Fully autonomous cars are still years away from hitting the roads, but internationally agreed rules for their use could be ready by mid-2026, the United Nations has said.
Safety concerns and the cost of developing next-level systems have slowed progress on autonomous vehicles, but work on regulations is moving forward, the UN said.
“While the hype may be dying down, the real serious work on regulation is going on,” UNECE deputy executive secretary Dmitry Marijashin told reporters.
The World Forum for the Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations, founded in 1952, meets three times a year, bringing together countries, car manufacturers and technology giants. This week’s gathering in Geneva is the main annual meeting.
The forum is held under UNECE, the UN Economic Commission for Europe, which sets the legal framework for land transport.
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Rules of the road
Richard Damm, chairman of the Working Group on Automated/Autonomous and Connected Vehicles (GRVA), said the new UN regulations on driver assistance systems were approved in February and will come into effect in September.
In addition, “we plan to have a globally harmonized regulation on Automated Driving Systems (ADS) ready by mid-2026,” he said.
Unlike some areas where regulation comes long after new technology is introduced, GRVA secretary Francois Guichard said the first settlement of the rules was in line with previous developments in the motoring sector.
He said regulations for electric vehicles were ready before they hit the market and the framework is also now in place for hydrogen vehicles if the industry moves towards mass production.
Five levels
There are five levels of automation, with the lower levels already becoming commonplace.
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At Level 2, drivers are expected to pay attention to traffic.
In Level 3, the driver does not drive when the automated systems are activated, but can intervene at any time and must take over when requested by the system.
At Level 4, the driver does not need to be ready to intervene quickly, at least in limited areas, while Level 5 vehicles are fully autonomous.
Guichard said Level 1 and 2 technology was probably in half of all new vehicles. “Level 3 is still rare, and Level 4 does not exist for sale as a mass-produced product,” he said.
Damm said the systems in Levels 3 and 4 were “much more expensive,” so the deeper driver assistance technology in Level 2 is likely to come first, as a bridge to the next levels.
Road Safety
“Is there a future for self-driving cars? I can answer that with a clear yes,” Damm said.
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“This technology will come, and it’s part of the way, even if it hasn’t penetrated the mass market yet. It’s still a few years away from seeing it in the mass market because we have a lot of issues to work out.”
Public safety concerns remain the top priority for setting the regulatory framework.
There are approximately 1.2 million road traffic deaths per year, with another 50 million injured.
“We don’t know yet whether autonomous vehicles will be more of a problem or a solution,” Marijacin said.
Source: AFP