Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE) announced the creation of a Commission on Autonomous Vehicle Testing and Safety, a project of the organization’s Autonomous Vehicles Task Force.
The Commission will study and recommend best practices for industry and other parties for testing and early deployment of autonomous vehicles in real-world conditions.
The transportation system in its current form exerts an inexorable toll on society in the form of both oil dependence and traffic fatalities—these costs will be amplified by excessive delay over safety concerns.
Although there will be incidents while autonomous technology is perfected, the current 35,000 lives lost and over 2 million people injured every year on American roads reveal the scope of the current problem, reported the news release.
Their experts believe up to 90 percent of crashes will be eliminated by autonomous technology, but recent polling has shown that the general public remains skeptical of these benefits, with only 35 percent of Americans aware that autonomous vehicles will save lives.
Members of the Commission will convene over the course of the coming months, combining decades of experience in public safety and vehicle technology in their investigation. Once the group has completed its research, it will publish its findings for industry and regulators on best safety practices.
The members of the Commission are as follows:
- Mark Rosenker (Commission Chairman), former Chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board.
- Admiral Dennis Blair, Former Director of National Intelligence and member of SAFE’s Energy Security Leadership Council.
- Dr. Jeremy Brown, Director of Emergency Care Research for the National Institutes of Health.
- Paul Brubaker, Chairman of the Alliance for Transportation Innovation and former Administrator of the DOT’s Research and Innovative Technology Administration.
- Bob Lange, former top safety executive at General Motors Corporation.
- Cuneyt Oge, President of SAE International.
Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE) is a nonpartisan organization that aims to reduce America’s dependence on oil in order to bolster national security and strengthen the economy. SAFE advocates for expanded domestic production of U.S. oil and gas resources, continued improvements in fuel efficiency, and in the long-term, breaking oil’s stranglehold on the transportation sector through alternatives like natural gas for heavy-duty trucks and plug-in electric vehicles.