The case that autonomous vehicles can be deployed safely has been made repeatedly.
While that could be true one day, it’s not an effort that can be rushed.
Autonomous vehicle manufacturers have made “live streams” of their driverless vehicles available, have detailed test runs and have partnered with major carriers to validate their operations.
This coincides with exemptions from the federal safety requirements for autonomous vehicles being routinely requested and, in some cases, approved. Additionally, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has twice amended its federal standards for automated driving systems this year, calling them “outdated.”
In a Friday, Oct. 17 letter to U.S. Department of Transportation Acting Assistant Secretary Michael Halem, OOIDA explained ongoing concerns about the safety of autonomous vehicles while also calling for documented research and testing data.
“Regardless of their potential, it is important to understand the implications of AVs on public roadways,” OOIDA said in the letter. “While AVs might improve safety under certain conditions, they create new risks with dangerous outcomes. Unfortunately, mostly voluntary federal reporting requirements leave truckers and the general public in the dark about the safety and reliability of autonomous technologies.”
Recent research from the Autonomy and Robotics Center at George Mason University revealed serious concerns about the safety of autonomous vehicles.
OOIDA said its supports mandatory testing, safety and crash reporting requirements that would educate about the actual reliability and performance of autonomous technology.
“The reliance on voluntary safety reporting from AV manufacturers has not effectively built public trust, acceptance and confidence in the testing and deployment of these vehicles,” OOIDA wrote. “Any hurried and misguided introduction of AVs would not only have a negative impact on safety but would disrupt the trucking workforce by displacing drivers and adversely impacting the economy.”
OOIDA submitted the following suggestions for increasing the safety of autonomous vehicles:
- Make safety claims testable and auditable before scale.
- Standardize adverse weather and degraded-surface benchmarks.
- Utilize crash and incident evidence integrity for legal and policy use.
- Build context-aware comparators.
- Exercise transparency and build public understanding.
“One of the central problems today is that regulators are often presented with research that presumes AVs will be safer than human drivers simply because, under narrow and carefully controlled circumstances, AVs may show advantages,” OOIDA wrote. “U.S. DOT should support research that proves – rather than presumes – safety for AVs, with particular attention to automated heavy trucks operating in mixed traffic.” LL
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