The Taiwan Transportation and Safety Board is in July to publish a preliminary report on road incidents involving electric vehicles equipped with advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), with the final report to be released in May next year.
The board on Nov. 30 last year launched an investigation after an ADAS-equipped Audi electric van struck a truck mounted attenuator on Sun Yat-sen Freeway (Freeway No. 1), damaging both vehicles and a sedan in front of it. No one was killed or injured.
Board Chairman Lin Shinn-der (林信得) yesterday said that the board is gathering information on several similar cases to include in its report.
Photo: Lo Pei-de, Taipei Times
“We will investigate all these incidents to determine whether they were caused by government failures to raise awareness of the problem or to have preventive measures in place, the flawed design of the vehicle, or the drivers,” he told reporters in Taipei before attending a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee.
The Society of Automotive Engineers defines six levels of driving automation, ranging from 0 (fully manual) to 5 (fully autonomous). ADAS-equipped vehicles are considered level 2, in which the system can control steering and acceleration or deceleration, but a human driver can take control of the vehicle at any time.
Level 3 vehicles have “environmental detection” capabilities and can make informed decisions automatically, such as accelerating past a slow-moving vehicle, but a driver must remain prepared to take control. Level 4 refers to high-driving automation in which vehicles can operate in self-driving mode, but can only be operated within a limited area.
Although most of the autonomous vehicles in Taiwan are level 2, some car dealers claim that their vehicles are equipped with an autopilot function without informing drivers of the different levels of automation.
Meanwhile, the board is next month to publish a final investigative report on a fatal accident on the Taichung MRT Green Line on May 10 last year, when a crane boom fell from a construction site above elevated MRT tracks near Feng-le Park Station in Nantun District (南屯), killing one passenger and injuring 15 others.
In other news, Lin told legislators at the committee meeting that the tests of Taiwan Railway Corp’s new train control system did not go as planned.
The state-run railway firm purchased the system, developed by Lilee Systems (理立系統), to help it monitor the operation of train services after a Puyuma Express train derailment on Oct. 21, 2018, killing 18 people and injuring 200.
Taiwan People’s Party Legislator Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said that Taiwan Railway received a NT$60.67 million (US$1.86 million) subsidy for the project from the National Science and Technology Council, but failed to generate valid results.
Huang said the railway company was seeking to benefit the contractor while wasting taxpayers’ money.
“We held a forum to look at the data generated by the system, which did not even pass the proof of concept. We have alerted the railway operator about the problem with the system,” Lin said.
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