Author: cjarosh

Autonomous vehicles promise such a degree of improved safety that we sometimes picture them as all-powerful, faultless machines. To a large extent, they will need to be. But how can we be sure they’re safe even in the most risky situations?

Consider the signalized intersection. Since their appearance at the end of the 19th century, traffic lights have been the primary mode of granting access to road intersections. However, traffic statistics show that, despite their claim to only a tiny percentage of road area, intersections are where 25% to 45% of all traffic collisions occur. Why is this?

When you think about it, it starts to become obvious. Intersections bring together cars traveling in all directions and then asks them to proceed through in groups timed by traffic signals. If any one car makes a false start, or speeds through the intersection and collides with a car in front of them, the entire exchange is compromised. And since cars are coming from all directions at various speeds, the risk of an accident that causes injury and/or major damage to vehicles goes way up, too.

So how will autonomous vehicles navigate the signalized intersection?

Therein lies the debate: will AVs independently “sense” their way through intersections using onboard sensors capable of discerning, for instance, the color of traffic lights, all while communicating with other vehicles (V2V) — or will AVs be “escorted” through intersections via connected infrastructure (V2I)?

As it turns out, the case for the V2V argument is in question. For starters, we would need to trust that every manufacturer has built in precise, latency-proof communications units that ensure constant communication with every other car. Statistically, the odds of that happening aren’t good, and it seems like too big of a risk when all it takes is the failure of one sensor on one car to cause an accident.

Furthermore, according to a paper by the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, “a vehicle approaching an intersection can quickly find itself in a situation where a collision is unavoidable, even when it has acted optimally.” In other words, even if no car overtly malfunctions, you can hardly call the intersection safe. As the JAIR paper notes, an intersection has very specific points of potential collision – hotspots that only one car at a time can occupy. That’s engineer-speak for “two cars occupying one hotspot will cause an accident.”

And this is why there’s a strong case for the V2I argument (where AVs get escorted through the intersection). The paper goes on to argue that an intersection needs its own “cooperative vehicle intersection control system (CVICS)” – hardware and software located at every interchange, which keeps an eye on all the points of potential collision and guides AVs through based on its safety-first algorithm.

Remember that acronym, CVICS, because it’s going to be a huge factor in the success of autonomous vehicles. It is absolutely essential for the safety of AVs, which can’t reasonably be expected to never run into trouble in a complex intersection, no matter how advanced they become.

Researchers at JAIR aren’t the only researchers arguing that CVIC systems are going to be a necessity for autonomous vehicles. There seems to be a consensus forming around the idea, to the point where researchers are now trying to determine the best algorithms for intersection control. MIT recently reported research on a “slot-based system”, similar to airplane-boarding procedures, designed for slow guidance through intersections in groups. They were essentially building on an IEEE research paper that offered a detailed algorithm for intersection control units to deploy.

The results from IEEE’s testing of their algorithm is worth a look. Not only was the flow through the intersection optimized for safety as expected, researchers also noticed some other improvements: vehicle stop delay time was reduced by an astonishing 99%, improving average travel time (under the presumption that a commute will involve several encounters with CVICS) by 33% or more. Carbon dioxide emissions were reduced by 44%, correlating directly with fuel savings of 44%. Basically, the researchers found that CVIC systems not only ensured safety, but made the process of getting through an intersection much faster. What’s not to like?

We remain optimistic about the safety benefits offered by autonomous vehicles. But the research is out there, and it’s compelling. Rather than risk public distrust in autonomous vehicles following a few crash-causing anomalies in intersections, it makes sense to deploy CVIC systems with proven algorithms to make intersections foolproof.

Just as we will eventually cede the wheel to our AVs, we will also need them to cede the wheel to CVICS from time to time and, in principle, the statistics showing such a disproportionate number of accidents occurring in intersections will shrink down to zero. We know that in the future our cars will be smart, but their interoperability with safety-oriented systems like CVICS will allow them to be brilliant.

Rob Fischer is President of GTiMA and a senior advisor to Mandli Communications’ strategy team. GTiMA and Mandli Communications are both proud partners of the Wisconsin Autonomous Vehicle Proving Ground.

Follow Rob on Twitter (@Robfischeris) and Linkedin.

Have you seen this commercial? It starts with a woman in standing in the middle of the street, gazing up at a sky-written marriage proposal. We see that she’s in an urban area. A car comes quickly into the frame and even more quickly stops, as the words “automatic emergency braking” appear on-screen. Then the camera pulls back to show that we’re in a car going quite fast on a desert highway, with a couple watching this demonstration of emergency braking on their smartphone. “Wow, good to know we have automatic brakes,” says the woman. The man, entranced by the video, swerves out of his lane, which is corrected. “We have lane departure assistance, too,” he says with a smile.

There are a lot of problems with this ad, and those of us that are excited about the AV age should be paying attention to it and ads like it. Because the fact is the public does not currently trust these automatic driver assistance systems (ADAS). J.D. Power recently released the results of a new survey that shows “basic semiautonomous features such as adaptive cruise control, autonomous braking and lane-departure assist notched the largest increase in complaints this year.” The analysis argues “these complaints signal an uphill battle … if car buyers aren’t convinced that the basic building blocks of self-driving cars work seamlessly now, they won’t buy a self-driving car in the future.”

That should concern anyone with a stake in the ultimate success of autonomous vehicles. And the public may be correct to not trust them at present — these AAA statistics show that the efficacy of automatic braking systems is iffy at best. Automatic emergency braking, for example, only has a shot at working if the driver is going fairly slowly. There’s little consensus over what sensors should be used for which systems — that conversation is still ongoing — and there are other unknowns when it comes to ADAS that suggest many of these systems are not ready for prime-time.

So why are car companies pushing these systems so quickly? The ad described above shows they’re aware of the limitations of their systems. The car that narrowly misses a pedestrian is going slowly, but we immediately cut to a car that’s going quite fast — a sneaky way to make the AEB system appear useful on the highway, when according to AAA, it’d be somewhere between 9 and 40% effective when traveling at 45 miles per hour.

These companies are caught in an awkward position. They are aware of the need to maintain public trust once it’s time for level 3 and 4 autonomous vehicles. But they also need to continue to turn a profit in the meantime. So we can understand why they’re anxious to get these systems to market, but the systems need more than the small-sample public testing AAA carried out. There is still debate, for example, on whether lidar or radar is more effective for automatic emergency braking. Doesn’t it seem like this should be discerned before cars touting the feature are deployed? Shouldn’t consumers get systems that work as advertised? To ADAS our way to AVs, shouldn’t consumer trust be at least as valuable as a car sale?

We understand the current plight of the OEMs — the genie is out of the bottle, ADAS systems are on the road, and they are features that have been proven to be desirable, at least in theory, to consumers. Nobody wants to get left behind when it comes to new and cool features. This is where the Wisconsin Proving Grounds comes in. By testing ADAS systems at the Proving Grounds, OEMs can simultaneously ensure the safety of their systems and — since they’d be doing so out in the open — gain public trust that is so crucial to their business model, both currently and in the near future.

The time is right. It’s about to get easier to “ADAS our way to AVs” in terms of testing AV systems without needing an entire autonomous prototype. According to recent reporting, the House and the Senate are both advancing legislation to make AV testing easier on manufacturers, following hearings and meetings with over 100 industry stakeholders. There are over a dozen bills advancing through committees right now, but as far as the proving grounds go, we’re thinking this will help speed things along: lawmakers are looking to “raise the federal cap on the number of exemptions that can be granted to driverless carmakers who want to design and test cars without traditional automobile features.” Currently, while all cars are required to have steering wheels and pedals, federal waivers can only be granted a certain number of times per year for testing purposes, which constrains the ability of manufacturers to conduct serious testing. With that regulation eased, we think we’ll see a lot of ADAS action at the proving grounds.

So, our message to auto manufacturers: this is your moment. Public opinion may be turning against some of the early iterations of autonomous features in vehicles, but there’s a clear path toward righting the ship. It’s coming at just the right time, with a confluence of regulations and test site availability opening the doors to a new intensity in regimes for testing ADAS systems. And with a growing public attention to all things AV — which is sure to result from the big legislative push that’s ongoing — it seems pretty clear the public will take notice. When that starts to happen and testing shows, for example, improvements to automatic emergency braking systems, those commercials are going to connect as well as they were meant to in the first place.

Heath Davis-Gardner is a professional writer and editor who currently serves as Strategic Communications Specialist at Mandli Communications.

Blockchains, or more generally, Distributed Ledger Technologies have a huge role to play in the future of mobility. With the advent of connected autonomous vehicles as well as the rise of electric mobility and shared usage models, Distributed Ledger Technologies and the future of mobility is a perfect match.

It is no surprise that the New Mobility ecosystem – automotive players, mobility service providers, insurance companies, telecommunications providers and smart city leaders – are exploring blockchain technologies. Many leading players are starting to embrace the key concepts of blockchains in order to solve real world problems related to identity management for people and machines, data control and integrity, information sharing, as well as trusted connectivity and cyber security.

However, it appears that blockchain technologies have not been able to move beyond proof of concepts. Production deployments have been limited to ‘private” or ‘consortium-based’, rather than public blockchains. There are many reasons that help to explain this statement. For one, the concept of blockchain technologies is still relatively new. Along with this, the notion of distributed peer-to-peer architectures and new business models is challenging conventional thinking. The main reason, however, is much simpler: Blockchain technologies have inherent limitations.

These limitations include lack of real-time validation of transactions, and the scalability issues that are inherent in the architecture. Related to this issue are transaction fees and the concentration of mining power.

The notion of blocks being generated through the consensus process makes real-time validation and scalability hard to achieve. In fact, it is inherent in the architecture. Transactions and the consensus process are sequential. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of unconfirmed transactions in the case of Bitcoin introduce serious limitations for use cases. Furthermore, the concept of mining and the need for stakers to achieve consensus and create blocks introduces transaction costs. As complexity grows an increasing amount of energy and computational power is needed. Bitcoin’s mean transaction fees have already risen above $1. Even worse, transaction costs are difficult to predict and therefore undermine business models in the Internet of Things. In a world of micro-transactions the question arises, “who is going to pay for it?”

Why a Blockchainless Approach Might be the Future

With the IOTA protocol, an interesting new approach to distributed ledger technologies is emerging that does not rely on traditional blockchain approaches. The 4 co-founders behind IOTA – David Sonstebo, Dominik Schiener, Sergey Invancheglo and Serguei Popov – have been part of the “Blockchain 2.0” revolution and made major contributions to the space. For instance, Sergey Invancheglo invented proof of stake. As part of many projects they have experienced the inherent limitations of traditional blockchains and have conceived a new approach to distributed ledgers. The idea of IOTA was born in 2015.

The main innovation behind IOTA is that it is a “Blockchain without the Blocks and the Chain”. The Tangle is a new distributed ledger architecture based on a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) that shares the same underlying principles and the key benefits of blockchains, just without their inherent limitations. Let me explain how.

Rather than rely on the creation of blocks that are chained together, in the Tangle, a single transaction references two past transactions.

The process involves 3 simple steps:

1. Signing: The transaction inputs are signed with your private keys.

2. Tip Selection: Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is used to randomly select two tips that represent unconfirmed transactions, which will be referenced by your transaction.

3. Proof of Work: In order to have your transaction accepted by the network, you have to do some proof of work.

Once these 3 steps are completed, the transaction will be broadcasted to the network. Another network participant will come along, choose the transaction in the tip selection process and validate it.

IOTA validates transactions without the need for miners and the associated cost of creating consensus. Instead of relying on a small subset of the network (miners / stakers), IOTA relies on the entire network of active participants to approve and validate transactions. Consensus is no longer decoupled from transactions, but rather an intrinsic part of the process. This allows IOTA to scale without any transactions fees.

The benefits of this approach are apparent. IOTA achieves a step change in performance and scalability, which makes it particularly suitable for the Internet of Things with ultimately billions of connected things. Given that there is no such thing as ‘always on’ connectivity in the real world, the Tangle also supports offline transactions through partitioning. This allows clusters of IoT devices, such as cars and trucks, to branch off and still make transactions using P2P communication protocols.

Since the transaction posting and consensus is parallelized, the network is inherently growing and scaling with the number of transactions. With the more transactions are being made, the Tangle becomes even more secure and efficient.

The creation of IOTA formed the backbone of the Internet of Things and the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) Economy: a world where scalability is a must, and where transaction fees are prohibitive to making business models work.

The fact that IOTA does not introduce transaction fees makes it uniquely suited to IoT and M2M where a large number of micro- or even nano-transactions can be expected. The IOTA team envisions a future in which machines trade resources such as computation, electricity, storage, bandwidth, data and much more without the involvement of any third party. IOTA opens the doors to an Internet of Things that is not only secure and scalable, but makes business models in the M2M economy practical. It sets the industry on a path where it can move beyond proof of concepts and instead to real deployments.

If you look up “IOTA” in the dictionary, you will find it is “something very small.”. If you “don’t care one IOTA about something”, it means you don’t even care about it one little bit.

IOTA is a blockchainless approach to distributed ledgers. Should you care about it? Given its huge potential to become the backbone of the Internet of Things, I predict that IOTA will turn into something very big. We should not only care about IOTA. We should all get involved and use this revolutionary technology to shape our collective future.

Click here to view a short introductory video, “Welcome to IOTA Universe”.

Back in December 2000 I had my first meeting in my new role to help SAP develop a future vision and strategy for supply chain management. Together with Albrecht Diener I met Steve David, the then CIO of Procter & Gamble, who introduced us to his vision of a Consumer Driven Supply Network powered by a next generation Auto-ID technology and agent-based optimization.

My next trip was to meet the Director of the MIT Auto-ID Center, Kevin Ashton in Cambridge, MA. Kevin is credited with inventing the term “Internet of Things” back in 1999 and has played a key role in shaping it. Next to the MIT Auto-ID Center, Steve David also introduced us to Stuart Kauffman from the Santa Fe Institute, the godfather of complexity science. Together with brilliant minds like Bill MacReady, Tony Plate, Fred Seibel, Brian Birk and Brian Potter we looked at swarm intelligence and how ants and termites organize themselves, how birds flock and how schools of fish protect themselves from predators. Ever since I was fascinated by the notion of smart, connected things and a future of autonomous, self-organizing systems.

The challenge we faced was that we did not really have the underlying infrastructure to manage such systems. How do you manage a global network of smart, connected objects? How do you give them an identity? How do you steer the behavior of these independent economic agents in a way that leads to a somewhat optimized outcome for the entire system? How do you enable transactions between these smart objects? How do we create a record of transactions in a world of distributed systems? And how do you keep such a system secure? We could not really find a satisfactory answer to these problems at the time.

When I discovered blockchain technologies almost 15 years later, I felt like I finally found this missing piece. Blockchains or more generally distributed ledger technologies promise to deliver the backbone for the Internet of Things. In the not too distant future, we might have fleets of electric robot taxis swarm out like ants to look for passengers. Distributed ledger technologies will play a critical role in this emerging Machine-to-Machine economy.

We have done projects with world leading companies to explore the potential of the technology. The more we learn, the more excited we are about its potential to change the world for the better. We believe that distributed ledger technologies are critical to shaping our collective futures. Thanks to people like Rob Wolcott, Yossi Vardi, Maurizio Rossi and Plamen Russev we have become part of a global ecosystem of innovation. In our many discussions at events such as DLD, KINglobal, webit, 4YFN, Kinnernet, Autonomy and TU Detroit more and more people seem to agree that we need to make sure that technology serves us as humans. We all need to make sure that we create a future where humanity, life and the planet can thrive.

We aim to create a platform to empower more people to understand the technology and its key concepts and implications. In the next weeks and months, we will share more and more of our thinking around blockchains and distributed ledger technologies.

· We will make the technology and its key underlying concepts and implications understandable to a larger audience.

· We will share our passion for a world where people and things have digital identities that can be shared and trusted across a network.

· A world where our data is no longer compromised by storing it in large honey pots of data that attracts hackers.

· We will explore why distributed ledger technologies are critical to securing the Internet of Things. We will explore the role of blockchains in machine learning and artificial intelligence, autonomous robotic systems and the emerging Machine-to-Machine Economy.

· We will examine new business models and how we as humans can thrive in this future.

We want to build a future we all want to live in. I hope you will join us on that journey. We all must play an active role in shaping the future, or somebody else will create it for us. A future we might not like. Let’s create the future we want!

Alexander Renz is Director at the New Mobility Lab, a not-for-profit organization with the charter to raise awareness and scale knowledge related to distributed ledger technologies in the New Mobility ecosystem. New Mobility Lab is a platform for sharing real world experiences and executing pilots and proof of concepts across the public and private sector. To learn more, click here.

When you’re tracking the evolution of autonomous vehicles via Google News alerts, every day starts with something interesting and often exciting. But some of the time, an article is only interesting because of how misleading it is.

There’s a reason for that. As we’ve been reporting for some time now, sometimes a writer or a publication decides to take a sliver of information out of context and turn it into click-bait.

The result, of course, is a scary and/or discouraging headline blowing up your RSS feed. This week’s culprit: “Self-Driving Cars Could Be Terrible for Traffic – Here’s Why.”

This is a rare case. Not only is the argument spurious, the tone actually gets worse after the headline.

Usually, a click-bait headline gives way to an article that begins to pull its punches or makes caveats. But the lead three paragraphs of this particular article take this fascinating progression: “(p1)Self-driving cars might make your future commute a lot more pleasant, but they won’t eliminate traffic” … (p2) Execs like Sergey Brin of Google say they will… (p3) “But experts say the vehicles’ impact on traffic will be minimal or negative.”

So, it’s not really that they’re saying self-driving cars “could be” terrible for traffic. They’re saying they will be.

Of course, as expected, the expert quoted in the following graf says nothing that calls for that sort of language. The expert says “autonomous vehicles won’t fix congestion woes unless a pricing system is put into place” for zero-occupancy vehicles to discourage companies from using AVs as a free alternative to shipping carriers like UPS and the postal service.

Buried deeper in the piece, almost as an afterthought, are examples of states that have already begun putting such pricing systems into place.

It may seem like a small thing. This is just one article, after all, in a sea of articles, if you search “autonomous vehicles and congestion” that all say in one way or another how much AVs will help reduce congestion. ( Here’s one of my recent favorites, from MIT’s Technology Lab, about how just a few AVs on a road among standard-driver cars dramatically reduces congestion.)

But this is how myths are made. The power of the Internet is strong, and the power of the human mind to think it knows something because it read it on the Internet may be even stronger. For the average news consumer who hasn’t been making an effort to stay abreast of every new study and survey that point to the undeniable promise of autonomous vehicles, all it takes is chancing upon this one article, and suddenly they know a new “fact” about AVs.

And they tell their friends. And their friends tell their friends. And so on, and so on.

But as we argued months ago, this is a deeply irresponsible act every time a respectable news outlet plays on the public fears of the unknown to make a spurious argument just to get some traffic for their banner advertisers. To paraphrase Elon Musk in the above-linked piece, every time a journalist writes an anti-AV piece, they’re potentially putting human lives at risk.

Because we shouldn’t lose the big picture here. Yes, states will have to adjust regulations to account for businesses that want to use AVs as free courier services. The switch to autonomous vehicles isn’t going to happen overnight, and it’s not going to be a situation where we just have a new kind of vehicle but we keep all the laws exactly the same. But the idea that states, which often find it extremely hard to tighten the belt enough to find money for road repairs, would simply go along with companies using AVs for free deliveries is absurd. Of course the company would need to pay for using public infrastructure for wide-scale delivery services. It’s hard to think of a state that wouldn’t jump at the chance of opening a revenue stream for transportation in this way.

Here’s the big point this argument gets us to, though – one totally missed by its author. So let’s imagine this future where businesses are having to pay a per-mile tax for unmanned delivery services. First of all, they’re economizing their own use of VMT (vehicle miles traveled) to get the job done for as little as they can have to use the roads, which means the nightmare scenario put forth by this article never comes true (as the expert cited in the article says) and yes, traffic congestion does decrease. The state, meanwhile, is getting some extra money to make road infrastructure repairs and even invest in new pieces of infrastructure. The environment is benefitting from the drop in congestion, and maybe will even more from smart infrastructure the state invests in. And people are still getting their packages on time.

This is the thing with these misleading articles. If you stop to logically step through the scenario they’re positing, and you account for basic common sense they forgot to include, their hollow scare piece turns into another rosy-looking scenario for AVs.

This isn’t just optimism on my part. Here’s a little experiment you can do to see my point in action. Go ahead, search around the internet for the benefits of AVs on any given topic, from safety to land use. Notice the hundreds of immediately available news articles and the plethora of white papers and academic journal articles.

Then Google the exact opposite of what you just saw hundreds of articles about. Example query: “autonomous vehicles will be less safe”. Something we know beyond a shadow of a doubt isn’t true. And yet, there you see all the click-baity counterexamples.

If I’ve written in a colloquial style here, it’s only been because I want to keep your attention. The point is deadly serious. Journalists need to stop worrying so much about getting clicks and start being responsible to their sources as well as their readership by avoiding this sort of crass misappropriation of context.

News outlets, just consider it: it’s completely possible to support your business model without scaring people into clicking headlines. AVs are exciting enough in their own right. We know you’ll catch on soon.

Heath Davis-Gardner is a professional writer and editor who currently serves as Strategic Communications Specialist at Mandli Communications.

Growing up in the 80s without cable TV, a Nintendo or the very idea of the Internet, I did a lot of reading. One of my most treasured books, likely published in the 1970s, was full of scientists’ predictions about the future. I couldn’t wait to see some of this stuff come true: telephones with video screens so you could see the other person, cars that could take off from highways and rise to a cruising altitude of 30,000 feet, movie theaters with remote controls that let the audience vote on what the main character should do next.

It was fun to read, but ultimately gave me little indication of what the future was going to look like. I never dreamed I’d have a pocket computer with a processing power thousands of times greater than my mom’s IBM 286. Or that I’d be able to instantly communicate with anyone in the world with it. Or, for that matter, that cars would eventually be able to drive themselves. Even in the vision of flying cars, there still needed to be a pilot.

Here’s the thing – the future is very difficult to predict. Even very credible people who specialized in artificial intelligence swore that a computer program could never learn to beat a grandmaster at chess. They were proved wrong two decades ago.

Even today, we can’t predict the future with a hundred percent certainty. The things we highlight about autonomous vehicles are always based on research rather than empirical proof, but we do this because we see so many potential benefits that could come from the technology once it is fully realized. The number of fatalities per year from the current auto culture is staggering and the harm reduction AVs could bring is one of many factors that motivate our optimism.

But there are some out there who doubt. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But there’s a difference between openly doubting and outright sowing of negative myths. And unfortunately, it seems like these doubts, when stated as facts, serve as amazing click-bait for people that are instinctively concerned about AVs.

So we’ve decided to begin a series where we’ll look at a few of these myths and shine some light on them. The potential benefits of AVs are promising enough to demand this approach.

Let’s start with one of the most well-worn chestnuts of doubt.

MYTH: AVs will cost so much that only the rich will be able to use them.

Some people never get past a figure that is oft-cited by AV doubters: $250,000. That’s how much a fully autonomous vehicle is estimated to cost given the current price of sensor technology. And, yes, that is on the surface a prohibitively expensive price tag for the vast majority of people. But it’s founded on two myths: one, that manufacturers will never find a way to make LiDAR sensors at a lower cost. (They’ve already made some breakthroughs there). But the second part of it is that it’s based on an unrealistic picture of what a culture powered by AVs would look like.

A recent study from Columbia University’s Earth Institute suggested that AVs could be run for 30 to 50 cents per mile, down from a $3-5/mile cost to taxi companies under the current regime. In Manhattan, they concluded, the rate would be about 40 cents a mile – whereas today the cost to companies is around $4/mile. If taxis and Ubers were 90 percent cheaper than they are today, would you rather pay to maintain your own car and deal with the regular hassles of repair and regular tune-ups, or spend one to two dollars per day being taxied all around town? Which would be more convenient for making it to work on time or getting your kids home from school? It’s a no-brainer.

This cost reduction could be even more dramatic. Currently, cabs have to focus on one customer per ride. People sometimes share taxis if they know one another and are at the same pick-up point, but rideshare apps have already shown the potential to drastically cut fares even under the $4/mile to operate conditions. If the reduction in costs to operate were paired with the ride-sharing component, getting around town via a hired car would cost far less than it currently costs to own and operate a car.

So, yes, if the technology remains as expensive as it is now – a big ‘if’ – maybe you won’t own your own autonomous vehicle. But maybe you wouldn’t even want to. Imagine never having to worry about changing the brake pads or renewing your registration again while still getting around town just as easily. I don’t know about you, but personally, that sounds like a future I can accept.

Heath Davis-Gardner is a professional writer and editor who currently serves as Strategic Communications Specialist at Mandli Communications.

Editor’s note: Happy infrastructure week! This is the week during which Congress devotes most of its time to exploring possibilities for improving America’s infrastructure. At least, that’s what they usually do. This time around, all eyes are on the Trump/Comey situation, and likely will remain there for a while. But let’s just pretend there weren’t any political problems blocking actual policy decisions during this crucial week and dive into one of our favorite topics: infrastructure.

Sometimes you have to sort through the bad news to find a silver lining. A recent poll may turn the stomachs of the Trump administration and Republicans in congress, but if they read it carefully, they’ll see they have a chance to turn things around: and it’s not by repealing Obamacare or building the border wall – it’s by delivering on Trump’s campaign promises regarding infrastructure.

The poll in question was a survey of midterm voters in four swing states flipped by Trump in 2016 – Florida, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania. And there’s no two ways about it: things are looking bleak for him and his party. A whopping 80% of voters surveyed, for example, say they believe that Trump lies. A plurality of voters don’t feel he’s been successful, and a majority of those voters feel he has himself to blame. A majority of voters also will blame Trump and Congressional Republicans if spending disagreements result in a government shutdown.

But the poll contains some clues for what the administration ought to do next. Trump needs a win, but with recent efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act floundering in Congress and disagreements over the border wall holding up spending bills, it would appear Trump needs to adjust his priorities.

According to the write-up of the results, “voters are lukewarm regarding Trump’s campaign promises” — for example, only 40% o0f respondents said they’d be disappointed if the border wall isn’t built, and 3/4ths of the disappointed would still vote Republican in the midterms anyway – but they do have one priority in mind: infrastructure.

Infrastructure is “the most popular and ‘deal-breaking’ of the four promises tested … with 57% of voters indicating disappointment if it does not pass by 2018, and only 53% of that subset indicating they would vote Republican [if it doesn’t happen].”

So we hope the administration is paying attention. And judging by a few recent decisions, it would appear that the President will need to change tack to get it done through bipartisan consensus.

Not only is bipartisanship essential to getting a bill passed – we’ve reported the difficulty in moving an infrastructure bill through Congress in more than one piece – it’s completely doable. Democrats, at least in theory, love the idea of investing in infrastructure. Many Republicans have also named infrastructure as a major priority. Both parties know this is a popular, necessary measure.

For that reason, it’s somewhat disappointing to learn from a Politico transportation reporter that a recent confab between DOT secretary Elaine Chao and the House Transportation Committee was “a Republicans-only affair… Democrats were not informed about the meeting.” The meeting was to discuss the role of public-private partnerships in an infrastructure funding initiative. While Republicans and the Trump administration may like this approach more than Democrats do, transportation and infrastructure (T&I) Democrats have always maintained they believe public-private partnerships have a role to play in any infrastructure bill.

Hopefully, the administration is just finding its sea legs. Politico also recently reported that the Trump administration’s practice of adding “senior advisers” at every federal department has completely backfired and that they’re looking to give up on this “shadow cabinet.”

The shadow cabinet plan was especially bad at DOT. Senior adviser Anthony Pugliese, according to a DOT source speaking with Politico, “got off to a rough start when he ordered the blocking of all outgoing mail in the early days of the administration, supposedly to prevent last-minute Obama decisions from going out the door, then neglected to lift the order. The result was a giant stack of mail full of obscure bureaucratic missives that nobody knew what to do with.”

Secretary Chao herself was put off by the shadow cabinet push. The DOT source said that “Pugliese at one point informed Chao that he wanted to approve every DOT policy prior to its public release, which took Chao by surprise.” According to the source, “the secretary was like, ‘um, what’s your name again?'”

The Trump administration has had a go at dealing with these vital infrastructure issues without compromise. Press covering the above mishaps has certainly done nothing to aid his efforts. But ultimately, it all comes down to votes. The administration needs a win, and the data shows that the win comes in the form of an infrastructure package.

So it’s time for Trump and congressional Republicans to finally invite Democrats to the table, admit that they need to work together to pass an infrastructure bill, and get started right away finding common ground on language and purpose. It will take some compromising, but isn’t that what Congress is supposed to do?

And just in case infrastructure becoming a national emergency isn’t enough motivation, the administration can just take the pulse of the swing states that put them in power. If they want to continue chairing the Transportation committees, along with all the rest, it seems clear that the infrastructure bill is the win they need to retain the confidence of their voters.

Rob Fischer is President of GTiMA and a senior advisor to Mandli Communications’ strategy team. GTiMA and Mandli Communications are both proud partners of the Wisconsin Autonomous Vehicle Proving Ground.

Follow Rob on Twitter (@Robfischeris) and Linkedin.

How many government officials — national, state, regional, and city — does it take to modernize the infrastructure of the United States?

There’s no good punchline, and only one answer that fits: too many. And whether this large group of politicians can actually pull it off remains to be seen.

There are, unfortunately, roadblocks at both the state and federal level, and plenty of them. Each of them makes it a little bit harder for the Trump infrastructure proposal to come to fruition. Added together, they paint a bleak picture. So let’s take a look at this problem at both the federal and state levels.

FEDERAL

Last month, we looked at vehicle-to-infrastructure technologies and how important they are to the rollout of autonomous vehicles. In that piece, there was a choice quote from Adie Tomer of the Brookings Institute: “developing a single Infrastructure bill would require a Congressional Tower of Babel.”

It’s an interesting conceit. You may remember the story of the Tower of Babel, but here’s the gist: at that time, humans all spoke the same language, and because that enabled them to work together so effectively, they managed to build a tower that reached heaven. In the story, God saw it as an affront to his power: “if as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible to them.” So he created different languages to confuse everyone and doom the project.

The tale is meant to explain why there are different languages and cultures, and why we have national/cultural conflicts. But read today, in the context of developing a national infrastructure strategy, Tomer’s allusion is quite apt. Because for something as huge as modernizing the nation’s infrastructure, there is going to have to be unity – everyone speaking the same language. Especially since this isn’t just a matter of repairing old infrastructure. We’re seeking to create smart roads and other V2I infrastructure — they’re essential aspects of the AV and smart city future, and they’re not going to just build themselves.

And in that same Brookings piece, Tomer goes so far as to say “there’s no such thing as an infrastructure bill.” That’s surprising, given the amount of talk from the Trump administration about a $1 trillion infrastructure investment.

So why would a Brookings fellow say this? Not “infrastructure can’t pass,” but “there will never be a bill”? We need a “tower of Babel”? We know Congress can’t get along, but can’t they just put aside party politics for once? If only it were that simple!

You might expect that there’s a subcommittee somewhere in the US legislature that oversees America’s infrastructure. And you’d be correct. The problem is, there are several of them — in each chamber — all claiming some jurisdiction over US infrastructure. The result: trench warfare.

When browsing through a list of the standing Senate committees trying to determine who has jurisdiction over infrastructure, you might naturally stop at the Commerce, Science and Transportation committee. Seems like the natural place for it. And it is: the committee oversees “communications, highway safety … regulation of interstate common carriers, technology research and development of policy, standards and measurement, [and] transportation.”

But there are subcommittees within Commerce, Science and Transportation with overlapping interests, especially if our new infrastructure is going to be V2I-equipped, which it must be. There’s the Communications, Technology, Innovation and the Internet subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over wireless communications — an integral function of V2I tech.

Then there’s the Consumer Protection, Product Safety, Insurance and Data Security subcommittee, which oversees the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration “in creating safe and fuel efficient vehicles.”

And the Space, Science and Competitiveness subcommittee, which, among other things, oversees the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) — and good standards are crucial for V2I interoperability.

Finally, there’s the Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine Infrastructure, Safety and Security subcommittee, which “has jurisdiction over interstate transportation policy issues,” and oversees DOT and the Office of Research and Technology, as well as independent transportation regulatory boards.

Obviously, all these subcommittees would have to work closely together, each representing jurisdiction over an element of V2I technology, in order to ensure the right language is in a hypothetical infrastructure bill. But at least they’re grouped under one larger committee. Subcommittees often disagree within the framework of the larger committee they’re serving — sometimes due to constituency and re-election issues, occasionally due to ideology — but ultimately, the committee at large takes their recommendations into consideration when deciding whether to move a bill to the floor or not.
So it should still be doable, right?

Maybe not. Because there are some other standing committees with jurisdiction over similar, and sometimes the same, aspects of infrastructure. And this is where the need for a “tower of Babel”, a shared language, becomes really apparent. Unless all these standing committees and subcommittees are coming at infrastructure with a uniform point of view, this is where the whole bill really risks falling apart.

Just a couple of examples: the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs committee enjoys jurisdiction over “urban mass transit systems and general urban development issues” — road infrastructure in cities would need their OK. There’s the Environment and Public Works committee, whose jurisdiction includes construction and maintenance of highways, and a subcommittee called Transportation and Infrastructure that oversees “transportation”, according to their website.

But wait, you may be saying… How can there be a Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee that has jurisdiction over transportation, while you just read about the Commerce, Science and Transportation committee claiming the same jurisdiction? Well, that’s part of the problem. I’ll spare you further descriptions of committees and subcommittees that have similar jurisdiction, but believe it or not, there are four others (in each chamber!) that also claim some oversight over transportation and infrastructure. And if you begin to include things like data security and collection that will be necessary with V2I infrastructure, that number gets even bigger.

And let’s just say these committees all, through sheer luck, managed to agree on exactly what was needed for infrastructure in a sweeping reform and funding bill. They’d still have to get through Appropriations, which has the final say in allocating monies for the bill. And, wouldn’t you know it, there are Appropriations subcommittees that could wind up at loggerheads over money, too. There’s the Transportation and HUD subcommittee, which funds DOT as well as surface transportation projects, but there’s also the Energy and Water Development subcommittee, overseeing the US Army Corps of Engineers and others that build “civic works projects.”

Considering that Congress doesn’t have a great track record, especially recently, of being able to come to consensus on budgetary issues, it would appear Tomer is right. There are too many cooks spoiling the broth in Congress. And, remember, if the Congressional committees did all somehow hammer out an agreement on infrastructure and then there was agreement about how to fund it, and a majority of Senators passed the bill, the President would still have to sign it into law.

The question ultimately becomes: would a Congressional Tower of Babel even be enough if legislators managed to unify around this issue? It doesn’t take much for a bill to die in committee. The Congress must recognize the urgency of this issue and be brave, since not everybody is going to be able to impress their state constituents and please their fund-raisers in the short-term. A massive investment in infrastructure transcends those concerns – it’s the role of the federal government to make these big decisions for the good of the nation, and, dare we say it, to compromise with one another in doing so.

Take a deep breath — it gets tougher.

STATE

Recently, Reuters ran an investigative report about the astonishing delays infrastructure faces at the state level.

Part of the report focused on a saltwater-to-freshwater treatment plant that might be built in Huntington Beach, California. If you’ve been following the news over the past few years, you know that California is in desperate need of fresh water — it’s been enough for the governor to declare a state of emergency multiple times. The drought has threatened crops, started wildfires, and caused the citizenry to worry about whether their taps would even continue to flow if it went on. So this piece of infrastructure could reasonably be called an emergent need.

Here’s the problem: the project was proposed in the late 1990s, with permit requests sent to the requisite boards and commissions. By the early 2000s, the city of Huntington Beach had approved it, but the builder still needed 24 more permits from state agencies to build the facility. Some of these permits required other permits before the project could even be considered, so the timeline went like this:

• In 2007, the company finally got approved by the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board, which is federally mandated by the EPA to ensure that a piece of water infrastructure has an effective pollutant discharge elimination system. Following that approval, the company was able to apply for a permit from the California Coastal Commission.
• The CCC permit application required dozens of amendments — because as time went on with the permit pending, new laws and regulations took effect. The company had to completely redo its design, for example, when the state decided to phase out power plants that use seawater for cooling purposes.
• After several redesigns and permit amendments, the company had to temporarily shelve their application with the CCC in 2013, who directed them to look into concerns about the effects of the plant on fish larva in the area.
• Two years later, all fish larva concerns cleared, the permit was resubmitted in 2015 — but withdrawn again in late 2016, because the commission wanted proof that the plans complied with rules passed in 2015. This compelled the company to redesign their saltwater intake and discharge technologies.
• As of this writing, the company still doesn’t have approval from the CCC, along with two other agencies. The other 21 permits have been issued. The company’s optimistic prediction is that by the second quarter of 2018, construction can finally begin.

Again: designed by a company in the mid 90s, applied for in the late 90s. 20 years later, they’ll be able to begin construction, if they’re lucky. And this isn’t just some big industrial blight that one could argue deserves to be held up. It’s a piece of infrastructure that would directly address what the state’s governor has officially called an emergency.

That means it’s a cautionary tale. No matter the importance of a new piece of infrastructure, a single major project can be stalled for decades as it seeks all requisite permits. Many of these permit agencies do environmental impact studies that take a year or two apiece. If there wasn’t so much bureaucracy and agency-level politics, maybe a state could agree to do a single environmental impact study per proposal. This would drastically reduce the wait time while still ensuring infrastructure projects would be at least environment-neutral.

But, again, to do this, there would have to be broad agreement across state agencies with overlapping jurisdiction on infrastructure projects. Sound familiar? A single Congressional tower of Babel was already pitched by Adie Tomer as an impossibility – could we possibly manage to come up with an additional 50 of them?

WHAT TO DO?

This is not a rosy picture. An infrastructure bill is going to be very hard to pass federally, and then each individual piece of it will likely face roadblocks at the state level. But when it comes to looking for V2I technology to be put into place — a necessary aspect of rolling out AVs — there is some degree of hope here. Infrastructure is a national emergency. The short-term approach to upkeep of failing infrastructure is costing cities far more than it would cost to repair and/or build new infrastructure. There are water emergencies across cities and states not just limited to California. We got a reminder from Atlanta recently that there are road and bridge emergencies waiting to happen nationwide, too. So eventually something is going to have to be done in spite of all this gridlock. It’s a shame that infrastructure has decayed so badly that it truly is a national emergency, but if there’s a silver lining, at least it’s happening now as opposed to ten years ago.

Because now we have the science and technology to integrate V2I technology into the infrastructure that will have to be rebuilt. With that technology, we will be able to monitor the condition of infrastructure so we will know when it needs low-cost servicing that will prevent a high-cost emergency down the road. We will be able to roll out autonomous vehicles, which will save money for companies and city/state governments in such impressive fashion that eventually the infrastructure spending will be made up for and then some.

We just need elected officials at all levels of government to recognize this is an emergency — from an economic, social and security standpoint — and find a way to overcome all the various hurdles to get this done all at once. This is the nation that got behind the New Deal and, through sweeping efforts, pushed through a depression that could have ended the nation entirely. No Congressional tower of Babel was required, because the emergency was obvious. All it takes now, as it did then, is a government that’s courageous and responsible enough to take on the challenge and admit the severity of the crisis before it’s too late. And this time we have the added benefit of being able to use the opportunity to bring in innovations that will prevent the emergency from happening again.

So we hope the government’s response to the question — how many governmexnt officials does it take to repair infrastructure — is “all of them, bravely working together, putting the national interest ahead of personal agendas, speaking the same language.” That’s the real answer – it’s not a joke.

Rob Fischer is President of GTiMA and a senior advisor to Mandli Communications’ strategy team. GTiMA and Mandli Communications are both proud partners of the Wisconsin Autonomous Vehicle Proving Ground.

Follow Rob on Twitter (@Robfischeris) and Linkedin.

Heath Davis-Gardner is a professional writer and editor who currently serves as Strategic Communications Specialist at Mandli Communications.

It’s tough to gauge the benefits of a technology that isn’t live yet. Saying “we don’t know” is a lot safer.

While many of us are excited about the potential of autonomous vehicles to dramatically cut emissions and reduce the carbon footprint laid down by humanity, there are some researchers that are saying “hit the brakes”.

Sometimes these warnings are couched in studies that bring us good news. Within the past month, a report from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) delivered some encouraging findings: by 2050, connected autonomous vehicles could reduce fuel consumption in cars by 44%. And just this week, the Institute for Transportation and Development policy released a report, along with a plan of action for vehicle electrification, automation, and ridesharing in urban areas –and they estimate the potential ceiling for reducing carbon emissions from automobiles at an astonishing 80%. In other words, the good news, when reported, is breathtakingly good.

But some continue to find ways to cast doubt on these findings. These reports come on the heels of another study published late last year by the Center for American Progress (CAP) that painted a bleaker picture – and the EIA study repeated the concerns raised by the CAP report. The summary of those concerns: “all this potential to reduce emissions could be wasted, and could be made worse than it is even today. It all depends on how people adapt to these vehicles.” These studies promote a wait-and-see approach. After all, they argue, what if people love AVs so much that they just ride around in them all day, thus exceeding the current average miles traveled per vehicle? This seems to be the top concern in both reports.

Good news. We do know already of existing technology that is proven to reduce emissions and is being deployed for that purpose worldwide. Transportation tech covers more than just the vehicles on the road, it extends to the roadways themselves – and how they’re managed.

So we don’t have to get involved in a hypothetical argument here. It may seem a little less futuristic and exciting than the idea of an AV automatically adjusting to limit emissions while driving, but smart city technology is already proven to cut emissions in a big way: up to 15% nationwide, once intelligent traffic systems are adopted on a wide scale. That data comes courtesy of a recent white paper by the National Center for Sustainable Transportation & The University of California-Davis.

15% may not seem like much, but the Climate Change Authority is calling for a 20% reduction in traffic-specific emissions. That means that even if people get addicted to their AVs and presumably overuse their vehicles, if they manage to reduce emissions even by 5%, we could meet that goal. And if – as we believe they will – AVs fulfill the promise to slash emissions by a third, we could end up exceeding the CCA’s goal.

So what are these complementary systems that offer such enticing benefits?

Intelligent traffic systems are just a piece of the smart city vision. But they’re also the systems that are the most developed. Cisco, Siemens and IBM all have comprehensive intelligent traffic systems on the market, as do many other companies. Many of the systems have been in place for some time, but their benefits aren’t known to most people. So what’s in an intelligent traffic system – how do the pieces fit together, and how does each play a role in cutting emissions?

Here are just a few examples — all of which rely on smart technology for dynamic minute-to-minute adjustments that allow them to reduce congestion and emissions at the maximum rate.

Traffic monitoring systems use sensors, wireless communication and real-time data processing to estimate traffic flow, density and speed. The information gathered by these systems can be used to improve management on the municipal side and can also help travelers find alternate routes when there’s a big load on the highway. These systems help reduce traffic congestion, which in turn cuts emissions.

Integrated corridor management uses techniques such as dynamic ramp metering for highway access ramps and advanced signal timing on arterial road networks, both of which promote improved traffic flow. Again: a reduction in congestion means fewer emissions.

Travel demand management uses dynamic pricing to increase toll costs for drivers who wish to use a highway when it’s badly congested. The supply and demand effect applied to roads naturally results in many drivers seeking alternate routes rather than pay a big toll. A reduction in congestion – you can guess what comes next, fewer emissions.

Some of these measures have been in place for some time. Even your E-Z pass for toll booths helps the environment. If you think those electronic payment systems are great because you get to speed through a toll booth more quickly, you’re not wrong. But that same freedom to move through the tollbooths without stopping does its own bit to cut congestion. Those passes take you out of the line of cars idling and waiting to throw their change in the basket. As with all these other examples, cutting down on cars idling on the highway does a big part to curb emissions. It’s a win-win for you and the environment.

These are just a sampling of traffic management systems we already see in use throughout the US. In most of these cases, smart technology is allowing city managers to take concepts they’ve put into practice already, but to maximize their effects. And those that have taken the time to make their systems dynamic have seen a big reduction in emissions.

Even if AVs don’t live up to the spectacular promise of slashing emissions by up to eighty percent – and, again, we believe they will – we’re seeing infrastructure incorporated on roadways throughout the world that are proven to cut emissions: without needing any more validation data, or any studies on how people will adapt to these advances.

So, no need to hold your breath: it looks like we’ll all be breathing easier.

Rob Fischer is President of GTiMA and a senior advisor to Mandli Communications’ strategy team. GTiMA and Mandli Communications are both proud partners of the Wisconsin Autonomous Vehicle Proving Ground.

Follow Rob on Twitter (@Robfischeris) and Linkedin.

When envisioning the coming age of autonomous vehicles, it’s easy to get stuck on picturing AVs themselves. Their sophisticated sensors, flashy dashboards, and roomy cabins have created a lot of well-deserved buzz.

The problem with that is it’s an incomplete vision. While AVs themselves are glamorous, vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) technologies are essential to their efficacy. Without V2I tech, the autonomous vehicle dream might not come true.

Steve Caya is head of production at Roadview — a subsidiary of Mandli Communications, which specializes in geospatial mapping of transportation infrastructure. The field work he and others at the company have done over the years has underscored the need for V2I tech, he says.

His take: “just as human drivers require visual and auditory cues to ensure a safe journey, driverless cars will need vast amounts of vehicle-to-infrastructure communications data to understand their world.”

Welcome to the era of V2I, where the technology outside the car is as critical as the technology inside the car.

Defining the coming age this way allows us to stress what needs to be done to prepare the way for autonomous vehicles. And we can put that in simple terms: funding for the AV proving grounds.

President Trump has promised to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure over the next 10 years. That sounds promising. And it sets him up for an easy policy victory: funding for infrastructure that includes V2I is a smart, forward-looking investment. It leads to a new age of productivity and safety in transportation. So it’s an easy chip shot for the President — right?

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Even if the President laid out the perfect infrastructure bill, he still would need Congress to vote it into law. And Congress uses separate authorizing legislation for each category of infrastructure. There’s surface transportation, air transportation, water resources, telecommunications, and energy — to name a few. Congressional committees mirror this stratified approach.

The result, not to mince words, is trench warfare. Adie Tomer, a Metropolitan Policy Fellow at the Brookings Institute wrote: “more than half a dozen committees in each chamber [claim] at least some responsibility for infrastructure design and oversight,” with each sector gunning for its planning ambitions, construction methods, and funding streams.

So it should come as no surprise that the US does not have a single, comprehensive infrastructure strategy — let alone a plan to fund it. Up until now, it’s never existed. “Developing a single ‘infrastructure bill’ would require a Congressional Tower of Babel,” Tomer continued.

That said, in spite of popular belief, sometimes Congress does actually break new ground to get things done. And they made a great first step toward that recently.

On April 7th, Senators Gary Peters (D-MI) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) led a bipartisan group in the U.S. Senate — which included Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) — in calling for increased funding to support the advancement of connected and automated vehicle technologies. This appeal took the form of a letter to the Chair of the Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME).

The letter asked Congress to appropriate funding for CAV technologies’ development and testing at the various AV proving ground sites across the US. This is timely and appropriate. Before the recent designation of the proving-ground sites by the U.S. Department of Transportation, there were no national testing facilities whatsoever for testing AV tech.

That’s right: none. And while they are in critical need of funding, the AV proving ground sites are ideal locations to carry out the huge amount of necessary testing. After all, the promise of autonomous vehicles, in sum, is a car accurately performing safety-critical driving functions in a defined scenario, such as a driverless-car-only roadway. The proving grounds sites are therefore a huge opportunity: where else could AVs and V2I technology, and the interactions between them, be tested safely in the exact sort of environment for which they’re designed?

The Senators understand the importance of the proving grounds. They wrote: “connected and automated vehicles are going to be developed abroad if we do not take the lead in making sure these technologies are advanced right here in the United States.” Recent investments by Chinese firms in AV start-ups certainly bear this out.

“Identifying and selecting these initial proving grounds was a crucial first step, but the USDOT must now be given the resources to work quickly to ensure that testing and evaluation at these facilities can begin as soon as possible,” the letter continued.

These Senators actually get it — quite refreshing. They understand that V2I and AV technologies go hand-in-hand. They know these proving grounds sites, which generally bring together research institutions and tech companies, are key to building a national strategy around integrating this technology. And they can see that time is of the essence if the US is to lead the way for the AV revolution.

Steve Caya said he’s excited, along with the rest of the company, about the partnership. “There are significant challenges on the road ahead,” he said, “but testing and researching this revolutionary technology is imperative, and we’re glad to be taking part in it.”

After all, this technology could prevent 90 percent of all traffic fatalities. So while Congress dukes it out in the trenches, the real action lies in these proving grounds. We hope Congress is serious about developing a national smart infrastructure strategy to support AV tech. And, with optimism on that front, we applaud the bipartisan group of Senators calling for funding the proving grounds. It’s not a bad start, and we hope the rest of the government is listening.

Rob Fischer is President of GTiMA and a senior advisor to Mandli Communications’ strategy team. GTiMA and Mandli Communications are both proud partners of the Wisconsin Autonomous Vehicle Proving Ground.

Follow Rob on Twitter (@Robfischeris) and Linkedin.