At a hearing held by the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee this week, lawmakers directly addressed safety standards and concerns for self-driving vehicles.
As noted by the Automotive Service Association (ASA) — the largest not-for-profit trade association for independent automotive professionals in the mechanical and collision repair industries — the Highly Automated Vehicles: Federal Perspectives on the Deployment of Safety Technology hearing included discussion of the fatal crash of a self-driving Uber car last year. The Tempe, Arizona crash killed a woman crossing the street despite detecting her presence and has led committee concerns over how to best address such vehicles’ unique safety challenges.
“Safety is and will continue to be paramount,” Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) said. “It is imperative that manufacturers learn from the incident and prevent similar tragedies from happening again.”
Witnesses included Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board; Joel Szabat, Acting Under Secretary of Transportation for Policy at the U.S. Department of Transportation; and Dr. James Owens, Acting Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Best practices were a major focal point of the discussion, and, in that vein, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) questioned Owens over why the NHTSA currently has no safety standards for Level 1 or Level 2 autonomous vehicles in place.
Owens said such standards would be created once the technology was already proven safe. No standards have yet been developed because the technologies remain in the emerging stages. The administration is concerned that premature rules might limit innovation or competition. Yet the NHTSA, Owens said, remains in constant contact with stakeholders and manufacturers to address technical issues, and offers a voluntary self-safety assessment program.
However, only 16 of the 80 manufacturers and developers out there have submitted self-safety assessments on their advanced driving systems.
“This technology needs some standards, it doesn’t mean they will never change,” Cantwell said, “but we are hearing from the National Traffic Safety Board (NTSB), that if you want to have a safe-testing environment, you need to put some condition[s] on that.”
The NHTSA notes that 36,000 people were killed on America’s roads last year, largely due to human error. The committee senators seem to hope that despite some early troubles, AVs hold the potential for great changes in terms of safety, while expanding mobility options.