This week, the Automated Vehicle Safety Consortium (AVSC) released its first written best practices for vehicle safety operator selection, training, and oversight procedures.
To promote safe development and testing, the AVSC best practice provides a structure for the qualifications and training of the humans that are on board and responsible for safety oversight during the testing of automated driving systems SAE Level 4 and 5 research vehicles. The in-vehicle fallback test driver (IFTD) best practice, along with all future best practices developed by the AVSC, will be supported by all consortium members in their safety operations.
The IFTD best practice offers test organizations and infrastructure owner-operators a baseline for test driving and pilot projects. It recommends a framework for IFTD basic driver training that includes a combination of autonomous vehicle knowledge and driving skill, in addition to sound teamwork and communication processes.
All current AV testing on public roads involves human oversight in some capacity, and the new IFTD best practice applies to those safety drivers in the vehicle who are responsible for the safe oversight of the vehicle during testing of SAE Level 4 and 5 automated driving systems on public roads.
The AVSC launched in April 2019 with the goal to safely advance testing, pre-competitive development and deployment of SAE Level 4 and 5 automated vehicles.
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SOURCE: Automated Vehicle Safety Consortium
