Transcript 0:00 [on-hold music] And this is all really exciting stuff. 0:07 Nothing you haven't heard me say before on this show, but you're gonna hear me say a lot more of it, and I'm gonna take the lead on this, and I'm gonna stoke the fire with a heck of a lot of companies. 0:17 And if they're not, I'm gonna prod them even more, because they all have a responsibility here, and I think NHTSA's taking the lead, and kudos to them and Elaine Chao for really saying, "Look, we've gotta do more, but we've gotta do more the right way." 0:32 [on-hold music] Welcome to The Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and digital transformation, with your host, Peggy Smedley. 0:52 Hello, listeners, and welcome to today's edition of The Peggy Smedley Show. I'm your host, Peggy Smedley. I hope you are all doing well. 1:00 This month on the podcast, I have been primarily focusing on smart city, smart home, and sustainability. 1:07 And we're wrapping up the month of June today, and I am also transitioning into July, which will be focusing on infrastructure and, in particular, transportation infrastructure. So we've got a lot to talk about. 1:19 So today on this segment, I'd like to kind of bridge the two topics by discussing some big news from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. 1:29 The NHTSA just announced a new initiative to improve the safety and testing transparency of automated driving system. 1:37 I'll be looking forward kind of to digging into what exactly this initiative will entail and how it might impact the space. 1:45 Later on in the show, I'm gonna be interviewing Caroline Blazovsky, president and founder of My Healthy Home, and what a great conversation we're gonna have. I can't wait for us to talk there. 1:55 And then I'm gonna wrap up the show with another wonderful guest, George Thomas, founder and managing partner of New Urbana. I'm really excited about talking to George. 2:04 I've joined their board as an advisory member, so we've got a lot to talk about there as well. So stick around. We're gonna have a wonderful show today. So let's get started. 2:13 Uh, automated and autonomous vehicles are coming. We've talked about this. You're all very excited about it. 2:19 But Gartner's actually forecasting more than seven hundred and forty-five thousand autonomous-ready vehicles will be added to the global market just by twenty twenty-three. Think about that number. 2:32 This year alone, Gartner predicts almost four hundred thousand autonomous-ready vehicles will be added to the market. So think about how fast all of that is happening right now. 2:42 However, Gartner says that the public perceptions of AV safety will determine growth, and I agree that safety in general, and we always talk about safety is number one, as well as all of our perceptions of safety will have a huge impact on how this all plays out. 3:00 Now, we're not talking about COVID right now. We're just talking about safety and what we all perceive AVs to be. So this leads us to the news from the U.S. Department of Transportation and NHTSA. So the U.S. 3:14 Secretary of Transportation, Elaine Chao, told reporters, "AV technologies are not yet advanced enough," and this is what she exactly said, "to enable wide-scale deployment of fully autonomous vehicles, but someday they will be, and the department is doing its part right now to help with that effort." 3:35 Now, here are the details of the USDOT's latest effort. 3:39 Nine companies in eight states, California, Florida, Maryland, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas, and even Utah, have signed on to, uh, participate in NHTSA's new initiative, which is called the Automated Vehicle Transparency and Engagement for Safe Testing Initiative. 3:59 Now, it's the AV TEST Initiative sh- for short, which I think that's better 'cause that's kind of a long kind of thing to try to say all the time. 4:08 But participating companies, now this is really interesting, and we're gonna talk about a few of those here, but they include Beep, Cruise, uh, Fiat, Chrysler, Local Motors, uh, Navya, Nuro, Toyota, Uber, and Waymo. 4:23 And I'll tell you a little bit more, I think, about a couple of these lesser-known companies in just a minute. 4:29 But, uh, first, I think let's talk a little bit about the initiative and how it's setting out to create a formal platform for federal, I think state, local, and governments to coordinate, I think, uh, share information in a standard way, 'cause all of us wanna share all this information so we know what's going on. 4:51 It's completely voluntary, first of all. But here's an important point that I think you should understand. 4:57 The initiative will provide an online public-facing forum for sharing, I think, automated driving system testing activities and other safety-related information. 5:10 So basically, in other words, the initiative will be sharing information with the public, which that's the crucial part. 5:17 Now, this is what I like about this, because this is where I think they, they're getting things a little bit right here, because this is thatIt's kind of creating a more of a transparency in what's going on in the world of AV testing. 5:32 The platform will offer online mapping tools that show things like testing locations, as well as actual testing activity data, like vehicle counts, routes, amongst a whole other data points. 5:46 Now, people can view online to see what's going on in their communities and beyond. So you can actually see all this, which I think is really great. I think they're getting it, and, and I think this is important. 5:58 And you can kind of learn all about and see what types of vehicles are being tested, whether it's cars, shuttles, trucks, or delivery vehicles. 6:08 So I think folks can even sign up to get email alerts when new information is being released. Now, that's pretty cool. Now, now that's like you're, you're getting into the whole thing. 6:18 It's not like it's happening and you're f- totally removed for it. 6:22 So this month, NIST also held a series of virtual events, everybody's holding a virtual events, we get it, kind of to kick off the initiative and boost all of our awareness of it. 6:33 And so why do I think all of this is important, and, and I really wanted to share this with you, it's, well, we already know that au- automated and autonomous vehicles hold a lot of promise for the future of transportation. 6:46 And safety, again, is truly a biggie here. This is the most important. 6:50 But when vehicles are communicating with each other and with the infrastructure, they're not going to be making the same mistakes as human drivers make. Now, that's really important. It's going to save lives. 7:05 Now, I want you to hear me on that. It's going to save lives. We lose a lot of people because of human error, so it's also going to make transportation more efficient. 7:18 So vehicles are going to be automatically take the best route to their destinations, and when every vehicle does this, traffic will be minimized, will reducing the time it takes to get places across the board. 7:33 I can tell you, I live in Chicago, and traffic sucks, okay? When anybody can make my life easier, hey, amen, brother and sister, I'm all over that. And if we can do that, that is great. You know what? 7:46 We talk about road rage here, well, maybe some of that's gonna be gone, so less time spent in traffic can also reduce carbon emissions. It can therefore contribute to cities' and nations' sustainability goals. 8:00 So we're moving in the right direction, and I love the way we're talking about this. 8:03 So AV technologies are also gonna open the doors for fewer models of mobility, and I think a totally new transportation paradigm that's a lot less focused on individual trips and personal car ownership. 8:19 Now, we've talked about this, so there's gonna be these new business models, will kind of further reduce traffic and carbon emissions, accelerating the benefits for society, I think, and our planet. 8:31 You know, I've been talking about this. We've got to think what we're doing about the planet and future things, and this is a big initiative in my mind right now. 8:39 I'm not just talking about IoT, but I'm talking about what the future goals are gonna be when we think about carbon initiatives, when we think about resiliency, sustainability. 8:49 I think we need to be thinking about all this, and this is where this is all going. And this is all really exciting stuff. 8:56 Nothing you haven't heard me say before on this show, but you're gonna hear me say a lot more of it, and I'm gonna take the lead on this, and I'm gonna stoke the fire with a heck of a lot of companies. 9:06 And if they're not, I'm gonna prod them even more, because they all have a responsibility here, and I think NIST has taken the lead, and kudos to them and Elaine Chao for really saying, "Look, we've got to do more, but we've got to do more the right way." 9:19 So I think also the road to this has been long and windy, right? But facilitating the safe testing, development, and eventual deployment of advanced vehicle safety technologies is a huge step to end that goal. 9:34 And that's what's really great here, and I love that we're all a little bit smarter. 9:38 So participants may include departments of motor vehicles, department of transportation, highway safety offices, city governments, and on the industry level, participants may include developers, manufacturers, suppliers, operators, testers, you know? 9:55 And then there's the whole other side of the initiative dedicated to transparency and public education, and this is an important point. 10:03 This is the point I think we can't lose, is no matter how safe AVs are, if the public doesn't buy it, it's just not gonna work. 10:12 So before I run out of time, though, I wanted to highlight a couple of companies that have signed on as initial participants in NIST's AV testing initiative, and the first is Beep. So do you know this company? 10:25 And if you don't, it's an autonomous mobility solution provider, and for instance, Beep offers autonomous shuttle services in places like Jacksonville, Florida, and Peoria, and Arizona. 10:38 And Beep isn't new, but now it'll be sharing even more info on how its shuttles operate and respond in various live scenarios as they, as they interact with pedestrians, bicyclists, and mixed traffic. 10:52 And I think that's what's important here, because I think they're doing more, and that's what we want to see. We want to see more participants, and I, and I like what they're doing, so I think that's important. 11:02 The other company I wanted to share before we end this segment is, and briefly mention, is Cruise. 11:08 Cruise is a San Francisco-based company that currently offers self-driving vehicle service designed specifically for urban environments, which is kind of interesting, especially considering what we're all going through right now. 11:21 But as you can see how having companies like this, as well as the ones already you know about, like Toyota, Fiat, Chrysler, Uber, and Waymo on board is extremely useful. 11:32 The more we have, the better it is, but these companies are all out there right now testing and learning, collecting really critical data and learning from that data. And again, that's what we're talking about. 11:45 Everybody's learning.So here's my opinion for today. In order to enter the age of AVs, we need to pool this data together for the benefit of all of us. 11:57 Now, understand that, because as I see it, we very much need NISTA, and what they're trying to do is to deliver all of this through its AV initiative, transparency and information sharing amongst all the stakeholders, and that includes us as the public. 12:14 And I think the other really big tip of the day, and you, you can guess it, sign up for all those alerts I talked about earlier. I plan to. 12:23 As a member of the tech industry and as a consumer, I want to see what's going on in the realm of AV testing. Let's help make this be a proper movement. The more we get involved, the more we help this succeed. 12:38 And NISTA's doing things and is getting the right people involved to do the right things to get us the right information. Ultimately, you know what? 12:47 To save all of our lives, to save our families' members' lives, can do the right things to make our society better. Not worse, but better. 12:56 And I love that we can help do things to save more lives and to make us all better as citizens. All right. As always, I'm curious what you think. I want you to share your thoughts with me on social media. 13:07 I would love for you to tweet at me @connectedwmag. That's important. I want to hear your thoughts on this. All right, check out our website. 13:14 We're gonna put up a new article on the website at connectedworld.com, or check out our show website at www.peggysmithyshow.com. We're gonna take a quick commercial break, but we're gonna be right back. 13:25 This is The Peggy Smith Show, the podcast and voice of IoT and digital transformation. And remember, with great technology comes great responsibility. We'll be right back. [outro music]
