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Fully autonomous cars will be "very difficult to produce", but it would be "unethical" not to introduce them, according to the Transport Research Laboratory's leading expert in the technology.
Prof. Nick Reed, TRL's academy director and vehicle automation expert, told BusinessCar that the corporate sector will be vital to the uptake of technology that will eventually lead to full automation. "We recognise how important fleets are; they are the most important customers of new vehicles," he said.
"If we introduce vehicles with automated systems with proven safety benefits such as active braking systems - which are starting to show they have a measurable reduction in collisions - fleets will start to specify that they must have them and this will drive more use of autonomy."
Reed admitted that there are both technological and ethical challenges to overcome. "It's very difficult to produce a vehicle that can work well in all situations, but it can be overcome," he continued, pinpointing snow, fog and heavy rain as particular challenges.
"The step of going door to door is very difficult, and we have to be careful about what we mean in going door to door, especially with disabled or elderly drivers where 100m from the destination could be worse than nothing."
With regard to the issue of autonomous cars having to make decisions when faced with an inevitable collision, Reed admitted that "ethically, it is a big challenge", although he said a programmed car would be driving more cautiously and would therefore be less likely to find itself in that position.
"It would be far less likely to occur and be far better in responding than human drivers are today; we overestimate out ability as drivers," Reed claimed. "The ethics of not introducing these systems - the fact that a collision on the road is the most likely way for a young person to die, and that five people per day die on our roads - mean it would be unethical not to introduce these systems, if it can be proven that it reduces that."
Cyber security is another area that needs to be dealt with ahead of automation. "I can't think of another situation where we put our safety in a situation where it can be hacked,"
Reed declared, before going on to say that he believed full automation would happen: "The 'stupid driver does something in front of you' scenario happens today and people have to deal with it, so we should be able to give the vehicle the sense to deal with something at least as well as a human does."
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