NHTSA Announces Automated Vehicle Safety Meeting

Today the DOT’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) published a meeting notice in the Federal Register (81 FR 14934-14936) for a public meeting in Washington, DC on April 8^th, 2016. The purpose of the meeting is to seek input on planned guidelines for the safe deployment and operation of automated vehicles. This automated vehicle initiative is part of the NHTSA’s crash avoidance research program.

The full day meeting will address 12 topics:

• Evaluation and testing of scenarios the AV system should detect and correctly operate in;

• Detection and communication of operational boundaries;

• Environmental operation and sensing;

• Driver transitioning to/from AV operating mode;

• Data;

• Crash avoidance capability;

• Electronics systems safety;

• Non-passenger AVs;

• Aspects of AV technology that may not be suitable or ready for guidelines;

• Identification of industry voluntary standards, best practices;

• Information AV's may need to communicate to pedestrians and other vehicles (manual or automated); and

• Other topics needed for operational guidance.

Readers of this blog should note that NHTSA includes both cybersecurity and system safety under the heading of ‘electronics systems safety’.

Advanced registration to attend the meeting is recommended. The meeting will also be webcast via a link on the Automated Vehicle web site.

NHTSA is soliciting both oral comments at the meeting and written comments. Written comments may be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal (www.Regulations.gov; Docket # NHTSA-2016-0036). Written comments should be submitted by May 18^th, 2016.