Five things to know about: making self-driving cars safe

On 18 September, the European Commission published an independent expert report that looks at some of the outstanding safety and ethical issues around connected and automated vehicles (CAVs). We spoke to three experts involved in the report about what steps they think still need to be taken to make CAVs safe, what challenges still need to be overcome, and how we can prepare for a future in which both computer-driven and human-driven cars are on our roads. CAVs need to be able to understand the limitations of their human driver, and vice versa, says Marieke Martens, a professor in automated vehicles and human interaction from Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. In other words, the human driver needs to be ready to take control of the car in certain situations, such as dealing with roadworks, while the car also needs to be able to monitor the capacity of the human in the car. "We (need) systems that can predict and understand what people can do," she said, adding that under certain conditions these systems could decide when it's better to take control or alert the driver.