Recent research from the UK, highlights the difficulties of adapting with the changeover from current motor vehicles
to autonomous cars. But it also highlights problems of adjusting to a different car including the way in which the technology operates and how you control it.
The changeover period to autonomous vehicles is not just about how a manually driven car will interact with an autonomous one.
What happens when drivers switch from one vehicle to another or if an autonomous car has to pass controls back to the driver because it has reached a situation that it cannot comprehend?
The UK’s Venturer autonomous vehicle project has conducted trials at Bristol Robotics Laboratory and on roads at the University of the West of England (UWE) campus.
The trials set out to investigate two scenarios when switching frequently between automated and manual driving modes within urban and extra-urban settings. The scenarios are: ‘Takeover’ (the time taken to re-engage with vehicle controls); and ‘Handover’ (the time taken to regain a baseline/normal level of driving behaviour and performance).
The broader issue here for companies with fleets is when drivers who are used to driving in one car (which might be their own) have to jump into a different vehicle at work.
Fleet Auto News tests new cars each week. In the past, the main thing you had to do when you picked up a new car was to adjust the seat and mirrors and check what side of the steering wheel the indicators are on.
You started driving after only a few moments in the car. Now it takes much longer. There are two major differences. For a start, the controls are not just a series of knobs and buttons but are often activated by a series of commands on a screen which are different for each car.
Pre-setting radio stations, for example, is not just finding the frequency and holding down a switch for a few seconds. Now it is often a complex series of steps requiring interpretation of screen symbols.
One of the key aspects of a road test now is, how long does it take to connect Bluetooth?
Apple Car Play and Android Auto allow you to have your familiar phone controls up on the car screen. That’s good but I want it for every control not just music and podcasts.
The other issue is that not all road safety features are the same. Some automatic emergency braking only works at relatively low speeds. Many cars are now getting lane departure warnings but the level of accuracy varies enormously.
The JD Power organisation conducts reliability surveys for news cars in America. They base their results on how many times a car is taken back to the dealer. The numbers have increased recently not because of cars breaking down more but because people are going back to the dealer more frequently to learn how to operate some of the aspects of their cars.
Road safety for fleets might well have to incorporate a training period for people who have not driven a particular model before and a features list of what the car has and how the critical functions are controlled and ultimately operate.
