Was The Solution for Ramming Attacks Found?
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עברית (Hebrew)
Vehicle ramming has become terrorists’ weapon of choice. Cases such as the deadly attacks in Barcelona and Charlottesville, show the attack can be all over before authorities take action.
However, life-saving technology that could literally stop vehicles from being driven into pedestrians is set to be widely available in the next decade, according to the head of Carnegie Mellon University in Australia, Emil Bolongaita. The revolutionary technology is promised to bring a dramatic change in the motoring industry and will eventually lead to a reduction in the number of vehicle ramming attacks, Professor Bolongaita said.
“The goal is to manufacture vehicles with artificial intelligence so that they will refuse to crash and proceed when there is a human being in front of them. They will automatically stop and refuse to proceed” Professor Bolongaita told heraldsun.com.
Scientists are working to prevent the driver from overriding the vehicle’s movement, making the machine immune to human conditions like road rage, fatigue, distractions and, in terror cases, malicious intent that can lead to fatalities.
“The eventual goal of the research is to remove the human from the calculation of the vehicle’s movement.”.
Ford, Google, Tesla and Apple are just a handful of companies developing technology for autonomous cars. Ford plans to produce fully autonomous vehicles by 2021, however, Professor Bolongaita said researchers were still working out how they will develop the AI for all weather conditions. He said self-driving cars were likely to be extremely expensive in the future as automation takes over — a factor that could potentially deter some terrorists from vehicle ramming attacks.
“Self-driven vehicles will be in limited supply … because the market itself will restrict the supply. It will be very expensive for self-driven vehicles in the future,” he said. “There will be a risk factor and they will require higher insurance coverage. Only those who can afford the high costs for insurance will be able to drive them.”
