While fully autonomous vehicles are years away from reality, the promise of the technology exceeding the safety of human drivers is leading some to question if human driving should be allowed in the future.
In an opinion that may not be popular among the masses, IDTechEx’s new data forecasts that by 2040, self-driving cars will be capable of fulfilling mobility worldwide without accidents. By 2050, manual driving could be outlawed.
The idea is that safety has always been a parameter for restricting how people can drive: speed limits to increase safety on roads, seatbelts for additional safety and increased pedestrian zones to ensure safety for those not in vehicles. If automated driving adds an additional layer of security, should additional restrictions be placed on vehicles?
IDTechEx said cities could adopt zones where only autonomous vehicles are allowed in order to increase inner-city pedestrian safety and help to improve local air quality and a greener space inside a city.
That could lead to manual driving becoming completely illegal on public roads in the interest of safety, IDTechEx purports. However, manual driving won’t completely disappear and could be relegated to sports racing or in areas where pedestrians are not in high population.
Technology changing laws
The market research company said that technology has always changed laws and when it comes to vehicles this is even more apparent. As vehicles became faster, speed limits were introduced. When smartphones became ubiquitous, use in vehicles had to be outlawed for safety. Autonomous vehicles will once again change laws to meet a greater need for human safety, IDTechEx said.
Self-driving cars are never distracted by mobile phones or infotainment or changing music. Autonomous vehicles will be connected by 5G and receive more information on their surroundings than human drivers could ever see or process. The biggest challenge is to get to the point where the public has confidence enough to put its trust completely in the hands of the technology.
There is a good reason that computers are so ingrained into our everyday life, they can deal with more data than we can, they process it faster and they do not make mistakes. The difficulty, of course, is certifying that given the responsibility of driving, the last of these advantages is maintained and that the public has confidence in the technology.
If growth in autonomous technology continues on its present course, IDTechEx said, by 2046, self-driving cars will meet total mobility demand in the U.S. without a disengagement (human intervention). By 2050, these vehicles will be able to meet the world’s transportation needs with fewer than one collision per year.
This leads to manual driving being outlawed by this time, the company said.
The full research can be found in IDTechEx’s Autonomous Cars, Robotaxis & Sensors 2022-2042.
