Draft #3 Summary_Reader Response: Singapore revs up engines for autonomous vehicles race
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 AVs could help to “pave the way for road safety” (p.2) as 94% of the vehicular accidents 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 could potentially reduce the rate of accidents caused by humans.
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 and Shasheen (2015) who mention that 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 preconditions, 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 environmentally-friendly compared to normal vehicles. Thus, this implementation would benefit the user by reducing pollution in 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 commanded by computers, manpower reserves as labour would be released for alternative use. Hence, there would be a huge impact on the industry such as the 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 briefly stated that AVs were “safer, greener and more efficient” but did
not further elaborate on it. Without Noble showing the need, the benefit and
the impact of AVs, most of the readers would not care to read her article, as
it does not show a direct impact on the reader or how it would affect the
reader in the future. Thus, by including these three points, Noble would
involve the readers as it shows the reader there was 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
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