What will slow down self-driving cars, tech or fear?

An article by Drive starts an important discussion on the development and launch of self-driving cars. The focus for automakers like BMW now is to build technologies to support autonomous cars. However, this article says that people’s fear may slow down the production more than tech.

The hesitation about self-driving cars is still high, especially among people who love the experience of driving. Like what happened the first time electric cars were introduced into the market, there were a lot of hesitation and people were not fully convinced. The doubts are valid too. Customers fear that an autonomous car may not be able to handle all situations, especially when the unpredictable happens, which of course branches out to many safety questions.

BMW’s Head of Sales and Marketing Ian Robertson acknowledges that this fear will be what slows down self-driving technology, not tech.

“We are going to see cars becoming a lot safer, but there is going to be a mismatch for decades. The legislation around it is also very immature and we are just beginning to ask the questions ‘What If’,” Robertson told Drive.

According to Robertson, people just aren’t ready yet, even if technology is. “Does the car have the ability to answer the life or death question? Yes it does. Are we ready for that? No we’re not. It will be limited not by the technology but by society.”

Robertson discusses the similarity of self-driving cars to airplanes on auto pilots. Technically, these planes do not need pilots, but people generally feel safer to fly with one on board.

He also highlights how many people died in car crashes in the US alone, but people do not fear driving on the roads. “I look at the US, where 40,000 people died on the roads last year. If we said we could halve that, we’d all say that was a really good step. But on the other hand, if 20,000 people fell out of the sky in aeroplanes each year we wouldn’t be flying,”

“So our perceptions of what this looks like is not easy. How this develops will not be limited by the technical steps but it will be limited by the other things around it, what we’re prepared to accept and how we’re prepared to accept it. And we’re really not ready, as a world, for a machine to make that final decision yet.” said Robertson.

BMW is confident that they can create a Level-5 autonomous car by 2021 but Robertson mentions they are having doubts on whether legislation can keep up. “The legislators are saying various things; How do you certify it? How do you regulate it? How do you put the boundaries around it? There are simple parts of this and there are more complicated parts of this, so if you look at low speed restricted areas it is easier to do than high-speed un-restricted areas. I think we’re going to see parts of the mobility world enabling quicker than others, but will it be universal or global, no it won’t… it will take a long time.”