The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation announced formal guidelines Wednesday that will allow self-driving vehicles to operate without an emergency driver in the vehicle.
But don’t expect to see them on local streets any time soon because the technology isn’t ready to handle quickly changing weather conditions in Pennsylvania, according to a Carnegie Mellon University professor who is one of the leading researchers on self-driving vehicles in the country.
Raj Rajkumar, the George Westinghouse Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at CMU and a member of PennDOT’s advisory committee, said the guidelines are important because they establish formal procedures for how companies receiving state permission operate self-driving vehicles. Those include clearly marking vehicles that don’t have an emergency driver, gathering and reporting data about each hour the vehicle is on the road, and immediately reporting accidents and other emergency incidents.
Companies that don’t adhere to the guidelines risk losing their operating certificates.
The guidelines are a follow-up to Act 130, a law passed by the Legislature in 2022 to govern the use of self-driving vehicles. Developing the guidelines was required as part of that bill.
Rajkumar said he is satisfied with the guidelines because they were developed through the Highly Automated Vehicle Advisory Committee, which was established in 2018 and has 23 members ranging from elected officials to researchers, police, union officials and industry representatives. The committee issued proposed guidelines for public comment in August and adjusted them slightly before they were put into operation Wednesday.
“It’s a very strong group that covers a variety of areas,” Rajkumar said.
In a news release, PennDOT Secretary Mike Carroll said it is important for the agency to set development standards.
“As technology like driverless vehicles advances, Pennsylvania is staying at the forefront of ensuring public safety with a regulation and certification process for those interested in operating in the state,” he said. “We are excited to continue our role as a crucial location for driverless training and operations.”
The key provision of the guidelines is that for the first time developers can deploy self-driving vehicles in the state without having an emergency driver who can take over control of the vehicle. Instead, the vehicles can be deployed with no driver as long as they are monitored from a central location.
Pennsylvania and the Pittsburgh area in particular have been a hotbed for the development of self-driving technology, beginning with Rajkumar’s development of a self-driving vehicle at CMU more than 20 years ago. Other firms such as Aurora, Latitude AI and Motional have operations here primarily because of the engineering talent available at the university.
But Rajkumar said he doesn’t expect any of those firms to jump right into operating self-driving vehicles without emergency drivers here. CMU’s vehicle has the most advanced technology available, he said, and while it is “pretty close,” it isn’t ready yet to adjust to fast-changing conditions that can go from sunny and clear to windy with rain or snow within minutes.
Some of the companies with operations here already are deploying self-driving vehicles in California, Arizona and Texas, where there are many miles of relatively flat, mostly straight roads with predictably dry weather.
“All of them are developing their sites locally,” Rajkumar said. “None of those companies are planning to do deployments in Pittsburgh yet.
“Weather plays a bigger role here. It changes very rapidly in the Pittsburgh area.”
Heavy rain, in particular, causes problems for self-driving vehicles, he said.
Derrick Herrmann, PennDOT’s chief of transformational technology, said he wouldn’t be surprised if a firm would want to start testing self-driving vehicles without a driver. The difficulties Rajkumar noted make it a challenge for the technology, something researchers often like to try.
He said the state purposely wanted temporary guidelines so that they would be easier to update as needed in the future. Some states in the southwest have almost no rules self-driving vehicles while others such as Ohio and Pennsylvania have strict guidelines.
“Our goal all along was to write guidelines to allow development of the technology and keep people safe on the roads,” Herrmann said.
Ed covers transportation at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at eblazina@unionprogress.com.