Prior to the first hearing of the Georgia House study committee on driverless cars earlier this month, we asked Fayette County Commission Chairman Steve Brown about pitching his county as a test ground for the new technology:
What’s the status of Fayette County serving as a test ground for driverless cars in Georgia?
We’ve formally passed a resolution stating we are willing to use our local roads for the testing. We talked to the Georgia Department of Transportation, and they are supportive, but we are awaiting final confirmation from Governor Deal’s office. We want their approval to use the state routes in the county. We can allow them today to crisscross on our county roads, but they’re going to have to eventually cross a state route or get on a state route to get to the next set of county roads. So we’re trying to be a good partner. We want to work with the state on that. We’ve spoken with Georgia Tech; they’re willing to work with us, and they have an interest in the research possibilities.
Do you need legislation passed to do this?
Our understanding is you don’t have to have legislation as long as you have a driver in the vehicle. I’m closely watching the California model. Google, I think, drove almost 200,000 miles on California highways before California DOT even knew they were doing it. Essentially, their point was, the laws covered them, they didn’t need to have special laws. California has since restructured some statutes, and they have new regulations coming out; I think they’re due by January. So they’re the leader. They’ve actually had the vehicles on the roads. There’s a lot of anxiety when you have new technology and people fear change, and of course, computers do have glitches, and what’s going to happen if I’m on the road and that happens? The new Google-manufactured vehicles are lightweight, tiny two-seaters that only go 25 mph, so that are not really a safety threat.
What are you hearing from Fayette citizens about this idea?
Peachtree City was worried in terms of participating. They didn’t know if their golf cart paths would play a part in distracting the (driverless) vehicles, if the cars could determine the difference between a road and a golf cart path. A lot of the golf cart paths do intersect local roads. So I think we have to assure Peachtree City that that’s not going to be the case. But the citizens themselves are very excited about it. This is why Fayette County works so well for testing these vehicles. You have a very affluent population, a well-educated population, a strong high-tech-user population, and I think if you’ve got a county that you would consider an early adopter for this kind of technology, it would be Fayette. We kind of fit that mold.
What do you hope comes out of these legislative hearings?
As a committee, I think they need to get a grasp on where the technology is today. I’ve been studying it for five or six years. There are four levels of autonomous driving. Right now, you can buy something on a car lot today that’s very close to level three. It’ll keep you in your lane; you don’t have to steer. It will accelerate and brake automatically via advanced sensory capabilities.
My biggest fear is, let’s not do to autonomous automobiles and trucks what we did with drones, and let the technology leapfrog the regulation, and then you ground everything. We have so many companies that are likely to be key players in the drone market in Georgia, and they’re all grounded. They can’t sell any product, they can’t move any product, and it’s pathetic. And this is where we’re headed with autonomous vehicles, because the technology is going to leapfrog the regulation. But that’s where we are going if we don’t get proactive.
Fayette County has taken the innovative step of offering our county road system not only for testing the technology, but also to serve as a policy and regulatory laboratory for the Federal Highway Administration and GDOT. Local road testing is the next critical step, and using an actual road network instead of a test track will give policy makers a genuine look at how autonomous and non-autonomous vehicles will interact. We have also made it very clear that Fayette County is allowing only vehicle manufacturers and their staff to use our road system in a controlled testing environment. Ordinary citizens are not part of the vehicle testing process.
Steve Brown is chairman of the Fayette County Commission.
