The eagerly awaited guidance from the feds on autonomous vehicles reminds me of the end of the "Wizard of Oz" where Dorothy clicks her heels three times and repeats: "I want to go home, I want to go home."
That is what the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) seems to be doing with its guidance, which sets out 15 “Safety Assessments” for the safe design, development, testing and deployment of autonomous vehicles, which it hopes the 50 states will adopt, making for a uniform, national regulatory environment. The agency will not establish a federal regulation such as a Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS). So NHTSA is essentially clicking its heels and hoping.
The auto industry, however, was happy to have the NHTSA guidance though it attempted to thread the needle with its hope – there is that word again – that states will do the "right thing." The concern from Google, Ford, Tesla, et al is states will pass very different laws regulating autonomous vehicles, causing a nightmare for the auto manufacturers.
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"Five states have already either passed legislation or their DMVs have established rules on autonomous vehicles," says Suzanne Murtha, Project Director of Atkins, an international design, engineering and project management consultancy. "Some of those conflict with the NHTSA guidance. NHTSA had to put a stake in the ground somewhere. The good news is that 45 states haven't done anything, they are looking for guidance, and NHTSA provides it here."
David Strickland, the general counsel for the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets, says, " With the guidance now publicly available, we encourage state policymakers to engage with our coalition to develop the appropriate policy solutions, and we stand ready to provide support and expertise for both technological and policy questions." The coalition was established by Ford, Google, Lyft, Uber, and Volvo Cars. Strickland is a former NHTSA administrator.
The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators hopes the states will cooperate, but it neither issued any marching orders to its members, and, of course, it has no control over what auto laws state legislatures enact.
Its statement said: "The policy provides a consistent and standardized approach to regulating highly automated vehicles while simultaneously honoring the flexibility and autonomy of each individual state. Since it was developed in consultation with the AAMVA Autonomous Vehicles Working Group, we hope states will follow the tenets of the policy when crafting public policy that balances promoting innovation with the regulatory responsibility to uphold public safety."
The technology challenges will be substantial, and there are those who believe the guidance does not do nearly enough to ease compliance burdens for the states or the manufacturers.
"The policy’s vague description of a framework for developing and verifying complex, safety critical software is inadequate," says David Gelperin, Chief Technology Officer & President of ClearSpecs Enterprise. He argues that the safety options the auto industry has already developed have not posed serious software challenges, options such as self-parking, adaptive cruise control and forward collision warning, to name a few.
But integrating those features with new ones required by autonomous vehicles – the guidance refers to these as Object and Event Detection and Response – will be a complex challenge. These involve developing software that, for example, detects and responds to speed limit changes and speed advisories; performs high-speed merges, moves out of the travel lane and parks, detects and responds to encroaching oncoming vehicles.
Gelperin said that the likelihood of accidents involving autonomous vehicles is significantly increased by the fact that neither automobile manufacturers nor NHTSA have experience developing, verifying, and regulating software of this complexity. "Vague references to standards and best practices won’t help the inexperienced," he says, adding that NHTSA should require compliance with specific standards, such as ISO 26262, MIL STD 882E, and RTCA DO-176C.
The fact sheet issued by the White House on the guidance attempts to buttress the Obama administration's bona fides on autonomous vehicles by referring to the $4 billion investment in automated vehicle deployment, which was included in his fiscal 2017 budget request. Congress ignored that request. It remains to be seen whether the states are any more receptive to this new guidance.
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