Robot rides slow down but keep moving
Intel Capital «My greatest fear is that we will hit the winter of AV (autonomous vehicles),» says Jill Sciarappo in response to an unwelcome question at the Intel Capital conference in Arizona – the US state that saw the first self-driving car death last year.
Sciarappo is the marketing director of Intel-owned Mobileye, one of the main companies in the autonomous vehicle market, and she was sat alongside the CEO of trade organization the Arizona Commerce Authority (ACA) Sandra Watson, and professor from Dr Sethuraman Panchanathan from the Arizona State University (ASU), at the Biltmore Hotel in Arizona just a few miles from the fateful crash.
Together they are representing the new «Institute for Automated Mobility» which was set up in October last year and represents Arizona’s response to the death of Elaine Herzberg, although no one is willing to say so publicly.
The institute combines business with government and academia but Watson – a government figure who oversees it – makes no bones about the fact that it is there to help drive the self-driving car industry. It was «set up to accommodate industry as much as possible,» she noted and repeatedly referred to the Arizona governor’s business background and desire to use his position to help corporates.
Just in case you’re in any doubt as to its approach, the main webpage for the institute notes at the top that «94 per cent of serious vehicle crashes are due to human error.»
All of which is important and relevant because Arizona remains the main testing ground for autonomous vehicles in the US and by extension the world. That’s down to three factors: first, Arizona is flat, its roads are straight, and new, and well marked, and the climate is dry and sunny. It’s the perfect test-bed for getting machines to learn how to drive cars.
Second, Arizona’s governor has championed the industry and gone out of his way to make Arizona a good place for AV companies to set up shop, even pushing and passing legislation to accommodate the industry. And third, the US is the center of technological advances and research on autonomous cars; it’s where the money and the engineers are.
Which is why no one wants to talk about Elaine Herzberg and her death at Uber’s hands. After a lengthy presentation about what the new institute will do and how it will do it (short version: test beds, tech specs, industry best practices), no one had mentioned the death that still casts a shadow over the self-driving dream, leaving it this reporter to raise the issue and make everyone uncomfortable.
The governor had gone out of his way to publicly invite Uber to Arizona after the company’s self-driving program was kicked out of San Francisco for failing to even apply for licenses. Uber came, and then it ran down a citizen and killed her, and the governor was forced to disinvite the company and pray that anger over the issue wouldn’t become a political problem for him.
So we ask what lessons have been learnt from the death a year earlier. Watson instantly glances at her notes and informs us that the Arizona state government’s «focus was always on safety,» and that she can’t comment further because the state is still involved in litigation over the matter.
