The successful commercialization of driverless cars has an attractive prospect

The third Sunday of November every year is the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims. According to statistics from the United Nations in early 2008, about 1.2 million people die in road traffic accidents every year. By the end of 2015, this number had risen to 1.25 million. 90% of these people are from low- and middle-income countries, and young people aged 15 to 29 are the biggest victims. How to make driving safer? Technology provides the solution of "driverless driving".

Compared with urban traffic with complex road conditions, driverless cars are more suitable for closed highways.

Are driverless cars safer? Many media commentators believe that the development of artificial intelligence has led people to hope to use driverless cars to improve vehicle safety, which is understandable. However, the limitations of technology itself make it difficult for people to trust the safety factor of driverless cars. Therefore, this question is a technological mystery, as difficult to solve as the question of "which came first, the chicken or the egg".

However, such embarrassing situations have not dispelled people's desire to continue to develop driverless technology. At the end of last month, the driverless truck of OTTO Automobile Company in the United States successfully completed its first cargo delivery mission. The delivery location was selected in Colorado in the western United States. The OTTO truck loaded with 45,000 cans of beer experienced 2 hours of unmanned driving and arrived safely at the warehouse. This journey was about 193 kilometers, which was the first time that a driverless truck completed a cargo delivery mission.

Anthony Lewandowski is one of the founders of OTTO. He was a research and development engineer for Google's driverless project and the creator of the "510 system" that is the foundation of Google's driverless technology. OTTO is mainly composed of 40 employees from companies such as Google, Apple and Tesla, and its research and development focus is on truck autonomous driving. In order to prove that trucks can achieve autonomous driving, OTTO uses Volvo VNL780 trucks equipped with radar, laser, cameras and software to complete cargo transportation tasks.

Lior Ron is the project leader, who used to work in Google Maps. In the official delivery video, he said that the average speed of the truck during this trip was 89 kilometers per hour, and most of the journey was on closed highways, without frequent stops and waiting for traffic lights, and without too many road signs and driving restrictions. Compared with complex urban traffic, driverless cars are more suitable for closed highways.

Autonomous driving will become an important part of Japan's urban transportation in the future

In addition to OTTO, there are more and more unmanned commercial pilots in the United States. In August this year, Uber "proudly" told customers in Pittsburgh that they could summon an autonomous vehicle with just a tap on their phone, and that anyone willing to ride would be free. In the middle of this month, Tesla even released a high-profile video of its autonomous driving platform called "Tesla's Perspective," which "implied" in an astonishing manner that taxi drivers might be completely laid off.

Of course, don’t think that only people in America are so fond of driverless cars. On the 13th of this month, Japan also conducted a driverless bus passenger test on a road in Senboku City, Akita Prefecture.

The test uses a "robot shuttle bus" developed by DeNA, a world-renowned mobile game company. It is about 4 meters long, 2 meters wide and 3 meters high. It can accommodate 12 people and has no driver's seat, steering wheel or accelerator. The test speed is about 10 kilometers per hour, but the maximum speed can reach 40 kilometers per hour. As can be seen from the official video, the appearance of this bus is very similar to the "EZ10" operating in the center of Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Senboku City is Japan's "National Strategic Special Zone", so it became the first experimental site in Japan to use steering wheel-less automatic vehicles. The project team specifically recruited more than 60 citizens to participate in the test ride. The bus determines the driving position through the satellite positioning system and uses sensors to sense the surrounding environment. During the test, the road along the shore of Tazawa Lake in Senboku City was blocked, and the driverless bus carried the experiencers four times along the 400-meter one-way route. The driving was safe and stable, which was recognized by the citizens and passengers.

As early as August this year, the AEON MALL shopping center in Chiba City, Japan, also started the trial operation of driverless buses. It is not difficult to guess that the Japanese government has begun to promote the application of driverless cars. Similar to Dubai's 2030 driverless plan, driverless cars will become an important part of Japan's urban transportation in the future, provided that safety is guaranteed.

Autonomous driving may be more suitable for commercial applications and may be used before personal use.

Continuous safety tests and commercial trials continue to refresh people's understanding of driverless technology. The driverless car accident that occurred some time ago is no longer so eye-catching, but this does not mean that there are no obstacles on the road to the marketization of driverless cars.

Many people are worried that driverless technology will lead to unemployment, whether it is truck drivers, bus drivers or taxi drivers, they may be replaced. In this regard, Lior Ron believes that the characteristic of driverless technology is that it can complete driving work uninterruptedly, avoiding driver fatigue. In the long run, it can also reduce logistics costs, but tasks such as loading and unloading still require manual assistance. In other words, drivers actually have a new helper. The research and development of driverless technology is not to eliminate drivers, but to provide a better labor model.

Michelle Krebs, a senior analyst at the US auto trading platform, pointed out that more and more people believe that compared to personal ownership of driverless cars, driverless technology may be more suitable for commercial applications and may precede personal ownership. After all, for everyone to have a driverless car parked in their garage, it requires that either the existing vehicles can be fully equipped with an autonomous driving system, or there is green recycling technology to handle non-intelligent cars, neither of which is currently realistic.

Half of the deaths in traffic accidents around the world each year are not caused by people sitting in cars or trucks, but by pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists on the roadside. Autonomous vehicles will reduce such occurrences. Dubai is expected to reduce transportation costs by 44% and save up to RMB 39 billion after promoting autonomous transportation. It will also reduce traffic pollution and traffic accidents by 12% each year. Therefore, although autonomous driving is controversial, the trial results and forecast data show that its commercial development is a good way to deal with traffic problems.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.