Fred Perkins' 2024 New Years Resolutions

Engineering Resolutions 2024

Vehicle adaptive speed control with speed limit exceedance warnings and speed limiters
Automatic mitigation of drunk, inattentive, reckless, or otherwise dangerous driving behavior
FMVSS for protection from animals, children, and incapacitated people and animals in overheated cars.
Objective safety standard or type approval process for ADAS and AV operations on public roads
- Safety standard if self-certification
- Type approval if objective safety standards are unavailable
- Applicable at end of vehicle service life
Airbag inflator qualification and lot acceptance test standards at least as stringent as military and industrial standards for similar components not used in a vehicular context.
Driver notification when vehicles approach or exceed safe operational limits.
Adaptation of NCAP tests to include diverse body types and back seat occupants.
Normalization of NCAP star ratings to incentivize continuous safety design improvements
Nationwide ‘duty of care’ for ADAS- and AV-equipped vehicles.
Requirement for ADAS and AV safety-critical feature performance and operational status availability for state safety inspection and driver/occupant alert for malfunction(s)
Determine parameters or processes to validate or verify safe ADAS/AV ongoing operational licensing.

Determine AV parameters that need to be organically collected for safe operation verification of individual vehicles.
Establish progressive licensing programs for ADAS/AV designs.
Recover marginal costs of capital investment in private transportation-related electricity distribution from EV owners/users.
Recover vehicle mass-based state and federal energy taxes from EVs equivalent to similar taxes fund taxes included in liquid fuel retail price.
Legislate ‘duty of care’ for ADAS/AV vehicles if no federal legislation or rules.
Establish rules, procedures, and mechanisms for periodic and on-demand police safety inspections of ADAS or AV safety-critical features (all vehicle classes).
Promote highway design and transportation planning rules that minimize use of cars and maximize public transportation and bicycle use.
Prohibit AV operation unless safety-qualified by third parties.
Couple vehicle liability insurance to vehicle mass.

Rejection of current SAE J3016 definition of “minimal risk condition” in safety standards development. as an acceptable safe harbor for errant AV behavior.
- Note that an injured woman was dragged 20 ft. under a Cruise vehicle that had maneuvered to MRC before and during the dragging event.
Elimination of proprietary data formats and industry restrictions on access to vehicle operational data.
Transparency of simulation model suitability of purpose and evidence of ground truth
- Doomed to succeed
  - Convincing graphics look almost real
  - Rapid convergence to wrong answers, but they sure look good
- Time-based vs. event-based
  - Some vehicle functionality is inherently time based
    - e.g. sensor sampling rate, OEDR rates, Kalman filter update, human control recovery
    - Mixing Event-based and time-based logic in a single simulation can provide unsupportable results. This problem is subtle, tricky, important, and an often ignored pitfall of vehicle motion or behavior simulations.
Bidirectional validation of safety-critical requirements
Replication of known ADAS/AV failures resulting in death or serious injury on test tracks as part of safety design validation.
Rear seat belt reminders
Improved seat back strength
Rear seat safety design improvements (motivated by data from rear seat test dummies).