22 AFTERMARKET NOVEMBER 2023 TECHNICAL/AFTERMARKET OF THE FUTURE www.aftermarketonline.net UK lead role in 1st international standard for safe self-driving Experts from the UK have been instrumental in developing the very first international standard for the safe operation of self-driving vehicles, the new ISO 34503:2023. Based on BSI PAS 1883, developed by the UK National Standards Body, it uses the Operational Design Domain (ODD) concept championed by Professor Siddartha Khastgir, of WMG at the University of Warwick. The ODD basically defines where a self-driving vehicle is going to operate, and the new ISO standard (full title: Road Vehicles — Test scenarios for automated driving systems — Specification for operational design domain) provides specifications for three key categories: Scenery elements: nonmovable elements e.g. roads, bridges, traffic lights Environment conditions: weather and other atmospheric conditions Dynamic elements: all movable objects and actors “Successful standardisation efforts are only possible with true international collaboration,” said Professor Khastgir. “I am grateful to experts from various countries worldwide who have engaged and contributed actively to this standard.” A new industry report by Cambridge-based independent market research provider, IDTechEx, claims that “Autonomous vehicles will soon be safer than humans, some already are”. Released in September 2023, the “Autonomous Cars, Robotaxis & Sensors 2024-2044” report was authored by Dr James Jeffs, Senior Technology Analyst at IDTechEx. The most interesting aspect of the research is the key metric that IDTechEx uses to monitor autonomous vehicle safety: miles per disengagement. First, it sets out the testing miles submitted by the top testing companies – including Waymo, Cruise, Pony AI, Zoox and Nuro – in California between 2015 and 2022. It then analyses how frequently the AV safety driver needed to intervene with the autonomous system. In 2022, Cruise led when it came to disengagement. During its 863,000 miles of testing, safety drivers only needed to intervene nine times. What’s more, IDTechEx concluded that four of these nine disengagements were caused by the poor performance of other nearby drivers. The study then applies a slightly spurious method – assuming that each disengagement would lead to a collision… and compares this to the average US human driver performance of approx. 200,000 miles between collisions – in order to justify the ‘some AVs are already better than humans’ claim. It isn’t an exact science, but the important point stands. Self-driving cars are getting safer year-on-year. IDTechEx: Best self-driving cars already safer than average human driver Neil Kennett looks at cutting-edge auto tech coming to a workshop near you soon AFTERMARKET OF THE FUTURE A commentator on the UK aftermarket since before Concorde was grounded, Neil is Editor of Carsofthefuture.co.uk, providing news and views about driverless vehicles, and Director of Communications at Selfdrivingpr.com, experts in automotive/autonomous media and public relations
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