Baidu rolls out autonomous vehicle on the roads less traveled in Beijing

Baidu, China's internet search engine titan, took a big step in its development of autonomous vehicles on Thursday when it began road testing in Beijing.

The tests, which will be strictly monitored, are limited to generally quieter parts of the capital. To prepare for them, the vehicles underwent a mandatory 5,000 kilometers of testing in a closed terrain.

In addition, they will have human drivers as backups, all of whom have undergone 50 hours of training.

Could this herald the beginning of a new era in transportation? Are self-driving vehicles just around the corner?

Baidu chairman and chief executive Robin Li said he expected it could take from three to five years before AVs become a regular feature on Chinese roads.

I can't help but wonder whether Li wasn't overly optimistic. The technological challenges are daunting, as has been underscored by a some high-profile AV accidents in the United States.

On March 19, Uber halted its AV road tests in the US and Canada because the day before one of its test vehicles struck and killed a woman crossing the street in Tempe, Arizona.

Like all other companies testing such equipment, Uber had human drivers at the steering wheel of its test vehicles, but the driver was unable to intervene in time.

In 2016, a man was killed in Florida when the Tesla self-driving vehicle he was in broadsided a tractor-trailer straddling the highway as it made a turn.

Tesla's "autopilot" didn't recognize the tractor-trailer as an object. Because the truck was white, the sensors apparently mistook it for background. The "autopilot" has since been updated to correct the problem.

In November, an autonomous-bus shuttle had a minor accident with a truck just hours after the service for tourists opened in Las Vegas, Nevada.

In fairness, according to a city statement, the fenderbender was caused by the driver of the truck, who backed into the bus. The AV sensors backed up the shuttle to try to avert the accident.

"Had the truck had the same sensing equipment that the shuttle has, the accident would have been avoided," it said.

Some would argue a human bus driver would also have beeped the bus's horn, too, doubling the chances of avoiding collision, because the truck driver would have become aware of the other vehicle.

However, the Las Vegas statement hints at the ultimate goal of AV technology. As Adie Tomer recently put it in a Brookings Institution paper:

"The promise of AV technology is to virtually eliminate this self-created scourge (of traffic accidents and fatalities). The thinking is sound: When every car can communicate with each other, and when machine-learning algorithms can capture the enormous range of interactions between vehicles and non-motorists, then we can manufacture vehicles that both get us where we need to go and ensure almost no one gets hurt in the process."

We've got a long road ahead with AV technology, but the goal makes it worth the wait.