Draft #2 Summary Reader Response: "Autonomous vehicles"
In this article “Singapore revs up engines for autonomous vehicles race” Noble (2019) stated that a temporary national standard called “Technical Reference 68(TR 68)” plays an important role in developing autonomous vehicles (AVs), which advocates the safety of fully deplorable AVs. Noble also mention that TR68 was implemented to deal with "four key areas of AV deployment including vehicle behaviour, vehicle functional safety, cybersecurity, and data formats". Noble then wrote about a statement made by Loh Ngai Seng, chairman of the Committee on Autonomous Road Transport for Singapore (CARTS) “in the early 2020s, we hope that TR 68 will guide AV industry players in the safe and effective deployment of AVs in Singapore”. According to Noble a report by Fitch Ratings found that implementation of TR68, would improve Singapore's establishment and acceptance of AVs. The implementation of TR 68 would also entice overseas “autonomous technology” organization to Singapore. The author conveyed autonomous vehicles would be the upcoming trend and more organizations would participate in the expansion of the autonomous vehicle industry.
While the author elaborates on the growing trend of AVs and safety measurement taken, she fails to mention fully on the needs, the benefits and the impact of AVs.
First, Noble failed to explain the needs of AVs. She reported that with the use of AVs, AVs could help to “pave the way for road safety” (p.2) despite 94% of the vehicular accident caused by human error. Her statement was supported by Ang. According to Ang (2019), Assistant Superintendent (ASP) Siti Haira Officer-in-Charge of the TP’s Drink Driving Investigations Team stated that “Even though we’ve seen a decrease in speeding-related accidents from 2017 to 2018” and “there was an increase in drink-driving accidents and cases involving the running of red light”. This suggested that most of the accident happened was caused by human factors. Hence, an autonomous vehicle which could potentially reduce the rate of accidents caused by human is needed.
Secondly, Noble also failed to explain the benefits of AVs. She stated that senator Michael Westhagrmann from the Hamburg Ministry of Economy, Transport and Innovation, mentioned new technologies would offer aid to the transportability of individuals and products in a more secure, greener and more efficient way. which was reinforced by Greenblatt & Shasheen (2015). Who mention Chester et al research proved that parking manually adds 1.3 to 25 grams of carbon dioxide to the entire greenhouse gas outflow of vehicle transport, with a huge drop in parking precondition, a considerable amount of this outflow could be removed. Therefore, using autonomous vehicles over normal vehicles reduces the amount of carbon dioxide released to the environment. This also means that AVs were more environment-friendly compared to normal vehicles. Thus, this implementation would benefit the user by reducing the pollution on the environment.
Lastly, Noble did not mention anything regarding the impact AVs would bring about to the transport industries. Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) reported that With AVs being command by computers, this also suggests that manpower reserves as labour would be release for alternative use. Hence, there would be a huge impact on the industry. Such as, rearrangement of manpower in the transport industry when AVs takeover.
To
conclude, Noble explained the increasing number of autonomous vehicles and the
safety measures taken. However, she never fully explained why AVs were needed, she
also briefly cited AVs were “safer, greener and more efficient” and did not
further elaborate on it. Without showing the need, the benefit and the impact
of AVs, most of the reader would not care to read her article. As it does not
show a direct impact to the reader or how it would affect the reader in the
future. Thus, by including these three points, the reader would get more
involved as it shows the reader there were a valid reason for the implementing
AVs.
References
Ang. (28 June 2019). On the Road with the Traffic Police.
Retrieved from
Economic Development Board. (16 August 2016). World’s first driverless taxi system comes to Singapore. Retrieved
from
Greenblatt. & Shasheen (21 July 2015).
Automated Vehicles, On-Demand Mobility, and Environmental Impacts. Retrieved
from
Noble. July 2019. Singapore revs up engines for autonomous vehicle
race. Retrieved from
(641 words)
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