Consumer Reports provides comments on global regulation of autonomous vehicles
Consumer Reports has provided feedback on how the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) could use a proposed United Nations Global Technical Regulation (GTR) on Automated Driving Systems (ADS).
The feedback was provided in comments Consumer Reports submitted to NHTSA per its request for input.
The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Working Party on Automated/Autonomous and Connected Vehicles (GRVA) adopted the GTR during a meeting in January. UNECE says the proposal establishes uniform safety provisions and a harmonized methodology for validating vehicles equipped with ADS, anchored in a safety case approach and robust research and development processes.
Consumer Reports notes in its comments that vehicles that perform the entire dynamic driving task (DDT) present a significant shift in roadway responsibility.
“When the ADS is engaged, the system assumes the role of the driver,” the comments say. “Any regulatory framework should therefore evaluate the ADS as a driver and hold it to demonstrable, enforceable standards. The draft GTR establishes that an ADS must achieve a level of safety equivalent to a ‘competent and careful human driver.’ If NHTSA were to rely on benchmark in any future framework, the agency should clarify how equivalence will be measured in practice.”
Objective evaluation criteria that allow manufacturers to certify compliance and enable NHTSA to assess compliance if safety questions arise are needed, the comments say.
Consumer Reports notes that the draft regulation frames performance and system behavior in terms of real-world roadway behavior. This includes compliance with traffic rules within the operational design domain (ODD), detection and response to relevant objects and events, appropriate reactions to priority vehicles, avoidance of unreasonable disruption to traffic law, and collision prevention.
A survey by Consumer Reports also found that 2 out of 3 (68%) U.S. adults think vehicle safety standards should be stricter for AVs than traditional passenger vehicles, and just 3% think safety standards for AVs should be less strict than traditional passenger vehicles, the comments say. This includes 59% of consumers supporting vision test requirements for AVs to ensure they can detect and respond to other vehicles, people, and objects on the road, as well as a human driver.
“Similarly, the safety management system (SMS) and safety case elements in the draft GTR would aim to ensure that ADS developers make, and can substantiate, an evidence-based argument that the system would meet safety requirements within its defined ODD,” the comment says. “The requirement that manufacturers maintain both an SMS and a feature-specific safety case is significant as well.”
Automakers required to have an organizational safety governance and a documented justification for system performance before deployment help prevent safety assurances from becoming outdated as systems change, the comments say.
This should include regulator-facing mechanisms to ensure that claims are supported, including the review of the manufacturer’s SMS documentation, safety case evaluation, and possibly confirmatory testing.
“The U.S. framework for meeting the standard for safety, however, relies primarily on manufacturer certification, with NHTSA oversight through enforcement and defect investigation once vehicles are already deployed,” the comments say. “If NHTSA incorporates a safety case framework, it should consider within that framework mechanisms to ensure independent assessment of safety claims, whether through agency-directed evaluation, a requirement for independent expert verification and validation of the ADS, or another means sufficient to prevent safety cases from functioning as unreviewed self-attestations.”
The GTR also recognizes that oversight cannot end at the time of initial deployment, the comments say. It requires timely notification of critical occurrences, short-term reporting of significant and critical events, and periodic reporting of broader trends observed during operation.
Consumer Reports points to NHTSA’s Standing General Order 2021-01 (SGO), which requires reporting of certain crashes involving ADS and Level 2 systems.
“Consumer Reports has supported the SGO as a foundation for greater transparency, while urging NHTSA to ensure that reporting is timely, standardized, and sufficiently detailed to support meaningful accountability,” the comments say.
Another Consumer Reports survey found that 89% of Americans said AV companies should be required to report to regulators when their self-driving vehicles are involved in collisions or other incidents that jeopardize safety.
“If NHTSA develops a broader ADS framework informed by the draft GTR, it should build upon and strengthen existing SGO elements,” the report says. “ Reporting should not be limited to the occurrence of a crash, but also should provide sufficient operational context to support meaningful safety evaluation. At a minimum, reporting should indicate whether the ADS operated outside its defined ODD, whether a dynamic driving task performance-relevant system failure occurred, whether the system issued a request to intervene or initiated a minimal risk condition, and whether remote assistance or remote operation was used.”
This should include meaningful exposure data, such as miles traveled with the ADS engaged, the comments say. It adds that without denominator data, crash counts alone cannot support an informed evaluation of ADS safety.
Consumer Reports expands on this, saying that states and local authorities should also have the ability to collect and access safety-relevant operational data necessary to oversee deployment within their jurisdictions.
“Federal standards should establish a floor for transparency, not a ceiling that limits state oversight or restricts access to information needed to protect road users,” the comments say.
The comments add that any federal action informed by the GTR should not undermine the role of state and local officials in protecting road users.
“Finally, any U.S. framework informed by the GTR must preserve the baseline expectation that vehicles meet applicable federal motor vehicle safety standards (FMVSS),” the comments say. Simply fulfilling the requirement to submit a safety case should not absolve ADS manufacturers from adhering to current or future safety standards. Exemptions from FMVSS should also be limited, evidence-based, and subject to transparent processes. Relying on broad determinations of ‘overall safety’ in lieu of compliance with enforceable standards risks reducing transparency and public accountability.”
Earlier this month, the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade passed the Safely Ensuring Lives Future Deployment and Research In Vehicle Evolution (SELF DRIVE) Act to the full Committee on Commerce and Energy.
The SELF DRIVE Act was passed with a 12-11 vote. The bill’s purpose, which is sponsored by Rep. Robert Latta (R-OH-5), is stated to “ensure continued United States leadership in the global automotive and autonomous driving sector, improve road safety, mobility, and accessibility, and create American jobs by creating rules and regulations that relate to the design, construction, and performance of ADS-equipped vehicles and by encouraging the testing and of such vehicles.”
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