PHOENIX — Gov. Doug Ducey insisted Friday that public safety will not be compromised by his decision to allow Uber to test its self-driving vehicles on Arizona roads before the state has adopted rules for their use.
The governor personally welcomed the first of Uber’s self-driving test vehicles, which were hauled to Arizona after Uber rejected the demand of California transportation officials that they be specially licensed and registered as test vehicles.
Ducey said that shows Arizona is friendlier for businesses than its neighbor to the west.
He noted that both the state Department of Transportation and the Department of Public Safety are involved in a task force with companies like Uber to come up with the rules and regulations for autonomous vehicles.
“We’ll be putting those out there with consumer safety and public safety being the No. 1 priority,” he said. “These cars are going to be insured,” he added.
The governor was not dissuaded by the fact the task force has not yet come up with any rules. “I mean, this is technology that is changing right before our eyes,” he said. “The message today is Arizona’s open for business. We’re welcoming this technology. We’re not pushing it out of our state.”
Uber claims it was pushed out of California when transportation officials there said the cars had to be registered as test vehicles. An Uber spokeswoman at Friday’s event in Phoenix declined to immediately answer questions on what regulations that entailed and why it was unacceptable to the company.
The company opted to ship its 16 test vehicles to Arizona, instead.
Ducey said Friday he sees no reason for any special registration. “These are vehicles that are actually going to have human beings sitting in the driver’s seat, just like any other car,” he said. “So the liability, the insurance, the permitting is the same.”
Only when the technology develops for fully autonomous vehicles, what Ducey called “the 2.0 stage of it,” will the rules of the road need to be in place before they can be deployed in Arizona, he said.
That’s also the position of Kevin Biesty, ADOT’s deputy director for policy. He said the stage of development now for the Uber vehicles does not and should not need special permission or special rules for tests in Arizona.
He pointed out, for example, that General Motors is offering an “advanced cruise control” on many of its vehicle, which has the ability to change the car’s speed by itself to avoid collisions.
Biesty said GM, which tests vehicles in Arizona, tried it out on the road with people behind the wheel, with no special approval.
“This is no different,” he said.
Biesty acknowledged the task force is still wrestling with questions ranging from whether those behind the wheel of truly autonomous vehicles need to be licensed, to who is legally liable if a computer-driven vehicle speeds or causes damage.
There also are moral questions about how a computer should be programmed to react if an accident is inevitable and it has to decide between protecting the vehicle’s occupants and harming those in other vehicles or on the sidewalk.
“These are the conversations we’re having,” he said. “Do I get to put my 2-year-old in an autonomous vehicle and send them to grandma’s house?”
Biesty said many of these questions are likely to go beyond what the task force can decide, with the ultimate answers coming from the courts as well as state legislators.
But he said the lack of answers should not preclude the kind of testing that Uber and other companies want to do on Arizona roads.
“We’re not to deployment yet,” he said.
“This is something that many in the press will say is decades away,” Ducey said, adding,. “I think it’s sooner than that. I think it’s much more developed.”
The real issue, he said, will be public acceptance.
“The safety of it has to be proven out,” Ducey said. But he said the public also needs to be sold on how it can help the environment with fewer vehicles on the road, less idling, a reduced need for parking lots and the opportunity for more open green spaces.
