“Chaotic” roads will stall self-driving cars

The Road Safety Markings Association (RSMA) has responded to the UK government’s announcement giving driverless cars the go-ahead on UK roads, saying that it points to an exciting future, but hampered at the outset by the daily routine of road works, potholes, worn road markings, burst mains and failed traffic lights. “By 2025, at least half the travel on Europe’s roads will be in vehicles that can read the road ahead including markings and signs. But vehicles, like drivers, cannot function if basic road
July 31, 2014 Read time: 2 mins

The Road Safety Markings Association (RSMA) has responded to the UK government’s announcement giving driverless cars the go-ahead on UK roads, saying that it points to an exciting future, but hampered at the outset by the daily routine of road works, potholes, worn road markings, burst mains and failed traffic lights.

“By 2025, at least half the travel on Europe’s roads will be in vehicles that can read the road ahead including markings and signs. But vehicles, like drivers, cannot function if basic road markings and signs are non-existent, non-compliant, worn out, obscured, inconsistent or confusing,” says George Lee, national director of the RSMA.

“In spite of the best efforts of local authorities and utility companies, road works are frequently chaotic, and difficult to negotiate for even the most experienced driver.

“We know from our own extensive survey of the UK’s local and national road network that half of markings need replacing immediately or scheduled for replacing.

“Poor maintenance and worn and inconsistent road markings and traffic signs are now a major obstacle to the effective use of technology in vehicles, such as lane departure warning and traffic sign recognition.

“The prospect of self-driving cars is exciting; the reality of cars that can read roads is already with us; but it would be a huge step forward if we could have roads that can be read easily by humans – who still account for the vast majority of road users,” says Lee.

Location Based Systems Urban Traffic Control

Related Content

  • Smarter transport remains key to smart cities
    January 9, 2018
    Colin Sowman looks at some of the challenges and solutions that will provide enhanced transport efficiency in tomorrow’s smarter cities. However you define a ‘smart city’, one of the key ingredients will be an efficient transport system. As most governments and city authorities face financial constraints, incremental improvements in the existing systems is the most likely way forward. In London, new trains and signalling are improving the capacity of the Underground but that then reveals previously
    Read More
  • Developing ‘next generation’ traffic control centre technology
    July 4, 2012
    The Rijkswaterstaat and Highways Agency have joined forces to investigate what the market can do to realise an idealistic vision for traffic control centre technology. Jon Masters reports One particular seminar session of the Intertraffic show in Amsterdam in March was notably over subscribed. So heavy was the press to attend that your author, making his way over late from another appointment, could not get in and found himself craning over other heads locked outside to overhear what was being said. The
    Read More
  • Amsterdam Group turn ITS theory into practice
    August 6, 2013
    ASECAP’s Marko Jandrisits discusses the Amsterdam Group’s efforts to bring a sense of order to cooperative ITS deployments. When an issue arises which is deemed to require a technological solution governments and public-sector agencies around the world all too often tread the same sorry path. A decision is made to research and develop said technology to the production-ready stage, the work is done and the technology realised but then the money for deployment runs out and the technology is left on the shelf
    Read More
  • Trust me, I'm a driverless car
    October 12, 2018
    Developing C/AV technology is the easy bit: now the vehicles need to gain people’s confidence. So does the public feel safe in driverless hands – and how much might they be willing to pay for the privilege? The Venturer consortium’s final user and technology test (Trial 3) explored levels of user trust in scenarios where a connected and autonomous vehicle (C/AV) is interacting with cyclists, pedestrians and other road users on a controlled road network. Trial 3 consisted of experimental runs in the
    Read More

Highlighted Content