INTERVIEW RICHARD MIDDELMANN, VITRONIC
roads soon, but that won’t remove the need for enforcement.” There will be many issues of compat-
ibility and safety and security for many years to come until, perhaps, the bal- ance is tilted 51:49 per cent in favour of autonomous vehicles. All the time those figures are anything like 10:90 per cent (or 0.005:99.995 per cent as they are now) there will be the need for enforce- ment. There’s good reason for the phrase “human error”. “Exactly, and what makes this ITS World
Congress so fascinating is that so many of the world’s top researchers into this topic are going to be presenting or at least in attendance. We’ve seen over the last 25-30 years the move from the develop- ment of core technologies within vehicles that are all the necessary building blocks that need to be in place to foster the move towards autonomy. “ Will there be the need for a sector of
the enforcement market that will deal with autonomous vehicles? “No, there won’t be any need for
enforcement all if all vehicles are auton- omous,” retorts Middelmann. “It’ll be superfluous because all you will be able to consider is if the software algorithms are appropriate and nothing whatso- ever to do with human behaviour. We are seeing an increase in autonomous vehicles on the open road and eventu- ally there will be autonomous vehicles on local streets, but until there are there will be human motorists travelling too fast for the conditions, ignoring local speed limits, and that will mean that there will be a need to enforce. There’ll be a need to enforce vehicles travelling through specific dedicated bus lanes, for example, or lanes that connect spe- cific suburban areas that are only per- mitted to be used by public transport, so the need to detect and enforce that becomes important.” In Vitronic’s company profile article on
pages 39-40 of this issue you will find a telling graphic noting the accident statis- tics of the company’s home country, Ger- many. Considering Germany’s dissimilar topography, and considering it’s just over
CONNECTED AUSTRALIA SUPPLEMENT
Rear end Crashes by type and region
4,856
Off path or out of control (on straight)
Off path or out of control (on curve)
Adjacent direction at intersections
Other opposing directions
Pedestrian 1,527 Manoeuvring 1,669
Side swipe or lane change
Head on (not overtaking)
On path Overtaking
Miscellaneous or unknown
307
441 396
165 Number of crashes Crashes by type and region
half the size of New South Wales but has a population three times greater than Aus- tralia’s, it’s not difficult to put two and two together and imagine that comparing traffic accident statistics would make for fascinating reading. Sometimes two and two fail to make four, however. “They are different, yes, as fatigue
becomes an issue in Australia due to the long distances between urban areas and between our major cities. The big- gest issue, though, is driver attitude, and that’s human nature rather than anything
22
specific to Australia or any one particular jurisdiction. I would imagine that’s the same everywhere,” says Middelmann, nonchalantly batting away the question. “There are local effects but we still have
the same types of accidents, vehicles leav- ing the road, losing control, impacting pedestrians, rear-ending other vehicles or travelling in an ‘inappropriate direction’… you get all those types of accidents in Aus- tralia and Germany, although the distribu- tion of them might be a little different.” A little different, a lot alike. ●
www.thinkinghighways.com 4,613 791 1,880 2,321
1,145 1,249
Metropolitan County
4,262 1,453 6,284 4,335 9,915 9,656 4,255 7,136 7,567 7,814
Mobile, in-car enforcement can detect changes in driver behaviour
17,825
Source: Transport for New South Wales
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52