USDOT stands out of the way of business
The US Secretary of Transportation, Elaine Chao, and her cadre of modal agency leaders at the US Department of Transportation, are all on the same page in their hopes for autonomous vehicles (AVs) and their attitude about government's role. They all did a nice job a couple of weeks ago at the public show of friendly solidarity at a large gathering in the USDOT building.
The USDOT Secretary, who is also the Senate Majority Leader's wife, and her modal agency leaders all declare that government should stay out of the way of the private sector to develop new technology and improved technology as well as reconfigured vehicles and business models. One point of caution that each USDOT official made, however, was the importance of safety - but without any word that government should take a particularly active role.
Lip service to people with disabilities and older adults
Every USDOT official uttered the magical, but quite general, incantation that AVs will bring freedom and independence to people with disabilities and older adults. But the devil is in the details and I did not hear anything about encouraging or requiring multiple and redundant interfaces that take into account different types of disabilities (or even preferences for interfaces). I heard zero about finally extending the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) or otherwise mandating universal accessibility for all - or even a healthy percentage - of AVs sold, leased, or placed on the street for service within the United States. Nada.
The same goes for the presumption of improved mobility for those on the low end of the economic spectrum. Vague comments about the magic of AVs, but without any details.
But USDOT invited in interesting voices
Though USDOT modal officials all spoke from the same playbook, the invited voices did talk about encouragement of shared-use modes, reduction in VMT (vehicle miles traveled), the need for additional technology to manage roads, the importance of parking policy and fees, and the question of what will happen in rural areas. The trucking association in the US also appeared on the dais, though it remained with its old trope about how we will be employing drivers for decades to come.
R Street versus letter to Senate leaders
Two diametrically opposed documents were released in the last couple of weeks that demonstrate how far apart advocacy is on AV policy. One document is from the R Street Policy Study No. 134, spouting the wise alignments that the private sector preternaturally produces, versus the Letter to Senate Leaders on Driverless Car Bill, spouting a bunch of safety and consumer protection reasons for waiting on national AV legislation. Both come to some wrong conclusions.
R Street's report mostly examines ridehailing and it is almost uniformly against all regulation by way of examining the shared-use transportation industry issues of safety, labor, fees, licensing, and insurance, among others. It does not address people on the margins of the current transportation system who need policy and legal encouragement, even subsidies, to achieve transportation equity. It does not examine issues of public health when criticizing ridehailing companies for declaring that cities should discourage car ownership (self-serving as such statements are when uttered by the expected beneficiaries of such policies).
The AV issues that R Street takes the most time with regarding AVs are privacy and cybersecurity. It's knee-jerk reaction throughout the report and in this context is to say that "we should be careful not to overreact and impose stringent new regulations that could harm responsible business practices." R Street may be correct in saying that we already have legal protections in laws and regulations, but it does not discuss whether those have been enforced sufficiently and whether they have been effective.
Letter brought to you by the word "no"
How advocates for safety can write the Letter to Senate Leaders on Driverless Car Bill with a straight face is beyond me. I'll be the first to say that the federal government has a role - a substantial role - in ensuring that AVs will be safe, BUT for safety and consumer advocates to conveniently forget that human-operated vehicles cause tens of thousands of deaths and millions of injuries each year detracts from the credibility of their arguments - in my opinion.
These signers of the letter include advocates from the fields of public health, biking and walking, law enforcement, environmentalists, consumer advocacy, and road safety. What is interesting is that the signers do not represent a broad coalition from any of those particular fields. In fact, proponents of national legislation include many groups representing people with disabilities and advocates against human driving while under the influence of intoxicants.
In terms of the letter, the message is that we should not have untested vehicles operating on public roads. (Again, with car companies self-certifying FMVSS compliance, we pretty much already have that system.) The letter is against the lack of performance standards as part of the House and Senate bills - or requiring their development and implementation at the USDOT. The lack of performance standards includes not even the equivalent - my words - of the driving test that 16 year olds are required to take before being licensed to drive or even your average DMV vision test.
The letter seems to back, without explicitly saying so, California's regulatory approach, while stating expressly that providing consumers with information is not a substitute for federal safety standards. The letter is against preemption of state and local regulation and in favor of encouraging vehicle designs that are accessible for people with disabilities. And the letter actually spells that out, though only in terms of physical accessibility and not in terms of accessibility and redundancy of interfaces.
What I like
I am fully on board with the letter's stand on extending federal AV legislation to cover SAE level 2 - Telsa equivalent - vehicles. There are more and more distracted drivers in those vehicles every day who are not ready in a split second to take over operation of their vehicles. And there are more and more of these vehicles on our roads with every new car purchase.
Letter brought to you by the word "no"
How advocates for safety can write the Letter to Senate Leaders on Driverless Car Bill with a straight face is beyond me. I'll be the first to say that the federal government has a role - a substantial role - in ensuring that AVs will be safe, BUT for safety and consumer advocates to conveniently forget that human-operated vehicles cause tens of thousands of deaths and millions of injuries each year detracts from the credibility of their arguments - in my opinion.
These signers of the letter include advocates from the fields of public health, biking and walking, law enforcement, environmentalists, consumer advocacy, and road safety. What is interesting is that the signers do not represent a broad coalition from any of those particular fields. In fact, proponents of national legislation include many groups representing people with disabilities and advocates against human driving while under the influence of intoxicants.
In terms of the letter, the message is that we should not have untested vehicles operating on public roads. (Again, with car companies self-certifying FMVSS compliance, we pretty much already have that system.) The letter is against the lack of performance standards as part of the House and Senate bills - or requiring their development and implementation at the USDOT. The lack of performance standards includes not even the equivalent - my words - of the driving test that 16 year olds are required to take before being licensed to drive or even your average DMV vision test.
The letter seems to back, without explicitly saying so, California's regulatory approach, while stating expressly that providing consumers with information is not a substitute for federal safety standards. The letter is against preemption of state and local regulation and in favor of encouraging vehicle designs that are accessible for people with disabilities. And the letter actually spells that out, though only in terms of physical accessibility and not in terms of accessibility and redundancy of interfaces.
What I like
I am fully on board with the letter's stand on extending federal AV legislation to cover SAE level 2 - Telsa equivalent - vehicles. There are more and more distracted drivers in those vehicles every day who are not ready in a split second to take over operation of their vehicles. And there are more and more of these vehicles on our roads with every new car purchase.
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