Quebec gears up for autonomous car race
People of a certain generation will remember there was a time when automobiles did not converse with you, although that notion did inspire a short-lived TV series in the 1960s called My Mother the Car.
Car innovations have come incrementally. Automatic transmissions and power windows, for example, were miraculous advances, and eight-track tape decks, well, Kansas City, you’ve gone about as fer as you can go.
But no, the relentless march of automotive technology has brought us to a new and breathtaking threshold: autonomous vehicles - cars, trucks and buses that drive themselves.
Are we ready for this? Some people are having a hard enough time coping with the options and gadgets already available on cars. Some people - I won’t name names - are terrified of cruise control as if the second you activate it an 18wheeler will come careening around the bend and leave you helpless to brake and swerve out of the way.
Like it or not, self-driving vehicles are coming to Quebec, Canada and the rest of the world. There is nothing stopping this transport revolution except for governments tapping the brakes with regulatory measures.
Here in Quebec, the Couillard government’s Bill 165 contains sweeping amendments to the highway safety code, from better protection for cyclists, to tighter drinking and driving and cell phone and texting measures. Coincidentally, these hazardous and often fatal vehicular abuses would be all but eradicated once AVS take over. At least that’s what the growing legions of corporate developers and promoters of AV technology claim.
According to the World Health Organization 1.25 million people around the planet die each year in road accidents and as many as 50 million are injured. Vehicular accidents are the leading cause of death among youth.
The Transport and Communications committee of the Senate of Canada, in a report released in January, concludes AVS “could herald the beginning of a new age of transportation, where, for instance, the nearly 1,700 road deaths and 117,000 injuries that occurred in 2015 because of human error become grim relics of a primitive past, and cars weave through the country’s streets with a computer-run efficiency.”
The report makes 16 recommendations to address what it deems to be Canada’s lack of preparation for the “fast-approaching future of transportation.”
In anticipation of the AV revolution, Bill 165 opens the door and “provides special rules” for AV test projects. One such pilot project - or should that be pilotless project - is expected to get underway this spring, in Terrebonne, northeast of Montreal. The French transport company Keolis, that owns and operates what used to be the Orleans bus network, will be testing out a self-driving electric shuttle.
The shuttles are seen as an option for commuters to get to points where they can take public transit. The plan calls for the mini-buses to travel on a circuit that intersects the urban transit network. The system is based on a project in Lyon, France, where after nearly two years of operation, there has yet to be an accident.
Other AV demonstrations have been less perfect. Last week a driver in a Tesla Model X died when the car crashed into a barrier on a California freeway.
A few weeks earlier, a pedestrian was struck and killed in Phoenix, Arizona, by a Uber AV. In both these instances, human error was a factor, although both Uber and Tesla suspended test projects pending detailed investigations.
Quebec’s entry into the AV universe follows Ontario’s initiatives by about two years. Last fall, the first-ever tests of an autonomous vehicle, the Blackberry QNX, took place on a public road in Ottawa, with the city’s mayor in the passenger seat.
Some 70 companies are involved in AV research in Ottawa, allowing it to proclaim to be the "autonomous vehicle capital" of the country.
The Senate report says the advantages of autonomous vehicles “could be astronomical - the economic benefit from automatic vehicles alone could reach an estimated $65 billion annually in collision avoidance, heightened productivity, fuel cost savings and congestion avoidance.”
Then there’s the human factor. How will we trust AVS when some people fear the lack of control with cruise control?