“WE SEE A FUTURE WHERE VEHICLE AUTOMATION
AND VEHICLE CONNECTIVITY COULD CUT ROADWAY FATALITIES DRAMATICALLY.”
—DR. MARK ROSEKIND, NHTSA’S ADMINISTRATOR
tions, that kind of thing.” Scott said the technology has the
potential to improve safety and fuel economy. Future trucks will be capable of “platooning,” where one truck drives 30-50 feet behind the other, a distance that human drivers cannot safely main- tain. That kind of driving offers fuel benefits for both the following truck and even the leading truck because of the aerodynamics. The technology offers the opportunity to make driving less stressful, though Scott said he didn’t know if that would help address the industry’s driver shortage. After all, it won’t actually replace drivers. Moreover, the issue causing the shortage isn’t too much time holding the steering wheel but too much time away from home. Scott said the industry still isn’t sure
what it will gain from the technology. “There’s a cost associated with it,”
he said. “We don’t understand yet the cost-benefit relationship here.” Scott, an engineer, said many tech-
nical challenges remain. Autonomous trucks depend on road markings that aren’t necessarily well-maintained on certain roadways. How well the trucks drive in bad weather remains to be seen. Scott expects the technology will prog- ress in stages, as it always does, but it is progressing rapidly now. While Daimler’s Freightliner
Inspiration Truck is the first autono- mous truck to hit the road, other manufacturers are at work. In April, Volvo participated with Daimler and other manufacturers in the European Truck Platooning Challenge, where autonomous trucks drove across Europe. Former Google employees have formed
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a start-up called Otto that would ret- rofit existing trucks with self-driving technology. Like the commercial trucking
industry, the passenger car industry is refining its technology. Automakers and technology firms are building and testing self-driving cars. Google says it has self-driven more than 1.5 mil- lion miles and is testing on the streets of Mountain View, Calif.; Austin, Tex.; Kirkland, Wash. and Phoenix, Ariz. What would happen if the pas-
senger car industry moved ahead of the commercial industry with autonomous driving technology, and they both had to share the same road? Scott doesn’t see that as a concern. He expects truck- ing to keep pace and to be able to catch up if it falls behind. “We aren’t going to be allowed to
run autonomous vehicles on the high- way unless we have some sort of public acceptance of it. … A big truck with a driver working on his computer? I may have been around here too long, but that just doesn’t seem possible to me without first getting the general public used to and confident in the technolo- gies,” he said. History suggests the technology will
happen. Then, however, the legal and regulatory climate must adapt. Scott said government regulators are “chasing the dog” by not regulating autonomous technology yet and instead prepar- ing to offer guidelines for the states and manufacturers to follow, which he said is a good thing. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is mostly in watch mode because there’s so little data available, so it remains to
be seen if hours of service rules could be changed given that the nature of “ser- vice” could be changing. Similarly, most states are in the early stages of allowing for testing and demonstration rather than hard overregulation. Many have laws regarding following too closely, often using subjective “safe and prudent language,” Scott said. Those rules would affect platooning and would have to be changed. And what about liability? On May 7, a self-driving Tesla Model S passenger car killed a driver when it crashed into a left-turning truck, ran off the road and hit a power pole. If an autonomous truck is involved in a crash, who’s really responsible? Federal officials appear to be aware
of the need to change the regula- tory climate. President Obama’s 2017 Department of Transportation budget, which has not been passed by Congress as of this writing, included nearly $4 billion over 10 years for pilot programs for automated vehicles. In January, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx updated NHTSA’s 2013 prelimi- nary guidance on autonomous vehicles with a document saying, “The rapid development of emerging automation technologies means that partially and fully automated vehicles are nearing the point at which widespread deploy- ment is feasible.” It promised within six months to propose regulatory guidance to industry and to states. It did not make that deadline, but the agency said on August 10 that it will release guide- lines later this summer. Speaking to the Automated Vehicles
Symposium in San Francisco July 20, NHTSA’s administrator, Dr. Mark Rosekind, said his agency and the Department of Transportation (DOT), “are well-positioned to very soon unveil strong highly automated vehicle guid- ance that will lay the path to the safe deployment of lifesaving technologies,” according to a transcript on NHTSA’s website. Rosekind said his agency tradition-
ally has set minimum standards that it enforces, and when new technology “is
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