Fifteenth International Conference on Technology, Knowledge & Society

Abstract

Testing of autonomous vehicles on California roads began in 2014 and manufacturers have led the way for the approval of deploying such systems. With this advancement in technology also came the first failures and collisions between autonomous and non-autonomous vehicles. The California Department of Motor Vehicles (CA DMV) mandates that reports for such off-nominal events be made publicly available. Currently, the DMV requires the reporting of two types of situations: accident reports of an event where a collision occurs; yearly reports of all autopilot failures. Research has shown that both types of reports display several shortcomings. The accident reports do not provide information regarding the mileage driven before the accident, a factor that contributes to the failure as it affects the response time of the driver that serves as a “back-up.” Conversely, the disengagement reports do not have an official template, so each manufacturer has provided different sets of data in different formats. The project will draw from the extensive experience in accident reporting within the Aviation Industry to ameliorate both DMV databases on the creation of a generalizable template and formatting for reporting accidents of autonomous systems. The study starts with an analysis of the current accident reporting in use by the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting Systems and the National Transportation Safety Board. The proposed study has three deliverables: highlighting weaknesses within the current template/layout of DMV-mandated reports; proposal of a new template for both databases; recommendations for DMV regulations on autonomous vehicle deployment.