In a survey of the digital association Bitkom one in three said that they want to use an autonomously moving car. Especially large is the proportion of 14-29 year-olds with more than 40 percent. Thus a certain consumer acceptance can be assumed. If all continue to work hard, self-propelled cars could determine the market in a few years.
Slowly but surely the future of mobility starts rolling. Often ideas and forward-looking concepts fail due to lack of consumer acceptance. With the self-driving car that seems to be different. A shown by a survey of the industry association Bitkom. Accordingly, 34 percent of respondents can imagine to use an autonomously moving car. This, according to the association, equals 24 million people in Germany. The interesting thing is that it is even 41 percent in the age group of 14-29 year olds who would sit in such a vehicle. This points to the future viability of the technology.
Creation of legal conditions
But until the final implementation there is still a long way to go in Europe. This starts with the law. Still, the Vienna Convention of 1968 is applicable. Accordingly, the driver shall have the control of the vehicle at all times. The United Nations has complemented the regulation a year ago, but this has yet to be transposed into national law. At least autonomous driving systems are permissible, as long as they can be stopped by the driver at any time. Bitkom has justifiably pointed out that the regulations need to be harmonized at international level in order to make cross-border journeys in a networked car at all possible.
Careful with personal data
The discussion about data is far from over. Especially personally identifiable information such as the position of the vehicle are being criticized. This is quite justified, because not everyone wants to be tracked permanently. Here, companies must provide solutions to anonymize these data. That’s quite possible. It can then nevertheless be noted that a particular vehicle has broken down. With a corresponding car-to-car and car-to-infrastructure communication then following vehicles can be warned in time. In autonomous driving cars, even the speed would be adjusted automatically.
It will take a few more years to achieve complex, automatic control of traffic. But then the 14-year-olds are ready to drive a car and also take advantage of the acceptance of those vehicles prevalent then.
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