Asleep in the back: a simply complex definition of the autonomous vehicle
What is an autonomous car? It’s not a trick question, but answering it is trickier than you might think.
For a start, what does “autonomous” mean? Does it have a steering wheel? Brakes? Accelerator? A driver’s seat? Is it always autonomous, or only on-demand? Can it execute all driving tasks, all of the time, or just some, some of the time?
And what about driverless? Self-driving? Unmanned? Is any one of these more autonomous than the others?
Which leads us to the issue of how autonomous is autonomous. Defining autonomous—the term we’ll be using—involves much more than just agreeing on a name.
What is an autonomous car? It’s not a trick question, but answering it is trickier than you might think
Is it autonomous if you can take your hands off the wheel, and maybe your feet off the pedals, but you need to keep your eyes on the road ready to take back control of the vehicle when alerted? Or is it autonomous if you can look down at your phone or watch a movie, taking not just your hands and feet off, but also your eyes, and your mind off the task of driving?
And who defines that level of automation? A few years ago, SAE International, a US organization which represents automotive engineers—created a six-step guide to automation. Intended for engineers rather than the general public, it ranged from Level 0, meaning no automation whatsoever, to Level 5, meaning the vehicle can drive itself anywhere at any time without any human intervention.
But despite such apparently clear codification, there’s plenty of room for error, doubt, confusion, and misinterpretation, whether unintended or deliberate, as per Liza Dixon’s notion of “autonowashing”—that is, use of the term autonomous (or driverless, or self-driving…) to mean, well, anything the manufacturer (or journalist!) wants it to mean.
Consumers are confused, the absence of common terminology is confusing—and dangerous—and the longer the confusion remains unresolved, the longer it will be before we can sit and sleep in the back of a vehicle without a human doing the driving
Once you’ve worked through all of that, there’s the age-old question of liability: Who is responsible if your autonomous vehicle causes a crash? If it’s in autonomous mode, the driver has already abdicated the driving responsibility to the vehicle. You’re (probably) not responsible for a crash when you’re a passenger in a taxi, but where the burden of responsibility lies once you’ve activated autonomous mode is still very much in question.
That’s why the Law Commission of England and Wales and the Scottish Law Commission recently recommended the introduction of an "Automated Vehicles Act" to distinguish clearly between vehicles with driver assistance features, such as adaptive cruise control, and those that are self-driving." Note, even here, the use of different terms: automated, self-driving.
This proposal would result in the regulation of autonomous vehicles with sanctions for manufacturers, not vehicle occupants, should anything go wrong when human drivers hand driving control to their vehicles.
“There are two kinds of vehicle: Ones where we can get in the back and sleep, and ones where we actually have to do some kind of driving”—Alex Roy
Automakers rarely make public commitments on the issue of liability, but in December 2021, Mercedes-Benz became the first automaker in Europe to gain approval for a Level 3 driving system—and the automaker confirmed it will assume responsibility for its performance when Drive Pilot is engaged. Mercedes joins Volvo Car, whose Chief Executive, Hakan Samuelsson, said in 2015 the automaker would take responsibility for its cars in autonomous mode.
But neither sells a fully autonomous vehicle. Indeed, currently no manufacturer does.
As a result of the confusion caused by a lack of common terminology, the US Self-Driving Coalition has renamed itself the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association (AVIA). Now only Tesla uses the term self-driving, misleadingly calling its $12,000 optional driver assistance system “Full Self-Driving”—and since it’s Level 2, the system requires hands-on, eyes-on driver attention.
Equipping a vehicle with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) is very different from equipping a vehicle with the software, machine learning and artificial intelligence, sensor suite, and hardware required for a safe autonomous vehicle. That said, the rapid roll-out of increasingly capable ADAS technology is narrowing the gap between driver and machine operation, and makes autonomous driving seem closer than it really is. And the capabilities and near-ubiquity of state-of-the-art ADAS technology on new cars belie the lengthy and incremental evolution of said technology. Adaptive cruise control hasn’t appeared overnight, or even over the last couple of years—what we have now has taken decades to develop.
Equipping a vehicle with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) is very different from equipping a vehicle with the software, machine learning and artificial intelligence, sensor suite, and hardware required for a safe autonomous vehicle
There’s growing discomfort among autonomous vehicle experts and commentators about the absence of common terminology. Philip Koopman, an Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, proposes four categories of vehicle automation: Driver Assistance, Supervised Automation, Autonomous Operation, and Vehicle Testing. Sam Abuelsamid of Guidehouse Insights talked on the No Parking Podcast about the need for one common term: “automated”—and in his view, it’s either automated, or it isn’t. And Mark Rosekind, the former National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Administrator who’s now Chief Safety Innovation Officer at Zoox, sees two broad categories: ADAS, for SAE Levels 1-3, with human responsibility for driving, and autonomous, for Levels 4 and 5, where the human is not responsible.
“I would define an autonomous vehicle as one that is capable of doing what we choose it to do while we sit in the back and sleep,” said Alex Roy, the former Cannonball Run record-holder, and now keen advocate for autonomous vehicles, during his appearance on Ride: The Urban Mobility Podcast. There are two kinds of vehicle, he explained: “Ones where we can get in the back and sleep, and ones where we actually have to do some kind of driving.”
And so we return to the original question: What is an autonomous vehicle? “We don’t want an autonomous vehicle which has a mind of its own,” said Roy. “What we want is a vehicle that can make decisions on our behalf, and do what we want it to do.” Consumers are confused, the absence of common terminology is confusing—and dangerous—and the longer the confusion remains unresolved, the longer it will be before we can sit and sleep in the back of a vehicle without a human doing the driving.
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Alex Roy joined Ride: The Urban Mobility Podcast for a discussion about autonomous vehicles. You can find the podcast episode page here, where you can listen to “Episode 14: Talking Autonomous Vehicles With Alex Roy”—or you can download it wherever you get your podcasts.
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