Articles Tagged with self-driving cars

A 49 year old woman was fatally hit, while crossing the street by a self-driving Uber vehicle in Tempe, Arizona earlier this month.  The crash happened around 10 p.m. Sunday March 18th near Mill Avenue and Curry Road.  This incident is believed to be the first pedestrian death involving an autonomous or self-driving vehicle.

The vehicle was a Volvo that was in autonomous mode when the accident happened.  It did however have a backup driver behind the wheel, which is common for Uber in case the vehicle has to be taken out of self-driving mode.   The victim was walking her bike across the street when she was struck by the vehicle and suffered fatal injuries.  The vehicle captured a video that Tempe police released that shows the moments before the pedestrian was struck.  According to the police, the vehicle was going 40 miles an hour in a 45-mile-an-hour zone and it did not slow down before impact.

Police in Tempe and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the incident.  This incident adds to the ongoing debate of the safety and feasibility of autonomous vehicles and how close they are to becoming more common on the roadways.

Pennsylvania is ramping up its continuing effort to become the “proving ground” for self-driving vehicles.  Earlier this month, Pennsylvania held its first Automated Vehicle Summit.  The event was held September 11-12 in State College.

Advocates of automated vehicles are hoping to make the roads safer by removing the human error element that leads to so many car accidents.  However, the process of proving to the world that these cars will indeed make the roadways safer is still in the works.  The most interesting question is whether there is a need to show that self-driving cars are as close to 100% safe as possible or whether it just needs to be shown that they are simply safer than human controlled vehicles.

Pennsylvania Department of Transportation Secretary Leslie Richards was the keynote speaker at the Summit.  Other officials from PennDOT, state police, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission and the state departments of Community & Economic Development and Labor & Industry were among those that also participated in the summit.

 

For the last several years various companies have worked to make self-driving cars a reality. Google has been working on a self-driving car since 2009. Automaker Tesla has gone a step further, their “Autopilot” feature has been available on consumer vehicles since 2014. Tesla CEO Elon Musk estimates that by 2019 “Autopilot” will allow vehicles to drive people to their destinations safely while the driver sleeps.

This sudden growth in self-driving car technology raises questions about safety, and many states, including Pennsylvania, have been working on laws to deal with the issue. The Pennsylvania legislature has been working on two bills that deal with self-driving cars.

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The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) has applied to the US Department of Transportation hoping to have Pennsylvania be designated as an Automated Vehicle Proving Ground.  The purpose of the application is to help in the facilitation of the safe and innovative development of Automated Vehicle technologies.

The application puts forth the benefits of Pennsylvania as a testing location because of the already existing facilities, environments, and topography within the state. “This application further illustrates that we’re a national leader in supporting automated vehicle development with safety and flexibility in mind,” PennDOT Secretary Leslie S. Richards said. “We’ve put in significant work on this issue with our task force, with our partners in the legislature, and through close collaboration with the industry.”

The application also highlighted the Pennsylvania Autonomous Vehicle Policy Task Force, which recently issued its recommended guidance to assist with testing policies helping to make testing proving grounds a success.

Pennsylvania’s Autonomous Vehicles Testing Policy Task Force has created some recommendations for PennDOT to review regarding the testing of Highly Automated Vehicles (HAVs). The public even had the chance to be involved, with the ability to ask questions and review the report during an online public forum that occurred earlier this month. This technology could be the future for transportation, so it was vital that safety as well as modernization were both kept at the highest importance during testing.

“Autonomous and connected vehicles will change transportation and could bring benefits of safer travel and greater ease of mobility for all if rules are in place to ensure passenger and pedestrian safety,” said PennDOT Secretary Leslie S. Richards in a press release. “Since HAVs will bring major changes to our transportation system, it is vital for Pennsylvanians to be informed and engaged in this process, so I encourage the public to participate in the Dec. 12 on-line forum.”

Some key highlights from the recommendations included restricting testing on only certain routes, ensuring PennDOT is notified when any HAV is tested without an operator, and more.

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