When we built the first fully self-driving, on-road vehicle designed to transport goods, we had two goals in mind. We wanted to give people more time to spend on the things they love, and to make our roads safer.
From the ground up, our vehicles are designed for safety. They incorporate creative innovations that give them the potential to be the safest vehicles on the road.
To explain to the world how we are prioritizing safety, today we’re releasing Delivering Safety: Nuro’s Approach, our first public safety report. The report outlines both our vision for safer roads with Nuro’s vehicles on them, as well as the specific progress we have made to include safety considerations into every step of the design, manufacturing and operation of this new type of vehicle. This report follows National Highway Traffic Safety Administration guidance, and reflects our significant engagement with community and government stakeholders at the local, state, and federal level.
Our approach to safety started at the company’s inception, with the choice to design a custom goods-only vehicle. This vehicle could be engineered for safety more comprehensively than traditional passenger vehicles. Some of our strategies include:
- A passengerless design that enabled engineering innovations in our first custom self-driving vehicle, making it lighter, narrower, nimbler, and operated at lower speeds.
- Custom hardware that is among the industry’s most advanced, coupled with self-driving software capable of continual improvement validated through extensive testing.
- A layered fallback strategy, including the continual development of multiple backup trajectories, so that we can always choose the safest option.
- Hardware redundancy — including in some cases triple redundancy — across all critical components: computer systems, communication, power, steering, braking, and throttle.
- A comprehensive vehicle operator training program featuring extensive screening, on-boarding, on-road training, and continuous improvement.
While Nuro is a young company, we’re proud of the progress we’ve made, our focus on safety, and the real service our manned vehicles are currently providing to people in Arizona. We believe it is important to share our approach to safety now as we prepare for the deployment of our custom vehicles on public roads this fall.
