PA Autonomous Vehicle Testing Legislation Still Needs Work

PA HB 2398 would legalize autonomous vehicles
(AVs) without
human drivers in Pennsylvania. Having passed the PA House, it is
pending in the PA Senate Transportation Committee. While the bill has improved, my
25 years of
experience working on AV safety at Carnegie Mellon University
leave me with significant
remaining concerns:

A municipal preemption clause would prevent
Pittsburgh from
restricting the testing of immature self-driving vehicle
technology in active
school zones and other high risk locations.A loophole regarding vehicles “approved for
noncommercial
use” apparently exempts most AVs from certification when using
conventional
vehicle retrofits, potentially rendering the bill toothless.Test drivers are not required to conform to
an established
industry standard for testing safety as done elsewhere in the
US. Argo AI is
the sole company conforming to the relevant safety standard: SAE
J3018.The recent National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration
release of AV crash data makes it clear that crashes will
happen. The bill
should require AV testers to attest that their technology is
acceptably safe. Perfect
safety might be unrealistic, but AV companies should at least
promise on the
record that their testing will be no more dangerous than human
driven vehicles.

The current bill leaves Commonwealth
constituents
unnecessarily vulnerable on public roads. In exchange for
placing road users at
risk from this work-in-progress technology, we at least deserve
to have these
issues fixed before the bill is made into law.

Philip Koopman, Ph.D.
Squirrel Hill neighborhood, Pittsburgh PA