20 | New Scientist | 7 September 2019
SURVEILLANCE is a fact of life.
Your boss is monitoring your
performance at work,
supermarkets are collecting data
on your grocery shopping, face-
recognition cameras are tracking
where you walk. Now there is a
new frontier: the automobile.
In a few months, European
Union law-makers are due to
rubber stamp proposals that will
make a raft of monitoring devices
mandatory in cars within three
years. All new models of car will
come with black boxes, intelligent
speed assistants, drowsiness-
monitoring cameras and more
besides (see “Eyes on the road”,
right). While the EU is taking the
boldest steps, these technologies
aren’t far behind in other parts
of the world.
The European Commission,
which proposes legislation for
the EU, reckons the tech will save
more than 7000 lives by 2030.
But are we prepared for devices
that watch how we drive and try
to help us do it better?
When cars feature in the news,
the story is usually about their
nasty emissions or how to make
them drive themselves. Safety
isn’t much discussed, principally
because cars are already very
safe. In the US, the lifetime risk of
dying in a car accident is 1 in 572,
according to the US Insurance
Information Institute –
substantially lower than, for
example, dying from accidental
poisoning (1 in 64).
The European Commission,
however, says that introducing
15 advanced driver assistance
systems (ADAS) will make driving
safer. In a report published in
April 2018, it found that the suite
of changes could save at least
7300 lives by 2030, and reduce
the number of serious injuries
from car crashes by 38,900.
“We can have the same kindof impact as when safety belts
were first introduced,” says
Elżbieta Bieńkowska, the
European commissioner who is
responsible for overseeing the
implementation of the rules.
She isn’t alone in her optimism.
“It’s a very dramatic change,”
says Oliver Carsten, who studies
transport safety at the University
of Leeds, UK. “This is something
that could halve fatalities
across Europe.”
The tech pulls this off by
focusing on the main cause
of road accidents: drivers not
sticking to the rules, whether
accidentally or deliberately. It
includes things like lane-keeping
assistance, which uses a camera
to track road markings and can
steer. Crucially, none of the
systems are designed to take full
control of the vehicle – drivers can
switch them off or override them.
These changes aren’t just
happening in the EU. The US
government has publishedrough plans for how it will prepare
for more automated driving,
with the first step being driver
assistance. Australia also has a
road map to prepare for more
automated vehicles.
Driver-assistance systems aren’t
entirely new. Some, like automatic
braking – which slows a vehicle if it
gets too close to an object – are
already present in some cars.Stay in lane
This means we already have
some sense of whether they are
effective. Jessica Cicchino at US
research agency the Insurance
Institute for Highway Safety
(IIHS) has studied the accident
rates for cars with and without
these systems by looking at
police reports.
She found that automatic
braking halves the number of
rear end crashes. And systems that
warn drivers when they veer out of
their lane reduced the rate of fatal
crashes by 86 per cent.
There are concerns about these
technologies, however. The main
one is that they might lead us to
get complacent while driving.
A survey by researchers at the
University of Iowa found that 1 in
20 drivers often or frequently feel
comfortable doing other things
while cruise control is engaged in
their vehicle. Another study found
that a fifth of drivers thought that
ADAS means drivers don’t have to
pay much attention to the road.
Because of this, assistance tech
should come with an education
programme, says software
engineer John McDermid at the
University of York, UK. McDermid
says he once test-drove a car and
was told by the salesperson thatEye-trackers will soon
alert drivers in the EU
when they are overtiredTransportTOMASZ SKOCZEN/GETTYNews Insight
25,300
Number of people killed in road
accidents in EU countries in 2017135,000
Number of people seriously
injured in road accidents in
EU countries in 2017... but driving could soon
be safer7300
Number of lives driver-assistance
tech could save in EU nations
between 2020 and 203038,900
Number of serious injuries such
tech could prevent in EU nations
over this period
Source: European CommissionThe future of driving
A raft of technologies will soon be monitoring a driver’s every move.
Is that a good thing, asks Chris Stokel-WalkerTraffic accidents kill and injure
many people...