Automated Vehicles hold amazing promise to make people safer on our nation's roadways. To date, our nation's chief road safety regulator - NHTSA - has not made any regulations to ensure that promise is realized. Now, they are taking a first step.
Late in 2020, NHTSA asked for public comments on a Framework for Automated Driving System Safety. Please join the League of American Bicyclists in telling NHTSA this Framework must prioritize the safety of people biking, walking, and using wheelchairs. Any Framework that does not prioritize the safety of people outside of vehicles is incomplete.
The League of American Bicyclists believes that NHTSA should prioritize the safety of people biking, walking, or using a wheelchair in its ADS Framework because people biking and walking make up 20% of traffic fatalities and that percentage has increased nearly 50% in the last 15 years. Now is the time to stop that trend.
An ADS Framework should:
- Include a "Vision Test" to ensure that developers are creating automated vehicles that can detect and respond to pedestrians, bicyclists and wheelchair users - of all races and ethnicities.
- Quickly implement safety testing of existing automated technologies, like automated emergency braking which is tested in other markets.
- Provide the resources necessary to ensure that ADS safety is safety for all people, including people outside of ADS-equipped vehicles.
Please join us in asking NHTSA to care about biking and walking safety in its first-ever Framework for Automated Driving System Safety.
