Focus on the Future — The Future is Now: Self-Driving Cars and Mobility in the 21st Century
This morning I attended the above named session at the Focus on the Future conference. Here is a summary of what I though were the most interesting points made by Malcolm Dougherty, Caltrans Director, regarding connected and autonomous vehicles. Mr. Dougherty started his presentation by informing the audience that Caltrans is interested in the implications of connected and autonomous vehicles from both the owner/operator and policy perspectives.
Personally, I felt the following statement was very strong and spot-on!
We’re not talking about autonomous vehicles because it’s the latest and greatest technology. We’re doing this because we see this as providing benefits to transportation, first and foremost is safety. This technology really allows for a great improvement in safety. It also has the ability to improve access. Improve mobility, yes — but there is a cautionary note there. We can’t assume 100% of all vehicles will be autonomous, at least not in the next 20 years. We need to think about unintended consequences. One of our toughest battles today is in an urban area against a single person and a vehicle — we don’t need to be battling just vehicles!
Regarding the recent federal actions around autonomous vehicles, like the SELF DRIVE act and others, Mr. Dougherty provided his assessment of what that meant for state and local agencies:
Typically and historically the Federal Government has determined what a “safe” vehicle is. The States have registered those vehicles, and tested the operator to make sure those operators can safely operate the vehicle. The state doesn’t test cruise control — but now that cruise control has become three dimensional. It is still yet to be determined who would be responsible for regulating that vehicle which is also an operator.
Continuing on regarding the Federal legislation, he had some very interesting points to make regarding the concept of preemption — that no state or local law can preempt existing Federal law:
There is a big question about ability of cities to designate where AVs can and cannot operate. If a local city wanted to geofence an area to say AVs can’t operate there, would that “preempt” the Federal laws? There may be a differentiation between the “performance” and the “operation” of vehicles. This is something to be worked out.
When hit with the hot button question of when we will see self driving cars on local streets (or specifically in his case, the question was “when will be be able to take a self-driving uber or lyft?”), I was pleased to hear Malcolm’s response. Mr. Dougherty provided a response in-line with the recent predictions I wrote about, stating that he thinks in three-to-four years you may have a “test” of an AV taxi system, perhaps in a small enclosed area, to take only short rides. This may include fully autonomous shuttles to link transit and remote locations — college campuses, technology parks. In his opinion, it will be five to 10 years before true “robo taxis.”
Mr. Dougherty impressed upon the audience that in the next 20 years, we will have a mix of computer-driven cars and human-driven cars. Therefore, Mr. Dougherty stressed that connected technology is critical.
Adding a device in a car that provides a basic safety message (BSM) is the challenge — how do you market that to car buyers? Should the public sector focus on investing in Infrastructure — doing the “I” in V2I? California is going to start deploying this technology at signalized intersections — share the status of traffic signal indication and phasing information.
Excellent presentation by the Director of Caltrans, and I was glad to hear it first-hand.
