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Some would argue that it’s an intrinsic part of human instinct to be wary of change. There’s something inside all of us which can be instinctively nervous about the concept of autonomous vehicles and there are some key questions which the industry is working hard to answer in order to allay these concerns. What, if any, degree of human oversight is required? How will autonomous and traditional vehicles co-exist? And most crucially, how can we guarantee safety?

This school of thought often mistakenly assumes that the current situation is preferable or even perfect, which is far from the truth. Humans will always be fallible, and are subject to factors such as fatigue and distractions – neither of which are an issue for autonomous vehicles. Today, more than 1.2 million people die every year on the world’s roads. A 2015 note from the US Department of Transport concluded that the causal factor for some 94% of crashes was attributed to drivers. And according to World Health Organisation figures, road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death among young people aged 15–29 years.

Improved road safety is a significant advantage for the driverless car over human-controlled vehicles, but the potential benefits don’t end there. Autonomous vehicles will also reduce congestion and emissions, by enabling more cars to safely occupy a certain piece of road and by reducing the unnecessary braking and accelerating caused by congestion – a major cause of vehicle emissions.

There is little doubt that this vision is hugely exciting and has great potential to change our world for the better. But the question remains of how we deliver this brave new world in the safest possible manner.

The answer comes in the shape of a 5G network combined with Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) technologies, starting with 802.11p and evolving to Cellular V2X (C-V2X) on the path to 5G. This powerful combination will bring safer roads, more efficient travel, reduced air pollution and better driving experiences for all. The extreme throughput, low latency, and enhanced reliability of 5G will also enable vehicles to share rich, real-time data, supporting fully autonomous driving experiences.

V2X communications will serve as the foundation for the safe, connected vehicle of the future, giving vehicles the ability to communicate with each other, as well as pedestrians, infrastructure, and the cloud. The MIT Technology Review put V2X on its 2015 list of “10 Breakthrough Technologies”, predicting that: “Car-to-car communication should also have a bigger impact than the advanced vehicle automation technologies that have been more widely heralded.”

Although advancements in technologies such as radar, Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), and camera systems are encouraging and bring autonomous driving one step closer to reality, these sensors all function on the basis of line of sight, which limits their useful application. V2X complements the capabilities of these solutions by providing 360-degree non-line-of sight awareness. This gives a vehicle the ability to gather intelligence from further down the road to enhance the vehicle’s awareness of its surroundings – even at a blind junction or in poor weather such as heavy rain or fog, which would have an obvious impact on visibility.

It might sound futuristic, but V2X technology is available today. Wi-Fi-based 820.11p has laid the cornerstone for latency-critical V2X communications, but tomorrow’s autonomous vehicles require continued technology evolution to accommodate ever-expanding safety requirements and use cases. The path to 5G will be instrumental in delivering this evolution, starting with C-V2X technology.

As well as the obvious speed advantage offered by a 5G network, other factors such as guaranteed reliability, quality of service and consistent low-latency are critical attributes which will make this autonomous vehicle revolution possible.

Low latency is a mission-critical feature: when vehicles are relying on the 5G cellular network to maintain a safe distance from the vehicle in front (vehicle to vehicle or V2V), or to stay in-lane, or be warned of hazards, a 2-second ping time simply isn’t an option. A low-latency 5G network consistently offering 1ms ping will safely enable these features.

And that’s not all. Building upon C-V2X, 5G will unlock even more exciting possibilities for the connected vehicle. Consider the possibilities of cooperative-collision avoidance, reducing the chance that individual collision-avoiding actions by one self-driving vehicle might create a hazard for others on the road. Cooperative-collision avoidance allows all affected vehicles to coordinate their actions to avoid collisions.

As with any new technology – and especially one which will be as revolutionary and integral to our future society as autonomous vehicles – safety must be paramount. With V2X technology, autonomous vehicles can be empowered to be far safer than human-controlled vehicles, cause less congestion and have a greatly reduced impact on the environment. This is a vision of the near future, and the dawn of a 5G network is only going to make the reality more powerful.

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