On February 14, General Motors, Toyota, Volvo and ridesharing company Lyft provided testimonies to the Energy & Commerce Committee urging expedition of laws which would standardise testing and deployment of self-driving vehicles. Although the US Department of Transportation (DOT) implemented some standardisation back in September 2016, regulations differ from state to state.
“10% of vehicle fatalities and 18% of injuries in crashes are due to distracted driving. More than 30% of fatalities involve a drunk driver, and 28% of fatal crashes were speed related,” said Mike Ableson, General Motors’ vice president of global mobility strategy. He declared that there are more than 35,000 deaths on US roads per year, with vehicle crashes continuing to be the leading cause of death in the 4-34 age group.
“With 94% of fatal crashes caused by human behavior, there is tremendous potential in deploying technology that can do much better. Self-driving cars won’t drive while impaired by drugs or alcohol, they won’t be distracted by a cell phone, they won’t drive drowsy or recklessly, and their speed will be limited to that of the local laws and conditions,” he said. “Current Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) do not contemplate vehicles without human drivers. Without changes to those regulations, it may be years before the promise of today’s technology can be realized and thousands of preventable deaths that could have been avoided will happen.”
In June 2016, GM began testing self-driving Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles (EVs) on public roads in Scottsdale, Arizona and the urban center of San Francisco (Figure 1). Further, in December, GM announced they were beginning tests in Metro Detroit, Michigan. This will apparently serve as GM’s primary location for testing in cold weather and winter-driving conditions. “We have more than 50 self-driving vehicles testing in these three states today,” Ableson said.
GM will produce their next-generation of self-driving test vehicles at their Orion Assembly facility in Michigan. These vehicles will be fully equipped with self-driving technology, including redundant systems of LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging), cameras, sensors and other hardware and software.
On January 19, US Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx announced that the US Department of Transportation had designated 10 proving ground pilot sites. These locations are aimed at encouraging testing and information sharing relating to automated vehicle technologies. The proving ground designees, selected from a group of over 60 applicants, are:
- City of Pittsburgh and the Thomas D. Larson Pennsylvania Transportation Institute
- Texas AV Proving Grounds Partnership
- U.S. Army Aberdeen Test Center
- American Center for Mobility (ACM) at Willow Run
- Contra Costa Transportation Authority (CCTA) & GoMentum Station
- San Diego Association of Governments
- Iowa City Area Development Group
- University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Central Florida Automated Vehicle Partners
- North Carolina Turnpike Authority
“The designated proving grounds will collectively form a Community of Practice around safe testing and deployment,” Foxx said. “This group will openly share best practices for the safe conduct of testing and operations as they are developed, enabling the participants and the general public to learn at a faster rate and accelerating the pace of safe deployment.”
Source/s: The Energy & Commerce Committee, US Department of Transportation, Autoblog.