MUNICH: Feel like reading or watching a movie when you’re stuck in stop-and-go traffic? Thanks to advancing technology that’s now a possibility not only for a car’s passengers but also the driver.

For example, the current S-Class from Mercedes, which reaches Level 3 (or “highly automated”) self-driving according to the authoritative classification of the SAE International organisation.

Level 3 means that the driver can hand over the steering wheel and responsibility to an autonomous car, but must be able to take over driving again at short notice if requested to do so by the system.

BMW offers Level 2+ in the new 7 Series, which means that the car can drive independently, but the person behind the wheel remains responsible for monitoring the traffic situation.

As far as autonomous driving is concerned, such cars are technological beacons. But will we all soon be letting ourselves be driven around by our cars? And will it become a problem when more and more automated cars meet cars that are still being driven by humans?

No quick breakthrough

It will take at least another 10 years before Level 3 driving assistants become established, says Professor Markus Lienkamp from the Chair of Automotive Engineering at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Germany.

“The sensors and cameras alone cost between US$3,000 and US$4,000, and the selling price of the traffic jam pilot as an option is around US$6,000. In purely economic terms, this will not pay off for compacts and small cars in the next few years,” he says.

Andreas Rigling, who heads a test centre for active vehicle safety at German motoring organisation ADAC, also doesn’t expect a breakthrough for Level 3 vehicles any time soon.

“Only when these assistance systems work absolutely safely at speeds of around 130 km/h will their use become the norm and not the exception, as it has been up to now,” he says.

In the US, some states permit the operation of fully autonomous vehicles on the roads. In Germany, automated driving has so far been limited to certain traffic situations on the autobahn, such as traffic jams.

Other European Union states, on the other hand, still require a responsible driver in every vehicle. According to Rigling, this could become a challenge with Level 2+ systems.

There’s a risk that drivers would come to rely too much on assistance systems, although the driver must still remain fully responsible at all times.

Who needs it?

Jan Becker is an expert on autonomous driving who teaches on the topic at Stanford University and who has developed operating software for automated driving cars with his company Apex.AI.

He sees the traffic jam assistant more as a convenience feature: “It’s not really necessary.” For that reason, authorities are unlikely to make it mandatory in the way that ABS and ESP are.

Automated driving does not seem to have much benefit for private cars, Lienkamp believes, but “from a business perspective, automated driving makes more sense for robot cabs, public buses or trucks”.

But even if automated vehicles become common, they will probably never have the roads entirely to themselves. “There will always be mixed traffic on the roads, if only because of classic cars,” says Andreas Rigling.

According to Professor Lienkamp, it could be a problem that humans and machines interpret traffic rules differently. “Natural human driving often deviates from traffic rules,” he says, while computer-controlled cars are more precise.

But that could also be an advantage. In stop-and-go traffic, for example, a computer system would close gaps more quickly and thereby reduce congestion. Cars and traffic systems, such as traffic lights, will also be able to share information about traffic and road conditions.

But it will be years before this works smoothly and the appropriate infrastructure is in place. “The automotive industry has not yet committed to a standard. Whether communication will later run via wi-fi or 5G has not yet been decided,” Lienkamp says.

 - dpa