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People will turn green

Questions related to reliability, cyber-safety, ethics or accountability in case of an accident, will have to be answered in a short amount of time7. Nevertheless, there are more operational questions that will rise, like safety and comfort in case the driver gets the control of the vehicle back, in a level 3 SAE8 or motion sickness on a level 5 SAE9 vehicle. Let’s focus on this last issue.

When I was a child, on the curved mountain roads, it was certain that after 15 minutes on the back seat of the car my lunch would make its way out. Growing up and driving on the same curved roads I’ve never suffered of motion sickness again. I don’t see myself on that back seat ever again, however that will happen with an AV.

Once the driver is no longer necessary it becomes just a passenger and easily susceptible to motion sickness10. Why? Because a driver can predict the movement of the car, but a passenger can’t.

And who has never, as a child, tried to read a book on the back seat? Or more recently read an article on the smartphone?

The automation of vehicles will allow the drivers to perform tasks that are not road related. With the use of AV nothing will be required from a driver and one can perform several different activities. With the driver becoming a passenger that are able to look at a book or smartphone it will be easier to lose perception of movement felt by the body and a static image seen by the eyes. This conflict will potentiate motion sickness7,11.

These vehicles can’t be seen as leaving rooms, offices or lounge areas with wheals7. In the future, some product changes will be required in order to avoid these issues and make the user aware. Several tests, either in a simulator or with real vehicles, are being developed to identify an acceptable solution for this problem.

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The dark side

An autonomous vehicle (AV) is not something that will be easily introduced, there will be several obstacles until we can use such an advanced technology. We ´re not just talking about hardware or software issues, but to general issues like the passenger´s confidential data, the vehicle data safety, the insurance or the ethical issues relative to life or death decisions.

Imagine yourself inside an AV facing an hazardous situation caused by a package falling from a lorry in front of you. The vehicle will have to avoid the package and choose one of the following options:

a) kill a person on a zebra crossing on the left; or
b) kill a dog on the right.

What option would you chose? There´s no place for “none of the above”. Even if the answer could be easy in this case, from our point of view, we can add some complexity. Imagine that you would have to choose between:

a) kill a cyclist without a casket that is not respecting safety rules; or
b) seriously injure a cyclist with a casket that puts safety first.

Things get tricky don’t they? More comparisons can be done. On the MIT website Moral Machine6, you can find a kind of a game where, facing a hazardous situation, you will have to choose one of the options that will challenge your ethics, moral and common sense. You will have to choose between killing an old lady or the young and sporty guy; the thief or your bank manager; or, the most difficult one, from our point of view, 3 people on the zebra crossing or the person that is inside the vehicle. This option leaves you less comfortable, doesn’t it? So would you buy a vehicle that can kill you?

When facing these questions the reader starts realising that the AV will make decisions for you as a passenger, and a question arises: would you trust that the AV will make the “right” decision in a life or death situation?

A quick search on the MIT Moral Machine website6, allow us to conclude that the enquired prioritise saving lives and protect Mankind compared to animals. It also shows that they tend to take in consideration one’s higher social value, youngsters and females as well as the fact of respecting the law and avoid the direct intervention of AV when facing the decision.

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What is the technology?

To accept a fully automated vehicle we need to understand the levels of automation, but when we try to do that we realise that automated vehicles are already a reality and a proven technology. The level 1 of automation is already available in any new family car sold anywhere in the world. In this level we can find the commonly used Cruise Control (CC) that allows us to press a button and program the motor to maintain a certain speed, or go in an automatic way to a set speed value. More examples regarding this level are: Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), the vehicle follows the front car and detect if it is accelerating or decelerating, or Park Assist (PA), where the steering is controlled by the automated system but the acceleration/deceleration is controlled by the human driver.

It is also a fact that advanced technology concerning the level 2 starts to be used in not only luxury cars. At this level we have the vehicles that are able to park without any human interaction, intelligent parking assist (IPA), and that with an automated system that controls acceleration/deceleration along with car´s movement in congestion areas, traffic jam assist feature (TJA)5. In sum, this level allows a human driver to get his hands off the wheel but still forces the driver to have his eyes on the road. See Tesla Autopilot4.

Level 3 will be the next level, with some technology already in an experimental phase, where the vehicle will perform in an autonomous way but with human supervision and interaction in specific occasions. These vehicles can carry out any decision like a human being would, but in some situations they will require intervention from the driver. Some companies are testing this technology as another stepping stone to reach the next level and this is the point where the interaction between human and machine starts to be discussed. Some accidents are caused by the fact that the human driver disrespected a specific rule, causing the accident, and maybe this will be the turning point of the whole discussion. Now is when we start questioning the actions of the machine, since it is not only assisting a human driver, but making decisions on its own.

At the same time that the technology evolves, so does the sociological discussion, and only this way we will achieve level 4 and 5, where no human interaction will be required. See Waymo2 and CityMobil23 (level 4). Until then, these first levels are real and understand them will allow us to reach to the next one. We hope this blog helps demystify the technology and contribute to the sociological discussion because this will happen, so as soon as we understand it, the better.