Testimony on Senate, No 734
Before the NJ Senate Budget Committee
Directs MVC to establish driver's license endorsement for autonomous vehicles.
by
Alain L. Kornhauser, PhD
Professor, Operations Research & Financial Engineering,
Faculty Chair, Princeton Autonomous Vehicle Engineering (PAVE)
Princeton University
December8, 2014, Trenton, New Jersey,
Thank you for allowing me to present this testimony this afternoon.
My name is Alain Kornhauser, I am here today to urge you to support Senate Bill No. 734 focused on autonomous vehicles.
I am going to spare you a recitation of my credentials, suffice it to say that I am in my 5th decade as a professor at Princeton University focused on the technology and policy of automated and intelligent transport systems.
This legislation is critically important.
It is rare thatwith one piece of legislation the Legislature hasa chance to
save lives, save money, create a new economic engine, and place the state at the forefront of a rapidly emerging area of technology.
By making a simple tweak in the state's regulatory structurethis bill will put us on a path towards the capture of each of those benefits.
In the 40 years from 1972 to 2011, the number of highway fatalities in this country dropped by 41% -- 22,000 fewer deaths each year despite vastly increased traffic. However, that long-standing trend began to turn.
In 2012, fatalities climbed a whopping 5.3%. While I am not aware of any published reason for the increase, the propensity of texting and other forms of distracted driving are out of control.
We as humans do not seem to be willing to completely focus our attention on the task of driving. An overwhelming majority of accidents evolve from driver distractions in one form or another. If we don’t want to remain focused and vigilant on the task of driving properly, it may well be time that we turn to technology for help and just let technology do it.
You may squirm at the notion of a self-driving car and dismiss it as not feasible, but please recognize that we're already well on our way – all to good effect.
Take anti-lock brakes. I find myself in a dangerous situation; my instincts tell me to slam on the brakes and the anti-lock brakes say (actually they don’t say anything) … "Alain, you’re stupid. Don’t you know that the coefficient of sliding friction is much worse than that of rolling friction; I’m going to take over." The system applies the optimal braking most likely to avoid the impending accident.
All new cars have "electronic stability control," an even more sophisticated feature. If I’m taking a corner too fast and rear of the car begins to lose traction, one of the car’s computers pushes me aside and applies the brakes differentially to keep me from spinning off the road. It doesn’t ask for permission, it doesn’t warn me, it doesn’t try to tell me what to do; it just bails me out.
It may not seem obvious, but New Jersey already has a substantial history of actively engineering our roadways to avoid crashes. New Jersey played theleadership role in the design and enhancement of possibly the most effective crash mitigation system, known around the world and the “Jersey Barrier.” A small collision with this concrete barrier diverts your car from having a much more serious head-on collision.
Autonomous vehicles promise a more sophisticated contribution to saving lives. Senate Bill 734 establishesthe public regulatory framework that will encourage the development, certification and broad adoption of technology that extends accident avoidance beyond anti-lock brakes to the entire driving environment.
Technology that will kick inany time we’ve let ourselves get into what could become an accident situation. Technology that, if installed in just that one Walmart truck would have completely averted the recent Tracy Morgan N.J. Turnpike accident. Adopted one at a time, these systems could incrementally reduce in half, if not more, of the almost 600 persons killed annually on New Jersey roads. In their ultimate form, these technologies will allow us to sit back and relax while we travel around the Garden State.
Moreover, this bill could welcome and encourage the 5 carmakers that have their North American headquarters in New Jersey (Mercedes, BMW, Subaru, Jaguar and Volvo) to invest in New Jersey to become the leader in the development, certification and adoption of these technologies; … much as happened with the “Jersey Barrier”. No reason why New Jersey could not become a world-leader in the job creation and value capture of this technology.
Should we really just leave it to Silicon Valley or Beijing or Detroit to do? NOT! When have the perfect facility-in-waiting with Fort Monmouth, a brain-trust-in-waiting with our Universities, technology companies-in waiting and a highly-trained workforce-in-waiting.
This legislation can form the framework by which New Jersey can lead in the development of this technology which I foresee as having the opportunity to be so inexpensive that its cost will be less than the present value of the expected insurance liability exposure that this technology will save the insurance industry.
This is a REAL business case for insurance companies. It creates the perfect arbitrage opportunity: we pay our existing premiums to the insurance companies. They rebate to us the cost of having these technologies installed in our cars. Accidents are avoided so that insurance company savings are greater than the cost of the technology. Those companies make more money, and we get the lives saved, injuries avoided, personal disruptions averted and ability to sit back and relax … all for free!
This is what we get from autonomous cars that we’ll own and drive some of the time.
These cars will eventually evolve to a point where they can drive themselves all of the time. At that point, NJ Transit can purchase a large fleet of these driverless cars and offer in-expensive on-demand mobility to everyone throughout the State 7x24x365 without needing any additional investment in our road infrastructure.
That’s the future that this bill enables. I strongly encourage the adoption of this legislation.
Alain Kornhauser