The Michigan Standard

"Michigan should let the cars drive. Michigan should take the lead on developing national testing standards for driverless vehicles.  If a piece of driverless vehicle technology cannot pass the rigors of navigating a northern Michigan winter, that equipment is not ready for delivery on a nationwide basis.

   Development of a "Michigan Standard" for testing would bring business to the state and set the bar for the national good. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is actively seeking guidance on protocols for testing more advanced driverless technologies. Michigan should provide some of that guidance. Michigan would draw driverless vehicle technology developers to Michigan to test their vehicles. With rapidly advancing computer technology, soon even small startups will be able to contribute. Innovation can as easily happen in a Gladstone garage as the Google campus in Mountain View.

   Google’s spring 2014 release of their prototype vehicle has captivated Americans, but in a May Associated Press article, Google was not confident their vehicles will work in inclement weather. The cars have never been driven in snow.  In California, Google's driverless car testing relies on a network of predetermined route information, a ‘supersized’ map imagery database far more detailed than what’s available for the rest of the country.

   Michigan autonomous vehicle testing continues to develop, with a driverless car campus being built in Ann Arbor, a fleet of connected cars plying the highways downstate, and MDOT snowplows collecting automated plowing data. Michigan need not fear driverless technologies. Backup proximity alarms and ABS braking are examples of lower function autonomous technologies many of us have in our cars and increasingly rely on. The more advanced cars being tested today are already proving to be safer than human drivers.

   Developing a public test track, traffic corridor, or an entire region for autonomous vehicle testing in northern Michigan would bring driverless vehicle testing to the state for real-world American winter conditions. What city in Upper Michigan will be the first to declare itself “driverless vehicle testing ready” and welcome these vehicles citywide?

   The question of who's at fault in a collision should not delay testing to a Michigan Standard. The 2014 Brooking Institute report "Product Liability and Driverless Cars" took an in-depth look at the issue, and concluded liability will be cleanly handled and assigned in a manner similar to standard product liability for other developing technologies. Fears of vague legal provisions regulating autonomous vehicle liability should not deter their testing and propagation in Michigan.

These cars need to be tested somewhere- why not northern Michigan’s winters? The country's vehicles and passengers will be safer because of it. We drive in snow like nowhere else, Michiganders owe it to the rest of the country.

 Michigan can choose to either take the drivers’ seat - or be the backseat drivers - in the driverless cars of the future. Michigan has little to lose lobbying NHTSA for a "Michigan Standard" for driverless cars, and everything to gain, by leveraging our automobile heritage and our northern winters for the good of the nation."

© 2014 mikeTbeck ARR