China may become 'guinea pig' for self-driving cars

China could be the first major market anywhere in the world to roll out Level 3 autonomous cars on a large scale, suggests Audi board member for Technical Development, Hans-Joachim Rothenpieler.

Speaking through an interpreter with carsales during the Frankfurt motor show this week, Rothenpieler revealed that the sheer immensity of the problem faced by car companies introducing self-driving cars to a market like North America was near insurmountable with current technology.

If anything, there's a stronger chance that car companies will offer the technology in markets more accepting of calculated technological risk, China being one such option.

“In America... you have around 40,000 fatalities in traffic [per year]. Now autonomous driving promises you to be 10 times better. It will still reduce it only to 4000 fatalities in America per year.

“Would we approve [of] that?” Rothenpieler asked rhetorically. “4000 fatalities is statistically enormously challenging.”

The Audi executive offered an example of the way in which any fatality will be subjected to very close scrutiny by the legal system, no matter how clearly the death was due to human error rather than machine error.

“There's your road, there's your pedestrian walkway. One guy standing here one morning just leaps out onto the road – just one step.

“That's what I say when I speak of statistical certainty. So if we are not willing to accept 4000 fatalities a year, the system must be capable of handling just that one situation...”

When it was put to him that any act of suicide or any 'misadventure' due to judgement impaired by alcohol would be near impossible for an autonomous car to counter, Rothenpieler simply replied: “If you look at legislation in the United States, that's the very expectancy…”

But isn't there an acceptable level of risk with any sort of technology? And doesn't that excuse autonomous vehicles, just as it would a driver in the same situation?

“No,” Rothenpieler succinctly replied.

“OK, put it differently; it's not an excuse, but if we have 4000 fatalities in America, we've got 4000 [questions] to prove exactly: 'Was he intending to commit suicide, was it a statistically-avoidable accident?'... that's what you will have to prove through the courts.

“Maybe I can add just one more comment here: you can say that the Chinese have got a completely different approach to it. [They're] much more willing to admit a statistical uncertainty. So it could well happen; the Chinese authorities, including the motor industry may become the pace-setters...

“What about America? Will they follow suit – to the pace the Chinese are defining and setting?”