Page 46 - Occupational Health & Safety, March 2018

TRANSPORTATION SAFETY
in 2015 for potential barriers to automated technologies, contract- ing with DOT’s Volpe Center that year to review the standards. Volpe’s review concluded there are few barriers for a vehicle with ADS to comply with the FMVSS, as long as the vehicle doesn’t sig- nificantly diverge from conventional design. However, Google had alerted NHTSA by a Nov. 12, 2015, letter that it planned to develop a vehicle without a steering wheel, accelerator, or brake pedal.
NHTSA says it began a new research project at the start of FY2018 on solving the challenges identified in the Volpe review and has contracted with the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute to perform the research. The project is being conducted by a core team consisting of FMVSS experts; General Motors and Nissan; testing facilities Dynamic Research, Inc. and MGA Research Cor- poration; and research institutions Booz Allen Hamilton and the Southwest Research Institute.
Their research will review new vehicle designs and establish an evaluation process; within the next 12 months, the project is ex- pected to produce “robust alternative approaches” to demonstrate compliance with current FMVSS’ test procedures that present challenges, says NHTSA, adding that results of the research will be made public after the project is finished.
Are there ways to solve the problems that any FMVSS poses without rulemaking, such as through interpretation, the request
asks, asking any commenter who believes legislation may be nec- essary to explain why, to identify the existing law that should be changed, and to explain how it should be changed.
One of the questions asks, for a vehicle driven only by an ADS, does the ADS need some or all of the same information that is cur- rently provided for a human driver? “For example, does the ADS need to know if the tires are underinflated? Why or why not?”
NHTSA also asks commenters whether they believe research should be done to determine whether any additional controls, such as an emergency stop button, may be necessary for safety or pub- lic acceptance if all manual controls are removed from fully self- driving vehicles.
Jerry Laws is the editor of Occupational Health & Safety. REFERENCES
1. https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/policy- initiatives/automated-vehicles/303131/fhwa-2017-0049.pdf
2. https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/policy- initiatives/automated-vehicles/303136/nhtsa-2018-0009_0.pdf
3. https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/dot0518
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Health, Safety, & the Pursuit of the Next Generation
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