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was good this week on "the communicators" a discussion about the guidelines and rules proposed for self driving cars. our guest, mark rosekind who is the administrator of the national highway transportation safety administration. doctors rosekind what should the public right now know about self driving cars? >> guest: they are here. the question not even a year ago , six months when are they going to right? they are here and they are on the roads. really all of us need to focus on how do we make sure they are in the safest possible because they offer tremendous lifesaving potential. >> host: your agency just put out some guidelines for proposed rules for self driving cars. what is the focus? >> guest: the policy focuses on four areas and just to make a quick vehicle performance guidance was for people that will manufacture these. if you're going to design, test

deploy here's a 15-point safety assessment you have to go through to make sure it's safe before goes on the road. he can talk about this more but it's a total reversal. right now we are trying to look at how do we build safety into vehicle beforehand because for this year's nhtsa, national highway traffic and safety administration has only been active in the wake of somebody getting injured. the second thing has to do with the model of state policy so we wanted to be as specific as we could for the potential to have a uniform consistent free-market policies throughout the country, patchwork of technology and the last to move onto one area that authorities didn't have to need in how do we is the current one to stay safely on the road now and what would a future need to expedite a that safety? >> host: could you speak a little bit more about the premarket approval process? >> guest: thanks for bringing that up because the secretary is

talked about that a lot because he is really trying to emphasize that for 50 years it's all been reactive so basically we have put out the regulation and then we have waited to comply with it or somebody gets hurt or kill them we have to find out if there's a defect. it's all reactive, after-the-fact. what the secretary is focused on what we have done at nhtsa and d.o.t. is to become more proactive. how do we get safety in front? the premarket approval is one of the 12 tools that's been identified. the mass boredom we don't necessarily equal highlight the kind of future method that we might need to get them safely on the seat -- street party will take a while to get there but we need a conversation to explore how we might be a loose use new tools. plus the joining art conversation is david shephardson with thompson reuters. he covers technology and as a previous auto reporter as well.

guess the one of the things at nhtsa did was offer these guidelines as opposed regulations. without a function of the fact that there was not enough time to go through the regulatory process to create binding rules? >> guest: both of those let's start with the regulatory side. there a lot of people for 50 years he didn't have to regulate them that the only way. that last big technologies we have had rear visibility cameras rear visibility control and advanced side airbags. eight years to get those rule-making stunts 06 or eight or 10 years ago, this technology is changing so fast it would be outdated before you got regulation so with that kind of timeline we will never get the safety that we want together that you highlighted with the first part of that is there are a lot of unknowns here and to come out you need your performance objective and the tests and the data. usually there's a penetration of

15 to 20%. we don't have all of that. let me finish by saying we tried to find how to provide the safety framework that nurture and support the innovation so by having our 15-point list both of you could calm to meet those priorities performance items in totally different ways and be as innovative as you want do you want to show us the data and prove you have come up with the same way. at some point we will pick whoever does the best with the data that supports it so it sets a beautiful stage iv the future foundation for regulation but let's start filling in those unknowns. >> guest: what is the auto companies reaction? are the receptive to voluntary? congress would agree to something like pre-approval authority for the agency. >> guest: the initial reaction has generally been positive then i take that as ironically but i

try to position this as we are trying to be as innovative and what we are doing from the government side is what we are trying to nurture and support on the technology and manufacturing side so it's a little different and it's essentially flipping on its head. i think the folks in this area appreciate the fact that we are trying not to just jam them in a box of regulations but open it up with safety to see what they can do. as far as congress goes those discussions are for the future and so what we did was identify 12 different tools. each of them probably requires a group to look at what would you do. that is the biggest one that everyone has focused on. the secretary in particular highlighted that because it sets an example of flipping it on its head from being reactive to proactive. >> guest: there needs to be a lot of discussion. do you think california is going to drop its plans to go ahead with its own rules that require a driver and the driver seat to fall in line with what nhtsa has proposed for the guidelines? >> guest: for sure you were

going to ask california that but what i do want to highlight as is we have the american association of automakers. we have had a lot of interaction with states including california so they participated in helping us understand what the big issues were so we started it over two years ago interacting with them in special groups and i think california has been extremely collaborative and telling us what their challenges are but has also been very patient waiting for us to come out with hours before they chose to to ask a priest and we will hear about their next step. the indicators they have given us they would like to be in step with their policies. >> host: dr. rosekind were there any regulations prior to your announcement on september 8? >> guest: thank you for that question because it is so critical. we did our own analysis at the transportation center. you look at the safety standards

hoar automated standards set with the current standards? if you think about it and that's what we wrote if you manufacture car that complies with all the current standards that you put in and you self-certify that you have complied you can put in any automation you want on the road. that is why this was so significant. his policies as if you want to do that here's how you have to address safety before you put that on the road. >> host: why choose self driving cars burn a change in how you approach policy? >> guest: that's another critical element which is this is, i'm surprised it didn't start with this but i will do it now. 35,092 are the numbers of lives lost in 2015 on the roads. that was a 7.2% increase from 2014. over a decade we saw a 20% drop in lives lost. last year we lost a third of that progress in one year so people will say keep doing stuff so we can save lives and keep

doing the same thing and expect a different outcome is not going to happen. we need to find new solutions. technology innovation as we are looking at represent that transformative opportunity to save lives and everyone --. >> host: given that this is technology in an automobile but given its technology will there be other government agencies involved in setting rules and regulations? >> guest: that's a great question because i think we are trying to highlight everybody talks about their vision for the states and i think we are watching it be created right in front of us. that's a great question because right now it nhtsa and d.o.t. are. >> in the middle of that and part of that is the vision we need to play a role but when you think about all the other areas, the motor carrier safety division they will have a role in this. we are looking at potentially spectrum and how that shares

vehicle to vehicle and indication, connected automation so there will be a lot of government agencies that can be involved but let me start with the vehicle at the central point with nhtsa and d.o.t.. >> host: david shephardson. >> guest: the critics say there's not enough files or data. google has driven 2 million miles and in fact one of the witnesses who testified at the hearing in the senate said we need hundreds of millions of miles in testing and it's too early to have these vehicles on the road. what do you say to that end you think more testing needs to be done before we can be assured these vehicles are safe? >> guest: i hope these people start reading the policies to understand health awful it is. i am saying that because i think one of the questions that i have two that is what do the new safety metrics mean to you? are in a transformative place. we can't just keep counting lives lost. we need new safety measures.

what are those and is that really the metric we need? i hope people will see how thoughtful it is me talked about stress on the road. it expedites the exemption process to get more on the roads for better data so i think we need more data but different meanings and different mechanisms on some of them we outlined and we are going to have more data. i still think the bottom-line is what are the safety metrics? california has a report to disengage but what about the hard breaking? what if somebody steps in front of a car and didn't hit the pedestrian? all you see is hard raking that hard raking is bad. we don't collect that data so trying to prove this is saving lives is harder to do but those are the safety metrics will have to figure out and it will be beyond how many miles per hour. >> guest: you mention the current rules and the company can self-certify as long as it

meets those guidelines and google this year had a crash word admitted some responsibility for hitting a bus. tesla had the autopilot crash word also at knowledge to did not work as it had intended. should these systems be on the road now without nhtsa having some sort of pre-approval or oversight into these near fully automated vehicle's? >> guest: you just highlighted something. in january secretary fox announced the president's proposal for $3.9 billion in support and the secretary announced that within six months we would come out with it. what's interesting is how much has happened in that time. if you think about it you know it's excel or adding literally so fast trying to get in front of it is a guest for anybody. one of our challenges was to put a stake in the ground that basically says going forward here is what we expect that

there's also a section that says if you are already on the road we will give you grace period and we want you to fill in the same safety requirements so that's how you tried to get not only the future but also what's out there now. >> guest: this is a question that the company reports due in meets those 15 guidelines. if you don't agree what is nhtsa's three-course at that point? >> guest: this is also really important and why it's a critical and the secretary and i tried to emphasize this. this is a policy that we have high expectations that people will follow them in one of the things that also came out when the policy was issued was a report and what it did was basically say all of this is current authority that we have. recall, penalty all that applies to new vehicle technology as well so we have a lot of authorities. we could use more that would help us be more effective for the future but our current

authorities are part of what is going on here so we have investigations that we can start and we have all kinds of other tools already available for us to try to be sure safety is built in on the front end. >> host: dr. rosekind who can comment on the 60-day comment period for these guys? >> guest: everybody's others in open segment and that's really important. we want the public and potential drivers in the future and passengers, there's a 60-day comment period and there's a docket that open. go to nhtsa.gov and you can find it there and anyone can make any kind of comment. i point out that in the policy we identified 23 next steps beyond the comment. macs of the web interact with workshops and an expert review of the policy. we will start working groups to look at some of the legislative issues. he specifically recommend a commission that the stay put together to look at liability insurance issues for examples of there are whole set of next steps.

besides the 60 days there are many activities that we expect everyone, manufacturers, media, anybody should be making comments that we could take this into consideration. we made a commitment to annually review and potentially update this policy. >> host: on your checklist of 15 points for those guidelines is the first one is gather and sharing. is this the sharing of technology or sharing of data? >> guest: its data-sharing and i would just say while the response has generally been positive the one caution that people like to raise is what about data-sharing because within official business rounds people worry especially in this day that era. there is money there so i think what i would like to highlight i am a recovering nasa science so i come out of aerospace. in the aviation industry where safety is not just a high standard that they have done so well there's a lot of sharing of safety needs.

what we are focused on is how do you share safety data and i will give you two examples quickly. there are a lot of unique things so that google valentine's day, things happen. that may not happen again to anyone else. everyone who has tried to program their vehicles should know about that one time because everyone could learn from that and the part about sharing is basically what you're talking about is all the vehicles on the road that learn all the safety information they don't get to share that information. you know that you're driving can only improve because the experience you get on the road. think of the millions of vehicles that could be adding to the vehicle that is taking you on a driverless car. >> host: another one of those on that check list is vehicle cybersecurity. we recently visited with raj kumar at carnegie melon university who is working on driverless cars. here is a little bit of what he had to say. >> because these audits done by

computers and software we have to be cognizant of and be cautious about possible technology. this could include cybersecurity attacks. i can send information out. i could also receive information back in. those entry points become potential portals for attack so we need to be careful. attacks can from across the state, the country, the consonant or globally. again besides cybersecurity threats, we are also worried about what can be done in the physical contacts. for example we can jam gps. you can use for example is simulated device causing it to

break so the cybersecurity threats and particular attacks that are possible. >> host: dr. rosekind. >> guest: i think we have to look at both the positive and the negative and let's start with the positive which is one example of how all this technology could be tremendous is the updates. you can update software. you could have a brand-new car with all kinds of safety features when you wake up in the morning, remarkable. another one which is let's say there's a recall or defect has to be fixed everyone wakes up and there is a 100% recall completion in the morning when everyone wakes up to their car. that's remarkable but what he pointed out is that also represents a portal for vulnerability where he could have somebody, bad after concerned about what type of security can i get to? that's white nhtsa very shortly will be coming up with

cybersecurity best practices. we outline a whole list of them in the vehicle guidance. this exists in energy and infrastructure. we have the system so they can report shared data. we already share data about the so it's acknowledged. i think the challenge is this move so quickly how to make sure sure that the best practices are in place to protect people? >> guest: there is a lot of two schools of thought here that self driving cars will come faster than my thought and others say there are too many complexities. companies like toyota say it's a little further away. where do you come down in terms of when are we going to see the level 4 and level 5 vehicles in wide deployment? is it in the 2020 range or 2025? >> guest: but a go at that by just saying i think one of the challenges that everyone have is actually trying to segment these a little bit are clearly been

the way we talked about. you talk about levels, only three of us know what you're talking about. his full self driving and that is we have no input from a human. the car is monitoring the environment and there are other levels where the human is responsible for monitoring the environment and the cars. the reason i say that as i think are we self driving in all environments? that's probably 2020 and beyond. i think we are looking at longer than that but it's on the road already. i think the question is we may get specialized versions of these so one of our 15 has to be an operational design demand. what does that mean? where should the car operate quick city of the delivery that's only during the day on these three blocks that's a specific application. that could be self driving but it's a specific place with low risk, a bunch of different things all the way up to self driving. depends on what you are looking

at because these things are already on the street and they will happen quickly. full self driving in all environments i think is that least it -- 2020 and beyond before we get there. >> guest: one of the things that guidelines say may be intuitively is the self driving car should follow the law. google for example reports these crashes are getting rear and do quite a bit because it's driving very safely and following the laws and coming to a complete stop at the stop signs. should any future self driving cars be allowed to drive more like human beings do which is going beyond the speed limit and how do we have an environment of human drivers which are less than ideal and self driving cars that are following the letter of the law? >> guest: this points out how complicated this is. besides that 35,002 lives lost on 94% are due to human error. isn't it ironic we say we want to teach the car is doing it to

be a little more human? what's interesting in the policies, now we are talking about thousands of safety laws and their times were you cross the yellow line. there's an emergency vehicle on the sign of pedestrians so there has to be times where you break the law. those are the things that these vehicles have had to be program for as well. again what we listed our number of scenarios and how your vehicle has been programmed to do with the specifically. >> host: dr. rosekind is self-driving and automated cars and connected cars, are connected cars a step in that direction or are they a separate issue? >> guest: at nhtsa we see them as connected and to get the secretary of the division to a lot of people like to say it's one or the other. what that means is your car is talking to another car. why that is relevant is they

can't see across the intersection. somebody is hard raking before the get to the stoplight. people think it's that or let the people stand on its own. connected automation where you put it together really gives it a system that is safer than either one of those separately. the policy just came out and at the same same time we are we are pushing and hope soon to put out the rules on the get go to the coke communication. the combination offers the greatest safety to all of us. >> guest: what has nhtsa's role going to be an deciding the ethical problems that self-driving cars present? should protect the ottomans of the vehicle? what is your role in that issue? >> that is a great question that we have decided to highlight because it has not been answered.

i would like to give credit and not try to provide an answer when there is a one and i'm saying that because we believe that one of the biggest most important things is consumers consumer's passengers and drivers accepting these vehicles. cybersecurity. my car can get hacked and i'm in danger i'm not getting in it or what about the efficacy and by the way that's a nice ethical dilemma. very complicated. people started raising the question but there's not a lot of information so in the policy we identify that is one of the concerns. we specifically talk about how companies need to address those and be swifter but they provide us and how they resolve them subtyping about innovation people think that's technology. how are we going to handle those ethical dilemmas in this technology revolution going on? we will decide which are the ones that really deliver on

safety for the public. those will be the ones we end up supporting in the future. >> host: dr. rosekind will we be entering into period much like 100 some years ago were horse and buggies lived on the same street as horseless carriages? >> guest: i'm not blowing smoke here. it's a great question because we don't talk about that. i actually think there are two transitions that don't get discussed. one is in the vehicle. some people focus, because that's your level 3. we are human and we still have to know what's going on and if there's a bad thing going on our transmission from automation to human alive questions about how that's going to go. the other transition as wages highlighted. the average age of cars right now 11.5 years and if you had a perfect self-driving card tomorrow it could take 20 to 30 years to have that new technology turnover, 2230 or

simply a perfect plan tomorrow will still take 20 to 30 years and then of course people say i really like having the top down on pacifica highway in california and a beautiful day. don't take my driver's license away. i think for one, two months we will have a midst of human drivers and automation on the same roads and 94% of those crashes are human and the others we will eliminate if we can but that's a transmission -- transition that we have no data on that i think will affect the future for the next several decades. >> guest: after those decades when self-driving cars become much more reliable that the pressure on the government or individuals did not drive will be there, that it will be too big of a risk to allow human beings to drink and drive who don't pay attention to driving? can you imagine 20, 30 or 40

years and now the government or the state saying human beings you are not careful enough to drive. >> guest: if you see the irony of this, right? are we ever going to get in? if we get two oh why would we let the risk of the human takeover that we'll? i don't know if we'll ever get there but that's a question for 30 years from now when there really is the data to show how far we have really come. i hate to say it but it will probably be my kids figuring out or we ever going to get to the point where the question becomes a reality and has to be answered? >> host: why is this coming at us in such a -- right now? >> guest: i am the third generation san francisco from silicon valley -- silicon valley. technology is what kind of bird and you have and why are we talking phone's? i literally stood in line for

the first iphone. i say that because it's the way technology happens. silicon valley what's the surprise here people? there some kid in a garage thinking at the next startup that will save more lives. that's excitement of it. i think part of what is so interesting to see is how there has been so much focus on the road so for all the technology we have phones and the internet of things in all this stuff. with so fascinating is the focus on the vehicle. people now realize mobility as we get older or disabled, sustainability for the whole planet so that secretary talked about think about expansion and all the other things without pouring another chunk of concrete and the ridesharing. when you look at those it's like a no-brainer that we need to be

going at this as strongly as we can. safely but we cannot us the opportunity represented here and i think it's fascinating that has been picked up by different segments. we have to go after this with techality. technology will not be the issue in the end. silicon valley will figure stuff out. the issues are the stuff that you are bringing up as humans. >> guest: what about the technical issues? will you ever want to give up your driver's license? >> host: mark rosekind is the administrator of the national highway traffic demonstration and david shephardson covers technology for thompson reuters and over the next two weeks "the communicators" will travel to pittsburgh and ann arbor. carnegie mellon university, we will show you the technology of the autonomous vehicle and then we look at connected cars at m city part of the university of michigan in ann arbor.