[SystemSafety] Uber Advanced Technologies Group publishes its "Safety Case Framework"

[Olwen Morgan]

On 23/07/2019 03:31, Bruce Hunter wrote:

<snip>

Although it misses the supporting strategy or context, it is good that 
they have gone public with this but it needs wider scrutiny and 
judgement against accepted standards.

<snip>

Uber's strategy will, IMO, be largely irrelevant because they do not 
control the fixed infrastructure in which their AVs will run. Railways 
have a dedicated infrastructure for trains and aviation has dedicated 
infrastructures for both civil and military flight. AV's will not be 
using a dedicated infrastructure and they will be trying to shoe-horn 
safety into environmental constraints that their designers had no part 
in setting.

I'm expecting AVs to work safely only where a such infrastructure can be 
provided, e.g. inter-terminal shuttles at airports or physically 
separate dedicated lanes on public roads. IMO no amount of in-vehicle 
technology is going to compensate for hazards arising from the existing 
design of non-dedicated infrastructure. The likely result, I suspect, 
will be a series of accidents before people realise that the lack of 
dedicated infrastructure is the critical problem.


Olwen