European countries keen to introduce autonomous vehicles on public highways must now switch their focus away from technology and trials and point it towards receiving Government support for driverless initiatives, a conference in the Netherlands heard on Friday.

 

Adriano Alessandrini of the University of Florence and the CityMobil2 autonomous vehicle project told the Polis sustainable transport event in Rotterdam: “Research on technology is done and fully autonomous vehicles can operate today on some streets. But to do that we need Government support and regulation, which is extremely important. If you go to the Dutch ministry and say you want to put driverless vehicles on a motorway they will say ‘no’.”

 

But the European Commission’s head of surface transport Liam Breslin said: “I don’t think we should be rushing to regulation and control how autonomous vehicles run on the road. We need to see some big trials on the roads, with tests taking place in mixed traffic in cities and across borders. We need to see what is likely to go wrong before we rush into regulation.”

 

Also at the conference the International Transport Forum’s administrator Philippe Crist said that the drive to introduce autonomous cars must not be thrown off course by safety fears during trials. “The day that poor fellow died in the Tesla accident there were more than 20 others who died in other crashes in America.”

 

He added: “There will be crashes and injuries and unfortunately deaths (of those using autonomous vehicles) but we have to keep in mind that we are trying to reduce the overall burden of this on society with the introduction of technology.”

 

European Road Transport Research Advisory Council co-chairman Jean-Luc di Paola-Galloni said he thought members of the public – and especially the elderly – will welcome a greater level of automation in how they get around. “Digitally connected citizens now expect something else,” he said. “The ageing society of tomorrow will be nothing like the old people of today,” he added, suggesting that elderly people in future will be more comfortable with using apps on the Internet to help with mobility.

 

(Photo: DfT)