Autonomous vehicle technologies have the potential to dramatically impact nearly all aspects of the trucking industry. A fully autonomous truck will have the ability to identify, interact with and safely react to all aspects of the driving environment without a driver in control of the wheel — in theory, this includes but is not limited to weather conditions, road types and unexpected events such as work zones and traffic accidents. It may be decades, however, before such a vehicle is commercially available. Autonomous truck (AT) technology is advancing rapidly, and as these advancements enter the marketplace, the responsibilities of truck drivers could dramatically shift. It is clear, however, that driver tasks will not be the only area where adaptation is essential — operations may become more productive, freight may move faster, and federal regulations could be dramatically altered to accommodate a new driving environment. How individual carriers respond to the advent of the autonomous truck may determine their successes or setbacks in this new environment. In 2016 the American Transportation Research Institute’s (ATRI) Research Advisory Committee (RAC) ranked “Analysis of Autonomous Truck Impacts” as its top research priority. Citing the institutional complexities of AT deployment and the rapid technological advances taking place in this field, the RAC asserted that industry stakeholders would benefit from an understanding of how this emerging technology would impact today’s most critical trucking issues. This report has two main objectives in response to the RAC’s mandate. The first is to offer background on the current state of autonomous vehicle (AV) technologies. The second and more central goal of the report is to outline the impacts of AT deployment on the topics found within ATRI’s 2015 Top Industry Issues. To accomplish this, the report explores the role of each top industry issue across several levels of truck automation, offering a discussion of impacts to drivers, companies and operations in general. Additional issues related to AT impacts on the industry are also discussed. While it is clear that trucking companies and commercial drivers will operate differently in an automated environment, the degree to which this new technology will mitigate (or intensify) some of the industry’s most pressing issues is not fully understood. This report takes a first step at highlighting a variety of potential changes and challenges, and intends to help prepare the industry for a new trucking environment. While vehicles including trucks have traditionally been operated manually, research and development has been conducted for nearly a century on automating aspects of vehicle control. Over the past 15 years, this technology has advanced rapidly, bolstered in part by Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) initiatives in the U.S. that encouraged university research through autonomous vehicle competitions. These research and development (R&D) activities demonstrated that vehicle automation was possible by developing systems with existing technology components. Today there are at least 33 vehicle manufacturers and technology companies that have R&D underway focused on autonomous vehicle technology There has been broad deployment of automated features and significant demonstrations and pilot tests of automated vehicle operations. It is important to recognize that the different levels of “autonomy” come with different technologies, functionalities and expectations. To better define and categorize autonomous systems, both the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) have developed automation scales. SAE’s six level scale can be found in Appendix A and NHTSA’s five-level scale is listed in Appendix B. This report will refer to SAE’s six-level scale using the “layman’s” description of each level provided by NHTSA in its September 2016 Federal Automated Vehicles Policy report. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting