Hello, and welcome to SAE Tomorrow. Today's show is about emerging technology leaders, innovators who make it all happen. On today's episode, we're absolutely honored to welcome Jonathan Morrison, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, more commonly known as NHTSA. On today's episode, we'll discuss NHTSA's latest priorities, including federal AV policy, regulatory modernization, fuel economy standards, and efforts to improve roadway safety. We hope you enjoy this episode. Jonathan, it's good to see you, sir, and thanks for coming on the pod.
Thank you for having me, Grayson.
It's great to have you here, sir. You've been taking a proactive approach to safety. You've been in the NHTSA administrator role, confirmed, for just over a year now, so congratulations on your confirmation and doing really great work. But as I said, you've been busy, and I'll use the pun, you've been putting the pedal to the metal and ensuring that the roadways are getting safer. What are some of the big accomplishments that you've achieved during the first year?
Well, I think we've set out a vision that the highway fatality crisis that we have on our roads is unacceptable, and we are using every tool in our toolbox to combat that. You know, I think we've been very active. I think of particular interest to you and the SAE community is evaluating our regulatory system and finding areas in there that don't add to safety, but act as barriers to new innovation that can unleash new safety technologies or better pathways to achieve safety targets that exist.
You and the Secretary and the entire United States Department of Transportation have taken this proactive approach to making our highways safe, and I'll just use the term, there's massive carnage out there. But in previous administrations, they didn't take this approach to embracing new emerging technologies, which will lower inflation, and it'll make our roadways safer, and it will help with mobility because elderly people will be able to get from point A to point B without having to rely on a relative. Why take this approach?
Well, I think, you know, when you look at automated vehicles, I think of the potential that they offer in terms of safety, right? These are vehicles that should never drive — they'll never drive impaired. They're never going to drive distracted. Not going to have road rage with an automated vehicle. And we see some real safety benefits out of that technology. We also see real benefits to mobility. I mean, think about how many millions of people in this great nation of ours are left behind from our economy, unable to participate fully in our society due to the inability to drive, right? Think of a lot of people with disabilities, the elderly. There's so many people that really want to participate in our society and our economy, but they can't. They rely upon a third person to take them from place to place. So, this is a technology that enables people, once it's done and if it's done right, to really fully participate and unleash their participation in the economy. I mean, it's really incredibly promising.
I will say though, you know, we're embracing the technology. We're digging into the technology, but we don't want to do this in a way that does not prioritize safety. I think we've been very active in that space as well. So, we've been pretty active in the enforcement side of things. You know, we're seeing some of these AVs that are doing unusual things. You know, some of them may be annoying. There's, you know, you'll find situations where a vehicle just may stop in the road. Sometimes we see unsafe things. And when we see unsafe behavior from an automated vehicle, we're not going to hesitate to act. We're in constant engagement with these entities. And, you know, when we see unsafe behavior, we'll open an investigation. We've overseen a number of recalls in this space as well. But I think we're fortunate, Secretary Buttigieg is fantastic. You know, he's really engaged in this area and he likes to talk about the Goldilocks approach, right? We can't be too fast, we can't be too excited about the technology, but we can't sit back, we can't be too slow either. So we really got to be just right and take this Goldilocks approach. That's the philosophy of this administration.
I think this administration is taking the right approach, and if you look at public statements made by yourself and public statements made by Secretary Buttigieg, there seems to be a clear understanding of this administration of the global impact this technology is having and the rise of China with their automated vehicle technology. It seems this administration is saying we have to put the rules in place, but we have to do it in a right way, because — and there's other data that we haven't discussed yet — but with automated vehicles, an individual could sit here and stare at their phone, which in my opinion is an epidemic, but in a human-driven vehicle that's an issue. Distracted driving goes away. That is another huge benefit to this technology.
100%, and I don't think anybody will be surprised to note that there's a major problem with people driving distracted. You know, people are using their phones, they're addicted to their phones, they love their phones, but for whatever reason they just can't wait to get to their destination. Meanwhile, they're driving 3- to 4,000-pound vehicles at dangerous speeds, and we're seeing a number of crashes. We do have fantastic data, but it's one of those areas where we don't have fantastic data on distraction. We know it's out there, we know it's undercounted. It's a major priority of ours to address distracted driving. We need more enforcement in this space as well. But like you said, an automated vehicle is not going to drive distracted, right? This is a vehicle that's going to be connected to sensors, monitoring the roadways, reacting very quickly in all circumstances.
I could see a campaign coming out: if you want to stay on your phone all day, go in an automated vehicle. If you don't want to go on your phone, drive a manual vehicle. So, you could kind of potentially see a campaign there. I was driving from Houston to Dallas two weeks ago, and I think, Jonathan, I was 12 minutes into the drive, and this person started swerving into my lane. Thank goodness the vehicle had ADAS, and it caught that, but it's just, when you drive on the road, the behaviors are just like, 'Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.' It's really eye-opening, which makes me just further believe how good this technology is going to be for the United States economy.
You know, I think so, and I think a lot of people focus on technology as the pathway to safety, and technology absolutely offers so many incredible new benefits to safety — automatic emergency braking, lane keep assist, automated vehicles. But I think, you know, if you look at the tens of thousands of people that are dying on our roadways each and every year, the vast, vast majority of this is based on behavioral issues, right? About half of our fatalities every year are people not wearing seatbelts. You know, a third are people that are driving impaired by alcohol or drugs or increasingly both. You know, another third are people that are speeding. And as we talked about before, far too many people are driving distracted. These are behavioral issues, and we need to solve these behavioral challenges. So, earlier this year, we launched our Pathway to Safer Streets initiative. This is NHTSA's largest, most comprehensive behavioral safety initiative in its entire history, and we're focusing directly at these core issues that are resulting in the fatalities on our roadways, and a cornerstone of this approach is really pushing for more proactive law enforcement on our roads.
You need proactive law enforcement. I will say the term, fortunate, unfortunate. I was happy I was able to go see it, but I was on Death Highway, the infamous road where more fatalities occur on the way into the Permian Basin, and you can't go 500 feet without seeing a memorial marker, and I was able to meet with Texas DPS, and I asked them why, and they said because of fatigue. That these drivers coming out of the Permian Basin working long shifts, sometimes, you know, two weeks on, three weeks off, and the vehicle, unfortunately, the truck, the 18-wheeler goes across the line, and an individual perishes from fatigue. As NHTSA looks at behavioral safety, do you also look into the fatigue in certain industries and certain individuals that drive on the road to try to raise awareness, 'Hey, you might be better off checking into a hotel or taking a nap somewhere?'
100%. That is an area of focus of the agency. In fact, later this month, I'm going to be joining the National Sleep Foundation on a panel on drowsy driving. When you talk about impairment, drowsy driving is absolutely a form of impairment, and I think it's hard to have a deep conversation with somebody about driving behaviors if you've been driving a long time — fatigue really, really is an issue, and people falling asleep at the wheel or nodding off at the wheel, incredibly dangerous. Another area: automated vehicles are not going to drive drowsy, right? There are so many of these behavioral challenges that we face that lead to so many crashes on our roadways that you just don't encounter with an automated vehicle. One of the reasons that we're excited about this technology, and we want to see this succeed.
It's great. If you look at statistics that your department has released around impaired driving, well, an individual could be impaired in the back seat of an automated vehicle and fall asleep. The vehicle's going to get there safely — whether you wake up or not, that's a different question — but you're not going to cause any potential roadway fatalities. And what we're starting to see, and your department's doing a really good job at this, is that the technology is emerging where you're starting to get vehicles on the road today that are automated with no manual controls. How is the department approaching, if you want to say that, the next evolution of automated vehicles?
Yeah, it's a great question, and this is an area of focus. When you take a look at the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, these are our regulations that establish minimum performance requirements for vehicles. Like, you've got to meet all of these, and you can't even be close — close is not going to get you anywhere, right? You absolutely need to certify that your vehicles meet every single one of these standards. But these standards have been developed over the decades. I'm going back 50 years, and they're developed with the intent of being performance requirements, but when you're establishing performance requirements, you're doing so with an understanding of the technology that's staring you in the face or something that might be coming in the not-too-distant future. And so, you know, if I were to go back in a time machine, sit down with some of the best engineers 40 years ago, I guarantee you none of them would imagine a situation where we'd have vehicles that are capable of driving themselves and being designed never to be driven by a human. So, that leads to a bit of a conflict. You know, I like to say that we find ourselves, unfortunately, with the technologies of tomorrow being regulated by the laws of the past, right? So, we have taken a concerted effort of evaluating our Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, looking for blockers to innovation, and new designs that are enabled by the technologies of tomorrow — automated vehicles, for instance. You know, so many of our standards have references or even specific mandates to manual controls. And so, this is a major priority of ours is to identify what those mandates are, and then to address those in a rulemaking process. And we're not doing this in a willy-nilly manner. We got to be thoughtful about this. We're moving very quickly with a sense of what I call deliberative urgency. We're really looking to focus on this, but do this in the right way. So, FMVSS 135, I think everybody's favorite example in the AV community, established the performance requirements for light vehicle braking. And they established a specific requirement in there that your service brakes in a vehicle must be actuated by means of a foot control. So, that literally requires your service brakes have a foot pedal on it. That made perfect sense decades ago when, you know, vehicles were all anticipated to be driven by a human, to have some sort of universal control understood, great for human factors and whatnot.
But for vehicles that are intended never to be driven by a human, that just doesn't make any sense. So, what we're proposing to do, and we have a pending rulemaking on this, is to remove that specific pedal requirement. And some might say, like, why don't you just say you don't need to have any of these braking standards? These are designed for humans in mind. Why don't you just say that AVs get a pass because, you know, they'll clearly be safe and people do the right thing? We're not taking that approach either, Grayson. What we're really looking to do is translate the performance requirements that are intended for human drivers and apply those to a vehicle that will be driven by an automated driving system. And so, our proposal says, no pedal requirements. You know, we're not going to be measuring brake stopping distance performance just from the amount of pressure that's applied to a pedal and how quickly you're able to get from 100 km per hour to zero — how far it takes you to get from 100 km per hour to zero. We're measuring the stopping distance based on the time that the braking actuators are triggered, right? Which makes sense, right? We want the vehicles to stop. We want them to have good braking systems. We just don't want to block innovative ways to get there.
And I want to highlight this, and the data is available in the Federal Register. You're not taking a willy-nilly approach to this. You're taking a safety-first approach. The documentation that NHTSA and the USDOT has released is very, very thorough. So, I commend you on that. If you look at it, and I'm going to go to somebody who is no longer with us, unfortunately, Walt Disney. When Walt Disney created Tomorrowland, he was always looking to the future of what is tomorrow. As NHTSA approaches, let's say, rulemaking for what is today with no manual controls, how do you ensure that in the future, putting on your Walt Disney hat, that there might not be something that you set rulemaking for today that in the future is like, 'Uh-oh, here we go again. History's going to repeat itself.' How do we avoid that?
It's a great question, Grayson. And I think, you know, you look at the brilliance of Walt Disney and looking ahead and what he had always put together. The Safety Act, the Vehicle Safety Act, is NHTSA's primary organic statute. And this Safety Act requires us to establish federal motor vehicle safety standards as needed that meet the need for motor vehicle safety. But federal motor vehicle safety standards are literally by definition requirements for motor vehicle or motor vehicle equipment performance. And so, it's really focusing in on the performance aspects. You know, we talk about this quite a bit in terms of AVs, but you know, if you take a look at our federal motor vehicle safety standards, even for vehicles that have manual controls, they're riddled with these areas that have requirements that are tied into assumptions of the past. And we're really looking to go into those. You know, I call them vestigial regulations. These are just like a wisdom tooth or your appendix, doesn't really serve a purpose today. At one time in human anatomy and our origins, when we're in our past descendants, you know, maybe they did serve a purpose, but now they just don't. In fact, they can create real problems. And so, I've challenged the team and we've taken comment from the industry. We've got some great recommendations of, you know, what are some of these aspects in our standards that are design-forcing or design-incentivizing, right? We don't want to have anything there that distorts how an automaker is going to, or a parts supplier is going to look to achieve their safety goals. We want innovation to drive how entities are going to achieve their requirements. And when you unleash the imagination of our wonderful engineers, you know, we're able to get so many cool new approaches. And that's what we want. We want folks to compete with each other to have the most effective, efficient means to achieve or surpass the safety targets that we have in our standards. So, that's a challenge I've issued to our wonderful team of engineers and safety experts and lawyers within the agency. And it's a challenge I've issued to industry as well. Help us identify these things. Help us solve these problems. We're ready, willing to go about it. And it's not necessarily the sexiest thing to go about, like let's dig into our Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, but I'm kind of weird. I like that sort of thing. So, it's really been a focus of ours to focus on the performance requirements and allow industry to decide how they want to get there.
And if you want to call it, you're giving a level playing field for the industry to build. And when I've toured factories and I meet with engineers, safety comes up and they say, 'Come on, let me show you this. Look at this. Look how we use this new material because the impact will be this, and look at this.' And there just seems to be, I'll say, a genuine enthusiasm in this industry now because NHTSA is putting the rules in place to allow them to build the products they want. One of the, I guess, most important things as a father that I've seen, every autonomous vehicle, if you want to use the term automated vehicle, I've been in, the vehicle won't start until I plug in the seat belt. I've tried to trick it, because I try to do silly things like that, but it won't start. Is that a NHTSA requirement? Is that a best practice? Or is that just the industry saying, 'You know what? This is the right thing to do?'
Great question, Grayson. We have requirements in our federal motor vehicle safety standards that all vehicles have seat belts. So, like your light-duty vehicles, all of those have to have seat belts. You got to have, in fact, the three-point seat belts, right? You got lap and shoulder belts. And that's mandatory. But states establish operational requirements. So, almost all states have a law that you can be pulled over, you can be cited for not wearing a seat belt. Or at a minimum, if you're pulled over for another purpose, you can be cited for not wearing a seat belt. There was one straggler out there — New Hampshire is, you know, for whatever reason they like to stay behind in that space — but those are operational requirements. But so I think to answer your question on the AV operator space, I think they're doing it to assure the safety of their riders and to assure that their riders are meeting the legal requirements.
I'll just say this, I think seat belts are cool. Okay, I said it. I think they're cool, but they serve a great purpose. I don't know if it was the education I got as a kid, but going old school when we were kids and they'd roll in the TV with the VCR on it and they put that tape in and it's like, 'Uh-oh.' And they would actually show you things they probably shouldn't have shown you in elementary school. And it scares the you-know-what out of you, but it worked because I'm sitting here saying it's cool today.
I tend to agree, man. I think those old-school educational approaches that show the actual crash forces that are in play and what happens when somebody's in a crash. Like going back to Vince and Larry, right? The old crash test dummy cartoons that we had when we were growing up. I think they're fantastic. We still have Vince and Larry costumes around. Special occasions we get people wearing them. It's actually pretty cool. Part of NHTSA lore and NHTSA culture. But you know the seat belt is really important. Not only is it something that keeps you in the vehicle in the event of a crash and prevents you from being ejected from the vehicle, and great things don't happen to you if you're ejected from the vehicle. In fact, 50% of our fatalities each and every year on our roads are people not wearing seat belts, even in this day and age where we have 90% daytime seat belt use anyway. But it's also really important. Incredibly sophisticated crash safety systems in today's vehicles, automated vehicles included. But you have to be positioned in that right location for everything to work appropriately. And if you don't have a seat belt on, you're just not going to be in that appropriate location.
