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DRIVERLESS CARS ARE going to be a part of everyday life and even if you have no intention of ever using one, they may still have an impact on you.
A panel of experts from around the world spoke about the future of self-driving vehicles or connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) at the Road Safety Authority RSA international conference in Dublin Castle earlier this month.
While the conference heard about the positive aspects of CAVs such as eliminating human error on roads – which is the main cause of fatal crashes – it also heard about concerns, including fears around how they could be used for terrorist attacks.
Technical director of Competence Assurance Solutions Ltd (CAS) Doctor Charles Johnson spoke to TheJournal.ie about how people who have no interest in driving these cars could still be affected by them.
What you’re going to have is a situation where roads are going to be shared by driverless cars and normal cars. That potentially causes all sorts of problems.
“One of the things that has come up is that autonomous cars don’t behave in the way human drivers drive.”
He said that when you look at the recent American data “the most common cause of collisions is human drivers failing to anticipate what an automated car is going to do”.
“In a situation where you’ve got maybe 50% driving autonomous cars and 50% driving normal cars, that could potentially be a recipe for disaster so that’s why the issue arises about whether you need to seperate them.”
Driving Test
He added that it’s “quite possible” that people could have to show they can drive with automated cars in their driving test.
You might have to introduce things about knowing how autonomous cars will drive into the theory test or it might be a requirement that you drive on roads where there is a high proportion of driverless cars so you can show how you can manage it.
Johnson also pointed out that the quality of the experience of using driverless cars will be reliant on where you are and what information the vehicle can access.
He said that Sat Nav driving in rural Ireland is already “all over the place” and driving CAVs in areas with bad signal will be challenging.
“What’s going to happen under those circumstances is that you’re constantly switching back and forth between autonomous mode and normal driving mode.”
Terrorism
On a more serious note, Johnson also spoke about the dangers around CAVs regarding terrorism – considering that vehicles are already being used as weapons.
Asked if he thinks automated cars will make things more dangerous than at present, he said: “My short answer to that is yes.
“If you think about what terrorists do when they’re using vehicles as weapons, is that they have to go, they tend to hire vans so you’re known as an individual, that usually means that you can only do it once.
But what we’re saying here is if you know how to hack into a system, you can hack into it, make a vehicle do something and you can be nowhere in sight when it happens, which makes it easier to be a repeat offender.
“They could be doing harm to people in all sorts of ways … and the other thing is it’s not just one vehicle, you could do this to multiple vehicles at the same time.
“Just imagine, I might download over the internet into the car system an instruction to hugely break the speed limit the next time that car drives and I could do it for thousands of cars at once.
“You have to be very careful about the cyber security.”
100,000 jobs
The conference also focused on what needs to be done to maximise the opportunities offered by the new technology.
Doctor John McCarthy has over 20 years experience specialising in areas such as connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) and he believes Ireland can be at the fore of the technology needed for these cars.
The leader of intelligent mobility at engineering consultant firm Arup said there is the potential for Ireland to create 100,000 jobs in this industry in the next 12 – 17 years.
He said the jobs would be in a number of areas such as data analytics, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, data centres, risk management and cyber security.
He said the foundation for the skills needed is already in Ireland. “For this market we just need to switch it slightly but the foundation of skills is already there.
The challenge is gathering them all up together and saying ‘focus on this industry’.
“If we don’t do it other countries will do it so that’s why Israel, the Netherlands, the UK, New Zealand, Australis the US are investing massively to be at the forefront of why companies would go there.
It’s a mobile phone moment, if you look at what they did in Scandinavia, they said they were going to be the world leaders, you had Nokia, you had Ericson establishing themselves at the forefront, we can do the same.
“It’s whether we’re willing to do it … it has to be now. If we don’t do it now we lose an opportunity and then it’s gone.”
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We have known about this patent cliff for years, yet we have supported generic products who do not engage in R&D. The downside of that is that large Pharma companies are not investing in NPD because of falling revenues and we have no new drugs to take over. We have done nothing to encourage R&D and we are going to pay a heavy price unfortunately.
The pharma companies are not sleep walking into this and have been living with this kind of thing as part of their normal business risks for years.
The good ones will be bringing replacement product on stream and selling the patent rump to generic manufacturers as they free up capacity for new product.
It is a well trodden path
“with the country’s pharmaceutical industry currently generating 50 per cent of the total amount of the nation’s exports”
Merchandise exports, not total exports. Ireland is ahead of the curve internationally in switching to services exports (software, consultancy, financial services, etc) and they now constitute 50% of all exports, so pharma is – after some simple multiplication – about a quarter of total exports.
This is a relatively serious issue, not because it is unexpected or even because of the effect it will have on our export statistics, but because of the effect it will have on (a) corporate tax revenues, and (b) FDI decisions by pharma firms in relation to existing and new plants.
Don’t forget that there is also a generic pharmaceutical industry in Ireland that provide people with affordable medicines. Some of those people could not afford the medicines when it is not generic!
When I was in college I did my work placement with Eli Lilly and it was an amazing place to work. They really look after their staff; the (very subsidised) canteen was award winning and as good as any restaurant. They threw a big party for everyone’s kids at Christmas and gave them Easter eggs as well. They really do everything they can to provide a safe working environment; with schemes such as flexi time (where possible) and of course employees are well paid.
These are exactly the kind of employers we should be supporting/keeping in this country.
@Patrick The Cipramil/Lexapro, Losec/Nexium, Clarityn/NeoClarityn trick has been closed by European regulators.
Overall, this is not a huge issue as Pfizer bought Wyeth recently, as the latter have a better “pipeline” of new drugs coming to the market. Pfizer would have negotiated the price for Lipitor which allowed them to cover the costs of developing it. If they had spent the money on developing new products rather than on marketting, they might not be in the position they are now.
Anyway, can we see real figures of what is contributed to people and the economy, rather than the not very informative figures of what value was exported?
So do you not just alter the drug ingredients slightly, give it a new brand name, work the marketing magic and take out a patent on the new brand and you’re away again ?? Example is Cipramil which is now called Lexapro because the patent ran out. So the manufacturer used a different binding agent in the drug, put it in a new box and off they went again with a “new” product and a new patent. I’m sure there might be a few sweeteners offered to doctors as well to prescribe the new named drug ! So for these reasons I don’t see the expiration of some patents being much of an issue really. It’s cheap labour in Asia that’s more of a worry where major manufacturers move their entire operations over to India or somewhere at a fraction of the cost.
No this is now not allowed. It used to be but unless it’s a completely new formulation the FDA and EMEA will not grant licenses.
When we talk about Pharma exports being a quarter of our total exports…
…how much of that is real exporting and how much of that is part of the double Irish tax dodge?
More of a question than a comment but can patents not be extended?
A normal patent gives you 20 years. You can apply for an extra 5 years in special circumstances i.e. drug companies. Assume that all this has been well researched by whoever owns the rights to Lipitor
You can. The makers of Prozac extended their patent by inventing a new disorder based on PMS. They then made the pills pink, whacked the price up 300% and called it “serafem”. They also marketed it to dogs as “reconcile”.
Check out the documentary “Big Pharma, Big Bucks”, it explains it all :)
Here is another question, how much does the hse spend on these companies products each year?
a good few of the companies are/will merge with other larger companies so it is a concern that the patents are coming on stream but the industry is adaptable !
have your say