From NHTSA to Nuro
Why I joined the pursuit of widespread autonomous deployment
Many years ago, my uncle was killed in the same car crash that left my father with a life-threatening injury. That crash left its mark on my family and set me on a path to ensure fewer families are forced to undergo the grief mine went through. I joined Nuro because I want to advance potentially lifesaving technology.
Even though there have been tremendous advances in vehicle safety over the past fifty years, on average more than one hundred people are killed in vehicle crashes every day, and that number doesn’t include the crash survivors whose lives are permanently impaired. These are our parents, siblings, children, friends, and coworkers. It’s totally unacceptable, and we have to find a better way.
As Acting Administrator of NHTSA, I promoted and enabled innovation with research in the motor vehicle space, handled law, policy, and research programs, and worked on initiatives to save lives. I’m proud of the work we accomplished there and to have had the opportunity to work with that great team. But despite all of the tremendous work that went into making our manually operated vehicles safer, road fatalities remained high.
Why?
Over and over, NHTSA’s experts have identified the same set of things causing most crashes and fatalities: speeding, alcohol and drug-impaired driving, distracted driving, and the failure to wear seat belts. No matter how safe we’ve made manually operated vehicles, NHTSA and automakers have not been able to solve driving behavior.
I’ve come to believe that, in order to achieve a quantum leap in safety for road users, we need a radical advancement in safety that automated vehicle technologies have the potential to provide. AVs could eliminate the well-known risks associated with irresponsible and illegal driving behavior. With AVs, we could see vehicles that don’t speed and that aren’t operated by impaired or distracted drivers. Without AVs, I’m concerned that we’ll be stuck looking at roughly the same number of fatalities on our roads, year after year. That’s not a future I signed up for, nor one that I want for my children.
Nuro’s mission is singular in its approach to addressing safety, which is another reason why I chose to join the company: Nuro’s bots don’t transport people — they transport goods. That allows the company to reimagine the vehicle’s design, and focus instead on protecting vulnerable road users, while giving people more time at home with their loved ones.
The widespread deployment of AVs needs to happen soon for our society to put a halt to unacceptably high numbers of road fatalities. I want to work to remove unnecessary barriers to safety and to deepen Nuro’s existing relationships with regulatory bodies. Because every day widespread deployment is delayed is a day with unnecessary tragedy.
