digibyte - autonomous vehicles take big human step forward with U.S. federal guidelines
- Summary:
- Today, the U.S. federal government released its standards for autonomous vehicles. Autonomous vehicles just got a big push - here's the breakdown.
Now, I know what you're thinking: "C'mon dude, self-driving cars have been real for a while." True - when you consider Lyft proclaimed earlier this week that the majority of Lyfts will be in self-driving cars by 2021.
But Lyft PR doesn't carry the freight these guidelines do. Without such guidelines, industry investment stalls. Recall my state of enterprise blockchain piece earlier this year, where the panelists - all blockchain enthusiasts - acknowledged that the lack of federal and state policies on blockchain technology was the biggest impediment to widescale adoption.
Though these guidelines are federal, they also include a clear framework for how states should be approaching this. And, unlike many federal projects, these guidelines go into effect immediately. None too soon, when you consider incidents such as Tesla's "driver assisted" fatality in Florida (Tesla says it's taken action to prevent re-occurrence, though another fatality in China has raised questions).
Regulations are crucial: the players in autonomous cars are a crowded cast of unpredictable characters, from the old guard automakers to the upstarts to the Googles and the Ubers. In August, Chinese Internet company Baidu was granted a test-vehicle permit in California. When you add the FUD of hackable connected cars to this chaotic mix, guidelines are essential.
What do the guidelines cover?
If you lack the coffee tolerance for a 116 page PDF, here's the high points:
- A 15 point public safety standard - which governs the development and testing of self-driving vehicles. The scope of passenger safety includes physical and cyberattacks. Transparency of passenger safety data collection is addressed.
- State policy framework - the policies make a concerted effort to delineate the roles the federal and state governments will play. Federal will set safety standards and investigate policy breaches, while states will handle the logistics of car licenses and registration. This will NOT be a case-by-case situation like medical marijuana; the guidelines emphasize a requirement for state-by-state policy consistency.
- Regulatory tools - basically the power the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has to crack down on violators.
- Future considerations - the report gives the NHTSA room to consider public feedback on emerging issues, such as whether autonomous vehicles should be required to have a steering wheel.
My take
This release came with tough-talking sound bites, warning automakers to stay on their toes:
"We’re laying it out there, what we care about, and inviting the industry to show us how they meet those standards," Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx told USA Today. "Some companies haven’t dealt with us, but they’ll learn quickly we can go really deep on these topics. We want the public to be safe."
No one wants the legal system bogged down in driver-assisted lawsuits. But I worry about the intrusions on privacy/consent connected cars bring. Look no further than our daily email intrusions to see how companies take wild advantage of what they define as "opt in."
For those wondering why the feds are so decisive on these guidelines when other policy work takes the slow-as-molasses route, driver safety statistics offer a big clue. The Department of Transportation logged more than 35,000 traffic fatalities in 2015; a whopping 94 percent were attributed to human error. The Transportation Secretary sees a big win here, and who's to blame him? Even a rise-of-the-machines skeptic like me will grant that humans aren't at their best behind the wheel.
What concerns me most about these guidelines and their media coverage, not to mention the boisterous announcements from Lyft et al - not one mention of jobs and labor. This goes back to a vigorous debate we've been having on diginomica.com on the threats and virtues of automation. The displacement of hundreds of thousands of drivers is inevitable. Granted, many of those drivers first impacted will be part-timers, but that's not the case in the delivery industry, with the trucking industry to eventually follow.
It's not the job of the NHTSA to fret about employment fallout - but it's certainly the rest of ours.