A barrier to innovation: Europe’s ad-hoc cross-border framework for testing prototype autonomous vehicles

Abstract

The conglomeration of regulatory frameworks for the testing of prototype autonomous vehicle s in Europe creates a challenging task for developers and researchers planning pilots across borders. While there are examples of international autonomous driving projects and cooperation in autonomous vehicle research, Europe lacks a mutually recognised testing procedure for autonomous vehicle pilots, and incompatible legal and administrative processes in each country creates a disincentive for ambitious cross-border testing. The diverse climate and topography of Europe potentially provides a rigorous testing ground for autonomous vehicles, and an opportunity to prepare the new technology to deal with varied signage, language and driver behaviour encountered when travelling across multiple countries.Prototype vehicles tested in such conditions provide valuable insight for research and product development. This may be encouraged by a more harmonised prototype testing framework including a pan-European type-approval exemption scheme for prototype vehicles, and for cross-border tests to be coordinated by regional organisations interested in promoting development in border areas.

Shaping future low-carbon energy and transportation systems: Digital technologies and applications

“…Ibrahim et al conducted intensive research on 5G wireless antennas using 26 GHz to 28 GHz, which aims to install a mock-up of a wireless device in a car to enable 5G communications [33] . Shah et al noted that an important feature of 5G is proximity services (ProSe), which can directly connect data to the system in autonomous driving and requires no data search in or data transmission with the data center [34] . Pattinson and Chen studied the data transmission and information security transmission of high-precision maps to improve the safety of autonomous driving and to provide solutions for the testing of autonomous driving [35] .…”

Achieving cross-border government innovation: Surfacing insights and experimenting across borders

“…Given these wide-ranging benefits and the preponderance of national borders, cross-border experimentation is also becoming increasingly important in the EU, where countries are developing innovative cross-border testing corridors for 5G-enabled autonomous vehicles. 92 The European context provides an ideal testing ground for autonomous vehicles, enabling manufacturers to rapidly test their technology in diverse contexts characterised by varied topographic and climatic conditions, different language road signs and different driver behaviours (Pattinson and Chen, 2020). To take advantage of these unique regional characteristics, the EU's 5G cross-border testing corridors create real-world legal, structural and administrative conditions for autonomous vehicles manufacturers to seamlessly test their products across national borders (see the case study at the end of this chapter).…”

“…Such frameworks are particularly important as governments and regulators increasingly adopt the abovementioned spaces and mechanisms to help ensure policy coherence and consistency. In the absence of a more strategic approach, lack of mutually recognised testing procedures across countries, coupled with incompatible legal and administrative frameworks, has the potential to disincentivise cross-border testing and raise barriers to experimentation (Pattinson and Chen, 2019).…”

“…This is particularly the case in the European Union where thousands of cars and trucks cross national borders every day, giving rise to specific challenges for widespread adoption of this technology. These challenges include not only the need for vehicles to quickly adapt to different road sign languages, topographies and driver behaviours (Pattinson and Chen, 2020), but also the importance of guaranteeing continuity of network coverage when crossing national borders. 5G-MOBIX partners have identified four key issues specific to cross-border environments that make experimentation crucial prior to safe deployment of 5G-enabled CCAM (5G-MOBIX, 2019a):…”

The Importance of Autonomous Driving Using 5G Technology

“…By arranging 5G base stations and smart cameras on the test-beds, the 5G network coverage is finally completed. Strictly speaking, these test roads cannot directly affect autonomous driving vehicles, but they will indirectly promote automatic driving testing in the form of providing high-precision map data and enhancing information security [10].…”