View the July 2017 seminar recording
Nicole Coene
Good afternoon or good morning to those of you in the West. Welcome to the Talking Freight Seminar Series. My name is Nicole Coene and I will moderate today's seminar. Today's topic is: Regulatory, Policy, and Planning Issues and Needs for Truck Automation.
Before I go any further, I do want to let those of you who are calling into the teleconference for the audio know that you need to mute your computer speakers or else you will be hearing your audio over the computer as well.
Today we'll have five presentations, given by:
Larry O'Rourke is a consultant at ICF and has 24 years of experience spanning all transportation modes. His work has examined the impacts of a diverse range of policies, regulations, and technologies on the trucking industry. His areas of expertise include freight transportation planning and policy research, air quality analyses, motor carrier safety, AV\CV technology and the economics of freight transportation. Larry O'Rourke is a coauthor of the report “Challenges to CV and AV Application in Truck Freight Operations, prepared for the National Cooperative Highway Research Program.
Brian Routhier is a Transportation Specialist with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Analysis, Research, and Technology Division with over 10 years of experience in government technical regulations. He is currently working on research that concerns technical issues of Highly Automated Commercial Vehicles. Mr. Routhier has BS in Mechanical Engineering from Clarkson University and an MS in Project Management from The George Washington University.
Dan Murray has more than 23 years of experience in a broad range of transportation fields including freight research, intermodal freight planning, transportation technology applications and public transit. He is responsible for managing more than $4.5M in transportation research, testing and evaluation. Prior to his employment with ATRI, Mr. Murray spent three years working for a Chicago economic development consortium and four years developing transit programs, policy and funding with the Regional Transit Board in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. He is actively involved in a variety of public and private transportation- and research-oriented programs, presently sits on the Minnesota Freight Advisory Committee and formerly represented freight interests as a Board Member of the Minneapolis/St. Paul Metropolitan Planning Organization.
Today's seminar will last 90 minutes, with 60 minutes allocated for the speakers, and the final 30 minutes for audience Question and Answer. If during the presentations you think of a question, you can type it into the chat area. Please make sure you send your question to “Everyone” and indicate which presenter your question is for. Presenters will be unable to answer your questions during their presentations, but I will start off the question and answer session with the questions typed into the chat box. If time allows, we will open up the phone lines for questions as well. If we run out of time and are unable to address all questions we will attempt to get written responses from the presenters to the unanswered questions.
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I'm now going to turn it over to Larry O'Rourke of ICF to get us started.
Larry O'Rourke
Today I am going to talk to you about automated trucks and public policy looking at implementation challenges and opportunities. I would like to start the presentation by acknowledging the study that some of this material is drawn from. The challenges to applications and truck integration was funded by the national cooperative Highbury Research Program and the study was led by Damon Fitzpatrick and I am a co-author.
Just to give you an overview of what I will talk about, the opportunity for truck automation is defined by technology, as well as infrastructure market structure, state laws, and regulations. I will run through each of these and give you some details.
To start off with the technology itself, usually when we talk about truck automation we are talking about several different levels of automation. This slide shows the levels of automation. As you would expect, level 0 there is no automation. Level 1 is defined as “driver assistance”, which is usually a single function that is automated with lane keeping or automatic braking or adaptive cruise control. A lot of these features are on trucks already, or recent model trucks. Level 2 would be partial automation. This would be when the truck has both throttle and brake controls that are automated, as well is the steering. For Level 2, the driver must be aware and still able to respond if assistance is needed. Level 3 is considered additional automation. The circumstances, like highway driving or driving in a queue, the automation takes over and the driver must be available to respond if needed but in a reasonable period. Level 4 automation, which is considered high automation, the truck should be able to drive itself and the driver essentially doesn't necessarily have to be in the seat, though there could be cases where the truck would not be able to respond to circumstances in which case going to fail safe mode and maybe pulling over in a safe spot would be appropriate.
Level 5 automation would be where the truck can handle every single case it encounters. With Level 5 automation you can imagine a vehicle with a steering wheel where the technology would be fully responsible for operating the vehicle.
What I want to talk a little bit about right now is the vehicle environment at the state level. There has been a lot of legislative activity recently. This shows there are 19 states that have passed the laws, and these laws are being passed very quickly. I think the number has more than doubled in the last year. You can see several other states with executive orders. One of the issues with autonomous trucks is that a lot of this legislation is being put forth in an ad hoc fashion, and this has created as a bit of a patchwork in different state laws. For instance, at a very basic level these laws define autonomous vehicles differently; some of them are specifically for trucks, and some are not. Some use only a little automation, and some do not at all. Some states authorize testing of autonomous vehicles or use of autonomous vehicles by the public or testing the driverless vehicles under certain conditions or operation without drivers. Some states require special licenses or data collection, as well as black boxes. There is a range of requirements across different states. This patchwork of different legal definitions and requirements have applications for the deployment of automated trucks.
One of the issues is with a near-term application which is if the company has a Level 1 system that they are just rolling out now, and one of the barriers to this type of a system is that the following requirements are treated differently in different states. Some states have a reasonable and prudent standard. Other states require they follow at specific distances or a certain duration of time behind another vehicle. You can imagine that operating a platoon across state lines - since it varies from state to state, this could cause some problems. In addition, an issue was an interpretation between states as well. Some states had a reasonable and prudent standard and they interpret that to allow the operations of truck platoons while other states may not. So, this shows that seven states have enacted legislation specifically authorizing the deployment of level 1 truck platooning.
Another issue even outside of autonomous vehicle laws, are the broader body of state laws. Including automated bodies into state laws is going to require the review of existing state law for the relevant of trucks. One element of this, as I mentioned the following are important, such as the treatment of the video systems. For instance, some systems have a video monitor in the truck that allows them to see the back– some of those systems are illegal under state law. Treatment of these vehicles is sort of an emerging issue. There is no specific laws or regulations about this right now, but if states are interested in it and if there will be any implications for these vehicles. Then of course there is a wide variance between different states in terms of the whole body of state law. For instance, some states may require hands on the wheel. California specifically prohibits the operation of autonomous trucks over 10,000 pounds. There is a wide variance of state laws.
The next thing I want to talk a lot about is the federal regulations. The Federal motor vehicle safety standards are the rules that deal with the manufacture of vehicles. These are usually in terms of the driver, the steering wheel, or the brakes are upgradable by the driver. The national transportation system center has conducted a study and concluded that these regulations do not necessarily serve as a barrier to standard design vehicles. They serve more highly automated vehicles. If you want to design a vehicle without a cab or steering wheel, then it would be a barrier to that. There is federal legislation that has been put forward and introduced and deals with protecting vehicles, so the legislation that has been put forward is to increase the exemption caps for manufacturers. This would allow more latitude for testing novel designs and so forth. One issue there is that manufacturers still must certify that the vehicle would be as safe as others, so there goes the chicken and egg. Then they say the hours of service regulations vary. To get to the true productivity benefits you can imagine some changes to the hours and service regulations. There would certainly be an argument for leeway in terms of operating the vehicle longer and having longer hours. Also, there may be cases where the driver is trying to get to their safe parking spot and their point for the day and they hit traffic. Perhaps maybe then they could put up their traffic jam assist and get some credit hours and service to get to a safe parking spot. There are all kinds of changes you can imagine that would make deployment of various automated features more valuable and more productive.
On the planning and infrastructure side there is a lot of issues in regards to lane striping. Improvements in lane striping are needed to keep Level 1 systems functioning well. Then there are issues with standardization. It should be standardized but there is sort of a white barrier in terms of how they are maintained. There is probably a need to improve lane striping. The quality of data on truck restrictions in other heavy-duty trucks obviously have various constraints. Having a database that has all this information and can be used by the many states that have this infrastructure and so forth, but the databases that would be necessary to have an automated vehicle would need to be improved to have that happen. We have certainly been planning this, understanding future demand and this very important issue. Understanding how automated trucks will affect infrastructure in the future is very important.
In regards to vehicles to infrastructure, you have to the extent that automated vehicles will use connected vehicle features and an investment must be made to that type of infrastructure. I want to talk a little bit about market structure, and the area of operation and vehicles - trucks specifically, and their opportunities for automation. As you can see from this table here, most trucks are single unit trucks operating in the short-haul areas of operation. Most miles are driven by long-haul trucks operating over much greater distances. The earlier opportunity for automation is going to be in highway drive. Automating the truck to drive on a limited access highway is a much easier problem to solve than other more complex problems. Early automation is likely to occur in highway driving. This is where most of the miles are driven. It is like the greatest opportunity in that segment.
If we look at market structure and platooning opportunities typically we do by the trucking industry into private fleets, which is not primarily transportation. Truckloads which are conducting point-to-point service truckloads with the freight. You can see the opportunity in these areas sectors and the larger companies are going to have more predictable routes between warehouses and so forth. On these high-density routes that operating between on the long-haul segment between terminals. They again may have the density to have their own trucks platooning with each other until the technology and similarly truckload carriers are in another area. Many people are focused on this, and probably the earliest and significant benefit will be the job of driving the truck. This will have a turnover rate in the first quarter of 2017. You can imagine the cost and disrupting the causes and then if there is a technology that can make the job of driving a little bit easier to offer long-haul trucks as team drivers where there is potentially an early term benefit which will allow the operation of an autonomous vehicle that will replace one of the drivers. Large carriers tend to internalize safety risks and the safety benefits that are likely to be quite large as well. Most carriers will expect to pay back the technology primarily because they may sell the truck in three years. This is especially the level 1 technology that is currently available. It is likely to be a short payback period.
I want to talk a little bit about a few principles first, such as policymaking. These are general ideas. The first one would be to maximize options and do not be overly prescriptive. A key point here is that you do not want to design policies and you want to adapt to any potential futures that may occur. You want to understand what level of autonomous truck you're making, and that the level will have a very big impact on the level of risk. This could be useful in cues they have the risk of any kind of failure that would be much greater and the cost of the failure as well. Including autonomous trucks will require some plans on infrastructure and obviously, it will look a lot different and you can think about how it will look different with autonomous trucks. Lastly, to educate policymakers so they connect policymakers with engineers and technical experts then they understand what technology is.
So, that is all I have. Here I have the link to our study and I am happy to respond to any emails.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Larry. We will now move on to Brian Routhier of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration
Brian Routhier
Thank you this is Brian Routhier with the research and technology division of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Thank you for having me. This is about a minute number of vehicles in the commercial motor vehicle space. We have industry research activity and some challenges that I will mention are a good discussion points. So, as many may or may not know, this is happening both with OEMs such as Freightliner, as well as add-on companies like Uber, and advanced technology groups like Google's work, robotics, and commercial vehicle testing.
Certain states are allowing requests to have trial runs on closed areas of highways. For some of the platooning the drivers have control and they must steer, but the distance forward motion and control that whatever set time for distance that our platoon trucks, as well including automated hazard alert and automated breaking. Following drivers have lateral control and they must steer, as Larry mentioned, there's different following distance requirements per state, as well as crossing over and whatever distance they would like to have the platoon run. You certainly do not want to have the first truck to have the best breaks, and the last truck to have poor breaks. That would not make for a good situation.
So, we have some collaborative automated research which includes the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. They will expedite the acceptance as these vehicles attain it, because they must pay attention to the cyber security, as well as pilot testing guidance to try to get a handle on what type of information would be required for pilot testing. Some would say that the safety systems can be a great benefit for some of this automation. Some trucks manufacturers that created automated commercial motor vehicles provide guides to states, and automated vehicles which are a courtesy on guidance issues. The research, the safety components, and security guidance I think most importantly help prevent patchwork issues, and being kept up to speed by industry stakeholders, whether they are the providers or OEM, also is important.
We are talking about three prongs of data sharing pilot programs and exemptions that are required per regulations. Policy guidance and roles are like the point Larry made about the driver is in the seat of a commercial motor vehicle. Also, human factors say the brakes as well as sensors that are targeted to be used across agency collaborative efforts. We had a review of the existing regulations for potential challenges with automated BMPs. We are in a project run by the Federal Highway Administration Joint Program Office and we are working with the trucks at ports to examine considerations of low-speed truck movement. They are mandated for heavy trucks. As they get updated, we follow along with inspection criteria to check. Some completed projects in our research division have looked at multimodal distraction and fatigue, they research the CMB drivers and sleep at naturalistic driving studies and fatigue modeling for individual differences. We are working on some guidelines for safe truck platoons and sensor performance guidelines as part of a vehicle checking, but also a physical guideline to look at the devices. With continued human factors also working on data and collection sharing, researchers see the public perception or multiple in the case of platoons going down the highway. Some human factors like workload distraction re-engagement with licensing require training so that the drivers are more aware what the automation is around them. Drivers in the seat and monitoring what level of attention needs to be taken know there should be no degradation in safety if they're going to be trial. This is the baseline data, you know the chicken and egg thing that Larry touched on, a little as well is if you want to run trials over the ready-made data to support since they say there is no degradation in safety. Of course, ultimately the question that needs to be answered is what is the cost benefit of any of these technologies for fleets. If there is no good return on investment or no safety benefit that is substantive fleets need to see them.
Back to a little bit more on the driver re-engagement, what happens when the automation decides it needs the driver to intervene and get control of the vehicle? We need to understand what cognitive state the driver is in. There needs to be something to make sure that they are still paying attention to what is going on down the road in front of them. Some of the policy and technical challenges the data would support indicate there is no degradation in safety, the state and local regulations of course then the federal motor safety standards and subsequent changes need to reflect that.
There are states with some regulations already and states allowing trials. When talking about platoon trials and we are talking about areas on limited access highways. We have drafted outreach and technology with the outreach and feedback with the technology providers. We had international transport for them; there that was an automated vehicle conference this past week that also had truck automation, and would continue to present at different events. How do you start to inspect these advanced technologies if they become mandated by the administration? As they get updated part of our motor carrier safety regulations get updated. Right now, as high tech as we are in electronic stability control, it already has us where we need to figure out how to inspect it at the roadside, because it is not a visual, so what is next?
Hopefully we have time to answer some questions. If not, I will give you whatever information I can.
Nicole Coene
Thank you, Brian. We are going to wrap up with a presentation from Dan Murray of the American Transportation Research Institute.
Dan Murray
Thank you. I should warn people we are moving offices this week. I am working off of two computers and for this technology oriented talking freight session, I am fearful that the technology will go south on me.
First of all, thanks for joining us today on a Wednesday. I am going to talk to you about connected and automated trucks. Those are frankly radically two different concepts. We are reflecting on both drivers and carriers and other stakeholders in the industry. For that I will give you an advance apology. My editorial comments I believe are backed up and substantiated with industry thoughts and data. We do research in different areas. I throw this up mostly. I will refer to autonomous technologies in several instances. Certainly there are familiar folks in that. We also have a research advisory committee made up of this sage group of folks that is federal state government carriers and academics. The Colorado State Patrol has also done research and I will reference in a short while some of the work has been done in Colorado.
With the autonomous vehicles and autonomous trucks Larry had listed the Freightliner inspiration truck is classified at level 3 safety, and political reasons classify the truck as a level 2. The marketplace does not quite seem to be ready for some of the level 3 and level 4 innovations. If we back up and sort of pretend like we will ignore the nuance between autonomous trucks and connected trucks, the basic technologies here include radar and LIDAR and video optics, several of which are automated. They have technology on the smartphone right now. Once we talk about a two vs connected truck, things separate out pretty quickly. As was already noted, we have a research advisory committee. In 2016 the number one issue they selected at the end of this was the process where they discuss and debate critical issues, what research methodologies would address those issues. If you can imagine every issue in the technology industry, understanding the impact that they will have and really call it a phase 1 of multiple phases, and if you will sort of the low hanging fruit for us is to take the existing top industries report which we have found for eight or nine years look at all of these issues and say how do these impact autonomy?
This is the synthesized list of all carriers and drivers together. If you break out those, you can see subtle differences we went through basically issue by issue working on the technology and industry side to say where these issues overlap and intersect. Doing that we could create some insight. If you take a look, and the whole report is far more detailed than what you see here, but this is just a snippet of the major issues and the relationship or nexus to autonomy, which we heard already from Larry how is the service clearly something that at least is level four will have to be modified. We will talk about this in a short while. There is no reason to pull over when they can easily do everything you would need to do for 30 minutes while the driver is rested they are very quick candidly deliberately distracting himself to reduce monotony. You go through the list and some people will say I am lying. It goes far beyond compensation and truckloads that they have radically different turnover rates.
Nobody mentioned the fact that every industry is suffering from baby boomer retirements. One of the things we are most intrigued with is that the millennials are very fickle generation. They look to multitask using technology and social media and we believe that a sophisticated and autonomous truck at least at level 3 or 4 could draw the millennials into the industry as a new attractive sort of opportunity particularly for those millennials who do not go on to college. If they could find some way to enter the industry when they are 21, there is an opportunity to attract and keep drivers. There is no interest in the trucking industry in the short to medium-term to take the driver out of the cab. It is a very important message I hope you share with everybody. Certain truck drivers were not getting that message and are terrified that this is an attempt to put them out of business. Certain technology companies even in this sphere are saying we want to get the driver out and we will save on labor costs. We think the driver training requirements will increase substantially. Now I have to understand area codes and other technology issues. They have considerations that have changed the “why would I pull over?” which I have had to do for 30 minutes. It is possible it could be longer. They will go through the list here with driver distraction that will be a moot issue for both cars and trucks. At some point driver distraction issues will have a hard time keeping up with the technology. If you get into the feel and the real world I think everybody is familiar with this photo or photos like it.
This is the auto truck at the time and then moved on to Cooper freight and has since moved on to brand reference. This service truck operated for 122 miles on I-25 in between Colorado Springs and Fort Collins. It was an amazing experience. I was one of two independent observers along with the deputy chief Savage. We watch this in real time over three hours, and yes the driver did engage the autonomous mode once he hit the interstate and got back in the sleeper berth and did not leave it for over three hours and 120 miles. What we really take away from that experience is that the low hanging fruit is the technology and the big challenges are societal is in perception, legal issues, who gets sued when technology does go down, financial issues which were already raised by Larry and Brian to beat the benefit cost. Those are going to be the challenges. The technology today is very robust. And in fact it is quiet but public information. The Guinness Book of World Records has just recently qualified the Colorado beer run as the longest autonomous vehicle trip in the world. At some point you will likely see that. You get a lot of hype and a lot of nuance out there. Very little of it is probably based on operational facts.
We all have to sort out freight stereotypes. Some of the stereotypes I will rattle off here. Brian was talking about safety and immediately had a photo of an “X” over a driver reading an email. Maybe he is reading a shipping notice. I am not so quick to jump to say the driver can never leave the seat because I watched him do it for three hours on an interstate. I am not so quick to jump to say the driver should never look away from the windshield. That could be fine with level 1 and 2. I watched it succeed in level 4 and we know that in real-world revenue setting you can obtain model for automation but all of those other externalities have to come into play that I mentioned. The safety issues will be very interesting to understand.
I will just jump ahead to number three - the commercial insurance industry does not understand or know yet, legitimately because there is no data, whether these will have increased safety risks which would increase premiums and loss ratios or if it will be beneficial and dramatically address up to 80% of crash scenarios. Let's clarify. It is not an 80% reduction of crashes - it is addressing 80% of crash scenarios. Do we get benefits from the industry or do we penalize? We do not know because there is not enough data there. Again the deputy chief believes it will have huge and positive ramifications to trucking industry safety. Without more real-world EMTs, we are not sure. I will jump back to bullet number 2, which is all good things will go punished and that tort law in the United States is basically going to say no matter what the negligence and who is responsible liability is high and will be spread around far and wide. The legal environment out there today will make carriers and drivers very hesitant to be the first in on this.
The fourth bullet is just another of my soapboxes. We need to define driverless car. First of all, Google started off with the whole term driverless car which is relatively ridiculous because Google has a driver, and they are wired into the computer of the car. The Colorado beer run did not have a driver in the seat and there was no wireless connectivity to the truck whatsoever and it made its own call to call it artificial intelligence decisions to accelerate or decelerate or switch lanes. It is so sophisticated that when a car came racing up in the left lane to pass the truck in the middle lane, you and I know that the car is going to accelerate cut in and hit the brakes. Knowing that the car is likely to do that, the truck started the breaking process before the car ever cut. That is the sort of knowledge base that you can build into these systems. At the end of the day all of these systems will have a driver in them so I think we should emphasize self-driving. The other point we want to make is that as we have level 2 trucks out there today with variations of adaptive cruise control and lane assist and all kinds of systems already qualify many trucks as level 2. We are all interested in what the implications of level 4 and level 3 might be.
We emphasize the drive assist. We are on the Auburn test team and we call it driver assistance, because it emphasizes that the driver is there. We have the whole issue of connected vehicles versus autonomous vehicles, and where does it fit into that? Brian emphasized that at the end of the day benefit cost is everything. I have just a couple more slides here where I wanted to highlight some of the economics of the industry. If you look at our partners' bankruptcy and these are five trucks or more per fleet as and there are not a million drivers cycling. These are some of smallest nuances and marketplace changes, which you can see on the slide. This is just fuel price volatility, and we see real changes in trucking bankruptcies. So given the very small margins the industry has we have to make sure that the paybacks are both real and short-term.
This is another snapshot. If you go through what was previously a good economy you can see the average profit margins were in the ballpark of 3.8, now what is technically an even more robust economy you see that margins for truck companies has fallen. The economic pressure is the fuel is dirt cheap right now. The economic and regulatory pressures are increasing cost. This includes driver wage increases. The regulatory cost associated with all the new equipment and driver and personnel requirements are compressing profits. There will have to be a quick ROI on these, when the truck costs $200,000, in a relatively short order, 2 to 3 years I have to find a new $70,000 per truck to break even. We do not necessarily have the business model figured out. One of the things we are watching very closely and not knowing if it will help or hurt is the dramatic increase in e-commerce. What it has done to the supply chains today is dramatically shortened truck trip lengths.
We are seeing many more truck trips, but they are much more urban and suburban than they are rural. We are seeing a massive infusion of warehouse and distribution centers, because you do not even want your goods in 2 to 3 days you want them today or tomorrow. Amazon is building up to 100 warehouses in DC. FedEx used to run everything at a Memphis center, and now they have 231 regional centers. So this phenomenon could have an impact on autonomy because these vehicles, they operate in a level 3 or more while they are in traffic congestion on I-70 in Indianapolis. It is hard to say where we will find the operating environments now where autonomous technology is giving us the paybacks that we need.
One more slide to throw out; with retail sales analysts were visualizing e-commerce was in the neighborhood of 12 to 15% of overall sales. A lot of economists now believe it is more like 20+% and what that impact will have on the fact that Amazon now has thousands of trucks but they are almost all step vans. Uber is moving into freight load matching and all of this. Are we moving away from autonomous technology at least in this environment? We do not know yet. Truck trips are going down. We are using shorter trips as essentially a surrogate reason, for getting the driver home more quickly. When I am switching out any drivers and have many urban trips it begs the question whether autonomous technology in the freight industry is going to give us the ROIs. Many of us are positive that it is one of those externalities that we have to deal with.
Here is the other issue. This is a 24-hour snapshot of what the United States with North America looks like. At some point you need the Federal Highway Administration. They give some general guidelines and are apparently working on that as well. We need to start envisioning what the network is going to look like. We started using GPS data we had along interstate corridors with seamless conductivity. We started to piece together a truck platoon network, but that could be different from an autonomous truck network. Somewhere we have to start doing that. On a state-by-state level we are seeing that happen; quite candidly a lot of these tests that we see are in Colorado and Ohio. I am under a nondisclosure agreement, but you will see more press on this is being done in an intrastate setting so that they do not have to deal with challenges and obligations. At some point the trucks need to cross the border, and they will need the DOT to step up and start giving us not just what are the challenges and restrictions but how can we basically enhance this concept or opportunity.
This is what the network looks like today and we are in that fast network we can operate these vehicles is a big unknown. The cost of congestion I just want to throw in here we have been doing this analysis for a number of years. Congestion will be able to pick for everybody whether we continue to build e-commerce in the urban areas and idle hundreds of thousands of trucks, the majority of truck drivers are paid by the mile whether that is not changing. These are real dollars that are being lost. I am sort of concerned that things like traffic congestion could dramatically impact both autonomous and connected trucks. I have to put in a concern about connected vehicles. We organized a really phenomenal standing room only session at the 2017 TRB meeting. I had Chris Spear the president of ATA as one of the panelists. They were on the panel with me, what is really interesting is that they said we really need Level 5.9 automation as icing on the cake. Industry is moving really fast with autonomy and that the 5.9 would be that great icing on the cake. There is no existing 5.9 platform out there today.
I will show you one of a dozen operating examples of questions about connected vehicles that seem to go unanswered today. Given that Brian is on the phone, maybe somebody can answer how this works. If you look every one of these vehicles has a 5.9 run. They are all trying to decide who has the right-of-way and priority and where everybody is. Based on the position everybody says the truck is through the intersection. The truck and tractor has already proceeded through the intersection when in reality the truck is there. Now we might need to add one or more transceivers to the trailer and now we will need to talk to the trailer which does not exist in the connected world. We can see how this provides the icing on the cake that Chris is eager to see. A connected vehicle is very different. Things are moving very quickly in the trucking industry. Here is low hanging fruit. This should have been done yesterday they are already using autonomous trucks. They are testing the waters these days. Industrial parks make lots of sense to share mobility. Level 3 cars are sort of out there today. Notice I do not have autonomous trucks in there because I cannot figure out where to plug them in. Based on all those externalities it will either be 20 years from now, or three years from now. Lastly because of a whole bunch of challenges ranging from cost to FAA issues, I do not see consumer and retail drone delivery showing up for a very long time. It makes great press but delivery of a $7 pizza in a $30,000 drum the ROIs will be very challenging for everybody. I am all done.
Nicole Coene
I'd now like to start off the Q&A session with the questions posted online. Once we get through those questions, if time allows I'll open up the phone lines for questions.
So, the first question is asking if there have been any studies on the potential savings that automated trucks will provide once they are fully deployed?
Brian Routhier
In the platooning world, research that was done independently and otherwise shows that when the truck headways are near 30 to 50 feet, the front truck can save as much as 4% fuel economy. Of course, they get fuel economy because you minimize the vacuum and the drag on it. There is an economic benefit for fuel savings and platooning and there is an air quality benefit that comes from air-quality operations that controls speed. There's also the question with modifications to the service and the efficiency of the trucking industry when you eliminate 30 minutes of rest, or even 2 to 8 hours of stop time; it equates to lower consumer prices anywhere from 5 to 7%. When a truck owner puts this down it becomes real, but you still must offset the fact that your initial outlay is $200,000 for an autonomous truck. So, that outlay and the interest in opportunity cost I do not think we have run all the numbers including driver wages going up, because it will require more sophisticated training. Right now, we have a severe shortage. The diesel mechanic wages must go up particularly when they discover radar systems and LIDAR systems. The technology is there and they just must figure out at the government and an industry how to grease the skids as well as we can.
Dan Murray
I guess I would add that it is very speculative because you do not know exactly how it is going to play out, but when you think about it, laborers and tools are some of the biggest operating costs for the industry. You can imagine other benefits, as well as autonomous technology, for increased utilization of the vehicle. So, that affects your capital cost as well. There is a potentially large productivity benefit. I would also mention that there has been some larger studies of autonomy and autonomous vehicles. The national laboratory data scenario analysis is a sort of a big picture look at what the impact might be for they found road applications of the technology that could have very large benefits. There could be an increased demand as well. It depends on what the balance is, and if you lower the cost of transportation, or if you look at freight more particularly you will have increased demand. So how does that play out?
Larry O'Rourke
I am also watching comments asking can and should the driver ever leave the seat. I guess on paper we may say no today because that makes us feel better. I understand that, but if I had ever said to any truck driver in the industry 20 years ago (and I believe that I have been in the transportation industry maybe 23 years), if I have said that he would have a handheld device that you would pay bills, videoconference with your wife, and you could text your kids, track your car, and get 1 million other things done, not to mention take videos and everything else you would have that in your front pocket, they would be laughing at me all the way to the bank. But we have that today in the form of a smart phone. We have no idea how this technology will even be in three years and the concerns we have today are going to be moot once we see the sophistication and rhythm of the technologies that are coming. So, I dare you to get into a commercial airplane even though it is flying on autopilot. I do not think any of us would do that and I think that is the general attitude.
Nicole Coene
We have some comments about driver engagement. One participant said “I am curious if the engagement time is the time-lapse to get the driver back to the seat or the time to get to see him get back fully aware of surrounding vehicles and requirements.” Then it was followed most recently with a comment wondering how will the driver avoid becoming bored or fatigued when not involved in active driving. This is much more fatigue inducing them being engaged in driving across the Great Plains states. Does anybody want to cover that?
Brian Routhier
This is Brian. I can make some comments on that. This was part of the discussions at conferences and forums on the issues. If the driver were in the seat for example, I would propose that the driver never must get back in the seat. If there is an issue and the automation is already starting to take some evasive action, a person trying to get from the driver seat may never make it there. I have seen some speakers skipping the steps four and five and forget about re-engaging the driver altogether. Those are just some of the observations I have heard people state out in the industry. I have tried to get that driver back. If there is a driver in the seat and people that are using the technology are expecting them to take over for the automation in certain situations, there is a time factor of whether or not it is you and I are fully engaged in a car, we can get our foot on the brake and a couple tenths of a second, but if we are not paying attention and it takes us a couple seconds to understand the situation then there is not a lot of margin for error.
Larry O'Rourke
So, the research we completed talks about the need for drivers because we identified a couple dozen things a driver does that have nothing to do with holding the steering wheel and pressing the break. For instance, this technology cannot get out and do a daily truck inspection which is required by FMCSA. There's so many things that they are needed for. Even when the driver was completely in charge of pickup and delivery and when they hit the interstate, we foresee all of that still being a driver obligation. The thinking we have right now, is that the drivers need to react to a crisis rather than assume it will be taken care of. Today, you can operate a drone in Syria somewhere in Washington DC without a driver. Unfortunately, there is at least one technology provider that is quite candidly saying “let's put the truck driver in his basement and he can drive the truck from his basement almost as a drone truck”. That ignores all the things the driver needs to do on a chaotic scenario. Staying in the trucking industry has nothing to do with the steering wheel. I do not foresee the driver leaving, but I do not think he will automatically be able to jump in the street and grab the steering wheel because something has happened.
Dan Murray
I would like to add one other big picture idea to this. You know when you talk specifically about level 3 driving there are a lot of questions about how that would be deployed, and if that could be dangerous in the sense of how are people going to interact with the technology. One of the human factors and implications is how people will use the technology. One way to think about it is they have something called the “automation paradox” which deals with when you have automated systems there is a tendency for people to become overreliant on them. The certain examples are autopilot and aircraft. We just had a vessel accident out on the ocean that was probably caused by the fact that people were either over reliant or misusing the automation features. There is always that danger that how are people going to use this when you put it on the road. That's always been a big question about level 3. That is why the manufacturers want to seem to skip level 3 and go right to level 4.
Nicole Coene
One topic that was covered extensively in the chat, and I will try to hit some of the highlights and then open it up to you was engaging on the highway with truck platoons. I'm wondering about the traffic impacts of platoons. Public acceptance is one thing, but there is a huge problem in the moment if you need to exit and the final line of three trucks is closing you off from your exit. Scott commented that it is a very valid concern with the human factors of how people would interact with autonomous trucks when they don't even know they are attempting to. Lastly, Chip added how much coordination will there be with automated connected trucks and automated and connected cars. I suspect this could be more of an issue regarding technologies for privately developed trucks and automobile manufacturers and automated and connected vehicle technology developers and is kind of hitting two topics with that. Interaction of automated trucks and just regular cars on the road and the future with the interaction of automated trucks and automated cars together also needs to be considered.
Dan Murray
If I could tell you one funny story about the Colorado beer run it was insightful and funny at the same time. The truck was driving down the road minding its own business with the driver back in the sleeper. When he came up on the cab of the truck as this one car driver did racing up at top speed in the left lane and just when he got to the truck, he must've glanced where driver should be in the cab of the driver seat and saw nothing. He watched him slam on his brakes and drive next to the truck for 30 seconds. My first thought is he is calling the state patrol. My second thought was “thank goodness because the state patrol is two vehicles behind the truck following it”. So, the public perception is going to be very challenging. I do not think people will blink about a Tesla autopilot car, because first they do not know that it is in autopilot mode, but a truck without the driver is going to scare the heck out of folks. I think one of those externalities that would be the biggest challenge is how to convince people that technology is substantially faster than the human driver. Not to take the driver out, but to say this is going to augment and support the driver at least make the truck as safe or safer and that will be a very challenging outreach effort.
Larry O'Rourke
This is Larry. I would add that there is a discussion that you may designate certain areas on interstates for truck platooning. You may also have areas if they have a lot of exits and so forth. You may designate or geo-sense certain areas where you would not have yet to mitigate some of these issues with at least people getting onto the highway. Certainly, now it seems like there's only discussion with two truck platoons so you can imagine these issues would be more significant if you have longer platoons.
Brian Routhier
This is Brian. I was at the automated vehicle conference last week, and one of the breakout sessions was interesting because it did talk about the interaction of people and cars etc. With automated vehicles, there was a lot of discussion around if you would advertise that there is an automated vehicle going down the road or not. Also, do you add more lighting or word banner displays to the front or back of the vehicle to tell the person in front and back of you what you are doing as an automated vehicle?
Dan Murray
It is interesting there was a diversity of opinion on whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. If you advertise “I am in an automated vehicle” people start saying “well, I can mess with this vehicle and it will just stop in front of me or I will step off the curb in front of it, because I know it is going to stop versus a car with a person who may not see me”. So, there is a lot of discussion going on about how the interaction happens and how it does or does not communicate that it is automated to the people and other trucks around it.
Nicole Coene
The next couple questions I am going to raise kind of tie together. It seems that a lot of the vehicles and platooning would work best and be safest if there is a dedicated segregated interior lane for these types of trucks. Are most HOV lanes interior and can they be easily separated from conventional traffic and drivers? Andrew Ray commented regarding policies involving interaction between vehicles and trucks, that the priority should be given to trucks moving region to region as interstates were intended to preserve mobility. At times when the interstates are congested we could restrict passenger vehicles to arterial roads to preserve interstates. Anybody want to take that on?
Dan Murray
This is Dan. I will tell you while the gentleman will probably get a quick job in the trucking industry, there are a lot of folks that would say number one we do support autonomous cars in HOV lanes because you minimize car traffic and freight movement becomes expedited. You know you talk to a lot of operators and carriers in school bus drivers and motor coach operators they are very nervous about operating in high occupancy lanes because the risk of exposure goes up substantially. If it were a dedicated truck lane I think that would be phenomenal. As the chat room points out, dedicated truck lanes are very expensive. We did research in Ohio and Indiana and it is billions of dollars. I do not think economics would cover that.
Nicole Coene
The next question covers maintenance. How are the environmental concerns treated with breaks in electronics? There was talk about environmental conditions and their effects on breaks in terms of how frequently they need to be inspected given the different environmental conditions. I know that is a lot. Would anyone want to tackle that?
Dan Murray
I will talk about this very briefly. At least one of the systems has incorporated military grade GPS, but it is not as differential GPS, which has very high correction resolution. I am particularly intrigued with that system of autonomous truck plus differential GPS. The worst thing we have out there today in the trucking industry is snow, rain, and fog. I would throw in black ice, but we can't do anything about that. Then the systems will directly address it because there will be scattered, even radar and LIDAR scatter. If you added a differential GPS it becomes an all-weather fighter. None of these systems have successfully managed snow, rain, and fog in an operational setting. That is going to be a huge problem for the northern states.
Larry O'Rourke
This is Larry. I would add one other thing. An emerging technology that uses ground penetrating radar that allows equipment to see the edge of the road is something that people always talk about. I am not sure the viability of that. I guess another issue is that you can set conditions for the operation of the vehicle so in certain weather conditions you don't operate in autonomous mode.
Nicole Coene
Does anybody want to discuss the maintenance standards for brakes for autonomous trucks?
Brian Routhier
This is Brian. I can speak to that a little bit. As far as our agency is concerned we are not anywhere near a state where we are going to establish a higher maintenance standard for automated vehicles and platooning vehicles. That being said, one would think that it makes sense, like I mentioned in the presentation, if I'm going to have two or three trucks within 40 or 50 feet of each other, I want to make sure that my equipment is in very good working order. The out of service rates for brakes is quite substantial in the industry, and I am voicing another comment from a large fleet about platooning, and I think Dan would hear this as well, if I am out platooning and I have the opportunity to platoon with another truck I have never seen or heard of before because they have the same technology the comments I hear are “I am not going near it because I don't know how well that truck had been maintained.” I will platoon all the light trucks from my fleet together but I'm not going to go over with another truck that I do not know where it came from. Like I said I certainly think that if you are using this technology and the automation is going to apply force at a maximum level and there are some cars that apply the maximum level for you because it is known that drivers tend to either not hit them as hard as they can or back off sometimes. You are going to want the tires and brakes to be able to handle all those forces and not have a wheel that has a bad or stuck brake.
Nicole Coene
Thank you. Kind of a similar thought, but what is being done to consider the possibility of technology communication issues when there is a breakdown or disruption in communication technology?
Dan Murray
Most of the suppliers/vendors are building in communication system redundancy, literally jumping back and forth as necessary between Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and 5.9 DCRC. They are all also building in the default code that if all else fails reduce speed and pull over to the shoulder. They are all attempting to build the redundancies. And I don't know what can be done beyond that at this stage.
Larry O'Rourke
Another thing that is being talked about is perhaps there could be a need for a mapping of interstates and major roadways to identify how good the communication is along these roadways and to identify dead spots and other things that the technology could encounter.
Dan Murray
I was just asked about differential GPS and digitizing the roadways. The Minnesota DOT is spending a substantial amount of money getting their version of the NHS digitized and once you have that it becomes an extremely powerful tool for many of these technologies. In particular, when infrastructure starts to go bad and paint stripes start to disappear, digitized maps will become very important. So, states that are pursuing that I think will become quick testbeds for a lot of these systems and states that have poor infrastructure will be a challenge for the industry.
Nicole Coene
Thank you. I am hoping the speakers can stay with us a little bit longer to get though some more of these questions. This one is regarding training. Within the policies that are being written is there a policy regarding the retraining of truck drivers driving automated vehicles? The skill set for a drivers driving automated vehicles is going to be drastically different than what is currently needed, i.e. more tech savvy. And a follow up question, how is the need for a more tech savvy driver going to be met when the industry is currently struggling to find drivers?
Brian Routhier
From our point of view there is not anything being written or re-written to address driver training. I mentioned in my presentation that is a potential area to be considered but I am not sure how that occurs yet. I would agree that a more tech savvy person does become the model for these drivers.
Nicole Coene
Did anyone want to address the recruiting of drivers? (No response) Okay, we will move on. What is it about automated trucks that makes them any safer than the railroad system? There are similarities about AV proposals and what is in place now on the rails and no one would say that the rails are the safest bet around for many of the same factors that are a concern with AV trucking. What lessons can be learned from the rails and how it applies to AV trucks?
Dan Murray
I am not going to touch that because I have friends in the rail industry. I think the big question is what are the differences between the railroads and trucks with or without the technology, but that is its own 10-hour webinar.
Brian Routhier
Some of the things we are doing include reaching out to other agencies such as transit, FRA, and even FAA. As mentioned earlier when people were talking about piloted and auto-piloted planes, we are trying to understand more. The airline agency has already gone through this experience and we are actively engaged with FAA on what issues they saw when autopilot became more prevalent. Generally-speaking, you have more time to assess the situation when you are in a plane, although the whole crux of Miracle on the Hudson was the pilot had less than 30 seconds to make a decision. The railroads have the deadman switch when the driver has to touch something every certain period of time so that the technology knows that they are still there, awake and watching over the train.
Nicole Coene
If we do not get to your question, you can email it to me and I will get written responses from the presenters. The original speaker cited VIUS data regarding segmentation, miles travelled, etc. Isn't that manually generated data almost two decades old and wouldn't a new automated data provided "survey", like DOE's Fleet DNA endeavor, be a better way to quantify such decision-making data?
Larry O'Rourke
That data is actually a combination of several different data sources and at the time that I put that together it was the best data that was available. It is true that there is definitely a need for better data sources on the trucking industry. They are near completing a new vehicle inventory use survey that will provide better data. There is always room for better data in the trucking industry.
Nicole Coene
Dan, the next two questions are for you. Doesn't the DSRC basic safety message include the size of the vehicle? It seems to me that if the truck isn't broadcasting the size, including the trailer, then it isn't correctly implementing the spec.
Dan Murray
Great question. It depends on who you ask, the answer is no. The basic safety message is going to be anywhere from the heartbeat/here I am which might just be a vehicle ID. If the transceiver is not wired to in to something else, that transceiver knows nothing about the vehicle, nothing about what is in the vehicle, how much it weighs, whether the trailer is attached, or how many people are in the vehicle. It can't take control of the foundation breaking. So today the connected vehicle is a simple message to notify people of something. What they are notifying them of is not easily discerned in the public information. Now Brian, you tell me your familiarity with the message because that transceiver today has no connectivity to major systems or my JBUS or anything.
Brian Routhier
I do know that there is some work being done at NHTSA regarding the articulated truck, not only how a truck takes a corner from car or a straight line truck but also to understand how they can get that information from the trailer so they do know the size of the vehicle.
Dan Murray
And that is transmitted to other vehicles? The weight of the truck?
Brian Routhier
Not the weight, the size. I know they have an ongoing project to find a way to identify the trailer to include it in the basic safety message so the issue you showed in the intersection does not happen.
Nicole Coene
Last question. Dan, can you discuss in more detail how AV can lessen urban congestions challenges?
Dan Murray
In that instance I am putting more burden on autonomous cars. Whenever you minimize headways, you can increase capacity. There are all kinds of AASHTO studies on this. You also have to understand that a huge percentage of non-reoccurring congestion is incidents. Incidents are huge. On paper everyone subscribes to the idea that autonomous vehicles will decrease incidents, aka crashes. Between reducing non-reoccurring congestion and increasing headways, we think the system will be more efficient. So if the cars beat the trucking industry to the punch with autonomy we will be happy, although right now on paper we look pretty far along. Tesla's autopilot system, which has had some snafus, is out there but I don't think that many people are out there racing to buy Teslas since they are not as cheap as Yugos.
Nicole Coene
Thank you for everyone for hanging in there an extra ten minutes. I think we will go ahead and close out. The recorded version of this event will be available within the next few weeks on the Talking Freight website.
The next seminar will be held on August 16, 2017. The topic is tentatively scheduled to be Coordination between Freight and Passenger Railroads. Registration is not yet available. I will send a notice out through the Freight Planning LISTSERV announcing when registration is open.
I encourage you to join the Freight Planning LISTSERV if you have not already done so.
Thank you to our presenters and to everyone attending. Please enjoy the rest of your day.
