Detailed description (English): Autonomous and connected transport will probably constitute the mobility landscape of tomorrow. It brings new benefits for all, including for visually impaired people, but it also carries risks that particularly concern them. There is the security risk, of course, but also, if their needs are not properly addressed at the outset, a risk of exclusion rather than inclusion of visually impaired people. The development of driverless vehicles should go with a commitment to ensure that the benefits outweigh the risks for blind and partially sighted people.
In May 2022, we responded to the European Commission’s public consultation on technical specifications for automated vehicles. The aim of this consultation was to collect the views of stakeholders about new EU rules governing modern technologies used in vehicles, to improve road safety and reduce pollution, namely “specific requirements for automated and fully automated (‘driverless’) vehicles and the systems they employ, to ensure that they are safe to use.” In our response - https://bit.ly/3DpO9pl - we focused on recommendations from the perspective of blind and partially sighted people as external participants in traffic, i.e., essentially as pedestrians.
In the context of European Mobility Week 2022, we publish a position paper that compiles those recommendations with further recommendations concerning blind and partially sighted people also as users of driverless vehicles. This is our contribution to promoting sustainable mobility and in particular inclusive mobility.
Target group(s): • Persons with a visual impairment (blind or partially sighted), as beneficiaries
• Developers of driverless vehicles and law-makers, as main targets
Objectives: We aim to highlight the conditions for social acceptance by visually impaired persons of connected and autonomous vehicles, more simply ‘driverless vehicles’. Our approach is from a two-fold perspective of visually impaired people: as vulnerable pedestrians and as users.
Partner: Our position paper is an EBU stand-alone contribution to European Mobility Week 2022. It is however based on our specific output, as only organisation representing visually impaired persons, in a project funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme – PAsCAL, “Enhance driver behaviour & Public Acceptance of Connected and Autonomous vehicLes” – which involves a consortium of universities, private companies and end-user organisations – see https://bit.ly/3qCYEy8.
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