Best Practice Help to Facilitate Industry/Public Communication, Calibrate Expectations, and Improve Acceptance of SAE Level 4 and Level 5 ADS-Equipped Vehicles

WARRENDALE, Pa. (August 10, 2022) – The Automated Vehicle Safety Consortium™ (AVSC), a program of SAE Industry Technologies Consortia (SAE ITC®), has launched the AVSC Best Practice for Interactions Between Automated Driving System-Dedicated Vehicles (ADS-DVs) and Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs). At a high level, VRUs are essentially any human road user not occupying a vehicle. While individual ADS developers may have exceptions, AVSC describes three simple criteria to clarify discussions involving ADS interactions with VRUs.

The variety of characteristics and behaviors across the many groups of VRUs adds unique challenges to ADS development. There is currently no consensus on all factors to consider during ADS interaction with VRUs but broadly speaking, safety during traffic interactions can be improved when all actors share a general understanding of the world around them and how they interact with each other. The document was developed from the perspective of an ADS-DV operating without reliance on external digital communications (i.e., interacting with VRUs that are not connected through some digital communication device such as vehicle-to-pedestrian, vehicle-to-bike, or vehicle-to-infrastructure).

“This new best practice establishes common terminology and provides readers insight and a framework to help baseline an understanding of challenges posed to evaluate ADS-DV interactions with VRUs. The content can be used to facilitate communication across industry and the public, help calibrate the expectations of all traffic participants, and improve broader acceptance of SAE Level 4 and SAE Level 5 ADS-equipped vehicles", said Dr. Edward Straub, executive director, AVSC.

ADS developers can reference this document for considerations related to interactions between SAE Level 4 and SAE Level 5 fleet-managed ADS-DVs and VRUs. Non-experts should come away with a greater appreciation of the challenges during these interactions. This appreciation and shared framework for interactions should ultimately lead to greater acceptance of ADS- DVs.

To download the paper, CLICK HERE

For more information about the AVSC, visit avsc.sae-itc.org.

The Automated Vehicle Safety Consortium™ (AVSC) is an industry program of SAE Industry Technologies Consortia® (SAE ITC) building on principles that will inform and help lead to industrywide standards for advancing automated driving systems. The members of this consortium have long been focused on the development of safe, reliable and high-quality vehicles, and are committed to applying these same principles to SAE Level 4 and Level 5 automated vehicles so communities, government entities and the public can be confident that these vehicles will be deployed safely.

SAE Industry Technologies Consortia (SAE ITC®) is an affiliate of SAE International. The SAE ITC team specializes in establishing and managing consortia by providing proven processes, tools and resources. SAE ITC enables public, private, academic and government organizations to connect and collaborate in neutral, pre-competitive forums thus empowering the setting and implementation of strategic business improvements in highly engineered industries globally. www.sae-itc.com.

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