INNOVATIONS
PREPARE YOURSELF FOR TOMORROW
Will self-driving cars take over the roads by 2025? It’s unlikely
The UK government plans to have self-driving cars on the nation’s roads by 2025. We talk to Jack Stilgoe, a leading researcher, who doesn’t think much will change
Self-driving cars have rapidly gone from science-fiction trope to the technology of today, with manufacturers all over the world racing to develop the ultimate driverless experience.
While the technology has seen drastic improvements in recent years, we’re still a long way from a world free of vehicles that need humans at the wheel. And yet, the UK government has said it wants to get self-driving cars on the road within the next three years. But how realistic is this deadline? And, assuming we hit it, is it going to drastically change the UK’s roads? We spoke to Jack Stilgoe, a professor of science and technology policy at University College London, to map out the future of cars.
HITTING THE ROAD
As part of a new plan for self-driving vehicles, the government has committed to spending £100m on supporting innovation in the industry. It estimates the investment will lead to 38,000 new jobs and a complete overhaul of how our roads will look.
While this could mean integration of driverless cars very shortly, Stilgoe suspects this will be on an incredibly small and limited scale.
“When we say ‘self-driving cars by 2025’, we need to ask, in what conditions? On what sorts of roads and for which people? The cars are likely to be constrained to motorways, which are already a tidy and safe driving environment,” he says. “We might see a self-driving vehicle being able to cope with a motorway scenario in quite a predictable way by 2025.”
This is a long way away from self-driving cars being a big part of our infrastructure, however. And that’s not really surprising, as the cost of the vehicles will mean they’re likely to only be an option for people with high incomes.
REWRITING THE RULES
Despite what these plans for rapid advancements suggest, the UK has fallen behind in terms of self-driving innovation.
“British policymakers say this is an area where Britain can lead, even though we lost all our manufacturing capacity for Ford motor cars a few decades ago and have not been quite so bullish as the US and, increasingly, China – both of which are rapidly accelerating the deployment of [driverless] vehicles in cities,” says Stilgoe.
This doesn’t mean the UK can’t be a key figure in the future of driverless cars, however. “Britain can still play a really important role, which historically it has done with new technologies through the process of standard setting – by helping to write the rules that shape the responsible development of the technology.”
This idea of setting standards and rules is as important as the technology itself. The ethics and legality of self-driving cars have been debated ever since they became a realistic possibility.
“The UK government has been working with the legal profession, thinking through questions of engineering and ethics,” says Stilgoe. “The most important task, legally, is to lay out liability and responsibility. [To figure out] who is in control of a vehicle: is a driver liable or is it the manufacturer?”
There are also more subtle, unenforced rules of the road to consider, however.
“The rules we’re taught at school [the Green Cross Code, for example] and the Highway Code, which changed recently – these things will need to be taken into account. A self-driving vehicle won’t interact with other road users in the same way a human would. But if we change the rules to suit self-driving cars, it could deprioritise other groups of people.”
“THE CARS ARE LIKELY TO BE CONSTRAINED TO MOTORWAYS, WHICH ARE ALREADY A TIDY AND SAFE DRIVING ENVIRONMENT”
As 2025 approaches, the government and the car manufacturers will need to decide on whether, and how much, the rules of the road need to change to accommodate self-driving cars. Doing so will mean ironing out details such as whether driverless cars should be clearly labelled as such, or if it’s okay for them to look like every other vehicle on the road.
THE FUTURE OF SELF-DRIVING CARS
Jump forward in time, and what will the future of self-driving cars look like? In the next five years or so, probably not all that different. Innovation for self-driving cars is likely to really take off in places like San Francisco, but for wider expansion, we’ve got a long way to go.
“We might see a slow rollout of the technology in which the beneficiaries of it are actually rather small,” says Stilgoe. “They might be people in rich cities who already have access to a lot of ways of getting around anyway. They might be rich consumers of cars for whom this is just another gimmick.”
Currently, there is no real reason to see mass adoption of the technology, especially considering it will take a long time for the cost of buying one to become widely affordable. Stilgoe likens the situation to that of the motorcar in the early 20th Century. While it was eventually adopted by the masses, it was first taken up by a small group. It required the rules of the road to change, and cities and towns to completely change their layouts.
This isn’t to say that we won’t see a sudden shift, though. “The insurance industry could get involved and say this technology is safer, so we’ll make it cheaper for you to use a self-driving car than to drive your own vehicle. The insurance premiums on human drivers going up is likely to change the overall viewpoint very quickly.”
Nevertheless, Stilgoe thinks that whatever the eventual outcome turns out to be, it will be arrived at via a “boring but profound” route. Instead of a focus on driverless cars, the biggest developments could be seen in driverless public transport.
In London, there are driverless light rail and Tube trains. Instead of looking to implement autonomous technology on chaotic roads, the existing technology could be developed to boost what’s already operating in more controlled environments.
