Self-Driving Cars in the Emerald City?
As a recent Seattle Magazine article describes, drivers in Kirkland “may have noticed a Lexus RX suburban utility vehicle with a black rooftop dome traversing local streets” that is unlike other cars, because while it has someone sitting in the driver’s seat, their hands are far from the wheel. That’s because Kirkland is one of three U.S. cities that is currently allowing companies to test self-driving cars, “to see if hundreds of split-second decisions instinctively made by a human driver can be replicated by an onboard system of sensors and computers.”Washington state is home to about 20 or so firms dedicated to researching and testing autonomous vehicle capabilities, as Governor Jay Inslee and Seattle DOT Director Scott Kubly have both pledged support to the endeavor, discussing the benefits of less vehicles on the road through the ability to share cars on a rotation, fewer auto accidents and injuries that stem from human error, and opening up more freedom for people that aren’t able to drive. But, city officials and state legislators will need to “grapple with how quickly the autonomous vehicle technology will develop, and what kind of regulations will be needed before these vehicles become commonplace.”The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) has provided a starting point, with a roadmap to implementing self-driving vehicles:
Level Zero: There is no automation and the driver retains complete control of the vehicle.
Level One: The driver is assisted by technical features such as cruise control and parking help.
Level Two: Partial automation with steering, acceleration and deceleration assistance.
Level Three: Conditional automation, where the car does most of the driving, but the driver may be asked to intervene, which we will see in Audi 8 production in the coming year.
Level Four: High automation, in which the human driver is not required to intervene at the vehicle’s request. If the system is unable to resolve what action is needed, the car parks itself. As Seattle Magazine describes, “some experts say this level could be ready for government testing in 2021, but others say it’s at least 10-15 years away, if not longer.”
Level Five: Full automation without a driver.
In response to the region’s growing number of self-driving test programs, the city of Seattle has assigned a three-person team to “monitor what the area’s 20-plus autonomous vehicle firms are doing, while also researching what issues the city will have to address when self-driving cars are advanced enough and plentiful enough to require regulation” so that whether it’s 5, 10, or 20 years away, we’ll be primed to move forward with cars that drive themselves.For more on autonomous vehicles, read the full Seattle Magazine feature here.