• by Chase Martin , December 11, 2016

The world of self-driving cars just got a push from a major consumer electronics brand and the focus is on safety, transparency and rapid development of autonomous vehicles.

Apple recently expressed concerns about the process of developing self-driving vehicles in a letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) from Steve Kenner, director of product integrity at Apple.

“The company is investing heavily in the study of machine learning and automation, and is excited about the potential of automated systems in many areas, including transportation,” Kenner said in the letter.

“Executed properly under NHTSA’s guidance, automated vehicles have the potential to greatly enhance the human experience—to prevent millions of car crashes and thousands of fatalities each year and to give mobility to those without,” he said.

The letter asks the NHTSA to create provisions to the Federal Automated Vehicles Policy for internal testing of automated vehicles. Specifically, Apple seems to be interested in establishing safety parameters that allow the NHTSA to accurately monitor the vehicles on the road, while allowing companies to more rapidly develop and iterate versions of self-driving vehicles.

Three areas that Apple wants the NHTSA to address in automated vehicles are:

• Algorithmic decisions - safety, mobility, and legality of automated vehicles
• Ensuring privacy and security in the design of automated vehicles
• Potential impact on the public good and potential consequences for employment and public spaces

When it comes to data, Kenner said that vehicle companies should share data from crashes and near-misses, although the details should be anonymized and should not jeopardize privacy.

“By sharing data, the industry will build a more comprehensive dataset than any one company could create alone,” Kenner said.

Another part of the letter focused on testing autonomous vehicles on public roads. While there currently are policies in place for established automakers to test their vehicles on public roads, companies that haven’t already sold vehicles commercially must first apply for an exemption in order to test on public roads, according to Apple. This could provide a disadvantage to non-car manufacturers that are pursuing self-driving cars, according to Apple.

Here are the different levels of autonomous vehicles from the Federal Automated Vehicles Policy:

• Level 0 - Driver does everything
• Level 1 - Vehicle can sometimes assist the driver in parts of driving tasks
• Level 2 - Vehicle can fully conduct some parts of driving tasks
• Level 3 - Vehicle can fully conduct some tasks, but driver should be ready to take control
• Level 4 - Vehicle can fully conduct driving task and driver does not need to be ready to take control, but only in some scenarios
• Level 5 - Vehicle can fully conduct driving tasks in all driving environments

The Department of Transportation defines the driver as the responsible party when operating between levels 0 through 2, but levels 3 through 5 define the automated system in the vehicle as being responsible for monitoring the driving environment.