Need for consistent driverless car strategy before 2020 Monday, 29 August 2016

Australian governments have been put on notice that they need to be ready for autonomous vehicles in the next couple of years.

Earlier this month, the Transport and Infrastructure Council (all the federal, state and territory transport minister) acknowledged at a meeting in Melbourne that emerging technologies such as automated and connected vehicles have the potential to fundamentally improve safety, productivity, environmental sustainability and transport accessibility.  As a consequence, the Council agreed to a National Policy Framework for Land Transport Technology, setting out shared policy principles for deploying emerging technologies and ensuring that consistent approaches are undertaken at all levels of government.

Last week, a meeting of Roads Australia (including public and private sector representatives from the road industry) acknowledged the statement from the Transport and Infrastructure Council and states that the pace of change occurring in this area meant Australian authorities had to be ready to support the safe deployment of partially automated vehicles on public roads before 2020, and highly automated and driverless vehicles within the following decade.

They agreed national consistency needed to be achieved around the regulation and operation of connected and automated vehicles, that the ground rules should be laid down early, and there was a need to understand the value chain created by automated vehicles, and how it will be captured.

Austroads Deputy Chair Neil Scales, said the National Policy Framework agreed to by the transport ministers demonstrated that governments recognised the imperative for a co-ordinated policy and regulatory response.

“What is clear after yesterday’s Summit is that this process needs to embrace a far broader range of stakeholders than just transport," said Scales.

"It potentially reaches into every area of government and business spending and service delivery. AV’s will change our lives, as well as our businesses.”

The organisation's President David Stuart-Watt said existing concepts of vehicle ownership and road-based public transport would likely be challenged by the arrival of autonomous vehicles. He pointed to Ford's announcement earlier this month that it was planning to build a fleet of driverless cars in the US for ride-sharing services by 2021, which it would potentially own and maintain.

“If we have a fleet of connected and automated vehicles running continuously on our road networks and offering economical fares, why would you want to own a car yourself?" asked Stuart-Watt.

"And why would you drive your own car to a car park to jump on a train when an AV could take you to the station and probably negate the need to own that car? If that is the case, what happens to the revenues governments have traditionally collected from these sources?”

[A Ford Fusion Hybrid Autonomous Vehicle. Photo: Ford]

Transport and infrastructure will be a major topic of discussion at the Australian Engineering Conference 2016 in Brisbane on November 23-25.