On October 2, 2023, a Cruise robotaxi autonomous vehicle (AV) struck and dragged a pedestrian in San Francisco. The circumstances were complex. They included a different human-driven vehicle striking the pedestrian first, and what amounts to an attempted cover-up by Cruise senior management of the final portion (the dragging part) of the mishap. Many high level people were sacked. A significant fraction of staff were let go as well. A 3rd party external review was commissioned. Now we have the report. Quinn Emanuel Investigation report:  Original Link / Archive.org link Hig ..read more

Vay is deploying tele-driven cars in Las Vegas. At a first pass they have done some safety homework, but open questions remain that they should address to instill public confidence. I spent some time doing background research before posting (especially listening to this All About Autonomy podcast with their founder https://lnkd.in/eYQH72EE ). News article: https://www.msn.com/en-in/autos/news/german-firm-starts-remote-driving-car-service-in-las-vegas/ar-AA1n7qWn Initial summary of their system: - The operational concept is a rental car ferry service with a tele-driving kit on ..read more

 My 2024 AV industry prediction starts with a slide show with a sampling of the many fails for automated vehicles in 2023 (primarily Cruise, Waymo, Tesla). Yes, some hopeful progress in many regards. But so very many fails. Jalopnik slide show link is here: https://jalopnik.com/this-was-the-dire-state-of-self-driving-cars-in-2023-1851115821 At a higher level, the real event was a catastrophic failure of the industry's strategy of relentlessly shouting as loud as they can "Hey, get off our case, we're busy saving lives here!" The industry' lobbyists and spin doctors can only get s ..read more

 2023 was a busy year!  Here is a list of my presentations, podcasts, and formal publications from 2023 in case you missed any and want to catch up. Presentations: 2023: Autonomous Ground Vehicle Safety: Lessons To Learn from 2023 | Slides | Archive.org 2023: Autonomous Vehicle Policy Issues, SFCTA Board Meeting | Slides | Archive.org 2023: Breaking the Tyranny of Net Risk Metrics for Automated Vehicle Safety | Slides 2023: Defining a Computer Driver for Automated Vehicle Accountability | Slides | Arch ..read more

Bruce Schneier has written a thought-provoking piece covering the social fabric vs. human behaviors aspects of trust. Just like "safety," the word "trust" means different things in different contexts, and those differences matter in a very pressing way right now to the larger topic of AI. Exactly per Bruce's article, the car companies have guided the public discourse to be about interpersonal trust. They want us to trust their drivers as if they were super-human people driving cars, when the computer drivers are in fact not people, do not have a moral code, and do not fear jail consequences ..read more

Here is a retrospective video of robotaxi lessons learned in 2023 What happened to robotaxis in 2023 in San Francisco. The Cruise crash and related events. Lessons the industry needs to learn to take a more expansive view to safety/acceptability: Not just statistically better than a human driver Avoid negligent driving behavior Avoid risk transfer to vulnerable populations Fine-grain regulatory risk management Conform to industry safety standards Address ethical & equity concerns Build sustainable trust. Slides: https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/lectures/L141-2023-12-AV-Safety ..read more

A comparison of California Cruise robotaxi crash reports between the California DMV database and the NHTSA SGO database reveals significant discrepancies in reporting. 28 crashes reported to NHTSA do not appear in the California DMV database. This includes six unreported injury crashes. Of special note is the Cruise crash with a fire truck that caused serious injury to an occupant of the Cruise robotaxi does not appear as a California DMV crash report.  Comparison Results: 36 crashes were identified across both databases for the date-of-crash months of July 2023 through August 2023. The c ..read more

Cruise has announced a fleet-wide safety stand down. This involves suspending driverless operations in all cities, reverting to operation only with in-vehicle safety drivers. I'm glad to see this step taken. But it is crucial to realize that this is the first step in what it likely to prove a long journey. The question is, what should happen next? Loss of public trust is an issue as they say. And perhaps there was an imminent ban in another state forcing their hand to be proactive. But the core issues almost certainly run deeper than mismanaging disclosure of the details of a tragic mishap a ..read more

On October 24th I had the privilege of testifying at a San Francisco CTA board meeting regarding autonomous vehicle safety. The session started with SFCTA and SFMTA describing the challenges they have had with robotaxis, my talk, and then a series of Q&As about additional relevant topics. The robotaxi companies were invited to participate but declined. The news of the CA DMV suspension of Cruise permits broke as the hearing was starting, adding some additional context to the hearing. We have all heard the hype and marketing from the robotaxi companies. This event gave air time to the chall ..read more

Cruise has now had two pedestrian injuries in San Francisco, with the more severe one being complicated because it involved a pedestrian first hit by another vehicle.  NHTSA has launched an investigation based on those injuries and at least two other public video reports of close encounters. This makes available the relevant crash reports, so we have more direct information about what happened. The question asked in this piece is what can be done to avoid similar crashes in the future. On a numbers basis, two pedestrian injuries in a span of fewer than six weeks for a fleet of a couple ..read more