Alert: AV START bill moving in Congress to allow thousands of self-driving cars; Requirement for self-driving cars to pass bike/ped Vision Test not yet included
The AV START Act, which creates federal regulations for self-driving vehicles and allows some hundreds of thousands of them on the road all across the country, is now looking like it may move forward in Congress soon.
Self-driving vehicles have great promise to improve safety on our roads. However, we know that self-driving vehicles have considerable difficulty reliably detecting people who walk and bicycle. Yet the legislation still does not yet include the "Vision Test" to prove that the systems can detect people who walk and bicycle, as requested by the League of American Bicyclists.
The current AV START Act has serious shortcomings and needs to be strengthened in important ways before it moves forward.
Missouri's two Senators play a key role on this issue. Senator Blunt is an AV START Act sponsor and Senator McCaskill is a consumer safety advocate who has not yet spoken up on this important consumer safety issue.
Please take 2 minutes to contact our Missouri Senators on this issue - it really makes a difference.
In 2016, two experts in city planning carefully examined the issue of driverless vehicles interacting with people who bicycle. They wrote:
We establish the following 13 principles as a manifesto for cyclists in an AV future.
#1. AVs should be able to detect bicyclists and detect and understand all bicycle signage and lane markings.
#2. AVs should be able to detect and understand bicyclists' hand signals.
#3. AVs should cede the right-of-way to bicyclists.
#4. AVs should have an ability to signal (visual and audible) its detection and basic intent.
#5. AVs should follow bicyclists at a safe distance when unable to pass.
#6. AVs should exceed the 3' minimum passing rule especially as speed increases.
#7. AVs should leave an ample margin of safety when making decisions about turning, passing, ceding right-of-way, and other decision-making scenarios involving bicyclists
#8. AVs should be able to detect approaching bicyclists and prevent "dooring." (Dooring refers to instances when cyclists are struck by the doors of parked cars along a roadway as passengers exit. A more complete explanation of the "door zone" is provided on Wikipedia.)
#9. AVs should be designed (size, shape, weight, materials) to minimize injury to bicyclists should an impact occur.
#10. AVs should travel at speeds appropriate for urban conditions to facilitate safe travel for non-automotive users (for example, not more than 20 miles per hour on downtown and neighborhood streets, 40 miles per hour on arterial connectors, etc.).
#11. AVs should minimize travel on streets designated as bicycle boulevards or that have high bicycle usage but no facilities.
#12. Companies deploying shared AVs should ensure adequate supply of vehicles equipped with bicycle racks/carriers to meet demand.
#13. AV companies should record and share all collision data with local, state, and national law enforcement and regulatory agencies.
Two years after these guidelines were written, Congress is ready to pass the AV START legislation to allow hundreds of thousands of self-driving cars to operate all over the country.
And AV START does not require these self-driving vehicles to show they can follow these basic standards.
We have no way of knowing whether or not self-driving cars actually on the road can follow these simple standards. Probably, some brands of self-driving vehicles would do OK, others would fail.
Again, there is no way for us to know.
That needs to change. You can help make the change by contacting Congress to ask them to improve the AV START Act before it is passed.
The "Vision Test" the League of American Bicyclists is asking for in the AV START Act is, in essence, asking that self-driving cars follow these basic rules of the road--rules we would expect any beginning driver to understand and follow.
This is the least we should ask of autonomous vehicles before they are allowed on our roads and streets.
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