Is Your AV Safe? Prove It

Credible claims of safety require proof. It won't cut it for companies such as Waymo, Uber or GM to simply declare their vehicles are safe

eetasia.com, Jun. 25, 2019 – 

Arguing credibly about the safety of any autonomous vehicle (AV) requires somewhat more proof than a company like Waymo, Uber or GM declaring that its robocars are safe for commercial deployment. The automaker must be able to demonstrate that its AI-driven vehicles meet specific and rigorous standards.

The next questions then become:

• Which safety standards?
• Who's developing the standards?
• How are vehicles being tested?
• Who's going to "assess" the safety of the AVs?
• Do we trust the assessors?

There are no easy answers. Further, safety standards, especially for AI-driven vehicles, come with additional twists and numerous caveats.

Put simply, AI-based autonomous vehicles are running on machine-learning algorithms housed in black boxes. The inner workings are probabilistic in nature, and it's almost impossible to determine why they make whatever decisions they make.