The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
AMERICA’S AUTO CLUB EVOLVES Q
VP of autonomous vehicle stragety for AAA talks future of driving
Founded with a mission to advocate for the motoring public, the American Automobile Association, or AAA, has for the past year been branching into entirely new territory: figuring out how to safely usher drivers out of existence.
AAA’s Northern California chapter, which includes Nevada and Utah, last year acquired GoMentum Station at the former Concord Naval Weapons Station, where self-driving car companies can test their vehicles on closed courses. The 2,000-acre site has 19 miles of roadways, complete with buildings, intersections and robotic dummies of pedestrians and cyclists that can move on cue. It’s there that the association hopes it can influence the direction of autonomous vehicle development by ensuring safety comes first.
The new direction is not so much an existential crisis for the 118-year-old association, which got its start when horse-drawn carriages still outnumbered motorized vehicles, but an evolution of its earliest raison d’etre, said Ignacio Garcia, the vice president of autonomous vehicle strategy for AAA’s Northern California chapter. The association has always been focused on safety, he said, whether that meant fighting for the first paved roads, demanding signage for motorists, or advocating for seat belt adoption.
The Bay Area News Group sat down with Garcia to talk about the AAA’s foray into shaping the development of autonomous vehicle technology. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
QLet’s start with the most obvious question: Why does AAA, an association founded to advocate for the motoring public, want to help ease drivers into their own obsolescence?
AWe believe that automated driving has the ability to save millions of lives. We also know that our members and consumers are afraid and confused when it comes to these technologies. Seventy-one percent of motorists we have surveyed say they would be afraid of riding in a self-driving vehicle if it was available to them today. And 40% in another survey told us they expect partially automated driving systems that are commercially available today to be able to fully drive the car by themselves, which is not correct. We have also researched the lack of standardized terms for driver assistance systems and found, for example, there are 40 different commercial names for automatic emergency braking. So for us, being a motorist’s advocate is understanding what motorists feel about new technology and how it’s evolving and trying to help address some of those concerns.
How does acquiring an autonomous vehicle testing site help you influence the development of autonomous driving technology?
AGoMentum is not just a test track, it’s a partnership ecosystem. There are private companies that are developing autonomous technology
that use GoMentum to test their technology. We have public agency partners, such as the city of Concord and the (Contra Costa Transportation Authority) that work with some of the private companies to plan limited deployments and pilots of those technologies on public roads. We have academia partners such as UC Berkeley that use the site and work with us to further their research. And we also have partnerships with other test facilities across the world, and we share some of the learning and best practices with them. So it really puts us in the middle of that ecosystem, and it helps us go back to our members and address some of those concerns they have.
QWhat are some of the things you’ve learned so far, now that you’ve been operating this site for about a year?
AWe have learned that safety is multifaceted. It involves technology development and validation of that technology through testing, but also many more things, such as consumer education and company culture. Closed course testing is only one mode to test autonomous technology that is available to developers. Developers can also test their vehicles on a computer simulation or on public
roads. We have learned each mode has uses that it is particularity suited to, and each mode has limitations, as well. So it has helped inform our belief that a combination of all these three modes should be used at all times when it comes to testing the technology.
QOutside of GoMentum Station, AAA’s Northern California chapter also launched a real live autonomous shuttle in Las Vegas from November 2017 to October 2018. How did that go and what did you learn from it?
AIn particular, it was an effort to evaluate how to educate the public on the technology. Las Vegas was chosen to provide a high number of rides to the public and be able to understand how public perception changed before riding and after riding the vehicle. In the course of its one-year operation, the vehicle provided over 32,000 rides. The two key things we learned was that we saw a 30% positive increase in perception after riding. And the other thing we wanted to validate was AAA’s own role or potential in educating consumers, and an overwhelming 90% said the fact that the shuttle was brought to them by AAA made them feel safer about giving it a try.