In the web page, Driverless Vehicles: A Vision for Singapore’s Transport, Ministry of Transport (MOT) website (2018) stated that the addition of Autonomous Vehicle (AV) technology to Singapore transport system will bring various benefits to the society. Benefits like car sharing system allow commuters to have more traveling options rather than owning a car. Car sharing will also lead to reduced numbers of private vehicles on the road in the future, thus reducing the environmental footprint and usage of manpower. According to the web page, trials were conducted to ensure such technology could blend into our current transport system, with the first public road testing conducted at One-north. A committee on Autonomous Road Transport for Singapore (CARTS), with renowned international experts, academics, and industry representatives has been set up to oversee and explore how this AV technology can further benefit Singapore. With everything in place, all that remains is for this technology to prove its worth in the future.
While this article describes the benefits of AV technology, it certainly fails to address the negative side of having such technology, for example, safety issues. Safety issues such as sensors malfunctioning, terrorism and the danger of having both manual and autonomous car on the road.
Firstly is the sensors malfunctioning issue. These self-driving cars depend heavily on sensors to be their guide, therefore if there’s disruption in signal or sensors malfunction, road accidents might happen. Recent cases have shown that self-driving cars are still not safe for use, with two fatal accidents reported in the United States caused by self-driving cars earlier this year according to Broussard(2018). Investigations have also shown that the Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) sensors have its limitations with reference to one of the incidents that took place in Tempe, Arizona. According to investigations by Singh(2018), the pedestrian is within human vision range based on the in-car camera footage and theory of LIDAR sensor but the vehicle did not slow down when it was supposed to, and it ended in tragedy.
Secondly, with terrorism looming large, autonomous car just might be the next suitable target. As Broussard (2018) mentioned, these self-driving cars are vulnerable to hackers as they depend on GPS, therefore pocket-size GPS jammers can be easily obtained online for people who want to bypass GPS-enabled toll booths for free. Think about it on a larger scale, terrorist applying the same logic by jamming the autonomous cars GPS signal using a bigger bandwidth jammer at the highway could result in the next big incident.
Lastly, having both manual and autonomous car together on the road poses danger. According to MOT website(2018), car sharing will reduce the numbers of private vehicles on the road in the future. This means that there will still be manually driven cars on the road with a mixture of autonomous car. Muoio(2016) shared that on February 2016, a Google autonomous car got into its first accident by driving into a bus in a merging lane due to wrong assumption. The autonomous car assumed that the bus will give way and drive straight into its path. Assuming all the autonomous car are calibrated in the same signal, they can read each other. But it can’t read what a manually driven car is trying to do.
In conclusion, there is still room for improvement for AV technology before it can be safely implemented in Singapore.
References
Ministry Of Transport Singapore (2018). Driverless Vehicles: A Vision for Singapore’s Transport.Retrieved October 11, 2018, from https://www.mot.gov.sg/transport-matters/motoring/Detail/driverless-vehicles-a-vision-for-singapore-s-transport/
Broussard, M. (2018, March 23). Self-Driving Cars Still Don’t Know How to See. Retrieved October 11, 2018, from https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/uber-self-driving-fatality-arizona/556001/
Singh, H. (2018, March 23). Uber’s Autonomous Car Accident Investigation – Towards Data Science. Retrieved October 11, 2018, from https://towardsdatascience.com/ubers-autonomous-car-accident-investigation-57fcc88cb6e7
Muoio, D. (2016, August 25). 6 scenarios self-driving cars still can’t handle. Retrieved October 12, 2018, from https://www.businessinsider.sg/autonomous-car-limitations-2016-8/?r=US&IR=T