose follows
Just accept for the moment that an overall framework to catch all with detail on each area following is better than splintered regulations
Re: We do not want "British" regulations
Historically national regulations come before international ones. Obviously the right international regulations will be better than the right national regulations, but that is no reason not to implement the national regulations before the technology hits the street.
Re: We do not want "British" regulations
before the technology hits the street
I would have thought that that would have been part of what regulations would have tried to prevent :-)
Re: We do not want "British" regulations
Regulations need to exist to ensure product safety but now everyone is only interested in ensuring corporate profits.
Regulations is in the hand of the makers
Does the UK make autonomous driving cars?
We probably have some spare civil servants who can sit around discussing things they don't understand while drinking tea. By the time they get round to regulations v1, the cars will already be on v5.
Re: Does the UK make autonomous driving cars?
There are at least a range of University groups which do research on such things ...
Autonomous trains
I think you'll find that there are already a number of mass transit autonomous trains in the UK alone.
Technically the Victoria London Underground line has been so from 1968.
Re: Autonomous trains
Don't forget the DLR (Dockland Light Railway).
Re: Autonomous trains
That one at Stansted that has to take a run up to get up a slope.
Until there are an agreed set of regulations
the notoriously risk averse insurance industry will be free to say 'NO' and decline cover to anyone wanting to insure such a vehicle. That would keep them off the road given the current laws.
Someone says (here), "We do not want British regulations..." , but do not tell us what kind they do want.
At least the British are forward-looking enough to realize that there must exist some sort of control over this already-over-hyped activity, and that someone has to take the lead.
Britain: How about starting with, "Absolutely, and under any and all circumstances, DO NO HARM."
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Regulate Spyware in Cars
When will they regulate location tracking and spyware - never- because it is too useful for govt revenue generation, warfare, and police and spooks monitoring, not to mention all the other crooks.
The data generated on people from cars is far too important to be swept under the carpet and ignored as is happening at present.
Where is the outcry from the privacy conscious?
I will never buy an electric car until this is tackled - there is no data leakage from my petrol car except by the well known abuse of cameras on the roads, and of course dashcams, mobile phones, "intelligent" homes systems etc etc etc.
Does nobody care about all these post-Orwellian systems?
No - of course this is the age of social media and reality TV where people qeueue up to be tracked 24 hours a day.
Why can people rebel against vaccines as state control, but ignore the bigger problem?
UK standards - Leveraging minimalism is warehouses, shops and homes.
Post-Brexit, setting a UK-only standard on tech effectively wipes the shelves of products overnight. There is a reason why Malta doesn't have its own rules on tech products. When we were in the EU we had a say in EU standards. Now we accept large trading bloc standards or go without.
We do not want "British" regulations
Autonomous vehicles are being developed all over the world; there should be one set of rules that manufacturers can build to, certify and then sell. Having similar, but slightly different, standards would be a nightmare.
Variations in how the "standard" vehicles are used to suit local conditions might be OK, but the way that they are built must be standard. Even right/left hand drive is a pain that we would (hopefully) not repeat today.
Common standards are good, not something that the Brexit brigade understands.