Attention should be paid to the policy lag in the application of autonomous driving technology.
Author | Rob
Edited by | Wenliang
The most noteworthy progress in the autonomous driving industry this week is that Beijing issued a notice of unmanned manned demonstration application yesterday, and Baidu became the first batch of approved enterprises.
"Driverless cars will definitely have accidents, and even fatal accidents, but this probability is much lower than that of someone driving." Meanwhile, yesterday afternoon, a screenshot of Baidu's founder, chairman and CEO Robin Li's circle of friends circulated online.
"Be at least an order of magnitude lower." Zhang Yaqin, who is currently an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, a chair professor of intelligent science at Tsinghua University, and the dean of the Intelligent Industry Research Institute, commented on this.
Obviously, Robin Li's statement is intended to show that unmanned driving is not 100% safe, but it can greatly reduce the traffic accident rate in reality.
But in addition, at the same time, we should also pay attention to the current policy lag in the application of autonomous driving technology in China.
Autonomous driving technology is a new engine for the transformation and upgrading of the automobile industry, the United States, Germany, Japan and other countries have long been the development of intelligent network to the national strategic height, have from the top level design to strengthen the coordination mechanism at the national level, the international competition is unprecedentedly fierce.
In contrast, mainland autonomous driving has actually reached the international leading level in core technology research and development and industrialization application, and it is urgent to solve the institutional construction of operational qualifications, product compliance, and regulatory compliance.
Just like a tube of stimulants and a strong needle, policy first, in order to stimulate innovation in the field of automatic driving, as well as the ability to land on a large scale.
Driverless cars are safer than people
Since self-driving technology is still new, the public lacks a deep understanding of it, and there are often different debates:
One of them believes that the safety of automatic driving is much higher than that of human manual driving, and you can trust automatic driving technology with confidence; the other is that because of the car accident of an autonomous vehicle with a certain level, the safety of automatic driving technology is far lower than that of human driving, and even has a fear of it.
Baidu founder Robin Li undoubtedly belongs to the positive optimistic faction: "Driverless driving will definitely have accidents, and even fatal accidents, but this probability is much lower than that of someone driving."
This sentence sounds surprising at first, but in fact, there is a lot of detailed data behind it.
In December last year, China Automobile Center, Tongji University and Baidu jointly issued the White Paper on Traffic Safety for Autonomous Vehicles (hereinafter referred to as the White Paper).
Through CIDAS, the largest road traffic database in China, the White Paper screened out 6967 accidents caused by passenger cars from 2011 to 2021, and found that about 81.5% of passenger car accidents were caused by human factors of drivers. Among them, about 79.9% are due to the subjective error of the driver caused by the accident, and about 20.1% is due to the limited ability of the driver to cause the accident.
Specifically, the detailed causes of accidents caused by subjective errors by drivers can be divided into failure to give way according to regulations, excessive speed, illegal use of lanes, drunk driving, violation of traffic signals, and fatigue driving.
Among them, the proportion of failure to give way according to regulations is as high as 43.4%. The causes of accidents due to limited driver capabilities can be subdivided into failure to pay attention to the behavior of other traffic participants, failure to maintain a safe distance, low driving proficiency, and other wrong driving behaviors.
It is undeniable that when humans master the steering wheel, they will cause a series of car accidents to occur at any time due to various factors, and most of the accident causes are also closely related to the violation of "people".
If autonomous driving technology replaces human drivers, the traffic accident rate may be significantly reduced.
According to a study by the foreign agency Eno Centre for Transportation, if 90 percent of cars on U.S. roads were converted to self-driving cars, the number of crashes would fall from 6 million to 1.3 million and the death toll from 33,000 to 11,300.
Part of the reason for this data is based on the real-time dynamic acquisition and recognition of the surrounding environment by self-driving cars through vehicle-road collaboration technology and multi-sensor fusion, and then take corresponding measures against other traffic participants in a timely manner.
Based on CIDAS database data, the following figure shows the distribution of pedestrian centers of gravity with a detection range of 30°, 45° and 60° in the 1.0 seconds before the collision of vehicles controlled by human drivers and autonomous driving, respectively. Compared with the limited ability of humans to drive cars, the automatic driving perception function can detect more than 90% of the situations that may lead to accidents in advance.
In addition, the self-driving car that is not affected by fatigue and emotions, its relatively perfect decision-making planning can ensure that the vehicle is driven in accordance with the traffic regulations, which means that the normal driving of the autonomous vehicle can completely reduce the subjective error of human driving, that is, 80% of the accident causes of human driving or can be effectively avoided, and traffic safety will be greatly improved.
In addition, the current automatic driving system is also more and more perfect and mature, has been built by a set of main safety system, redundant system, remote cloud driving three layers of safety system, from the bicycle system design to the actual operation on the road in Robotaxi, to give the vehicle more complete than relying on human driving, diversified safety guarantee.
The permissible risk theory argues that damage can be left unputable when the substantial benefits of a new technology to society are compared to the inevitable losses.
"The process of commercialization of new things needs to be improved through continuous trial and error, and this law has been fully reflected in the mobile phone and computer industries." It's just that the automotive industry is more special, and many of its mistakes are often verified by blood lessons, but this does not delay the mass production time of autonomous driving. Zhang Xiang, an analyst in the automotive industry, once said this to the new intelligent driving.
Trial and error, repair, verification, and improvement, this is the law of the development of all new technologies, automatic driving technology is the same, the industry commercialization is good, the policy is open, can not be because of the fear of failure, it will stop moving forward.
Robotaxi also needs to complete this spiraling process through further de-security officers, so it is also urgent to have a more open policy to give a certain identity space so that it can continue to try and explore experience.
Seize the heights: It is urgent for all unmanned vehicles to go on the road
However, at the level of opening up the autonomous driving industry policy, the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and other countries have long been a quick step on the side, and international competition is unprecedentedly fierce.
For the United States, the European Union, Japan and other major auto industry countries or regions, they have long begun to plan and guide policies in this field, for example, in 1998, the US government promulgated the "Transportation Balance Act for the 21st Century", from the legislative level officially announced its ITS (intelligent transportation system) research focus from the technical field to infrastructure construction, so that the United States autonomous driving into the practical application stage.
Subsequently, the US government also promulgated the first policies and regulations on the classification and testing guidelines of autonomous driving.
At the legislative level of autonomous driving, Japan is at the forefront of the world. In August 2019, the Japanese government officially passed the amendment to the Road Transport Vehicle Law, which provides safety standards and attribution of responsibility for the practical application of autonomous driving in Japan.
Relying on the technical advantages of local vehicle companies, the European Union began to formulate policies related to autonomous driving in 2010, and tried to establish a unified standard and specification among member states.
For example, it is at the initiative of Germany that the L3 Lane Keeping System (ALKS), which has a maximum speed of 60 kilometers per hour on highways, has been used to solve problems such as traffic congestion, and the United Nations is expanding the regulation of ALKS.
In the area of "all vehicles to safety officers", governments around the world are also quickly stepping up their efforts.
In Europe, for example, countries have long begun to allow autonomous vehicles to conduct road tests without safety officers.
In 2017, the Netherlands updated its self-driving road testing bill to allow testing without human drivers. The UK allows self-driving cars to be tested on public roads and proposes the concept of test operators who do not sit in the driver's seat, but still requires the ability to take over the car in real time.
In May 2021, Germany passed a draft Autonomous Driving Law, which began allowing self-driving cars (L4) to drive in designated areas on public roads.
Germany thus became the first country in the world to allow driverless vehicles to participate in everyday traffic and be used nationwide.
The United Kingdom just changed its Road Law on April 20 to allow drivers to watch non-driving content (TV, movies, etc.) on built-in screens in autonomous driving mode, but at this time drivers need to keep the car in one lane and at a speed of less than 60 km/h.
In Japan, the Japanese National Police Agency has successively issued the "Guidelines for Road Testing of Autonomous Vehicles" and the "Guidelines for Road TestIng Permits for Remote Autonomous Driving Systems", allowing enterprises to apply for remote tests that are unmanned in the car.
In the United States, as early as 2018, Arizona said that vehicles without safe drivers in the car can be tested on the road as long as they can comply with the laws and rules of traditional driving, without special permission.
The California Transportation vehicle authority (DMV) also issued driver-free testing licenses to Companies such as Waymo and Nuro in 2018.
In addition, the United States has also allowed driverless companies to build driverless cars without steering wheels.
On March 10, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a 155-page "final rule" that removes several routine control requirements for vehicles equipped with autonomous driving systems and driverless cars.
According to CNBC, the document, called occupant Protection Safety Standards for VehiclesWithout Driving Controls, said driverless companies could build and deploy driverless cars without steering wheels in the future, subject to other safety regulations.
From legislation to industry standards to the whole car to the safety officer, compared with the United States, Japan, the European Union and other countries and regions, the mainland has shown a catch-up trend, and the current Robotaxi main driving unmanned service is a big step to keep up.
However, in order to further commercialize the landing, the domestic Robotaxi vehicle without safety personnel operation, is urgent, industrial policy is undoubtedly more need to be further opened and accelerated.
Liu Jianjun, a former professor at the School of Traffic Management of Chinese Min Public Security University, also believes that "the integration of unmanned driving into the normal operation and service of road traffic is inseparable from the intelligence of automatic driving, road and traffic management technology, and even more inseparable from the support of relevant government policies, and also needs the guarantee support of a set of standard systems for intelligent networked vehicles to drive on the road." ”
Policy Liberalization: A Shot in the Arm for the Commercialization of Autonomous Driving
The gradual liberalization of industrial policies is definitely a stimulant and a shot in the arm for Robotaxi players in the industry.
China's autonomous driving industry has developed for many years, and at first everyone rushed to Robotaxi, but after the beating of reality, there are few companies that can insist on focusing on Robotaxi.
As for when Robotaxi can land large-scale commercial pilot services, some people in the industry always look up to the three mountains of "technology", "policy" and "mass production", and think that it will take more than ten years to move away from the mountain, as little as seven or eight years.
However, at present, players such as Baidu are still focusing on moving forward, and what supports them to move forward is not only the confidence of the players in their own technical strength and financial maintenance ability, but also the continuous opening and innovation of the government at the level of policies and regulations.
In addition, the liberalization of autonomous driving policies will also have many social values, such as promoting the development of the intelligent networked automobile industry, the development of new infrastructure (vehicle-road collaboration), the achievement of double-carbon goals, the development of smart cities (unmanned vehicles are mobile sensors), the creation of new jobs (safety officers, cloud driving) and so on.
"Under the premise of ensuring absolute safety, the change of the main driver from manned to unmanned will further stimulate the technological innovation and business model innovation of automatic driving, and promote the commercialization process of China's automatic driving." Deng Zhidong, a professor in the Department of Computer Science at Tsinghua University, a doctoral supervisor and an expert in artificial intelligence, thinks so.
In this regard, although the country is a latecomer, it is running fast in small steps and making rapid progress.
In fact, since the State Council issued the "Made in China 2025" document in 2015, officially elevating the development of intelligent networking to the height of national strategy, local governments in China are speeding up the formulation of policy standards in an attempt to catch up with other countries, and the progress has been rapid in recent years.
Take Beijing Yizhuang Development Zone as an example.
In July 2019, the Beijing Autonomous Driving Test Management Joint Group released the first batch of T4 level autonomous driving test licenses, which began to allow L4 vehicles to be tested on open roads.
Six months later, Robotaxi began to test in the Yizhuang demonstration area, in April 2021, it began to support qualified Robotaxi for night and special weather testing, followed by May, China's first batch of Robotaxi began to carry out normal commercial operations, and fully open to the public.
Also in 2021, in October, Yizhuang opened 20 square kilometers of open urban roads to Robotaxi to test "no one in the main driver and no one in the co-driver", but at this time it cannot carry people.
At the end of November 2021, Yizhuang officially opened the first Robotaxi commercialization pilot in China, and now, Robotaxi, who has no one in the main driver and someone in the co-driver, has begun to try to carry out manned testing.
Robotaxi has taken less than 3 years in Yizhuang from open road testing, to manned testing, toll pilots, and then to manned tests for main drivers to safety officers.
It took Waymo's self-driving vehicles more than four years from being tested on public roads in California in October 2013 to removing the main driver safety officer for manned testing in 2017.
Overall, at the level of policies and regulations related to autonomous driving, China currently attaches more importance to the national level, and the policy support is greater, showing the characteristics of long-term stability and orderly innovation; although the US policy started earlier, there is also a top-level plan, but it shows the characteristics of barbaric growth and lacks clear rules and regulations.
For example, as far as the evaluation standards for autonomous vehicles are concerned, China follows the "multi-pillar method" autonomous driving test guidelines established by the Un/ECE Working Group on Autonomous Driving and Connected Vehicles (GRVA) in 2018, that is, testing through simulation tests, field tests and actual road tests.
Image source: Research Report on the Standardization Needs of Actual Road Tests for Autonomous Driving
In addition, China's main C-V2X also beat the DSRC and became the only international standard for the global Internet of Vehicles.
Although the United States has developed some standards (SAE, IEC and other standards) by some international standards organizations, they are all industry reference standards, and there is no mandatory access standard at the national level, and enterprises can decide how to test.
In addition, the domestic diversified and rich road environment is also another key advantage for China's development of autonomous driving technology.
For example, New Intelligent Driving has previously interviewed a number of executives of autonomous driving companies, and they all generally believe that China has a more prominent advantage in data quality.
Stable and strong policy promotion, diversified and rich road environment, this is one of the two key advantages of China's development of the autonomous driving industry.
However, whether it is in business or industrial policies and regulations, in fact, the competition around the world is already fierce and full of gunpowder, so we must continue to work hard as soon as possible on the basis of our advantages to further liberalize the policy, so that Robotaxi can achieve a full car without safety officers on the road.
This is also as Deng Zhidong said:
"It is expected that our policy planning and deployment will not only be able to keep up with the rapid development of autonomous driving in the United States and Europe, but also be more conducive to the commercialization of the all-unmanned vehicle on the road and the automatic driving industry as soon as possible, running in small steps, and achieving breakthroughs in policy support with points and areas, while at the same time making the corresponding safety risks controllable and predictable."
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