The driverless car takes its first steps and the giants are already facing each other, between the Web and industry. In the midst of the work in progress of the Google Car, France is also trying, which on 14 September will bring Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron (and perhaps also Prime Minister Manuel Valls) on board the Citroen C4 Picasso, first transalpine smart car signed by the PSA group, which will also be followed by the new model of the Renault, the Next Two. But as Vincent Abadie himself, PSA's project manager, admits, “we cannot launch a vehicle that is 98% safe. We have to be able to handle all situations”.
Apparently, however, not even a 100% ready car can be said to be perfect for making its debut in city traffic. Or maybe it is too much. The news comes from the US and concerns the Google Car. Looking at the glass half full, the balance of the latest tests is also positive: the Google Car works. But paradoxically it works too well to adapt to the urban "jungles" of the great cities of the world. As he told the New York Times Donald Norman, the director of the Design Lab at the University of California, “the real problem is that they are too safe, these cars have to learn to be aggressive in the right dose. And the right dose depends on the different cultures”.
From 2009 to the present, self-driving car tests have recorded only 16 accidents, and all were caused by human error. One of the most frequent cases is that of pedestrian crossings, which notoriously are not respected in such a slavish way by drivers in the flesh: as soon as it perceives a pedestrian, the intelligent car slows down, and the motorist behind runs into him. In short, it will be necessary to explain to this car that entering an intersection in Mumbai, London, Naples are very different things. In the Shibuya district of Tokyo, for example, there is what is considered the most complicated pedestrian crossing in the world: with greenery, even a thousand people can pour into the intersection at a time.
A big problem, but not the only one. Then there is the regulatory and insurance issue: how will these cars ever be able to circulate freely in cities, and above all how will responsibility be established in the event of an accident, given that the driver is not a natural person but a piece of software? In France they are already thinking about it, and in the meantime the Ministry of the Economy has given the green light to an ordinance which will facilitate the carrying out of tests also in urban centers and which will allow by the end of the year the debut on the “péripherique” (the Grande Raccordo Anulare of Paris) of the new models, accompanied by a specialized driver ready to intervene in case of need. But marketing will still take time: as the French newspaper Les Echos points out, the Vienna Convention (being updated but still in force today) requires the driver not only to be present, but also to keep his hands constantly on the wheel.
