Amid growing public questions and concerns about current and future automated vehicle (“AV”) technology, the Governors Highway Safety Association (“GHSA”) has joined Partners for Automated Vehicle Education (“PAVE”).
PAVE is a coalition of industry, nonprofit, and academic institutions seeking to inform and educate the public and policymakers on the facts regarding AVs so that they can fully participate in shaping the future of our roads and highways. PAVE's members, led by co-chairs Audi of America and the National Safety Council, believe that the public needs factual information about AV technology in order to fully realize the potential benefits the technology can offer to increased safety, mobility, and sustainability. Launched in January 2019, PAVE's activities include hands-on public demonstration events, policymaker workshops, developing educational materials for dealer and customer-service personnel, and active online and social media channels.
The GHSA said in a statement that its new partnership with PAVE will help leverage state highway safety offices (“SHSOs”) to bring realistic, factual safety information about AVs to policymakers, the media, and the traveling public.
“We need to work together to raise public awareness of what AV technology can and can't do,” said Jonathan Adkins, the GHSA's executive director. “New technologies can help us on the road to zero deaths, but only if everyone understands, trusts, and wants to safely use these features.”
A growing body of evidence suggests that the public has limited knowledge of AV technology and what the operator's responsibilities should be, and many motorists report that they do not want to use automated features. This lack of understanding and enthusiasm is in part because of the many mixed, confusing, or inaccurate messages about automation, in the view of the GHSA.
“Seeing is believing,” said Mr. Adkins. “GHSA is encouraged that PAVE is sponsoring hands-on workshops for the public to personally experience and learn about the safe use of AVs, and the states, through GHSA, will be able to potentially bring these workshops to wider audiences.”
On May 8, 2019, the GHSA and State Farm assembled an interdisciplinary expert panel for a meeting in the Washington, D.C., area to develop ideas for how to deliver safety messages to the public and how to prepare the criminal justice community as AVs take the road. The GHSA will release a white paper summarizing the expert panel outcomes later this summer and discuss the paper at its 2019 Annual Meeting, August 26-28 in Anaheim, California, which will also feature speakers from Uber, Waymo, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and other leading voices on AV safety.
Steven A. Meyerowitz
Steven A. Meyerowitz, a Harvard Law School graduate, is the founder and president of Meyerowitz Communications Inc., a law firm marketing communications consulting company. He may be contacted at [email protected].