On June 26, 2022, the editorial board of The Washington Post published an editorial calling for minimum performance standards for vehicles equipped with partially automated driving technology. Below is a response to that editorial by Cathy Chase, President of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety (Advocates):
“Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety (Advocates) has been urging Congress and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to advance minimum performance standards for partially automated driving technology for numerous years. Yesterday, The Washington Post published an editorial in support of this course of action, following NHTSA’s first ever release of crash data involving vehicles with this technology. Minimum performance standards serve a number of critical functions, including requiring that the technology performs safely as expected and needed, ensuring that safety is improved for all road users, and establishing a baseline from which manufacturers can continue to innovate.”
“Nearly 43,000 people were killed in traffic crashes last year. The deadly state of our roadways requires swift action by NHTSA to address known safety threats, such as those identified in The Washington Post’s editorial, while also promulgating standards for proven advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). These include automatic emergency braking with pedestrian and bicyclist detection (AEB), lane departure warning, and blind spot detection, which should be standard equipment in all new vehicles, instead of an expensive additional cost putting them outside the budget of many families.”