Safety remains the top goal, but regulation of autonomous vehicles requires more collaboration, information sharing and flexibility than previous top-down approaches if rapid technological advances and the resulting safety benefits are to be realized, the nation’s top auto safety regulator says.
“To fulfill the promise of automated driving systems, we must give our full consideration to safety in the testing and development of these vehicles,” said Heidi King, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s new deputy administrator. “That means rigor, being transparent, learning from one another and broadening public understanding, not only of these vehicles’ potential benefits, but how safety is being addressed in their development and testing.”
Her remarks, at a NHTSA workshop Friday on voluntary safety self-assessments, marked the first time she has spoken publicly as deputy administrator since being appointed early this month.
NHTSA guidance on self-driving vehicles, which was updated by the Trump administration in September, doesn’t require autonomous vehicle developers to obtain pre-deployment approval for operating self-driving vehicles on the road. Automakers are simply asked to publicly provide evaluations of their technology, with the agency insisting it maintains authority to pull any unsafe vehicles off the road as needed.
Waymo became the first company to publish a self-assessment of its software and hardware, and how it validates the technology as safe to operate a vehicle.
Pending legislation on Capitol Hill would enshrine NHTSA’s approach in law, along with other rules designed to create a supporting environment for the autonomous vehicle industry. Automakers and tech companies, significantly, would be allowed to seek exemptions from conventional rules on vehicles controlled by humans. Public-interest safety groups complain that the proposed rules are too lenient and pose a danger to the driving public.
King, a former economist and research scientist who is the acting administrator in the absence of a White House nominee to lead the agency, said the voluntary safety self-assessments would help build the necessary public trust for widespread deployment of self-driving vehicles.
“By encouraging public disclosure of the voluntary self-assessment we look to support the efforts of other entities that wish to release information on how they are addressing safety,” King said.
“I understand that this is a new and innovative approach,” she said. “A technology this new and this dynamic requires an approach that is flexible, adaptive and open. NHTSA stands ready to help entities implement the voluntary guidance. By bringing stakeholders together we can share and discuss different approaches, and together work through the barriers to advance automated driving systems together.”