The new breed of self-driving zealots, many of them hunkered down right here in autonomy-obsessed Silicon Valley, must really like the word safety.
They used it, or variations thereof, no fewer than 15 times in their press release announcing that their legal chief would be speaking today before a panel of federal transportation officials at Stanford University, singing the praises of driverless vehicles.
And, according to his prepared remarks for the panel, boy did David Strickland with the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets sing their praises. In his testimony at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) public meeting for planned operational guidelines of fully self-driving vehicles, Strickland was expected to quickly make the case on behalf of his Stanford-anchored group for more support and less regulation from Big Government:
From your announcement in January with Secretary Foxx on the Obama Administration s commitment to provide nearly $4 billion over the next ten years to support and accelerate the development of automated vehicles, to today s public meeting on developing operational guidelines, the agency clearly recognizes the incredible promise automated vehicles can provide.
As you are deeply aware, the work on automated driving has gone on for years in various venues by diverse parties, but the evolution of active safety and automated technologies have brought us to a point where crucial decisions about our transportation future are upon us.
And therein lies the hook: this fledgling group but powerful of self-driving promoters, whose founding members are Ford Motor Company, Google, Lyft, Uber, and the Volvo Car Group, wants nothing more than to plow straight ahead and at full speed with its campaign to put a driverless car in every driveway in America. Because, as Strickland points out over and over again, the safety of our streets hangs in the balance.
In other words, the coalition sees its work as a matter of life or death. In his speech, Strickland stresses that while technological innovations to date have helped reduce traffic fatalities big-time . . .
. . . we still see over 33,000 lives lost each year on our roadways. This translates to approximately 90 fatalities per day due to traffic crashes. More frustrating is that we are seeing an upward trend in fatalities after enjoying years of significant reductions. While we must continue to make strides in crashworthiness and improving driver behavior, the future of occupant protection includes active safety and crash avoidance systems as new and important tools in this fight.
That s where driverless comes in. Says Strickland, I strongly believe that fully autonomous self-driving vehicles have the potential to significantly transform and advance the personal safety of passengers and other roadway users from what we are currently experiencing. That is why many of us are here today.
With all the various active safety technologies that are currently being deployed, it is imperative that we do not lose sight of the wide societal benefits fully self-driving vehicles can provide. Full self-driving technology directly addresses driver awareness and error, can reduce congestion, and would provide the opportunity for millions of people to attain individual mobility that are currently foreclosed from driving.
And with that, the group proposed that the government supports its efforts to deploy fully autonomous self-driving vehicles as quickly as possible and added that they were there to help make that happen.
And firing a shot across the government s bow, Strickland hinted that government, if it wasn t careful, could muck things up and slow the pace of this life-of-death tech march into the not-too-distant future:
One reason why this coalition of innovators came together is that, despite the abundant benefits to society from this technology, there are policy issues and inconsistencies in the regulatory environment today that could greatly delay deployment or possibly deny full self driving from many that could benefit from its promise. The coalition will engage with civic leaders so that any regulatory or legislative actions designed to improve safety do not foreclose Level 4 self-driving, and to ensure that this is achieved in a timely manner.
Can t be much clearer than that, can they?
Credit: MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – SEPTEMBER 25: A bicyclist rides by a Google self-driving car at the Google headquarters on September 25, 2012 in Mountain View, California. California Gov. Jerry Brown signed State Senate Bill 1298 that allows driverless cars to operate on public roads for testing purposes. The bill also calls for the Department of Motor Vehicles to adopt regulations that govern licensing, bonding, testing and operation of the driverless vehicles before January 2015. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
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