Tech innovation faces Aussie obstacles: BMW

Australian legislators don't seem to be keeping up with the rapid pace of technological change in the automotive industry.

While the federal government has been aligning Australian Design Rules (ADRs) in harmony with automotive legislation overseas, there remain issues — safety-related principally — where the local legislative framework remains far removed from what the rest of the world is doing.

Take for example, the iPhone app connectivity feature (pictured) now available in BMWs, through the company's ConnectedDrive technology. The feature was there to be tried by Australian journalists in Spain for the first drive of the new F10-series BMW M5. But we won't be seeing it in Australia, because it doesn't comply with ADRs, according to BMW Australia's PR boss, Piers Scott.

ISOFIX is another example of safety technology that has been slow to reach Australia. The child safety feature should eventually be available to Australian consumers, as motoring.com.au revealed in an interview with Volvo's child safety expert Lotta Jakobsson earlier this year. In the meantime, parents will continue to grapple with the existing child safety seat system that is usually fitted incorrectly and frequently needs to be transferred from car to car, depending on who is driving which car and caring for the kids.

ISOFIX has been the bane of European (and American) car companies selling their products in Australia. During the M5 drive program, motoring.com.au discussed the child safety seat anchoring system with Scott.

"I don't think there's much appetite within Australia to change the current ADRs to see ISOFIX introduced, on the grounds that their studies have found that a conventional seatbelt-fixed seat with a top tether strap, correctly fitted is the safest option…" said the BMW exec. 
The discussion between the car companies with a vested interested and lobby groups on the other side of the table — including government and state motoring associations — has been "lively" to use Scott's term, but the ISOFIX opponents argue that the existing system is actually safer than ISOFIX, provided the seat is fitted correctly. For their part, the car companies argue that in the real world, ISOFIX is more effective, because the likelihood that it would be fitted incorrectly is effectively zero. With the existing top-tether system, the risk of injury to a child in a seat poorly fitted is much higher. Scott, himself a father, has a personal reason for wanting to see ISOFIX permitted in Australia.

"From the perspective of someone who's got two kids under the age of three, that is a pain in the arse swapping two child seats across between cars constantly — as opposed to being just able to snap them in place.

The car companies have an interest in ISOFIX that goes beyond altruism and caring for the needs of the child, of course.

"Let's be honest, it's an opportunity to sell accessories that we currently cannot [sell], because we're not allowed to bring in our BMW-branded seats…" Scott admits. The company doesn't sell any of the top-tether seats anywhere in the world, because the world's largest motor vehicle markets (North America and Europe) have mostly migrated to the ISOFIX system.

But the fact that the car companies could be making money from selling accessory child safety seats is in itself no justification for holding up ISOFIX if it's a more practical system that yields improved safety for kids.

Volvo favours a rear-facing ISOFIX seat in the rear, with a top tether and a strut to the floor. It sounds like there's still some complexity fitting such a seat if the owner wants to go to that level of complexity. And with complexity goes risk. Scott agrees in principle.

"Very true… if you want to go to that level. That is where it's a discussion more around [to] what extent Australia wants to develop its own legislation and regulation around these things — or does it want to follow international best practice?

"We obviously designed these technologies for the vast majority of markets that have a standardised set of safety requirements; the fact that Australia tends to do its own thing in that regard can be frustrating, but we just have to respect that."

Speed Limit Info is another safety feature that is in doubt for Australia in the short term. And in fairness, it's not an idea that's been hobbled by bureaucratic inertia — not directly, at least. As a matter of fact, BMW itself decided to drop the technology from its locally-delivered range. The reason? Australian speed limit zones are a pig's breakfast, basically. Scott takes up the story:

"Speed Limit Info we introduced and it was a very popular option, with reasonably strong take-up among customers — and feedback was excellent — however, over time we started to encounter enough inaccuracy within the speed limit detection, which was in the high 90 percentiles, but still lacked the sort of accuracy we would expect of a BMW option. So we withdrew it, particularly because the speed at which you're travelling is a very important piece of information to get right," said Scott with a wry chuckle.

"So it's been withdrawn with a view to reintroducing it when we can iron out some of those difficulties.

As an aside, Scott wondered out loud how Audi were overcoming the same issue.

"I would be interested to know how Audi get on, knowing that they introduced technology that employs the same system, essentially — with nav data interfacing and defaulting to a camera detecting the speed signs beside the road — because we just found that the variability of speed zones in Australia was so complex that the accuracy rates just weren't there.

"The reason I mention that is because I don't think it's a failing of the technology, which seems to work remarkably well around the world; but [the problem] seems to be a unique peculiarity of the Australian market."

Is there a date we can expect to see the useful feature reintroduced to the local market?

"Certainly not a timeframe [for its reintroduction], because the technicians are still working out exactly how to address the issue," Scott replied.

So these are three examples of basic safety technology we are denied in this country. It leaves little room for optimism that our bureaucrats and legislators will pick up the ball and run with it when other markets around the world are already evaluating an intelligent global safety system such as Car 2 Car.

"Car 2 Car communication is something that is really in its infancy;" Scott explained. "All I would point to there is the Vision ConnectedDrive concept, which essentially showed what the future holds for BMW where ConnectedDrive is concerned, as far as connectivity of the car with the outside world: everything from real-time traffic information updates to, in its most advanced forms, an awareness of pedestrians, cyclists and other vehicles from a hazard identification and avoidance perspective.

"So these are things that are still some way off from being in production, and, as you can imagine… have the requirement of a number of different parties to work together, because it is not as simple as just fitting this technology to our own vehicles. It requires civic managers and local authorities within urban environments to encourage the usage by cyclists and pedestrians and other car users. But that's where we are.

"We all need to progress hand-in-hand, you might say. Over [in Europe], it's evident that these are initiatives the car companies are not working on alone; they're working together as an industry, with local authorities..."

And that spells long delays and self-interested, bureaucratic entanglement here, should the system ever be proposed for Australia. If convincing federal and state government bodies to adopt recommendations from car companies can be Mission Impossible, how much harder is it likely to get once local government is involved too…?

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