Dear Professor Blackstone,
Thank you for spending time to read and provide feedback on my reader response. I have made some amendments based on the feedback.
In this article “Singapore Revs Up Engines for Autonomous Vehicles Race”, Noble (2019) stated that as Singapore has been trying to merge autonomous vehicles into its transport system, several government agencies came up with a temporary national standard called “Technical Reference 68(TR 68)” to advocate the safety of fully deployable autonomous vehicles (AVs). It was further elaborated that TR68 plays an essential role in covering four important aspects of AV deployment; automobile performance, safety, network security and statistic configurations. According to Nobel, this standard will not only enhance the safety of AVs but also uplift Singapore’s development and adoption of AVs. Although Noble has stated that complying with the TR68 standard will ensure AVs deployed are safe to a certain extent, other factors that affect safety like the AV processing system, the detection system and weather conditions must be taken into consideration before AV deployment can be considered safe.
The first factor that makes AV deployment safe is the processing system of the AV. The processing system acts as the “brain” of the AV. It takes in information from sensors and responds according to the situation. With the “brain” being an essential aspect of AV, failure of the processing system can be a minacious issue. One example was found in the article written by Felton (2018). The article stated that on 20 January 2016, a driver was travelling on a highway in China when his Tesla crashed into the rear of a road-sweeping truck, resulting in his death. An SD memory card installed in the car and AV experts determined that the autopilot mode was turned on throughout the drive, but it did not stop the car when it was nearing the stationary truck. In addition, there was no warning alert. While there was no definitive explanation stated in the article on how this accident occurred, it was likely a malfunction in the processing system that caused the car to not respond appropriately to the information fed by the sensors. This shows that there is still room for improvement in enhancing the functionality of AV’s processing system
Another aspect that needs to be taken into consideration for the safe deployment of AV is the detection system of the AV. The detection system acts as the “eyes” of an AV to detect objects on the road. Thus, failure in the detection system could result in dire consequences. This was supported by a magazine article written by T.S. (2018). The article stated that on 18 March 2018, a pedestrian was killed in the night by an AV, even though the vehicle was equipped with a “Lidar” detection system. It was further elaborated that the “Lidar” detection system has the capability to detect objects around the car even at night. Contrary to this claim, the detection system misclassified the pedestrian as an unidentified object and failed to engage its emergency brakes despite being on autonomous mode, resulting in the fatality of the pedestrian. Such fatality accident has proved that AVs up to the present time are incapable of enhancing safety and improvements must be made to minimize such incident from occurring.
Lastly, the unpredictability of weather conditions needs to be considered for the safe deployment of AV too. Harsh weather conditions such as rain or snow could prevent AVs from functioning properly and safely. This was supported by Resnick (2019) stating that these harsh weather conditions can change the way an AV distinguishes objects on the road. Firstly, harsh weather conditions could blur or block the “eyes” of the AV which could potentially cause AVs to confuse the weather conditions as obstacles. Secondly, such conditions can cover road signage such as speed limit and prevent the detection system from gathering the essential information it needs. With the inability to detect road signage, it will hinder the system from functioning which may result in fatality accidents.
Singapore is a country that focuses on safety for commuters. Adhering to the TR68 standard indeed helps in the safe deployment of AV, but only to a certain extent. Therefore, other factors need to be evaluated as well before AV deployment can be considered fully safe.
References:
Felton, R. (2018, February 27). Two Years On, A Father Is Still Fighting Tesla Over Autopilot And His Son’s Fatal Crash. Retrieved from https://jalopnik.com/two-years-on-a-father-is-still-fighting-tesla-over-aut-1823189786
Noble, L.W. (2019, July 8). Singapore revs up engines for autonomous vehicle race. Singapore Business Review. Retrieved from https://sbr.com.sg/transport-logistics/exclusive/singapore-revs-engines-autonomous-vehicle-race
Resnick, J. (2019, January 29). How Does Weather Affect Self-Driving Cars? Retrieved from https://ride.tech/self-driving/how-does-weather-affect-self-driving-cars/
T.S. (2018, May 29). Why Uber’s self-driving car killed a pedestrian. The Economist. Retrieved from https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2018/05/29/why-ubers-self-driving-car-killed-a-pedestrian
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