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Yesterday I paid the domain renewal for Driverless Car HQ, which means it’s now one year since we first started discussing self-driving cars.

Paying the renewal caused me to reflect on the last year and the ridiculous progress made just in the last 12 months.

12 months ago…..

- Google was the only genuine declared player

- Testing hadn’t been approved in any jurisdiction

- Very few articles were ever published on the topic and it wasn’t even close to being mainstream knowledge. We seriously were scratching around trying to find even remotely related topics to talk about given that the news had very little for us.

- Only the bravest predicted that self driving vehicles would arrive by 2020.

Now…

- Nearly all major manufacturers have publicly announced some kind of project – GM, Lexus, Mercedes, Audi, the list goes on. Not only that, but Continental (the German tire-maker) was the second company to receive approval for testing in Nevada, and the Chinese government also appears to have some fairly advanced technology.

-Testing has been approved in Florida, California and Nevada, the latter having implemented self-driving vehicle number plates under a sanctioned testing system. The response from legislators and bureaucrats has been incredible, but also assisted by Google’s highly competent lobbying efforts. The enthusiasm shown by bureaucrats – most publicly the Nevada DMV (this video here is 100 minutes but is fascinating watching), whose leadership actively smoothed the path for successful passage through the local legislature.

- Articles abound on the net, with discussion taking place on blogs, fora and news websites around the globe. Where we used to link to anything remotely related to driverless cars, we now have to be quite selective in determining what is worth posting in our feeds and what is not.

- Many manufacturers – most notably GM, Nissan, Audi and Mercedes – have declared that we will see an autonomous vehicle by 2020. That’s only 7 years away – yikes!!. Sergey Brin goes one better – he  believes this technology will be commercialized within 5 years.

The momentum is unstoppable and the excitement is palpable, most especially after CES. There can now be no doubt that other manufacturers who have not yet shown their hand (Honda, Subaru and Mazda) are also working on the technology in some way.

Just read what Professor Thomas Weber of Mercedes had to say:

““It’s very important [to be first]. We are in a position [to be first].”

Wow.

Thanks for what has been an amazing last 12 months. Shouts go to Gabriel and Paul who have contributed so much since the start, to my fellow co-moderators and to Anthony who has been with me from the very first moment.

Mat.

For all those who wish to continue following Driverless Car HQ, please do so through our Facebook or Twitter accounts as we will continue posting links there for those interested.

https://www.facebook.com/driverlesscarhq

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The big news is that self driving cars are now legal in California!

An inside look into the California self driving legislation.

Meanwhile Washington DC may be next to legalise autonomous vehicles.

Questions as to whether Google will make money out of self driving cars. For the record, we think so though mostly via technology licencing which is not really covered in this article.

There’s also an article up at Traffic Technology International about self driving cars (Page 42 onwards).

Linux is working on an automotive Operating System. In other news Tesla will be updating the OS of their model S via WiFi.

Thanks to Chris Law, Paul Godsmark, Gabriel and Matt for all the links this week.

To summarise the article:

1. China hates the Google, and the Chinese want to drive their cars.
2. Insurance Issues.
3. Self Driving cars are too expensive.

1) In all honesty, point #1 doesn’t make a lot of sense. Even if the Chinese ban Google’s self driving technology, Google still has a target market of 6 billion people.

The author of the piece seems to think that the US won’t follow the lead of California and Nevada because Californian politics is weird and the rest of the country won’t follow what California does. I disagree, states will embrace autonomous technology because they want to get ahead in the technology game and are afraid of being left behind. Maybe some states will resist, but with Florida and Hawaii also considering driverless technology the rest of the world will have multiple templates of self-driving car legislation to copy. Also, self driving technology will be a big issue for the disabled and the elderly and those folks vote and will most likely not be happy with anyone who blocks the legalisation of this technology.

2) Liability is a big issue, as the author of the piece writes:

if major carriers decide the manufacturer will be to blame in fender benders involving these cars, there is one great reason for the manufacturer to not pursue the self-driving car dream.

I think there is a good chance this issue will be resolved. We (re)posted recently on some suggestions on how to tackle liability issues. The idea is that self driving cars will be very safe, but for the times when there is a catastrophe we can create a fund – like a vaccine injury scheme. This fund could be financed by a levy on ticket prices, self driving car profits or general tax revenue. Victims are duly compensated when ‘shit happens’ but companies aren’t unjustly sued for negligence.

3) Self driving cars are rather expensive. No doubt about this. However, if you look at Rio Tinto, they are deploying self driving trucks and trains partly because of high salaries paid to drivers. In other words, even though this technology is expensive, in cases it is already cheaper to use. That said, the original point that Google’s autonomous vehicles will flop is a bit absurd. Look at so many other technological products like computers, genome sequencing or even solar panels, prices start high but get rapidly cheaper.

Ok, that’s me done, if you have some time, read the original article and let us know what you think.

Here I’m going to quickly summarise a few scenarios on how to handle liability when a driverless car crashes and kills someone.

1. Socialised Catastrophic Insurance. 

This idea is similar to vaccine compensation schemes in various countries. Vaccines are great for public health, save lives, reduce disease related injury and are generally safe and well tolerated. However, there is a tiny chance (say, 1 in a million) that receiving a vaccine could kill or permanently disable the recipient. To account for this outcome, injuries from vaccines – particularly childhood vaccines – can be compensated. Caps on the payout and thresholds for the degree of disability are features of these schemes, which are funded from vaccine revenues.

Driverless cars in 10 or 15 years could be analogous to the vaccine example in that riding in a driverless car could pose very little risk to the individual. However, at some point an accident will happen and someone will be killed or injured. To compensate victims or their families the fund would award money for damages. The fund would likely be supported by revenues from selling driverless cars or by taxpayers.

The upside of this system is that car makers and programmers don’t have to over-engineer their products to be highly expensive and completely flawless to the point of paranoia. The downside is the same as the upside: should car makers and programmers not  have to engineer their products to be flawless because they won’t be liable, there is less incentive to make the perfect product.

2. Caveat emptor - Owner Liability.

Basically this scenario is ‘Buyer Beware’. Legislation could be organised so that car makers are not liable for driverless car behaviour. As a result whoever buys a driverless car is taking responsibility as the driver of the car – solely taking the risks and responsibilities upon themselves should an accident happen, with legislation requiring all driverless car owners to possess the appropriate insurance.

The upside again is that its great for car makers. The downside is that driverless car technology seems a bit pointless if you crash your car and get sued by whomever you’ve run over or crashed into because someone at Ford or Google didn’t debug their software properly.

3. Caveat venditor - Seller Liability. 

A far more likely scenario than #2 scenario of buyer liability and is probably the default legal setting in most countries today. This scenario is that not programming or constructing a driverless car properly is a form of tort. That is if a driverless car crashes due to manufacturing or programming error the manufacturer is liable.

The upside is that it really encourages car makers to be extremely rigorous in making their driverless cars. The downside is that car makers can get their programming right in 99.9% of situations but could still lose a lot of money in the 0.1% of situations they didn’t (or couldn’t plan for).

4. Travel insurance

This scenario is somewhat of a cross between 1 and 2 but instead of the cost being carried by society or one individual driver the cost is spread out by everyone using driverless cars. Its probably a more likely scenario if no-one owns driverless cars but we treat them as ubiquitously available taxis. The idea is that travel insurance would be charged as part of the taxi fare. If an accident occurred and the occupant was killed or injured the insurance company would pay out. Presumably caps and thresholds would also apply. Presumably the insurance companies would launch an investigation, if the owner* or manufacturer of the driverless taxi was negligent then they would also have to reimburse the insurance companies.

The upside is that this option could still be combined or augmented with option #1 of socialising increasingly rare catastrophic accidents. It also incentivises car makers to make less risky cars and continually debug their software as safer cars will attract lower insurance premiums. The downside is that travel insurance may be complicated and difficult to implement whilst also making driverless taxis less economical.

*Logically, taxi owners would also insure their driverless vehicles and keep them in good condition to avoid negligence claims and ensure payouts.

Today I want to share with you five websites I really like that are related in some way to driverless cars.

1. Marginal Revolution.

Tyler Cowen operates a super awesome site which covers broad topics but mostly confined to public policy and technology. Most often he and his co-writers often just uncover awesome content, like this ridiculously fascinating post about Uruguay (which got me carried away reading other articles for 10 minutes), this one that shows women perceive inflation to be higher than men, and regular assorted links posts. In my opinion this is one of the best blogs on the internet (and this is not biased by the fact that Cowen linked to us twice).

2. Ideas 4 Brad. Brad Templeton is an experienced technology veteran who founded the world’s first online business. He pioneered online discussion about robocars well before anyone else was speaking about it. Now a consultant to Google’s self-driving car program, he blogs regularly including this recent post about driverless cars. He can come across as a bit cranky but once you get past this, you can enjoy some really high quality thinking, such as this post about Nate Silver’s election predictions.

3. Next Big Future. Amazing technology blog for anyone who wants to follow the forefront of new technology. They keep us updated on things like Google Fiber, which is everywhere, and less talked about stuff such as recent stem cell research about growing cells in sponges. Most of the stuff they report on will probably turn out to be vaporware but this site does more than any other to stay positive about the future.

4. Motorscore.com. A bit more relevant to cars, this site is like a Rotten Tomatoes for cars but what’s most cool is that they have compiled the different car reviews into mini guides for specific types of models. To be specific, check out this list of AWD cars or this one that looks at 7 passenger cars. It doesn’t work in all cases – this Small SUVs guide is slightly awkward – but overall the site is highly useful.

5. Bryant Walker Smith is a law lecturer at Stanford University. He’s probably the leading authority in the United States on the topic of autonomous vehicle law and blogs occasionally. He needs to blog a bit more, but here’s his most recent paper which concludes that autonomous vehicles are already legal in the United States. Nice.

Bonus Site: Autopia.

What do you think? What are your favourites?

Currently an online poll at Canadian website cbc.ca is showing 62% of respondents in favour of self driving cars.

Brad Templeton has an article up at Forbes comparing High Speed Rail to self driving cars and how both might integrate with futuristic air travel. (Hat Tip to Thom Landon for both links).

Meanwhile College Humor does a parody of Google X including the self driving car program (Thanks to Paul Godsmark).

Expert Members of IEEE think that 75% of cars will be self driving by 2040 (Thanks to Gabriel).

This next link (whilst not specifically on self driving cars) has an interesting look at the pros and cons of robotic parking.

An article at Business Insider says Google’s self driving cars may be more expensive than Ferrari’s but suggests ways to bring down the costs.

Nearly 90% of surveyed drivers want driver assist technologies but only 39% would be happy with a self driving car*, at least according to the Detroit News. Interestingly, the article notes:

99 percent of those surveyed considered themselves “good” drivers.

Enjoy your weekend!

*39% seems quite encouraging for a relatively untested technology that is still a ways off…

Incredibly, someone is already looking at this problem and taking the idea of ‘defensive driving’ a bit more literally than most – his name is David Mascarenas and he’s from the Los Alamos National Lab.

One of Mascarenas’s projects makes robots less predictable and reduces their vulnerability to ambush. If you know a driverless delivery truck always goes down the same deserted street at 6:14 am, you can get there first. Mascarenas addressed this using a technique known as info-gap decision theory. This allows the robot to weigh the risk of any particular route with the possible benefits. This would apply equally to a robot submarine looking at the best way to gather oceanography data while avoiding fishing nets, or a pizza-carrying droid finding the shortest way through city streets. Crucially, the process is unpredictable: The machine will not always take the same route twice, and would-be ambushers can’t anticipate where it will be.

He also designed robots to behave in such a way that makes them less vulnerable to being hijacked while moving. Follow the link to check it out.

Thanks Chris L for sending the article in.

They’re saying that Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) – once in a lifetime events that are major solar flares – will cause satellites to stop working, meaning that driverless cars will drive off the road or into other cars:

If a CME-caused geomagnetic storm should take place and knock out GPS satellites, imagine the massive traffic it would cause, at best. Even worse, it could result in major accidents, should these cars veer off of the road and out of control. That’s a scary possibility that this recent solar flare close call should bring to the forefront. The engineers must devise a backup plan that overrides the GPS part of autonomous driving, should the signal be lost.

I wanted to leave a comment saying that driverless cars don’t depend on GPS – like so many assume – but you need to register to comment.

Here’s a picture of the prototype of the system, called KARR, from the article:

Credit http://www.brightsideofnews.com – “The final product is quite different.”

 We also learned that the Driverless car system will utilize the CAN and MOST150 Ethernet protocols to communicate with a sensor array and the rest of the Class A, Class B and Class C subsystems.

Google will submit the boxes for NTSB and FIA/TUV certification in October or November timeframe, after which we can expect roughly 3-5 year design period before the first driverless cars reach the market. The companies closest to deploy the Driverless Car System (DCS) are Volkswagen Audi Group and Toyota. As a side note, the DCS is planned to be assembled in the United States. Current systems however, are manufactured in Far East.

 

Read the full article here.

The article quotes no sources. What do you think of it? Scroll down to leave a comment.

Also, my mini startup has just sent a new site live into soft launch: Medisato.com - it’s a health symptoms database.

My other mini startup, Motorscore.com, is kicking ass at the moment.