The bumpy road towards automated vehicles: Can we smooth the path?

EXTENDED ABSTRACT: Autonomous vehicles and driver assist technologies are seen as the next-big-thing for road safety. Many authoritative organisations are predicting benefits of up to 95% reductions in crashes; levels never achieved before. Unfortunately, these forecasts are at best optimistic and at worst misleading as they are based on the false ideas that driver error is at the heart of all road safety problems and new technology is infallible. This presentation will summarise the main issues with the introduction of autonomous vehicles and explain why we need to act now to ensure that we maximize the road safety benefits from these vehicles