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The Obama administration announced Jan. 14 that it is proposing to spend nearly $4 billion over 10 years in an effort to fund a series of pilot projects that are intended to jump-start the autonomous car efforts in the United States. Standing with senior executives from major carmakers and leading-edge developers, Anthony Foxx, U.S. Secretary of Transportation, said that his department will be heading up the autonomous vehicle effort.
Speaking at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Foxx said the administration’s proposal is for a public-private effort to drive innovation in the transportation sector. “The president’s proposal allows us to test automated and connected vehicle systems in different corridors and different states, and to work with industry to ensure an effective interoperability framework,” Foxx said.
DOT is interested in promoting autonomous vehicles for several reasons, the most obvious one being safety, according to Foxx. In addition, Foxx noted in his remarks that by reducing congestion through the use of what he calls “automated” cars, some of the indirect effects of automotive traffic, notably air pollution, would be reduced.
The administration’s effort is part of an overall effort to get ahead of the transportation problems that Foxx sees coming in the future. By 2045, the U.S. population will grow by 70 million and three-quarters of all Americans will reside in 11 megaregions, which do not have the infrastructure to accommodate that growth, he pointed out.
“We have been talking about the tremendous potential benefits of technology in transportation for more than a year now,” Foxx said, “and we recognized that we had some catching up to do.” He noted that more than 80 percent of traffic accidents are due to human error, and that had autonomous vehicles been in use in 2015, that would have equated to a saving of 25,000 lives in that year alone.
Moving forward with autonomous vehicles really boils down to technology, and in this the administration is making an attempt to get ahead of the requirements of technology instead of playing catch-up. This means, among other things, working in advance to create a clear set of standards and best practices to give manufacturers and policy-makers a clear framework to build on.
Foxx pointed to a recent example of how this might work. “One example is BMW, which has developed a remote self-parking feature that did not comply with our standards. I use the past tense because I am pleased to announce today that we just recently informed BMW that their remote self-parking feature complies with the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards.”
White House Looks to Spend $3.9B to Jump-Start Autonomous Car Efforts
The DOT effort is aimed at asking manufacturers to ask for regulatory interpretation requests in advance so that they can meet federal standards from the start. In addition, Foxx said that he is encouraging manufacturers to request exemptions from safety standards where necessary to allow the development of autonomous systems and said that each car company could field up to 2,500 vehicles for development and testing.
One of the big hurdles in getting autonomous cars on the road, according to Foxx, is the current patchwork of state regulations. He said that DOT plans to work with state authorities to harmonize requirements for autonomous vehicle licensing, as well as driver’s licensing, to make sure that common standards exist.
It’s notable that DOT is kicking off the autonomous car effort by starting with standards, rather than simply giving out money randomly. If the technology practices of the past have provided any lesson at all, it’s that common interoperability standards advance the technology in ways that nothing else can. This example is made clear by the dominant role of TCP/IP in communications and Ethernet in physical networking. Without those, the Internet would be far less successful than it is now, if it would have ever come into being at all.
What’s perhaps most important about the role of technology in DOT’s plans is that communications technology is pivotal. One of the first capabilities that the department is working on is automated car-to-car communications so that any vehicle can transmit its status and intentions to the other vehicles around it, while also receiving that information from others.
Without clear communications standards being met by all vehicles, these links between vehicles cannot take place, and without that, the safety and environmental savings that Foxx and DOT hope for will never happen. While it’s true that the nascent self-driving cars that are beginning to hit the roads today don’t need to communicate beyond themselves, the fact is that this is only because they are few in number. To make the vision of efficient transportation work, more is obviously needed.
Foxx has said that DOT will develop and propose model policies to help states work toward a consistent nationwide policy on autonomous vehicles within the next six months. In addition, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration will propose best-practice guidance for safe operations, also in six months.
If this all looks ambitious and complex, that’s because it is. In fact, moving transportation in the U.S. to acceptance of autonomous vehicles may be one of the biggest technological challenges of this century. The fact is, this is a very complex undertaking, and it’s certain that there will be problems, but at least getting a head start will go a long way toward getting it done.