California steers toward a future of self-driving electric vehicles

Autonomous vehicles, mostly electric, are already here in a limited fashion — as a slow van, for example, to move people around a Bay Area office park. That kind of shuttle, and small delivery trucks, will likely be the first self-driving vehicles in wide use, employing GPS, 3D imaging and other technology to process and respond to what their cameras see on the road: other cars, pavement markings, traffic signals, pedestrians, etc.

Officials say automated cars will dovetail in two ways with
greenhouse-gas-cutting policies in California, where the transportation sector
belches out nearly half of the state’s climate-warming emissions. They’ll be
included in the fleets of ridesharing companies, reducing the number of
personal cars on the road as the state transitions to electricity-powered
transportation. And they’ll almost certainly operate on batteries (though some
could run on zero-emission hydrogen fuel cells), helping motorists wean
themselves off gasoline.

If properly managed, the coming driverless-car revolution could address other vexing problems as well, said Daniel Sperling, who directs the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis. He cited his sister’s poor peripheral vision, which prevents her from driving.

“It could lead to a dramatic improvement in safety, a dramatic
improvement for mobility for the elderly, for physically disabled people and
for low-income communities,” he said. For many, autonomous vehicles will mean
emancipation.

In addition, computer-driven cars are expected to reduce
fatalities. They will never be afflicted with road rage, will not stop off
after work for one too many and won’t nod off after endless hours on the road.
And productivity could rise as motorists who now lose hundreds of hours idling
in traffic each year are freed from the tyranny of paying attention and can
legally text, work, answer email and even watch YouTube.

But it’s a significant step from allowing testing of automated
cars in protected, supervised settings to unleashing them solo on the road,
which experts say remains on a far horizon. There is much to be perfected: how
best to turn left in traffic, for example, a maneuver that bedevils many human
drivers. Multiply that by many more dicey scenarios and it makes sense that
test vehicles’ current response to most obstacles is to just slow down.

Although the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says
human errors cause 94% of serious crashes, motorists are reluctant to turn over
the controls to computers, telling pollsters they prefer to drive a car, not
interface with one. And the potential for hacking has led some doubters to
paint a future in which bad actors ​“weaponize” a vehicle, taking over the
controls with harmful intent.

Still, California is pressing ahead. It was among the first states to contemplate a future for
autonomous cars, when the Legislature in 2012 authorized the Department of Motor Vehicles to devise rules for them.
Those regulations are now the nation’s most extensive; in April the DMV proposed allowing testing of autonomous lightweight delivery
trucks.

“You have to know what you are regulating, and we had to go to
manufacturers to understand the technology,” said Brian Soublet, the DMV’s
chief counsel, who has been writing the regulations since 2014 and is excited
about leading the way. ​“We had to start from scratch. … My kids are tired of
hearing about it, but to me it’s completely fascinating — the future of how we
are getting around.”

The Governor’s Office of Planning and Research has set out principles, such as prioritizing emissions reduction and more car-sharing,
to help guide future state policies on
smart cars.

And California’s controversial 2017 gas-tax increase encourages the transportation department and local
jurisdictions to tap road funds to build infrastructure that smart cars will
require, such as traffic lights that tell them how much time remains on a green
light and freeway signs that announce their messages digitally.

The DMV has doled out permits to more than 60 companies for
testing autonomous cars — nearly 800 of them — on California streets. Those
vehicles have traveled more than 3.6 million miles and have been involved in
177 collisions.

It’s not a free-for-all. Testing has been allowed since 2014, in
nearly every case with a human ​“safety driver” on board, able to take over the
car’s controls. And although one company, Waymo, has a permit to conduct tests
without a driver, it has yet to do so.

The future can be glimpsed at a former Navy base near the Bay Area
city of Concord, converted to the nation’s largest autonomous-vehicle proving
ground where computer-driven cars are let off their leashes and are free to
roam across 2,100 acres. The facility, GoMentum Station, run by the
American Automobile Association, is an innovation hive where Silicon Valley
marries its futuristic vision to the automobile industry’s traditional
know-how.

California could reap economic benefits from a smart-car industry, attracting
new business and jobs, officials say. Researchers forecast that investment in the technology, by traditional industry
players and newcomers alike, will grow to $85 billion nationally through 2025,
on top of $225 billion in spending on electric vehicles through 2023.

This transformation in transportation is taking place in a
deceptively modest setting. The testing area has all the dusty charm of an
abandoned town: shuttered buildings and empty parking lots, along with cattle,
wild turkeys and coyotes wandering freely.

That’s perfect in the eyes of Randy Iwasaki, executive director of
the Contra Costa Transportation Authority, which is a partner in the facility.
He guided his electric (though not autonomous) car along some of the 20 miles
of rough streets on a recent day.

“Look at this road, it’s cracked, you can barely see the center
line it’s so worn, there are weeds growing all over,” Iwasaki said with a trace
of pride. When testing first began, researchers had
to mow the streets because the earliest automated vehicles perceived that they
had wandered off-road. The imperfections provide excellent preparation for the
vehicles to navigate California’s bumpy, clogged and often chaotic streetscape.

The facility also features
45 types of intersections, various railroad crossings and a warehouse full of
​“targets” — vinyl deer decoys, pedestrian mannequins, bicycles and traffic
cones. Such accessories help the vehicles ​“learn” to process what they see and
make decisions through artificial intelligence.

“The camera vision is
great, but the perception is not always there,” said Huei Peng, who directs an
autonomous-vehicle research program at the University of Michigan. ​“The
vehicles can see, but they can’t always understand.”

Iwasaki explained this in people terms: At age 24 or 25, humans
may be at the peak of their acuity, with quick reflexes and excellent vision.
But drivers of that age lack a broad base of experience to make informed
decisions about the safest responses in traffic. The current generation of
automated vehicles, Iwasaki reckons, is still in its 20s and has much to learn
from errors on the road.

That ignorance of some learned conventions and courtesies of
driving gives many motorists pause. But they can relax: California is a long
way — a decade or more — from hosting truly autonomous cars on city streets.

Iwaskai said most autonomous cars being tested in California are
operating at very low speeds, almost crawling. That’s because their computers
need time to analyze what they are seeing. ​“If computers got faster you could
drive faster, but they are not ready to make that jump,” he said.

Uneasy about self-driving cars? Your vehicle is partly autonomous
if it has such features as cruise control, parking assist and lane-keeping
notifications. If you own a Tesla, you may have the highly advanced Autopilot, which makes decisions about steering and speed
that maintain the vehicle within its lane.

What’s critical is the programming instructions companies feed to
their computers to teach them
decision-making of the sort human drivers make every day: Is it appropriate to
break the law and cross a double yellow line to avoid an accident? Is it ok to
drive on the shoulder to get around an obstacle?

Programmers use real-world experiences, like the cars get at
GoMentum Station, to build databases enabling the vehicles to make split-second
decisions as people do.

Bernard Soriano, deputy director of the state DMV, said his agency
issues a driver’s license when a human exhibits a ​“minimum set of skills” and
can be expected to improve over time. Autonomous cars will be held to the same
standard, he said. At the moment, the state requires manufacturers to
self-certify that their vehicles operate within the rules of the road — not
exceeding the speed limit or crossing double lines, for example.

Autonomous vehicles are programmed to be cautious, to put safety
first and to always obey the law. That typically translates into low speeds and
frequent braking, trying the patience of the humans involved in the testing.

That makes for a sobering real-world scenario: What happens when
fleets of law-abiding, speed-limit-adhering cars hit the road and mingle with
California’s sometimes willful motorists, known to call their own shots?

“It’s an ongoing discussion,” Soriano said.

This story was produced by CalMatters.org, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.