James Goodwin

AUSTRALASIAN New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) chief executive James Goodwin has called on the Australiasian governments and regulators who are responsible for rules governing driverless cars to take “a global approach” and not tie the region down to unique regulations.

Mr Goodwin recently returned from a meeting of the nine global crash-test agencies in the US where the introduction of autonomous cars was discussed.

Addressing a recent Victorian professional development forum for the Australasian Fleet Managers Association (AFMA) he said: “We are trying to have a co-ordinated approach.”

“In Australasia, any regulatory solution needs to be national, but it also needs to be global – consistent with any international rulings,” he said. “We don’t need to reinvent the wheel.

“This is a global marketplace. We don’t want another situation like we had with Victoria unilaterally deciding that no vehicle could be sold without ESP (electronic stability program).”

He said there were more than 700 different regulatory and legislative barriers in Australia to the introduction of driverless cars, and that work had to be done on  fundamental items.

“We need to look at some of those things like line markings and speed signs to make it easier for the autonomous technology to pick them up,” Mr Goodwin said.

“There is a lot of hype around driverless vehicles, but we need to start with some very basic fundamentals like speed signs and line markings.”

By Ian Porter