INTERVIEW – RANDY ADAMS – Chief Technology Officer of DRIAV Autonomous Insurance Solutions

ABOUT RANDY:

• Randy helped invent the Adobe PDF

• He was one of Steve Job’s top software engineers for many years and

• Helped found Yahoo, and was one of its first board members … he’s a tech legend in Silicon Valley

• RANDY is an executive for a Silicon Valley-based tech firm and he is working with car companies and insurance industry in answering the question on insurance liability for self-driving cars. WHO IS AT FAULT WHEN A SELF-DRIVING CAR IS IN AN ACCIDENT??  RANDY is working on providing insurance solutions for autonomous vehicles and is creating the system to manage the problem of liability.

SELF DRIVING CARS IN THE NEWS:

• House last week passed a bill that helped move forward self-driving standards nationwide. U.S. House lawmakers passed a wide-ranging bill to speed the introduction of self-driving vehicles championed by tech and auto companies racing to develop and deploy the technology.  “With this legislation, innovation can flourish without the heavy hand of government,” Ohio Republican Bob Latta said on the House floor ahead of the voice vote in the chamber Wednesday. Latta is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee that developed the legislation.he action now moves to the Senate, where Republican John Thune of South Dakota and Democrats Bill Nelson of Florida and Gary Peters of Michigan are leading work on legislation of their own. The trio serve on the Senate commerce committee, which on Wednesday announced a Sept. 13 hearing to examine autonomous commercial vehicles and how they may fit into the Senate’s self-driving vehicle legislation. The House bill only applies to passenger cars and light trucks.The House bill would put the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in charge of regulating self-driving car safety and preempt competing rules at the state level. Manufacturers would eventually be able to introduce as many as 100,000 self-driving cars per year that don’t comply with current safety rules that assume the presence of a human driver. It also instructs NHTSA to develop new standards for self-driving cars. Companies must draft security and privacy plans for autonomous vehicles and document their approach for ensuring self-driving car safety.

• The Senate is holding hearings this week (Thune/Commerce). Questions remain over safety, insurance and regulations. Senator John Thune (R-SD) is chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. As he and his colleagues craft legislation to pave the way for integration, he says there is a lot of work to be done. Thune says overregulation could hurt innovation in the self-driving sector. Others say we need a hands-on approach to hands-off driving. 
  
• NHTSA (National Highway Transportation Safety Board) released a report yesterday that placed some of the blame on Tesla’s self-driving car for the Florida crash a couple years ago. Driver Errors, Overreliance on Automation, Lack of Safeguards, Led to Fatal Tesla Crash. The National Transportation Safety Board determined Tuesday that a truck driver’s failure to yield the right of way and a car driver’s inattention due to overreliance on vehicle automation are the probable cause of the fatal May 7, 2016, crash near Williston, Florida. The NTSB also determined the operational design of the Tesla’s vehicle automation permitted the car driver’s overreliance on the automation, noting its design allowed prolonged disengagement from the driving task and enabled the driver to use it in ways inconsistent with manufacturer guidance and warnings. As a result of its investigation the NTSB issued seven new safety recommendations and reiterated two previously issued safety recommendations.