Opinion

How Do You Know?

The single biggest challenge faced by the AV industry is knowing whether vehicles are safe enough to deploy.

David Muyres
February 22, 2023

‘How can we know?’


That’s the question that those of us in the Autonomous Vehicle (AV) industry ask ourselves in response to another question: 


‘Are the vehicles being deployed safe?’


Now we have an answer. Streetscope has been working to address the issue of AV safety, and we believe that, yes, we can know.


First, some brief background.


The single biggest challenge faced by the AV industry is knowing whether vehicles are safe enough to deploy. Simply put, if they’re not safe, then they shouldn’t be deployed. Right? of course. 


But if they are safe…well, how safe is safe? Who will determine how safe is safe?


Because you can’t just see ‘safety.' You certainly can’t check the AV’s driver’s license.


All key stakeholders want to know the answer. To proceed, they have to know it. Stakeholders like vehicles developers, operators, and planners in the cities in which AVs operate.


Streetscope has focused on this question for the past several years, and our answer, and the methods by which it is determined, are catching the industry’s attention. In fact, the Streetscope Hazard Measure can be used regardless of the technology inside the vehicle. It works not just on AV’s but on all vehicles. It works on anything that moves! 


The measure we use to evaluate the safe movement of any vehicle in traffic is:

  • objective
  • forward-looking
  • repeatable
  • reliant on simple fixed or moving camera video data.

What’s more, our toolchain can analyze both real-world and simulation kinematic data.


We are the only enterprise with this universal objective measure, one easily adapted for use by insurers, municipalities, route planners, developers and deployers, all looking for a confidence level of AV safety.


Because it’s not enough to say that the vehicle is safe. You need to show how you know. Now you can. Because we know.

\\\

Photo by Marsha Reid on Unsplash

Related Articles