UN Geneva - Multimedia Newsroom : UNECE Press conference: Regulating autonomous vehicles

Good afternoon and welcome to this press briefing on regulating autonomous vehicles, international developments and the work of the United Nations.

I would like to first of all introduce our speakers, Dmitri Mariassin, Deputy Executive Secretary of UNECE, Mr Richard Dam in the middle Chair of the Working Party on Automated Autonomous and Connected Vehicles known as GRVA and further Francois Guichard, Secretary to the Working Party.

I will pass the pass the microphone to Dmitry Mariassin to give some introductory remarks.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Thomas.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

It's my great pleasure to be here with you today and to open this briefing.

On behalf of UNISE.

We have the privilege to host this week the World Forum for Harmonisation of Vehicle Regulations.

It's the major moment for for the global Rd safety community and for the automotive industry every year.

And Unicy is the only global UN body on inland transport has the privilege to host it as long as well as a few other key areas of of work, a few other conventions and regulatory areas of work that concern inland transport.

But this is just the excuse.

The real reason we're here is autonomous vehicles.

This is an area that is getting more and more attention in the press and we appreciate all of you being here today.

We read a lot about autonomous vehicles soon or already becoming part of of our daily life and there have been many promises made in this regard.

We were hoping that would be in that would be on the streets already at the Olympics in 2020.

We've had a lot of tests that have received media attention.

We do have quite a lot of public interest in the topic.

However, the fact remains there is no yet scaling up of autonomous vehicles on our roads.

They are part of our reality, but they're not yet part of our daily life.

And we are at the UNECE and our responsibility is to produce **** quality regulation in a way that reflects the reality of industry, the interests of citizens and also respects the viewpoints of various stakeholders, first and foremost, member states.

We at Unity said as far back as in 2015 that it would be difficult to move quickly on autonomous vehicles because first and foremost, safety is our priority.

We need to have all pieces of regulation in place before autonomous vehicles can be on the streets safely.

It's not about the technical feasibility, it is about understanding that safety is whole of industry, whole of government and whole of UN priority because this is about human life.

At that point in time, our Executive Secretary issued a number of messages and O pads that have called for countries and industry leaders to take regulatory work seriously and to come to our platform.

Specifically within the framework of the World Forum for Harmonisation of Vehicle Regulations.

And now specifically through the Working Party on Automated and Autonomous and Connected Vehicles, about the work of which you'll hear more today, to come together and join forces in creating this regulation.

This is by no means an area where the United Nations experts should be dictating to the world what to do and connected and autonomous vehicles.

But this is a space, legitimate space where all key players, major countries.

And we have on this platform United States, China, India, of course, in addition to the European Union as well as Japan, South Korea, Australia, South Africa and many others participating, of course, the automotive industry.

And I would dare say that we have in this platform as part of the groups proceeding, working parties proceedings, all key automakers, but also very important the technology partners because autonomous vehicles are not longer about vehicles, they are about an ecosystem of connectivity, AI powered solutions and a broader technology discourse.

So we need technology providers, we need companies that drive the AI technology forward, and we need players like Tesla, for example, that are both an automaker and a technology provider, as well as many others.

We now have a sense that while the hype may be slowly disappearing, the actual serious work on regulation is advancing.

And today is an opportunity to brief you on where this is happening, in which areas, how this is going.

And to do that, we will be joined, as Thomas, already mentioned, by Richard Dam, who is the chair of the working party of the intergovernmental body that deals with it, and by Francois Guichard, who's my colleague and Unity Secretariat, who is responsible for supporting this intergovernmental regulatory cooperation.

But let me leave you with two key messages.

Once again, this is about safety and this is about getting all the stakeholders on board for a collaborative effort to create regulation that actually works.

Thank you.

Thank you very much Dmitry.

And as you mentioned over to Francois Guichard, who will explain a little bit more the functioning of this working party and the importance of this work.

Thank you Thomas for the introduction.

Thank you very much, Dimitri for this great introduction.

So I'm, I'm going to speak now a bit more in detail about, you know, the UN involvement in vehicle regulations and the importance of UN vehicle regulations for the automotive sector.

So UNEC provides a body that is a work forum for harmonisation of vehicle regulations.

The street name is WP 29 since 1952 and this group is dealing with many aspects like safety, seatbelts, crash worthiness, braking systems etcetera.

Environmental performance became also very important 20-30 years ago and many regulations are developed under this FORA with many stakeholders from all over the world.

Regulations are very important for the automotive sector as they are also for aviation.

They are an enabler and for example, today we talk about automation but a few years ago we could have talking about electric vehicles.

All the regulations for electric vehicles were ready when the vehicles came on the market with battery electric technology.

The same for hydrogen vehicles.

The regulations are ready.

So today we don't have a mass introduction of hydrogen vehicles.

But if there would be the need, the possibility, the desire from industry, this would be possible because the regulatory framework is ready.

So we have a body that is trained to develop technical regulations in a way that is technology neutral to make sure that we have a a level playing field for all industries.

And this makes it a very strong forum where people dare to come, they agree to come together, develop regulations, they kind of negotiate, fight if necessary in in very good conditions.

WP 29 is unique, unique in the UN system, but there there is no other body dealing with vehicle regulations at the, the global level.

This group is essential also because the automotive sector itself is a global industry.

Just to give you a, a few figures and I'd like to thank Thomas for looking for the figures for me.

So we have around 50,000,000 people working for the automotive sector worldwide along here in this region, in Geneva, in, in Europe.

I mean 30 million people are working for this sector.

This sector accounts for over 7% of the GDP of the region.

Regulations at the global level allow for huge economies of scales.

They are fostering innovation and they lower the price of vehicles.

Should be noted also that this sector contributes to over 400 billion in government revenues worldwide.

So you see this, this sector is big important and it's providing lots of things in terms of innovation, new technologies, etcetera.

So WP 29 became logical place to discuss technical matters also related to connectivity and automation.

We have experience it, it didn't come suddenly.

You know, active safety systems with some electronics came two decades ago in the vehicles.

Back in 2014 already we had the initial technical discussions around this kind of technologies and later, as it was explained, our executive secretary called on for cooperation.

The G7.

Also transport ministers felt that WB 29 was a valuable place and the place where this kind of topics could be discussed.

And we are there after so many years of work.

We have good experience, we know about the technology, we develop guidelines for automated driving systems for ADAS.

And I'm pleased to say that we are now starting the regulation activities related to ADS.

This is where we are.

We have great experts.

We have countries from all all of the over the world contributing to our activities like the EU, of course, USA, Canada, Japan, Korea, India, China and they come together to develop regulations and they want to, you know, they are so motivated in these activities that they want to Co lead these activities.

So we have sometimes very big governance with 7-8 coaches from all these countries willing to work together on global technical regulations.

This is a complex topic and just to show you how complex this is, there is no single technology.

There are different levels of automations and today I would say that you know the technology of level 1 and 2 which are systems cylinder, the control of the vehicles are in the vehicles probably 50% of all new vehicles.

Level 3 is still rare and level 4 doesn't exist in a for sale as a mass production product.

And this is where we are and I think Mr Damm will tell us more about what we are doing at GRVA to address this sector and these innovations.

Thank you very much.

Thank you Francois for these explanations.

Richard Dam, Chair of the working party over to you.

Thank you Thomas and thank you for inviting me here.

And welcome to all of you for this press briefing on the work on automation for Rd vehicles within the UNEC and especially the WP 29.

So the World Forum for the Harmonisation of vehicle regulations.

As indicated before, I'd like to mention you some items on the role of GRVA and the current state of play of, of work within the GRVA.

So the work on harmonised regulations undertaken by Chair VA brings together a number of countries here.

And what we are trying to do is to collaborate.

As Mr Mariasin already said, that's the main effort to bring the players to the table here, to work together and to worldwide harmonise vehicle regulations.

And it's the only platform, as indicated by Mr Gershire, the only platform who's acting in the field of vehicle harmonisation.

So we currently, when you look into into the different regions around the world, we have two different regimes.

1 is the type approval regime where vehicle manufacturers must demonstrate to the competent national authorities that their products comply with existing regulations before they can sell them and bring them to the market.

And the this regime is applied in Europe, in China, in Japan, Australia, South Africa and a number of other countries.

In total we have 58 contracting parties to the 1958 agreement where the type approval regime is administered.

The second regime is the self certification where vehicle manufacturers certify let's say comply with all regulatory requirements.

So there is no pretesting.

So the vehicles, the manufacturer manufacturers are allowed to bring their vehicles to the market.

They have just to certify that the vehicles do comply and there are by the authorities some compliance cheques done on the spot with certain vehicles to check if the vehicles really comply.

Under both regimes, recalls are possible, but there are some differences.

Of course.

What we are trying is to combine the regimes in some way here at WP 29 to allow both area, so the area, the region where the self certification is applied and the area where the type approval is applied to work with the UNEC regulations that are drafted at the WB 29 and the GRS like the GRBA under WB 29.

So since 2015, W 29 has adopted a variety of UN regulations to introduce driving assistance functionalities.

And for Cheer VA, we had two key milestones in 2021 was UN regulation on cybersecurity and the second regulation was on the automated land keeping system.

So both were adopted and entered into forest in 2020.

And this is still a reference worldwide.

And last example is India who has used these regulations to implement it in their local and domestic market going on and time wise we have since 2019 in GRA work undertaking on the yeah pre regulation of the automated driving systems mentioned already by Mr Guichard.

We have now adopted some guidelines for the automated driving system.

So that's a a major step we have undertaken.

And this is now leading into the regulatory work which has been started quite recently this year, but is going on at a **** speed.

And we are planning to have a globally harmonised regulation on ADS ready made of 2026, so within two years.

And that's very ambitious because as you heard before, we are involving all the relevant countries in technology, in industry, North America, Asia, Europe and we also have Australia, South Africa on board.

So that's a a major step we are undertaking.

But it's not only about automation, we also looking into assistance systems.

We have agreed and voted positively on a new UN regulation for driver controlled assistance systems, the so-called DCAS.

DCAS regulation.

It was adopted in February 2024 and will enter into force in September 2024.

And this is a major step as well as the assistant technology will bridge yeah, vehicles and the technology that is used for the way towards automation.

So a major step.

It was also unique last month in May to have a first GRVA meeting outside Geneva.

We have held a meeting in the United States of America in Troy, MI from 20 to 24th of May and we got support from the UNEC Secretariat to do so.

So this was very much appreciated because it gave us a a good opportunity to show the global collaboration and to work together and also show some demonstrations of technology.

So to experience technology, the state-of-the-art technology.

So it was a very good event and we are planning to have one Chia VA meeting also in Asia in the year 2025 in Bangkok, in Thailand.

And this is massively supported by all the delegations within WP 29.

And we of course looking forward to it.

So you should already take note of this event in May 2020, five in Bangkok.

So there is often, very often the the question raised, is there a future for autonomous cars?

And I can clearly answer this with a yes, this technology will come and it's partly on the road even if it's not penetrating the mass market yet.

So there is still some quite, quite some years ahead before we see it in the in the mass market because we have to resolve several issues.

And we are working hard here at the UNEC at the WB 29 to overcome these issues, to address these issues and to provide solutions that technology can be deployed.

So just a few figures with regard to the vehicle fleets in the world.

So the average age of fleets in developed countries is approximately 8 to 10 years.

So the fleets are quite old vehicles that are registered.

And in the developing world, it's even the vehicles are even older, 15 to 20 years.

By average, we currently have around 1.5 billion cars in the world today and there could be 3 billions in 2050.

That's what is estimated.

So it's still a growing population.

So yes, you can see as with the existing fleet, it will of course take additional time before we see autonomous cars be being the maturity within the fleet.

So, but anyway, I think the promises that we are given by the introduction of autonomous cars will materialise, that's quite clear.

But it is not a silver bullet to address major problems caused by motorised transport and there are quite a number of challenges in terms of safety, as mentioned by Mr Mariasin.

That's key of our work.

It's about collaboration, but safety is a key priority as we have one point, approximately 1.2 million deaths on the road worldwide in traffic 50,000,000 are injured annually and that costs us 2 trillion U.S.

dollars per year worldwide.

And we have to work on this and provide solutions.

Air pollution is also an important issue.

Vehicles exhaust are a major source of air pollution, which kills 7 to 8 million people worldwide per year.

And the climate angle, of course.

So the transport sector is responsible for about 23rd percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions, with transport accounting for around 77% of these emissions.

So as populations, economies and the need for mobility grow, the World Bank estimates that the greenhouse gas emissions from transport could increase by as much as 60% by 2050 if left unchecked.

So it's time to act, and it's urgent.

So that means that countries and the motor industry cannot afford to delay action on these issues and automation of vehicles can contribute significantly to this in a positive manner.

So to overcome the the problem.

So the Inland Transport Committee here at the UNEC, the ITC equivalent to the ICO for air and the IMO for maritime.

So the International Civil Aviation Organisation and the International Maritime Organisation.

So the ITC is placed for governments to come together and devise mutual solutions.

The adoption of the ITC strategy to decarbonize inline transport by 2050 is an example of CIS action.

So time to act and we are contributing in the GRBA.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Richard, for these detailed explanations.

With that, I would like to open the floor for questions starting with in the room we have AFP.

So please.

Yeah, thank you very much.

I have a few questions actually.

So perhaps if I just go 1 by 1, firstly on, on the time frame, how many years before we might see Level 3 cars being at the sort of same level at Level 1 and 2 are now we said there's about 50% of the cars that are on the road.

How long before we might see that for Level 3 and then ultimately Level 4 and Level 5?

I'll start with that one.

Thanks, Richard of Francois.

Thank you very much for this question.

It will be definitely a stepwise approach.

What we currently try to achieve is as I indicated before to pave the the way for assistant technology will be which will be a bridging technology.

So we see an extension of the functionality of assistant technologies, which is moving and aiming towards automation.

We just see a few Level 3 approvals currently where the driver is not in the responsibility of the driving task anymore.

And the the the systems on Level 3 and Level 4 are much more costly and therefore it's currently just seen in the luxury segment.

But what we are trying is to give also opportunities for some mass segment.

So for the medium price segment as well and for CSS system technologies will be will become more important.

So we we are looking, I think we will see both on on the market, but it will be quicker with the Level 2 systems with extended functionality instead of the Level 3 systems.

But there there will be Level 3 systems as well.

And about the years, I can't name a concrete number, but it will be years.

Thank you.

And just on the the numbers of deaths and injuries, could automated vehicles actually bring those numbers down rather than being seen as a seen as a safety problem?

Could it ultimately become a safety solution?

Thank you for this question.

So we definitely see not only the automation but see assistance systems as a major contributor as soon as it's as a penetration is growing within as a fleet, a vehicle fleet.

So what what we have to bear in mind as well is a large number of this road fatalities is also coming from the middle income and below developing countries.

So what what the UNEC and I think the UN in general is promoting that more of the regulations that are in place here and available here at the UNEC are also applied in different regions around the world, which are not yet advanced in vehicle technology and therefore the UN safety.

So Mr Sean Todd, who's acting as Rd Safety Special Envoy of the UN Secretary General, he's he's promoting the implementation and that's what we support as well.

And also try to to attract more countries to apply the regulations we are installing here.

And you have to bear in mind, it's not not only about vehicle technology, of course, it's about education, it's about the infrastructure.

So there are many fields where work is undertaken here at the UNECE.

But we are trying to trying to contribute as WB 29, as GRVA and as soon as there is some, some baseline installed for vehicle technology, for infrastructure and for education of the people of of all yeah, Rd participants, then then automation can also contribute to reducing the number of fatalities.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Richard, would you like to add anything more on that from the Secretariat side?

Dmitri, maybe just a point on on the road safety.

In December last year, the World Health Organisation issued its report that analysis the situation in the world regarding Rd safety.

We saw some small improvement, but not not nearly at the pace that is needed to reach the 2030 target of having the deaths on on the road.

And of course the the the deaths on the road are not just related to vehicles.

Very importantly, this is a systems issue and the approach we've been advocating for jointly with W2 and others is a safe systems approach.

It starts from behaviours of of everyone on the road to two vehicle regulations, including basic regulations that most countries in the world are still to accede to and to implement from a standard from for helmet.

So many die on the roads because they're wearing substandard helmets.

And as you know, 2 Wheelers are currently on on the rise of the cause of deaths and injuries.

2 Technical inspection.

Again, another basic convention of ECE that could save lives if only technical inspection in so many low income and middle income countries could be done according to the standards that we promote here and of course other vehicle regulations.

Then there is post crash care, there is level of financing and there is attention to Rd safety in building roads and infrastructure improvements.

No new loan should be issued for a road without Rd safety being at the centre of it.

This is a key message but I'd like to to say that we don't know yet whether autonomous vehicles will be more of a problem or more of a solution.

I think it can go both ways and it's, and again, we need to look at it as not a car on the road.

We need to look at it as a whole system.

It means the perception of a vehicle will have to change and behaviours and governance models and and well behaviour of players like police and others will have to evolve as more and more vehicles operate, you know, as Level 3 especially.

And then the drivers do no no longer take responsibility or take limited responsibility.

I think I'll leave it in that.

Thank you, Dmitry.

We have a question online from Jan Heberman from Tiger Spiegel.

So Jan, over to you.

Yes, good afternoon.

Many thanks for giving me the floor.

I was wondering how do you want to harmonise the regulations or the upcoming regulations for autonomous vehicles with the regulations for conventional and existing cars and trucks that are on the road already?

Do we have a sort of a system with two competing sets of regulations or can it be brought under one huge umbrella?

Because if this revolution really happens, then you have on the road at the same time autonomous cars and cars which are driven by by drivers.

So how do you want to, how do you want to harmonise that many things?

Thank you, Yan, for the question.

Francois, over to you.

Thank you, Thomas and thank you very much for this question.

So I will, I will just say a few words about what we are doing.

Also currently we are reviewing all the existing regulations and we are identifying where some changes are needed in order to accommodate automated driving systems.

So what we are doing is not to create two different sets of regulations.

We are actually modifying the current set of regulation to make sure that the regulations will remain fit for purpose also with automated driving systems.

Thank you.

And if I may, I'd like to add that we also have starting an activity about connectivity of vehicles as it is important within a mixed fleet of manually driven vehicles and automated vehicles to ensure some communication between the vehicles.

And that's why we have started last year under the WB 29 and the the activity also together with ITU to work on the connectivity issues for vehicles.

So to drive also.

Yeah, the the connectivity in the in the right way as it is needed for such fleet.

Thank you.

Thank you Richard and Francois, I don't see any further questions online.

Another one in the room.

So back to Robin from AFP.

Thank you.

A question about about AI.

You've been, as you said, you've been working on these issues for many years, but but over that time period, AI has emerged in in recent years.

I just wondered if that's if that had changed the game at all in terms of automated vehicles and assisted vehicles and and if so, how?

Please, Richard.

Thank you, Thomas.

Indeed, that's a major topic and quite recently and it is coming at a **** speed.

We have started two years ago at WB 29 to discuss about AI.

This was started at GRVA.

As it is the topic is mainly linked to automated vehicles and to assistant technologies.

We had a discussion this week and I'm sure Mr Guichard can inform you about the outcome or the result of the discussion this week.

It's clear we need to address it and it's not only related to automated autonomous vehicles, but going beyond and that's why WB 29 has taken it on board and is planning to install a working group to address the eye AI topic in the context of Rd vehicles.

And I hand over to Mr Gichar as well.

Thank you Mr Adam.

So well the discussion is still ongoing this afternoon.

So I'm not going to pre judge of the outcome, but there there were indeed activities we are working on, on guidance etcetera related to to AI in the context of vehicles and in the context of vehicle regulations.

You mentioned the activity starting two years ago, but I remember the first document about AI at WP 29 was actually I think in back in 2017 already.

So this is really something that is monitored and we have really this mandate to monitor this situation.

Of course, there is a preference to work on technology neutral, the requirements because you know, today we talk about AI, the hype around AI where we are all amazed by ChatGPT, etcetera.

Who knows what will come in three months.

We are such an exciting time.

So you know, there is a justification for trying to remain as much as possible technology neutral.

But it seems from the discussion that we have that we will have no other choice than than looking, looking at the specificity of AI at least in within the next months and years.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah, just just one more, it might be a bit of an obvious question, but how is the how is the picture shaping up with regards to legal responsibility for accidents in terms of, you know, say a crash happens with a, an automated or a semi automated vehicle.

How how's that picture shaping up?

Richard Damm, could you please share your thoughts on this?

Thank you very much, Thomas, and thank you for the question.

It's indeed an an important issue.

So we see currently, of course, the responsibility within the the different countries, so different regions around the world, what WP 29, what GRVA is providing as a service to develop requirements not only for the event data recorder EDR, but also for the data storage device for automated driving.

So DSSAD, this is a device which will be exclusively installed in automated autonomous vehicles and store the data that is necessary to check for also liability reasons not only but also I think the EDR is applicable for all of the vehicles, the whole vehicle fleet and the DSSID is specifically for automated vehicles.

So we are providing yeah regulation in future for the the countries to install it in, in their national, regional legislation and to provide services that can be checked on liability.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I don't see any further questions unless there are any last minute requests online or in the room.

We will close there and we certainly remain available for any follow up questions that you may have.

So thank you first and foremost to our speakers for sharing their insights and expertise with you on on these issues.

Thank you all for attending today and looking forward to keeping you updated on this fast moving area.

UNECE Press conference: Regulating autonomous vehicles - 26 June 2024