The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced plans that will speed up the development and market adoption of core autonomous vehicle technologies. Recent talk has surrounded the abilities of Tesla, Uber and Google to put a fully autonomous vehicle on the road before 2020, but a larger questions remains. When will the average consumer, who can't afford a Tesla, get an autonomous car? Well, NHTSA's strategy may be the catalyst that puts an autonomous car in your garage sooner than originally anticipated. Insights into market adoption, roadway safety and more ahead.

On Tuesday, Dec. 8th, NHTSA announced plans to update their New Car Assessment Program (NCAP, 5-star safety rating) that according to Sec. Anthony Foxx will, "... provide more and better information to new-vehicle shoppers that will help accelerate the technology innovations that saves lives." Essentially, NHTSA plans to directly incorporate new crash avoidance technologies, such as automatic emergency braking, into a vehicle's 5-star safety rating that consumers see on the vehicle's window sticker. For example, if a car does not have automatic emergency braking then it may receive a 4-star safety rating instead of a 5-star safety rating.

This strategy from NHTSA comes after both research and insurance data shows that new technologies have legitimate safety benefits. Just recently, ten auto-manufacturers stated that they intend to make automatic emergency braking a standard feature on all of their vehicles in the US.

While automatic emergency braking may be the crash avoidance technology in the limelight today, NHTSA's strategy opens up the playing field for other technologies, everything from blindspot detection to V2V communication technologies, to be developed further and faster, fueled by consumer demand for a safer car. This is because NHTSA's strategy directly links the technology's effectiveness to the consumer's perceived safety (5-star rating) of the vehicle.

Consumers should care about vehicle safety. More than 30,000 vehicle fatalities occur in the US each year. Vehicles deaths are the leading cause of death for teenagers and 20 year olds (#1 killer of our future generation). Between 1998 ans 2007, US roadways were more deadly than the battlefield in WWII (>420,000 deaths). Vehicle crashes also cause 200+ billion dollars worth of direct economic damage each year (this number approaches 900 billion dollars worth of damage if you include quality of life and other factors). Roadway safety is a complex issue that is not easily solved, but consumer demand for smarter and safer vehicles could lead to greatly improved roadway safety.

In the past, consumer demand coupled with NHTSA's safety ratings and recommendations have led to luxury/expensive/optional safety features becoming standard safety features. Examples are airbags, ABS, ESC, and back up cameras. If history is any indication of the future, then crash avoidance features will follow a similar trend (dependent on the technology's effectiveness).

But how do autonomous vehicles play into this?

Consumer demand for safer vehicles will only increase the pace of development for autonomous vehicles. Core technologies being developed for crash avoidance technology is essentially the same technology used in autonomous vehicles. In fact, it is widely known that autonomous vehicles have very few issues driving in most conditions (i.e. Google car, Delphi Audi, Telsa Autopilot). It is the complex city streets and changing environmental conditions that are hardest for autonomous vehicles to navigate (and prevent collisions). This is where better and faster development of crash avoidance technologies will accelerate the development of autonomous vehicles. Crash avoidance technology face many of the same challenges that autonomous vehicle face (i.e. being able to work in crowded city streets). Advancement in crash avoidance tech will lead to advancement in autonomous tech.

NHTSA's potential ruling may be focused on increasing safety, but is also allows consumer demand to determine the pace of autonomous vehicle development. If consumer demand safer cars that actively prevent crashes, then autonomous vehicles may not be as far away as some think.

Larger Context of Safety Ratings and Crash Avoidance Tech:

The IIHS (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety) in the US already includes crash avoidance tech in their safety recommendations. Other countries such as the UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Australia, and Japan already include crash avoidance tech in their own version of the 5-star safety rating. Results of this strategy in other countries have been positive. The recent proposal by NHTSA will contribute positively to the global development of safer vehicles and better technologies.

Background on the Author:

Garrett Dowd was sponsored by ASME to develop federal policy recommendations for crash avoidance tech and autonomous vehicles through the W.I.S.E program. These recommendations included the direct integration of crash avoidance tech into NHTSA's NCAP 5-star safety rating. His policy recommendation paper can be viewed here. Garrett has also previously worked for multinational companies in the area of next-gen transportation. This includes working on a personal electric vehicle prototype in Seoul, Korea and motion planning for an autonomous vehicle in Bangalore, India.

Follow him on Twitter @iamgarrettdowd