Autonomous vehicles Archives - Transportation For America

The NTSB recommends safety standards for AVs. But Congress isn’t listening.

Update, 4/10/20: Republican staff of the House Energy and Commerce committee published a blog post arguing that the COVID-19 crisis is a great opportunity to pass automated vehicle legislation that prioritizes vehicle deployment over safety. To be clear, ventilators and personal protective equipment save lives during pandemics, not AVs. Don’t exploit a crisis to advance legislation devoid of any meaningful safety standards.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found in two investigations that the lack of safety standards contributed to fatal automated vehicle crashes. And polling shows that Americans overwhelmingly want these safety standards. There’s both evidence that safety standards are needed, and a desire among the public to establish them: so why isn’t Congress including safety standards in its draft automated vehicle (AV) legislation?

A traffic jam in Texas. Photo by Open Grid Scheduler on Flickr’s Creative Commons.

To hear some in the automotive and technology industries tell it, the only way we can ever advance as a society and develop AVs—”innovate” as they say—is to do so in a Wild West regulatory state. No basic, minimum performance standards to keep people safe.

And that’s exactly what Congress is planning to gift to the automated vehicle industry. Congressional committees across party lines are writing legislation that allows AV manufacturers and developers to put this new technology on the road before it’s proven to be safe.

This is incredibly disturbing in light of new findings from the National Transportation Safety Board, the U.S.’s premier transportation safety investigators. The NTSB found in not one but two investigations that the complete lack of federal safety standards contributed to fatal AV crashes. In its investigation of a fatal Tesla crash (released last week), the NTSB said that the main federal vehicle safety regulator “failed to develop a method for verifying that manufacturers … are incorporating system safeguards that are critical to ensuring the safety of the motoring public.” Translation: The federal government is doing nothing to check that AVs are actually safe.

The investigators at the NTSB aren’t the only ones highlighting the importance of safety standards: New polling from Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety found that Americans overwhelmingly want safety performance standards for AVs.

Yet Congress is doing the exact opposite. For the last few months, a bicameral, bipartisan group of Congressional committee staff have been drafting pieces of a potential AV bill that deploys AVs before they are proven to be safe. In the drafts released publicly, the Secretary of Transportation has 10 years to set motor vehicle safety standards; in the interim, automakers must “self-certify” that their AVs are safe by submitting test results and data—but the Secretary is prohibited from banning AVs for sale based on any of those materials.

These drafts directly contradict what the NTSB advises and what the public wants. The NTSB has now repeatedly recommended that the federal government verify that AV manufacturers include critical safety systems in their vehicles; but the draft AV bill sections doesn’t require that the federal government do this. The NTSB recommends that the federal government test AV technology themselves; the draft bill also doesn’t require this. The NTSB recommends that the federal government use “enforcement authority” to make automakers comply with safety rules, but the draft bill doesn’t give the federal government any imminent hazard authority—nor create any safety rules to comply with. Whether or not Congress adopts these specific proposals, it should concern us all that Congress is considering legislation which fails to include any safety standards before AVs are deployed.

Safety standards are not a lot to ask for. Without safety standards, preventable crashes will happen; people will die. Yet it seems that Congress has fallen for the siren song of automakers and tech firms, believing the marketing tale the AVs are inherently safe. If that’s the case, then what’s the harm in enshrining that safety into law with minimum safety performance standards?

AV technology is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to dramatically improve safety for all road users, not just people inside cars. And with more people dying while walking and biking than ever before, it’s an opportunity Congress would regret to miss.

We’re not the only ones who want minimum performance safety standards. In August, we joined over 40 national advocacy groups to send a letter to Congress outlining what any AV legislation needs to guarantee safety and equitable access to this new technology. You can read that letter here.

Autonomous Vehicle Policy Letter

T4a led a diverse coalition of national groups this summer to write a letter to Congress with principles for national AV legislation. This letter calls for a national policy that addresses issues like safety, access, local control, and data issues.

You can view the letter here.

Florida is out in front on driverless vehicles

The State of Florida knows that the way they’ve done transportation projects for the last 50 years won’t be the way to do them for the 50 years ahead. That’s why the Florida Department of Transportation, in partnership with the City of Gainesville, state legislators, and mobility company Transdev, are piloting one of the first autonomous vehicle shuttle projects in the country.

“It can’t just be a research project. It needs to move people,” says Dan Hoffman, Assistant City Manager for the City of Gainesville, which is the location of the pilot. “We want to understand how this technology could support an entire transportation network.”

Gainesville’s shuttle is currently in the testing phase. Once in operation, its route will connect the University of Florida’s campus and downtown Gainesville. It would be among the first automated vehicles in the nation to provide fixed-route transit services in mixed traffic on public roads.

“Florida is putting their money where their mouth is,” says Hoffman. “We want economic development. We want people to be safer on our roads. We are willing to start thinking in new ways about how to accomplish that.”

Dramatic advances in transportation technology are part of what’s powering Gainesville’s shuttle. But the project wouldn’t have been possible without making changes and innovations to state transportation policy. In 2016, the Florida Legislature passed the nation’s first legislation to legalize fully autonomous vehicles on public roads without a driver behind the wheel. Several other cities in Florida have started pilot projects with driverless vehicles since then, and other states have since moved to follow Florida’s lead.

To discuss how Gainesville and the State of Florida are doing this work, and what other states can learn from it, Dan Hoffman will one of our featured speakers at Capital Ideas 2018, taking place on December 5 and 6 in Atlanta, GA. Register for the conference today to hear more details about Gainesville’s driverless vehicle project and ask questions about your own projects.

Why come all the way to Atlanta if you can read about the project online?

“You always pick up nuances about the work at presentations and events,” Hoffman says. “People feel a little more comfortable being honest in person and that’s really the biggest benefit of events like Capital Ideas. You get to connect with the people who do your type of work in other places and have conversations that are a little more wonky or specific than with anyone else. To me, that’s the biggest benefit.”

Get your ticket to Capital Ideas 2018 today to hear from Dan and to discuss your own community’s work on autonomous vehicles and the future of new mobility. We hope to see you in Atlanta in December.

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Have questions about registration, sponsorship, or our program? Email capitalideas@t4america.org to talk with our team.

Stories You May Have Missed: June 19th – June 23rd

Stories You May Have Missed

As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you pertinent information. This includes news articles to inform your work. Check out a list of stories you may have missed last week.

U.S. Conference of Mayors attendees are “hungry for details about Trump’s infrastructure plan.” (Marketplace)
The Senate Commerce Committee has rejected the White House’s proposal to privatize the U.S. air-traffic control system. (The Hill)
Autonomous vehicle bills are on the horizon. (The Hill)
“States raising gas taxes to fund transportation improvements.” (Fox News)
Inside Uber CEO Travis Kalanick’s resignation. (NY Times)

Smart cities: why now?

The US Department of Transportation’s Smart Cities Challenge was just the latest event to expose the growing interest for cities using technological solutions to solve pressing transportation problems like reducing transportation costs while also making it easier to get around, making housing more affordable and ensuring that low-income residents benefit from our increasingly prosperous cities.

Flickr photo by Paul Krueger. https://www.flickr.com/photos/pwkrueger/9220398978/

While the verdict is out on just how the trends we outline below will affect our cities, one thing is certain: we’re in the midst of the most significant shift in urban transportation in decades. To wit, just a few weeks ago, Uber’s self-driving pilot kicked off in Pittsburgh.

The creation of the interstate system to connect cities (and also speed commuters through them to new outlying suburbs) was the last truly epochal shift in urban mobility. We’re on the cusp of the next one right now. So why does this appear to be “the moment” for the interest in being a smart city?

Cities are bursting at the seams with new residents

Since 2008, for the first time in human history, more than 50 percent of the global population lives in cities. Experts estimate cities will house 70 percent of the global population by 2050. In the United States alone, urban areas account for 85 percent of the total population and nearly one in three Americans lives in the ten largest metro regions.

This surge has created new opportunities for thriving urban areas, but it also brings new challenges and exacerbates existing ones.

Cities of any size thrive on their ability to efficiently move people, goods and ideas from point to point, yet many cities still struggle to provide the basic infrastructure to do so, whether a comprehensive transit system to move large numbers people in limited space, well-maintained roads and streets for automobiles, buses or bikes, or safe sidewalks — because almost everyone begins or ends their trip with a walk. And it’s an ongoing struggle to keep it all running smoothly. Washington D.C.’s Metro is currently undergoing a such an extensive repair project that whole sections of the system are shut down for weeks at a time, while New York is preparing to close one of its most popular subway lines for 18 months.

The demand for urban living is at an all-time high, but that opportunity comes with a greater challenge of moving even more people safely, affordably and efficiently.

High-speed internet access is ubiquitous and consumer demand is growing

Since 2000, whether at home, at work or on mobile devices, high-speed internet access has become ubiquitous in cities, driven both by innovation and consumer demand. High-speed internet availability hovers near 100 percent in urban areas in the U.S. and Wi-Fi coverage is also available for free or low cost in most buildings, stores, and coffee shops. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the cost of broadband has actually dropped by a factor of nearly 40 times over the past 10 years.

Beginning largely with the release of Apple’s iPhone in 2007, smartphones have saturated the market. 68 percent of Americans owned a smartphone last year, nearly double the number of just five years ago.

Unfortunately, far too many lower-income residents still lack affordable access to broadband or a connection to the useful tools driving this movement. Though this movement presents cities with additional challenges of equity and access to solve, the fact that the majority of urban residents now have an internet-connected supercomputer in their pocket all day long has fed a growing demand for more data and real-time information about the cities we inhabit. Which leads us to…

Data sensors and processing power have become more affordable and accessible

While the demand for having more information at our fingertips is also driving an expectation that everything should be online and connected, two other factors are making this possible.

First, over the last decade prices for sensors — that can monitor everything from when your laundry is done to air quality to location — have dropped by roughly 50 percent over the last decade. Second, during that same time period, the low-cost and availability of virtually limitless computing power through cloud computing has given the power of aggregation, analytics and visualization to anyone with a desktop computer or smartphone. The result of all of this is that startups, entrepreneurs and “makers” are testing the addition of sensors in every conceivable context.

There are hundreds of civic applications for these sensors — such as measuring air quality in low-income neighborhoods to water pipe leakage to knowing precisely where a bus or train is located to predict its arrival — that cities can take advantage of to give them a better idea of what’s happening in their communities.

Huge private sector investments in new business models & disrupting old ones

Enabled by all this data and processing power, the penetration of smartphones and the desire for improved urban mobility, the last five years have been marked by private sector efforts to “disrupt” traditional transportation markets. Scores of private companies, whether old guard car companies like Daimler (through Car2go) or new providers like Lyft or Uber, have been investing money and resources to provide new options for getting around. Google is a primary investor in Uber, while also developing its own self-driving car.

Uber, Lyft and other ride-hailing companies are also still on shaky ground when it comes to their business models and are ultimately seeking automated solutions (i.e., self-driving cars) to bypass their biggest cost: labor. Uber has lost over $4 billion since it was founded with $1.2 billion in the first half of 2016 alone. And, while some of that is certainly caused by developing automated vehicles and their expansion troubles in China, much of it comes from incentivizing drivers to maintain their market share in the U.S.a

With the decline in auto ownership led by millennials, even some old guard auto manufacturers are attempting to rebrand themselves as mobility companies, investing in or acquiring dozens of startups and testing out new product lines unthinkable for them just five years ago. Just a few weeks ago, Ford not only purchased shuttle service Chariot, but also launched a partnership with Motivate to expand bike-sharing operations in San Francisco.

It’s a perfect storm right now, and the “smart” cities will be the proactive ones

We’ve reached a tipping point where the ubiquity of technology has coincided with a growing need for our cities to become or remain prosperous, equitable, enjoyable places to live. While connected and automated vehicle technology certainly has the potential to dramatically improve pedestrian and driver safety, decrease traffic congestion, and improve freight and shipping technology, there are real consequences to be mindful of.

We’re clearly at a crossroads as we tip over into this monumental shift in urban transportation. But as we mentioned in our last blog post, smart cities are those that thoughtfully take advantage of the new technological tools at their disposal to accomplish what’s most important to them.

The smartest cities will take advantage of this moment in time and this transformation to become more prosperous, efficient, affordable and equitable.

What will happen to the cities that innovate without including everyone?

This post was written by our smart cities team of Russ Brooks, Rob Benner and Steve Davis

Senate Commerce Committee considers the (rapidly approaching) autonomous vehicle future

Yesterday the Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing with representatives from the autonomous vehicle industry to gather input on the needs and concerns of the rapidly growing industry.

Witnesses were:

Chris Urmson, Director of Self-Driving Cars, Google X
Mike Ableson, Vice President, Strategy and Global Portfolio Planning, General Motors Company
Glen DeVos, Vice President, Global Engineering and Services, Electronics and Safety, Delphi Automotive
Joseph Okpaku, Vice President of Government Relations, Lyft
Mary (Missy) Louise Cummings, Director, Humans and Autonomy Lab and Duke Robotics, Duke University

The key takeaways from this hearing were:

Autonomous vehicle technology is rapidly advancing and is close to market.

Each witness highlighted the strides their own companies have made. The message from all the panelists is that this in no longer an abstraction, but real technology that could very soon be on the road.

Mr. Ableson from GM and especially Mr. DeVos from Delphi focused on market-ready technologies that add semi-autonomous features to vehicles. Certain 2017 model year Cadillacs will feature technology allowing the cars to drive themselves on the highway. DeVos highlighted several crash avoidance and warning systems that will soon be entering the market and praised committee members for including a provision in last year’s FAST Act that adds new safety ratings for such technologies, incentivizing their adoption.

Google’s fully autonomous vehicles are further away, but Dr. Urmson noted that these vehicles have already logged 1.4 million miles in testing.

Despite these impressive advances, there are still significant hurdles to overcome. Dr. Cummings noted the challenges that autonomous vehicles face, for instance, in dealing with rain or other poor weather.

Panelists were concerned about conflicting regulations.

Panelists all expressed concerns about the possibility of a “patchwork” of overlapping or conflicting regulations enacted at the state or local level and requested that the committee and federal regulators such as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) steer consistent rules nationwide.

But disagreements about what and how much regulation is appropriate.

While panelists asked the committee to help avoid a patchwork of local regulations, they were reluctant to back any specific federal regulations on the industry, either. Several senators brought but unresolved regulatory challenges. Ranking Member Sen. Nelson (D-FL) struck a cautionary tone and brought up the ongoing recall of Takata airbags of an example of the devastating impact of design defects. Sens. Markey (D-MA) and Blumenthal (D-CT) pushed the panelists on what regulations they would endorse. But under direct questions from Sen. Markey all of the industry representatives would not support any mandatory requirements over safety or privacy, arguing that the industry is evolving too quickly for regulators to keep up. Dr. Cummings, speaking from an academic perspective, cautioned about technology moving to quickly to implementation, but also warned that federal regulators did not have the expertise to keep up with technological developments.

Autonomous vehicles will bring new business models.

Mr. Ableson from GM and Mr. Opaku from Lyft frequently brought up the new arrangement between the two companies which they see as a way to pioneer autonomous vehicles through a growing rideshare market. This strategic move from GM—an effort to move from selling vehicles to selling mobility—shows how disruptive this technology can be. Transportation network companies—especially Uber and Lyft—have already created an entirely new transportation service in only a few years, using existing technology. Adding radically new technology will undoubtedly be transformative.

Autonomous vehicles will be transformative and bring big benefits.

Committee members brought up numerous benefits of autonomous vehicles. The safety benefits could be tremendous, given that nationwide 38,000 people die each year in car crashes and 90% of those involve driver error. Additionally, several senators and the panelists noted the potential to help people with disabilities and others who currently have poor mobility options connect to economic opportunity. In his opening remarks, Chairman Thune (R-SD) noted that the transformation in how Americans get around would also allow cities to reclaim the one-third of their land now devoted to parking, increase vehicle efficiency, and turn time now wasted behind the wheel into productive, quality time.

Even with quick technological development, full implementation could take a long time.

Mr. DeVos of Delphi noted that the average vehicle on the road today is 11 years old, and there are more than 262 million vehicles registered across the country. Mr. Ableson said GM is only designing autonomous vehicles from the ground up and, from their perspective, autonomous retrofits would not be possible. That means even if the first autonomous vehicles are close to the market, it will take a long time for a large portion of the vehicle fleet to be autonomous without bigger changes to how people get around.