▲ 2022 Future Mobility Forum Seminar

No accidents causing safety issues; citizens' anxiety must be eliminated
A data-centric cybersecurity system is essential to ensure traffic safety

Experts predicted that as the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport's roadmap includes provisions for mobility-specialized cities, improving social acceptance of autonomous driving will become crucial, and the complexity of traffic accident factors will also increase.

Gangwon Province and the Future Mobility Forum held a Future Mobility Forum seminar on the theme of Mobility Specialized City (M-city) at The-K Hotel in Yangjae on the 9th.

Yoo Min-sang, Managing Director of Autonomous A to Z, took the stage for the keynote presentation and spoke on the topic of "Proposals for Future Mobility in Mobility-Specialized Cities Viewed from the Perspective of Autonomous Vehicles."

▲ Yoo Min-sang, Managing Director of Autonomous A to Z

Executive Director Yoo strongly argued that social acceptance of autonomous driving accidents must be improved.

He said, “In 2021, Waymo had 64 incidents, but almost none caused safety issues.”He stated, “Detailed information regarding the accident must be disclosed, and sufficient compensation details for customers must also be revealed to improve social acceptance.”

Cruises is disclosing the detailed cause of the accident, and California is disclosing information regarding the accident investigation.

In addition, the United States is making significant efforts to integrate autonomous driving into society by disclosing damage details from accidents involving low-speed urban environments.

According to Guidehouse, the United States ranked first in the overall ranking of autonomous driving technology for three consecutive years.

Executive Director Yoo cited flexible regulations as the reason the U.S. was able to achieve these results.

The only valid current regulation in the United States is the voluntary submission regarding compliance with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) guidelines.

Former U.S. President Trump issued the 'One In Two Out Rule' executive order by presidential authority in 2017, and Tesla's rapid growth also began at that time.

Subsequently, at the 2020 U.S. Consumer Protection and Trade Commission hearing, there was agreement that data obtained from autonomous vehicles operating on actual roads is necessary, and that active approval of exemptions is needed to make the revision of regulations realistic.

In order to avoid hindering the pace of technological development, the United States utilized exemptions and boldly eliminated regulations, which led to the growth of Nuro, the only company in the world to successfully commercialize autonomous driving.

Executive Director Yoo emphasized, “Despite these positive signals, Level 4 autonomous vehicles cannot be sold, resulting in zero corporate revenue,” adding that “an investment environment must be established to enable companies to survive.”

He added that autonomous driving companies in CaliforniaExplained the reasons for preferring development and demonstration in [location] and offered advice to help create a mobility-specialized city in Korea.

California has been releasing autonomous driving demonstration data every year since 2015, and this data allows for trend analysis and comparative analysis of annual data by company.

In addition, the state government manages autonomous driving license holders and reduces the burden on companies by granting licenses on a company-by-company basis rather than on a vehicle-by-vehicle basis. In addition, the fact that all data is disclosed and used as evaluation material for corporate rankings is also an attractive aspect for companies.

Executive Director Yoo Min-sang also emphasized the importance of dedicated autonomous driving lanes, citing examples such as Michigan in the U.S., Beijing in China, and the Sejong BRT.

The speed limit in Sejong City school zones is 20 km/h.

Autonomous A to Z autonomous vehicles begin to slow down 100 meters before a school zone, but this causes all the cars behind to back up, triggering traffic congestion.

Acknowledging that operating autonomous driving across the entire road network is virtually impossible due to these efficiency factors, arguments for constructing dedicated lanes are gaining traction.

Meanwhile, regarding the commercialization of Level 3 autonomous buses and the like in 2025, he offered a positive outlook, stating that autonomous driving within designated areas would be fully possible by 2025.

In response to a question about whether there are any laws that need to be abolished or changed regarding autonomous driving, he added that urgent matters have been resolved to some extent in this roadmap.

He added that while the price of autonomous vehicles has decreased compared to before as various equipment such as LiDAR has been localized, it can still approach 300 million won. He also mentioned that currently, the fare for an autonomous taxi is 1,000 won, so the annual income is less than 1 million won, but this is expected to increase further in the future.

The outline of the mobility-specialized city specified in the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport's roadmap is to establish key hubs that implement 'diverse' mobility services throughout the city by integrating advanced technologies such as ICT and AI.

According to the roadmap, the direction for creating specialized cities is to implement projects targeting both new and existing cities through collaboration between the government, local governments, public institutions, and the private sector.

Bae Jung-cheol, Head of the Seoul Regional Headquarters of the Korea Transportation Safety Authority, on the topic of 'Traffic Safety Strategy for Mobility-Specialized Cities'In a lecture, he emphasized that new cities aiming to become mobility-specialized cities must be approached very cautiously.

Bae Jung-cheol, Head of the Seoul Headquarters of the Korea Transportation Safety Authority

They warned that not only would a large budget be required, but the project could also escalate to the point where all the various problems arising would have to be shouldered.

There is also a change in the traffic safety paradigm.

While driver negligence accounted for 95% of existing accidents, accident factors are becoming increasingly complex due to various vehicle functions such as ADAS.

Accidents caused by over-reliance on ADAS are being reported, and incidents also frequently occur when drivers attempt to control the system according to their own habits because they are not accustomed to the assistance provided by ADAS.

Director Bae predicted that various accident factors, such as communication defects and information errors, would occur in the near future, and that the government and the Korea Transportation Safety Authority would have even more matters to manage.

He went on to say that a data-centric cybersecurity system would lead to securing traffic safety.

It was emphasized that large-scale networking across the entire mobility service environment and the introduction of data linkage and integrated management systems for each distributed mobility are important.

Data from mobility services can be utilized as foundational data to improve traffic safety and efficiency.

Director Bae stated, “As the importance of mobility data increases, data operations, including collection, processing, and storage, are emerging as sensitive issues.” "Most mobility data consists of sensitive personal information with very high security ratings, so establishing and operating a cybersecurity system is directly linked to safety," they explained.