[Quietcars] Article: Blind 'Drivers' Step Up to Shape U.S. Push for Driverless Cars, bloomberg.com, July 19, 2017

Fri Jul 21 15:09:40 UTC 2017

Great article! Thanks for posting this!

Debbie

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Subject: [Quietcars] Article: Blind 'Drivers' Step Up to Shape U.S. Push for
Driverless Cars, bloomberg.com, July 19, 2017

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2017-07-19/

blind-drivers-step-up-to-shape-u-s-push-for-driverless-cars

Blind 'Drivers' Step Up to Shape U.S. Push for Driverless Cars

Bloomberg.com

July 19, 2017

By Ryan Beene

Anil Lewis was behind the wheel of his Ford Mustang convertible on a sunny
Atlanta day in 1988, when he nearly hit a pedestrian who appeared in a
crosswalk ahead of him, seemingly out of nowhere.

It was then Lewis realized his deteriorating eyesight would soon end his
days behind the wheel. Now 53 and legally blind, the prospect of fully
autonomous vehicles gives him hope of returning to the road on his own.

"If it's designed correctly, if the vehicles are accessible," said Lewis,
executive director of the National Federation of the Blind's Jernigan
Institute, which works to develop technologies and services that help the
blind. "It's going to create an improved ability to travel that doesn't
currently exist."

The revolution in self-driving cars holds promise for a segment of the
population that thought they'd never be able to operate a vehicle: the
blind. Advocates for the estimated 1.3 million legally blind people in the
U.S., and millions more with other disabilities, have joined automakers and
technology companies in lobbying Congress to help spur the roll out of
self-driving vehicles.

A panel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted unanimously
Wednesday to advance the first legislation on driverless cars. Advocates for
the blind have let lawmakers know they have a special set of concerns: They
want accessibility incorporated into car design and states to steer clear of
laws that would prohibit the blind from one day sitting in the driver's
seat.

They're up against a regulatory and industry paradigm that assumes drivers
see the road ahead. Policy makers and companies working on fully
self-driving vehicles -- still many years away from being widely available
-- are only beginning to tackle new challenges to ensure that the blind can
benefit, and some roadblocks are already emerging.

Sit Back, Human Driver. Computers Will Take the Wheel: QuickTake

Alex Epstein, senior director of digital strategy at the National Safety
Council, says autonomous vehicle technology still has a long way to go until
vehicles don't have a steering wheel or brake, and the driver can be removed
from the equation.

"In theory, the concept is a wonderful idea," Epstein said. "The question is
how does the auto industry and the tech industry get to that place."

The National Federation of the Blind has begun airing radio ads as part of a
new coalition of representing the hearing-impaired, the elderly, carmakers
and Securing America's Future Energy, an energy-independence advocate. It's
also joined the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets, an advocacy group
that represents Ford Motor Co., Volvo Cars AB, Alphabet Inc.'s Waymo unit,
Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc.

The auto and tech industry's vision of robotaxi fleets could improve access
to employment and education that have long been among the blind federation's
top policy priorities, said spokesman Chris Danielsen. The group is
concerned about state policies that could limit the blind's access to
autonomous rides in the future.

Vision Test

Florida, Michigan and New York already have laws that require operators of
automated vehicles to have a driver's license, which mandates a vision test.
What's more, even states lacking statutes with such requirements would
likely defer to current law, creating a de facto driver's license
requirement, according to Amanda Essex, transportation policy specialist at
the National Conference of State Legislatures.

"That obviously freezes us out," said Danielsen. "Certain policy makers will
say that even though it's a self-driving car, I don't want a blind person
behind the wheel because I don't believe that that's safe."

Requiring that passengers in an autonomous vehicle that needs no human
intervention have a driver's license is a "needless restriction" that would
blunt the impact of the technology on the disabled community, Securing
America's Future Energy said in a recent study commissioned along with the
Ruderman Family Foundation, an advocacy group for the disabled.

SAFE has lobbied aggressively to advance autonomous vehicles. Its study
found that improved access to transportation from fully-autonomous vehicles
would save $19 billion in health care costs from missed doctor's
appointments and help improve job prospects for some 2 million disabled
people.

The House bill would leave states in charge of their traditional areas such
as vehicle registration, insurance and licensing, but says the federal
government is the only entity that can set safety standards for autonomous
vehicles. The draft dropped a provision from an earlier proposal that sought
to promote access to autonomous vehicles for the disabled.

Advocates did win other provisions though, including the creation of an
advisory committee within the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
to examine disabled access.

Self-driving vehicles that don't require intervention by a human driver will
present new policy challenges at the state level that must be addressed to
ensure the blind and disabled can take full advantage of the technology,
according to David Strickland, counsel for the Self-Driving Coalition for
Safer Streets and a former NHTSA chief.

Accessible Vehicles

"We're going to be moving from a model where people are drivers to a model
to where people are going to be passengers," he said. "You're going to end
up segregating them from the use of that technology unless you amend the
licensure laws."

It's a similar situation for automakers, which generally haven't had to
consider access for groups such as the blind or people with other
disabilities, such as paralysis. Accessible vehicles are largely built by
specialty retrofitters. And it's up to government transit authorities and
taxi operators to ensure trains, taxis and other modes of transportation can
be used by people with disabilities.

"When you're talking about the narrow aspects of para-transit, you've really
never had to think about human-machine interface on a broad scale for the
disabled," said Strickland, who spoke at the National Federation of the
Blind's national convention last week. Automakers will now have to "tackle
the question on a broad consumer scale."

Some of the companies developing driverless cars -- such as General Motors
Co. and Google parent Alphabet Inc. -- have already begun to tackle that.

An App for That

In 2015, Steve Mahan, from the Santa Clara Valley Blind Center, traveled
around Austin, Texas by himself in a Google car without a steering wheel or
floor pedals, according to an announcement last year by the initiative, now
known as Waymo.

Blind GM employees are advising company designers working on autonomous
vehicles to make them accessible and one focus has been on the use of
smartphone apps tailored for blind users, according to Renee
Arrington-Johnson, an industrial engineer with GM for 40 years who led the
effort until she retired this month.

Other technologies are still in the research stage.

"This is a big market that you will have open to you, and this is
independence for people who are now depending on public transportation or on
taxis," Arrington-Johnson, who is legally blind, said, describing how she
pitched senior GM executives on the idea. "In the past you didn't really
necessarily market to a person who was blind or low vision because that
really wasn't your big market."

She said most of the changes need to occur in the way information is
communicated to blind users. Just like sighted people, blind people want to
know where they are and about the surrounding environment upon exiting the
car.

The National Federation of the Blind discussed the blind community's needs
for an autonomous car at Daimler AG's annual Sustainability Forum last year.
Any company that finds out how to tap this market "will be the winners in
this game," Lewis said.

"I've always said the hardest thing for me when I went blind was giving up
my driver's license," he said. "It was a symbol of my independence."

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