Michigan, and Feds?, Betting on Slow Road to Driverless Future

The Economic Development Administration, a federal agency, is giving $247,000 for the Michigan autonomous vehicle testing ground project, called the Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Development Center, according to a Bloomberg Business article. Why is the federal government spending this small amount of money on an enterprise and a technology field that is already attracting tons of private dollars, not to mention yen and euros? Why is the government perhaps hoping that Michigan automakers are the winners in the autonomous vehicle sweepstakes?

The automakers are comfortable with DC lobbying, something that their union counterparts are no doubt in favor of as well. Much of the Michigan economy depends on keeping car companies there, something the state congressional delegation presumably strongly supports.

But this is not only about where federal dollars go, and roughly $250,000 is chicken feed for a project like this. This is about who wins in how fully autonomous vehicles come to the market and when. Detroit and the state of Michigan are banking on a slow roll out of autonomous features rather than Google and Uber's revolutionary approach of going for the end game, the fully driverless vehicle. Detroit and foreign traditional car manufacturers are betting that people want to remain at the steering wheel and pay some attention to the road.

Clearly this is a middle-aged crowd. Anyone under 35 has his or her eyes glued to the smartphone. Detroit is risking a lot on its bet. 

Silicon Valley's movers and shakers are pretty confident the story will turn out differently. Indeed Google is already planning small demonstration projects, such as one that would help non-driving seniors to get around.

Safety Should be Reason #1 to Go Driverless

Last week's newsletter from the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials included an article about the human brain and its inability to ignore a phone, even while engaged in the task of driving. The smartphone manufacturers, it seems, actually pay attention to how to keep our attention. Multitasking, talking hands free on the phone, glancing at the phone - all distract from the demanding task of driving a heavy, dangerous machine down the road. 

One third of the over hundred thousand car accidents a year are caused by distracted driving. With over 90 percent of accidents attributable to human errors, software and machines have ample room for improvement.

Three people I had heard of or knew through a friend died in the last week in road accidents. 

Why would anyone not want to take human drivers out of this equation?

Rural towns already scared

Some towns in rural America subsist on truckers and travelers getting off the highway for a short stop. Just like the railroads and the interstate highway system boosted some towns and caused the disappearance of others, no doubt driverless vehicles will do the same. 

One Nebraska writer is already trumpeting the disaster that will ensue when vehicles go driverless. He is envisioning a significant loss of jobs for truckers, truck stops and restaurants. 

I'm not sure the reality will be as bad the writer fears. Even a traveler who is not driving wants to get out of the vehicle once in a while and the whole point of traveling, in my mind, is to experience local flavor. However, there is no doubt that the loss of driving jobs will have a huge impact on immigrant communities and rural America, where the basic skill of driving can provide a living wage for a family. 

For the past few decades, rural communities have been losing population. Now it is true that the loss of trucking-related jobs will most likely continue that cycle, except in places that have found other ways to attract business, mostly through education and tourism.

Port of Long Beach to Go Driverless and Google News

Supposedly, late in 2015, we will see a new terminal at the Port of Long Beach, called Middle Harbor (reference to Middle Earth?), that will have driverless tractors. Some tractors are already on site and working, supervised by humans.

Google is talking pilot-less planes for commercial air travel, though flying logistics are complicated because planes do not operate on a two-dimensional street surface network, but rather move up and down as well as in other directions. I do not know how the essentially driverless aspects of airline travel now relate to those where we have a pilot in control. Drone deliveries are also part of the plan. No more brown shorts on those UPS delivery men; maybe brown drones.

Really?

Anti-driverless writers have embraced the news that Google cars have been involved in 11 California accidents despite the fact that the accidents were very minor and that no one was hurt. They fail to emphasize that the cause of the accidents were human drivers of other vehicles. There is no indication that human drivers in the Google cars would have been able to avoid these accidents; nor have we seen data that the number of accidents are high or low when considering the number of miles driven and where they were driven.

Truck Drivers Get Shot of Anxiety

The Daimler debut of the driverless Freightliner Inspiration Truck, albeit only for testing, is already causing anxiety for professional truck drivers. They are the first set of people who make a living from driving who are expressing what most proponents of driverless vehicles know is coming - that human drivers will not be needed. These workers probably have 10 years. I'm also guessing that the Daimler truck, envisioning a human aboard, will be, at most, an interim phase, before trucks have no one aboard.

This does not make the Teamsters Union happy. Their tactic is to foster uncertainty about driverless trucks. That strategy did not get them anywhere in manufacturing, which has heavily automated, and it will not save any jobs for drivers, in my personal opinion.

Now for all those whose work depends on brains

Any high-level cognitive worker should stop chuckling now. Your job will soon be threatened as well. MIT has developed underwater exploration robots that decide how to perform certain aspects of their work and they can perform cooperatively with other robots. Now that we all have anxiety, maybe we should all consider opening those artisnal cupcake shops and distilleries.

Parents have different attitudes

Parents look at the driverless future a different way. They would like to see automation in cars that keeps their sometimes irresponsible teenage children safe, despite themselves. They want to see speed-limited cars, geographic range limits, curfew guarantors, and even a system that restricts the number of passengers. If you have ever waited up at night to hear the car in the driveway or the key turn the lock, you would understand.

Driverless Truck Testing at Hoover Dam

A driverless truck is being tested at Hoover Dam. What's interesting is that the testing is taking place on tight, winding roads. The truck is from Daimler Trucks. This is in Nevada, which already has a law permitting driverless vehicle testing on its roads. There is still a driver, who will act as a logistics manager of the truck, but on the first trip the driver actually kept his hands on the wheel. 

Last year, it was reported that the truck is expected to be available for sale in 2025. I'm thinking that by 2025 there will also be trucks without a logistics manager/driver. 

Utah is going further than any state in revamping its motor vehicle laws and road technology (such as traffic signals) to anticipate vehicle-to-vehicle technology of communications among vehicles. Trucks will be allowed to travel with less space between them, for example. These are considered steps on the way to an autonomous driving future.

Liability with Manufacturers

As automobile manufacturers get close to 2017 and partially driverless vehicles - meaning driverless on the highway, an upgrade, if you will, of cruise control - the automakers are sticking to their preferred legal opinion that laws that remain silent about hands or humans at the wheel will allow for autonomous vehicle travel on the roads. 

I hope that the same automakers realize that this is not the only possible legal opinion on the matter and that plenty of attorneys will be happy to argue otherwise whenever that first accident occurs on a road in a state without a driverless vehicle law. I hope they also realize that judges are conservative by nature, regardless of their individual political stripes.

I imagine the automakers and the Silicon Valley driverless folks are spending some money behind the scenes in Congress and perhaps at state legislatures. This is actually a pretty easy obstacle to surmount; passing laws is not that difficult. 

Clarity on this issue would be good for consumers and for the manufacturers. 

Speaking of risk

I like it when actual experts agree with my non-expert opinions. A Rocket News article quotes insurance, or risk management, expert Michael Stankord stating that most of the liability for driverless vehicles will sit squarely on the shoulders of the manufacturers. Though there will be far fewer crashes, the ones that occur will not render litigation a matter of deciding which human or which manufacturing defect caused the crash or malfunction, but perhaps which company was negligent in the design of the software or the physical components of the vehicle.

Another kind of risk - patents

Another article speaks of patent risk and compares the driverless vehicle race - with lots of software companies involved - to smartphone industry patent developments. So this is something I know absolutely nothing about, except that where risk is placed and the threat (and cost) of nuisance and substantive litigation have financially real and significant consequences. The author, David Marcus, sees value in setting standards for driverless technology, due to the safety ramifications of driverless travel, and he argues in favor of FRAND, which stands for fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. 

Can Driverless Go on Roads Without New Laws?

A piece in the New York Times offers the argument that the partially driverless vehicles coming on the market and the entirely driverless ones to follow will need no new laws to operate on our streets and highways. But an equally valid argument can be made that the legal presumption has always been - and these laws always assumed - human drivers would be operating the vehicles. It could be that state judiciaries, regulators, and legislatures will come to a range of conclusions about what the current laws mean in relation to driverless vehicles.

Another point made, a good one, is that the federal government has heretofore restricted itself to vehicle safety standards and the states have regulated driver licensing and behavior.

Questions and possible legal solutions

The question is raised, therefore, of what happens when the machine is both the equipment and the driver. This only leads to more questions. Are new laws required? Is that the province of the states or of the federal government? If we want people to be able to seamlessly travel and cross state lines, then hands-free "driving" cannot be subject to differing sets of rules when borders are crossed. In fact, presently, we not only have state regulations, but motor vehicle codes and enforcement performed at the city and county levels as well.

The possible savior here is the US Constitution's Commerce Clause, which will allow Congress to step in, as it has in the past, to declare that the nation needs a uniform set of rules and to specify what those rules are. Another option would be to create a uniform code among the states, similar to the Uniform Commercial Code and a range of others, that would amount to essentially the same (or extremely similar) laws being passed in most or all of the states in the continental US.