Autonomous Vehicle Guideline for Public Road-Testing Sustainability

Version	Summary	Created by	Modification	Content Size	Created at	Operation
1		Mohd Azman Abas	+ 2067 word(s)	2067	2022-02-08 07:54:57	\|
2	format correct	Conner Chen	+ 341 word(s)	2408	2022-02-17 03:32:53	\|

This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper 10.3390/su14031456

Numerous countries have developed guidelines for public road testing, but those rules are not uniform, and discrepancies occur between nations. Issues such as vehicular safety, registrations, authority, insurance, cybersecurity, and infrastructures weigh differently in each country. Rather than relying on a single national standard as a reference, an amalgam of guidelines from different countries allows a more holistic and measured view of AV testing practices. Synthesizing these diverse national regulations into global guidelines would promote the safety and sustainability of autonomous vehicle testing and benefit all parties interested in autonomous vehicles.

autonomous vehicle public road testing testing guideline connected vehicle testing regulation mobility transportation road transport vehicle

1. Introduction

Since the first appearance of road vehicles, automation functionality has continuously been developing and evolving. The use of autonomous vehicles (AVs) in road transport is increasing because of their contribution to road safety and the potential to lower the number of casualties due to the elimination of human error. Besides safety, AVs could also help reduce traffic congestion, increase productivity, and provide transportation accessibility. Nevertheless, automating the driving process is a complex task involving numerous challenges that need to be tackled to facilitate the widespread adoption of AVs. Apart from the technological issues, the psychological, policy, and regulatory challenges should be tackled simultaneously. Psychological concerns, which may be the main barrier to mass adoption of AVs, refer primarily to the trust issues and public concern for personal safety and security ^[1]. Additional studies in the public acceptance and willingness may identify the necessary measures that will contribute to the widespread adoption of AVs. Besides the availability, transport policy can help shape positive public opinion on AVs. Increasing the funding for initiatives involving education, marketing, advertising, compatibility, and process simplification can result in new, effective transportation policies that can stir the public sentiment towards widespread acceptance ^[2].

Additionally, adaptive regulations must be developed incorporating both the latest knowledge and safety requirements and technological advancement ^[3]. Under the new regulations, testing standards must address a wider range of real-world scenarios, such as the absence of connectivity. Currently, it is unclear whether an AV is capable of avoiding crashes without connectivity with surrounding vehicles (V2V) or infrastructure (I2V) ^[4]. Thus, reaching the goal of widespread use of AVs requires not only advancement in AV technology but also other AV-interlinking areas/technologies.

AV must be able to analyse the surrounding area and manoeuvre safely with minimum or no human interaction ^[5]. Referring to the on-road motor vehicles, six levels of automation have been defined by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), published in SAE J3016. Figure 1 illustrates these six levels, starting from Level 0, which requires full human attention and input, to fully automated Level 5 ^[6]. Level 2 is the highest level of vehicle automation currently in production, although recently, Honda (Tokyo, Japan) became the first to produce a road vehicle equipped with Level 3 self-driving technology ^[7]. Levels 4 and 5 are yet to be achieved through testing, research, and development in the coming years.

Figure 1. Levels of driving automation in SAE J3016 standard.

As of 2021, most manufacturers involved with AVs are conducting tests on public roads. Findings and inputs from these tests can be valuable in revising and developing the infrastructures, regulations, and public opinion. Companies such as Waymo (Mountain View, CA, USA) are conducting testing in public areas permitted by the government ^[8]. Germany has started testing AVs up to Level 4 on public roads with speed limits of up to 130 km/h that require a human driver’s oversite ^[9]. Facilitating AV testing on the public road requires multigroup involvement, including manufacturers and testing organisations, government, various safety authorities, and the public.

With numerous countries undergoing AV public road testing, there must be some common ground where their regulations and guidelines overlap. Hence, to formulate a global and complete set of guidelines, a study of the relevance of individual regulations and their adaptability must be conducted. This is because public testing is required in order to allow AVs’ deployment in the real world. Since AVs are expected to have minimal or no driver’s input, validating their usage in the real world is critically important. Traditionally, test results act as indicators of a vehicle’s road safety; however, that is not the case with AVs where the safety assurance is acquired in real-mileage testing ^[10]. Deploying AVs in a simulated environment may be insufficient as it is still essentially conducted under controlled conditions. Thus, the question of concise and complete legislation enabling AV real-road testing arises.

Different countries have different strategies and component requirements for public road-testing guidelines. Some aspects considered important in one set of guidelines may not even be mentioned in another, potentially leading to safety hazards when testing is executed. Emphasizing safety is key in legislation and policy making and is crucial for conducting successful testing practices. In case of accidents, the testing organisation would be responsible for liabilities. Ideally, synthesising various policies would potentially result in a concise and complete set of guidelines acting as a global framework for countries developing AV testing guidelines. Hence, countries could draw upon and adapt these regulations based on their suitability within their own context. National authorities would benefit greatly from relying on this global standard as an underlying framework already in place, leaving only suitability issues to be considered. Resources could then be diverted to researching suitability and supporting infrastructural aspects of AV deployment. Testing companies could use this global tool as a preliminary reference prior to consulting the local authorities. It would also serve as a good basis to educate the community on AV public road testing.

2. Background

In the early 1900s, Norman Bel Geddes deployed the first self-driving car, an electric vehicle guided by radio-controlled electromagnetic fields generated with magnetized metal spikes embedded in the roadway, during the General Motors exhibition in 1939 ^[11]. Further advancements in AV were apparent in the 1950s when RCA Laboratories and the state of Nebraska tested an AV on a 122-m stretch of road with embedded metal wires ^[12]. In the 1960s, United Kingdom’s Transport and Road Research Laboratory and Citroen tested a Citroen Ds model, which drove autonomously 130 km/h using magnetic cables embedded in the road ^[13]. In the following decade, manufacturers started to include advanced technologies such as neural networks in AV control, the precursors of the technologies currently used in AV. The Prometheus project by the Daimler group used a Mercedes-Benz van as a test vehicle and managed to autonomously drive up to 63 km/h on traffic-less roads ^[14]. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) also tested an autonomous land vehicle using lidar, computer vision, and automated control ^[15].

Based on the previous development, the United States Congress approved the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA) that guides the United States Department of Transport to conduct AV system testing and highway road testing in 1997. This Act led to a demonstration of 20 AVs in San Diego, California ^[16]. In addition, Daimler-Benz successfully tested autonomous driving in free lanes, convoy driving, and lane changes with autonomous passing under normal traffic conditions, with human supervision and inputs only in certain circumstances ^[14]. Within the same decade, numerous institutions and organisations started conducting tests on vehicles with different levels of autonomy over long distances. In the 2000s, DARPA conduct tests in urban environments to simulate traffic congestions and other real-world conditions ^[17]. In 2009, Google conducted their first AV testing that was publicly announced only in 2012 in Nevada 2012 ^[18]. Later in 2010, the Institute of Control Engineering of the Technische Universität Braunschweig publicly tested AV driving in Germany ^[19]. Due to the increasing number of testing activities in the real world, California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) noted that their 2010 regulations had not considered AVs, and therefore, certain aspects of the regulations may not be relevant due to the advancement of AV technologies ^[20]. This indicated the need for developing the regulatory framework for AV testing. As a result, Nevada became the first state to pass a law on AV testing on public roads in 2011, which came into effect in 2012. In the same year, Google registered their AV with the Nevada DMV, which requires a driver to be present in the AV to monitor the testing ^[21]^[22]. Florida and California became the next two states to allow public AV testing ^[23].

Testing of partially autonomous vehicles or driver assistance systems became widespread among large manufacturers throughout the 2010s. In 2014, SAE International published a classification system for AV with levels ranging from manual to fully autonomous systems called the J3016 ^[6]. In August 2016, Singapore launched the first self-driving public taxi service, provided by nuTonomy, a spin-off company of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) ^[24]. In the same year, the province of Ontario, Canada, officially allowed AVs to be tested on public roads with a driver present to monitor the testing ^[25]. In 2017, Canada’s first fully AV was publicly tested within a closed section of a public road ^[26]. As the global number of AV testing is growing and is expected to significantly increase in the near future, a synthesized testing guideline would seem a welcomed and valuable reference tool to all the parties attempting to implement public road testing worldwide. Figure 2 illustrates the aforementioned milestones of AV road testing history, from a radio-controlled vehicle of the 1930s to the existing AV testing procedures and policies of the 2010s.

Figure 2. Brief history of AV road testing.

Similar to other technology development, AV testing must be conducted to confirm and validate their ability and reliability, especially in terms of safety under real-world conditions. The safest AV testing method is to conduct the test within a controlled environment, such as in a dedicated area with simulated traffic, replicating the real-world road conditions. However, testing within controlled environments should not be the primary approach because it lacks many factors found in real-world conditions. Controlled or simulated environments could not replicate the uncertainties and unpredictability characteristic of uncontrolled situations. For example, the reactions of other road users may depend on factors such as emotions, habits, current physical and mental conditions and circumstances. In the simulated environment, almost all variables are controlled, bringing into question the validity of the results obtained within “fake city” environments. Hence, the need for AV testing to be conducted in the real world and the deployments of many testing organisations on public roads.

Ultimately, the synthesised global AV testing framework would contribute to designing the national guidelines for AV public road testing. Countries covered in this research include Australia, Canada, and United Kingdom. Australia’s national guideline, the “Guidelines for Trials of Automated Vehicles in Australia 2020”, aims to guide the testing organisations and local authorities in the upkeep of testing safety and requirements. The guideline also acts as encouragement in innovation and, at the same time, maintains the safety of AV testing in Australia ^[27]. “Canada’s Safety Framework for Automated and Connected Vehicles” is a multilayered framework that covers three areas of general testing, the jurisdictional authorities, and the testing organisation themselves. Such a flexible system allows for customising policies that suit different environments. The United Kingdom’s guideline, “The Pathway to Driverless Cars: A Code of Practice for testing”, is a framework helping the testing organisation by providing clear guidelines and recommendations for implementing key actions and procedures during the pretesting, testing, and post-testing phase ^[28]. Figure 3 presents Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom guidelines in a timeframe, among other AV-related documents. Following the release of the SAE J3016 standard in 2014, the United Kingdom released their guideline in 2015, Australia in 2017, and Canada in 2018. It is expected that the existing guidelines will be regularly updated, and many more will be established worldwide.

Figure 3. Modern-day guidelines of AV deployment and testing on public roads.

3. AV Public Road-Testing Guidelines

AV testing guidelines provide recommendations to testing organisation and authorities on standards and practices they should consider and apply when planning and conducting public road testing. As mentioned earlier, this study examined the guidelines for AV public road testing from Australia, Canada, and United Kingdom, with a particular focus on (1) Preparation (preliminary activities before the testing), (2) Testing, (practices during the testing) and (3) Post-Testing (reporting and data management). Highlights of guidelines from Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, are listed in Table 1. The findings from the review of these guidelines are used to develop a synthesis.

Table 1. Highlights of guidelines from Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Subject	Australia	Canada	United Kingdom
Approvals and permits	Follow the regulations of local authorities and the policies mentioned in the guideline. May conduct trial without requiring permit which depends largely on the local authorities.	Obtained appropriate authorisation from the local authorities. Compliance with each jurisdiction is required when testing.	Obey all traffic laws such as MOT test, Road Traffic Act 1988, Highway Code.
Safety requirements	Map out routes and describe Operational Design Domain (ODD). Explain technology being tested to authorities. Sufficient closed-track testing of technologies. Establish a Traffic Management Plan.	Sufficient closed-track testing of technologies. Communication plan for the public. Notification to local authorities. Automation and manual mode switch.	Can be tested anywhere on public roads. Stability of technology must be tested and proven. Sufficient closed track testing. Automation and manual mode switch.
Data collection, storage, and security	Information such as time, date, location, automation status, traffic conditions, vehicle information, sensor detection, and the vehicle operator during the incident must be accessible.	Availability of data recording device that records technical information about the AV status and operations.	Fitted with a data recording device with a minimum frequency of 10 Hz. Include data such as driving modes, vehicle speed, steer and braking, and objects surrounding the vehicle. May include video and audio storage.
Test driver/operator	Does not need an operator in the vehicle, but real-time remote monitoring is necessary.	Must always require driver or remote operators.	Must always require driver or remote operators.
Insurance	Compulsory third-party insurance. Comprehensive vehicle insurance. Public liability insurance. Product liability insurance. Self-insurance. Work or occupational health and safety insurance.	The minimum insured value of CAD 5 million in liability insurance, in the form and manner required by the MTA authority. Additional liability insurance for large seating capacity.	Anyone conducting tests of automated vehicles on public roads or in other public places must hold appropriate insurance or otherwise comply with the statutory requirements.
Reporting	Provide an initial report of the incident within 24 h. The full report, including the relevant data and information, must be provided within a week. Must submit a report to relevant agencies monthly for minor incidents.	Preliminary report submitted within 24 h of an accident.	Give full cooperation with relevant authorities in the event of an investigation.

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Mohd Azman Abas

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1. Introduction

2. Background

3. AV Public Road-Testing Guidelines

References