Heavy Duty Trucking, May 2018

HDT MAY 2018 98 WWW TRUCKINGINFO COM Rolf Lockwood Executive Contributing Editor rolf@ newcom ca e cant afford to be afraid of change especially not these days when anything seems possible but we also cant afford to be cavalier about the path we take in finding new and better ways to do things Case in point the testing and occasional use of autonomous and semi autonomous vehicles on public roads So far its been mostly cars but heavy trucks are out there pretty often too And in a couple of recent cases mayhem ensued First we had the Arizona fatality involving an Uber car in autonomous mode The facts are a bit sketchy but in a sense they dont matter Its about the optics The vehicle was doing 40 mph 5 mph under the speed limit apparently in Level Four autonomous mode and simply failed to see a woman crossing the roadway at night She walked into the cars path allegedly jay walking according to published reports A driver was present though not actively driving Confusing the issue somewhat the vehicles proprietary collision avoidance system had apparently been turned off in favor of Ubers own technology Id venture a guess that autonomy actually had little to do with this accident and that nothing could have prevented the womans death There simply wasnt time for any reaction human or otherwise More recently a California man in a Tesla X running in Autopilot mode died when the car drove itself straight at one of those awful concrete lane dividers The mans hands had apparently been off the wheel for at least six seconds despite warnings from the car Did its systems fail Or is this essentially a new variation on the theme of driver error Its not clear Regardless whatever trust had been built up in the idea of vehicular automation has been severely damaged by these incidents That was bound to happen at some point but Uber was probably right to suspend its autonomous testing after the Arizona tragedy even though I dont think its autonomous technology failed Optics again The public seems to have little confidence in the autonomous idea in cars and a lot less when it comes to trucks It will take time to restore the average persons willingness to entertain the concept of vehicles driving themselves Confidence in the idea Think at least a decade or two Theres no surprise there and this really isnt a setback for proponents of automation because it was never going to be a slam dunk The technology is well advanced though clearly imperfect but the social and legal aspects of this were always going to be the bigger challenges by a very wide margin In a sense then nothing has changed despite these fatalities that have drawn so much public attention Not surprisingly there are an increasing number of calls for more rigorous testing of autonomous technology on test tracks before such vehicles are let loose on public roads California on the other hand is steadily making public testing easier So whos right Should we be more cautious than weve been so far I tend to think so not just because of the recent fatalities I simply think were moving too fast Im certainly not afraid of change and not of the autonomous one in particular but I really do think were being cavalier It forces me to ask Whats the rush Are we moving too fast on autonomous vehicles Rolf Lockwood is vice president editorial at Newcom Business Media which publishes Todays Trucking He writes for HDT each month on the making maintaining and using of trucks He can be reached at rolf@ newcom ca or 416 315 1829 LOCKING IT IN Id guess that autonomy has little to do with this and that nothing could have prevented the womans death W