The Department of Transportation announced the release of federal guidelines for autonomous vehicles Tuesday.
In the video below, Secretary of Transportation Anthony R. Foxx discusses the progress made by the federal government, the stakeholders engaged and the guidelines detailed in the policy paper, “Federal Automated Vehicles Policy: Accelerating the Next Revolution in Roadway Safety.”
Other speakers at the press conference included stakeholders representing Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), a spokesperson for people with disabilities and a representative from Securing America's Future Energy (SAFE). The speakers touted the benefits of autonomous vehicles including reducing car deaths caused by human error, enabling mobility for people with disabilities and reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil as many autonomous vehicles will be powered by electricity.
In the policy paper, “Federal Automated Vehicles Policy: Accelerating the Next Revolution in Roadway Safety,” the Transportation Department discusses four major themes.
1. Vehicle Performance Guidance for Automated Vehicles: This section discusses best practices for car manufacturers to release highly autonomous vehicles (HAV) for mass commercialization including design, development, and testing.
There are 15 safety checklist items for manufacturers to address.
- Data recording and sharing – HAVs need to record and share data with regulators.
- Privacy – Owners need to understand what data is being collected and have the ability to opt out of certain data being recorded.
- System safety – Carmakers need to adhere to federal safety guidelines.
- Vehicle cybersecurity – HAVs need to be secure enough to withstand hacking attempts.
- Human-machine interface – HAVs need to be able to switch between human driving and autonomous driving.
- Crashworthiness – Carmakers need to adhere to federal safety guidelines.
- Consumer education and training – Carmakers need to educate their customers on how to use autonomous features.
- Certification – This relates to certification of software updates by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
- Post-crash vehicle behavior – There needs to be a documented process for making sure that HAVs are road ready after they are involved in an accident.
- Federal, state and local laws – HAVs must recognize which governing laws apply.
- Ethical considerations – Carmakers need to disclose to NHTSA how the autonomous system makes decisions.
- Operational design domain – Carmakers need to disclose to NHTSA how the equipment is designed to work.
- Object and event detection and response – Carmakers need to disclose to NHTSA how the equipment recognizes objects and responds.
- Fallback – There needs to be a fallback option when there are technical glitches.
- Validation methods – Carmakers need to develop comprehensive testing and validation methods for HAVs.
2. Model State Policy: This section discusses laws across state lines. Today, drivers don’t have to deal with any law changes when traveling between states. HAV laws should have the same consistency.
3. NHTSA’s Current Regulatory Tools: This section discusses how “NHTSA will continue to exercise its available regulatory authority over HAVs using its existing regulatory tools: interpretations, exemptions, notice-and-comment rulemaking and defects and enforcement authority.”
4. Modern Regulatory Tools: Regulators recognize that technology evolves quickly and “threatens to outpace the [NHTSA’s] conventional regulatory processes and capabilities.” As a result, “This section identifies potential new tools, authorities and regulatory structures that could aid the safe and appropriately expeditious deployment of new technologies by enabling the Agency to be more nimble and flexible.”
With the release of this paper, the Department of Transportation is hoping to enable the auto industry to fast track the development of highly autonomous vehicles.
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