Keynote 1: How Safe Is Safe Enough for Autonomous Vehicles?

Abstract

The most pressing question regarding autonomous vehicles is: will they be safe enough? The usual metric of “at least as safe as a human driver” is more complex than it might seem. Which human driver, under what conditions? And are fewer total fatalities OK even if it means more pedestrians die? Who gets to decide what safe enough really means when billions of dollars are on the line? And how will anyone really know the outcome will be as safe as it needs to be when the technology initially deploys without a safety driver? In this talk I discuss the factors involved in measuring and predicting autonomous vehicle (AV) safety. These include what people mean by “safe,” risk management vs. safety, setting an acceptable safety goal, measuring safety, safety performance indicators, deciding when to deploy, and ethical AV deployment. A framework for making a responsible deployment decision needs to include not just risk, but also deal with inevitable uncertainty, stakeholder inclusion, and an ethical governance model. The talk is a high-level overview of my recently published book: How Safe Is Safe Enough? Measuring and Predicting Autonomous Vehicle Safety.