7 September 2019 | New Scientist | 21Here are five of the 15 driver
assistance technologies that will
be required in all new cars in the
European Union from 2022.INTELLIGENT SPEED ASSISTANCE
will recommend sticking within
speed limits, but can be
overridden in an emergency.ALCOHOL INTERLOCK SYSTEMS
monitor drivers’ breath and stop
them from starting a vehicle if
their blood alcohol level is too
high. A quarter of road deaths in
Europe are due to alcohol, and
such systems can be up to 95 per
cent more effective at preventing
repeat drink-driving than fines.DROWSINESS AND ATTENTION
DETECTION uses eye-tracking
technology to warn people to take
a break if they appear drowsy,as measured by the percentage of
time their eyes are closed. One in
five European drivers say they
have fallen asleep at the wheel in
the past two years, and 7 per cent
of these cases led to an accident.LANE-KEEPING ASSISTANCE
tracks road markings using a
camera and keeps the vehicle in
lane – in theory. But such systems
have struggled on bends or hills,
so can’t be relied upon entirely.EVENT DATA RECORDERS are
one of the most controversial
technologies because of fears
that these black box recorders
encourage surveillance. However,
the EU rules say the system
won’t be used except in the event
of a crash – and they help with
insurance claims and police
investigations.Eyes on the road
usually simpler methods available
to achieve the same ends.
It would be easy to worry about
being watched in your car too.
But the EU rules demand that
drivers can’t be identified from
any recorded data. Plus, the blackbox required by the rules is
only checked in the event of an
accident. The point is to “provide
for a more equitable allocation
of responsibility when a crash
occurs”, says Shladover. In the US,
such a device continually records,
overwriting data until a crash,
when it stops recording, keeping
only the previous 30 seconds.
People in the US sometimes
choose to have a black box because
it can reduce their individual
insurance premium. Having them
in every car might push premiums
down for everyone if it encourages
people to drive more safely. “These
technologies are reducing costs
for insurers because they’re
reducing the number of crashes
that occur,” says Cicchino.
What’s more, the data collected
in human-driven cars will help
train automated driving systems
to the point that they could be
ready for large-scale deployment
in the future. After all, many
ADAS systems will be used in
automated vehicles. “These are
the precursors to automated
driving,” says Carsten.
As a result, what may at first
glance seem like an intrusive
surveillance technology actually
looks set to be a benefit for
society. “Drivers should think of
it as an extra layer of protection,”
says Cicchino, “rather than the
vehicle trying to take over driving
from you.” ❚computer systems. Hills, where
road markings can temporarily
disappear at the crest, have
flummoxed lane-keeping systems,
according to IIHS research. “Quite
simply, the technology is not yet
mature enough,” says McDermid.
There’s also the fear that adding
more technology to vehicles
might make them potential
targets for hackers. For instance,
Dudi Nassi at Ben-Gurion
University of the Negev, Israel,
and his colleagues recently
showed they could fool road sign-
recognition systems in vehicles by
firing images of fake signs at them.
Such concerns might be
overblown. Steve Shladover,
a research engineer at the
University of California, Berkeley,
says that when people worry
about terrorists hacking cars,
he reminds them that there are“Half of drivers in one
survey said they didn’t
understand their automatic
braking system”the lane-keeping assistance meant
he could take his hands off the
wheel – as long as the road didn’t
curve too sharply. The salesperson
couldn’t say exactly what that
limit was, though, and McDermid
was unwilling to find out by
trial and error.
The trouble goes beyond that
anecdote: half of drivers in the
University of Iowa survey said
they didn’t understand how their
car’s automatic braking system
worked. “I think the driver needs
to be given much better training
and warning about these things
than they actually are,” says
McDermid.
It is also important that these
systems remain advisory for
the time being. It is hard to
distil down the skill of driving to
concrete, logic-driven decisions
that are comprehensible to
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