Safer Roads with Automated Vehicles?

• June 12th, 2018

This report examines how increasing automation of cars and trucks could affect road safety and which security vulnerabilities will need to be addressed with the rise of self-driving vehicles. The report applies the principles of the “Safe System”, which is at the forefront of current thinking about road safety, to the wider discussion on vehicle automation. It also takes into considerations the security of the cyber-physical system associated with automated driving. This includes a definition of relevant system boundaries and future-proof minimum requirements for relevant safety and security indicators.
Recommendations for how to to keep our roads safe with automated vehicles include:

• Reinforce the Safe System approach to ensure automated vehicles are used safely.
• Apply Vision Zero thinking to automated driving.
• Avoid safety performance being used to market competing automated vehicles.
• Carefully assess the safety impacts of systems that share driving tasks between humans and machines.
• Require reporting of safety-relevant data from automated vehicles.
• Develop and use a staged testing regime for automated vehicles.
• Establish comprehensive cyber-security principles for automated driving.
• Ensure the functional isolation of safety-critical systems and that connectivity does not compromise cyber-security or safety.
• Provide clear and targeted messaging of vehicle capabilities.