By Paul Brubaker
George Hotz, founder of a company called comma.ai, is full of ideas when it comes to self-driving cars. He has no fear, as witnessed by the news conference he recently held in his garage, to announce his idea to sell after-market kits to people who can’t wait for automotive engineers to mass produce autonomous vehicles. There is no telling if he will succeed, but one thing is for certain: Hotz is riding the tip of a technology spear that challenges the pace of progress in this space.
Certainly, the account of Hotz’s media event reminds us of others who launched world-changing technologies from dank spaces – Jobs, Wozniak, Hewlett and Packard. All of them had revolutionary ideas. None of them started with much fanfare.
What George Hotz represents is the coming wave of innovation in the self-driving car sphere. What he has uncovered through his challenge to the regulators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is the agency’s lack of preparedness to handle this task.
Hotz contends the automobile safety authority has no sway over his software. Perhaps not. But someone should be involved to make sure his product, or any other that comes to the market as part of this fledgling revolution, is safe for use on public streets.
That’s why the Alliance for Transportation Innovation has argued that the responsibility rest with the White House, where all of the pieces can be managed more effectively.
Riding in a car that drives itself requires a higher standard of safety than NHTSA can provide, and involves issues that extend beyond its purview, such as telecommunications technology, communications bandwidth, insurance regulation, and hours of service rules as it concerns commercial vehicles, all managed, regulated or otherwise monitored by a variety of agencies across the federal government.
Without coordination at the highest levels, Detroit’s careful approach will be the least of the challenges we can expect to the goal of safe, yet widespread implementation of this technology – and the lifesaving benefits that will follow.
Getting self-driving vehicles out of the test beds and onto the roads will be a herculean task. Currently, there’s no single group with the influence and authority to make it happen. President-elect Trump has an important opportunity to lead a program that will save lives and build a transportation legacy, but only if it is well coordinated with his endorsement guiding the government’s handling of the issue.
Our proposal to give the White House Office of Science and Technology the lead would ensure coordination among government agencies and improve our chances for streamlined decision-making especially where agencies may disagree.
Meanwhile, George Hotz continues to look for ways to bring his idea to market, because he knows that one day self-driving cars will dominate America’s streets and highways. And whether he succeeds or someone else finally brings his idea to store shelves, George stands for the potential of this technology and the promise it holds to dramatically improve our lives – a goal we can and must get behind.
Paul Brubaker is the President and CEO of the Alliance for Transportation Innovation. He served under President George W. Bush as the second Administrator of the Research and Innovative Technology Administration at the U.S. Department of Transportation and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and Deputy CIO and the U.S. Department of Defense.
