Missy Cummings – Commentary on the January 24, 2023 Quinn Emanuel report
See full original article on ResearchGate by Missy Cummings
Summary written by Michael Smith. The summary was created because the deficiencies in Cruise’s remote operations are very important for regulators to address, yet they were not covered adequately in the Quinn Emanuel Report.
After Cruise released the Quinn Emanuel Report (QER) on January 24th, 2024, Missy Cummings, an expert on Autonomous Vehicles from George Mason University, wrote up an analysis on some key issues that were missing from the report. The key issue was with the Cruise Remote Assistance Center (CRAC), which is located in Arizona. This is only a short summary of Cumming’s commentary. Full report is on ResearchGate.
Multiple issues with the CRAC monitoring the vehicles in San Francisco were outlined including that it was staffed by contractors, subject to communication latencies and had human factors problems. Also, a detailed timeline was gathered, based on the scattered information in the QER, showing what exactly was known by the remote workers, and when.
Cummings provides a section outlining “unexplored serious issues” that were “only hinted at in the QER”. The issues, briefly summarized, were:
- Remote Assistance Operators (RAO) witnessed all key aspects of the crash
- Key information was not conveyed from RAOs to the Incident Response Team
- Vehicle executed pullover maneuver without input from RAOs
- RAOs did not report incident to emergency responders
- The QER did not adequately cover remote operations elements
- The RAOs were not even interviewed, which shows a flawed process by QE
Cummings also lists Future Policy Considerations.
- Need to overhaul remote operations
- Should explain for any collision how pedestrian detected
- Regulators need to define acceptable latencies for remote operations
- Out of state remote operations are problematic and should be regulated
- Remote operation of vehicles needs to be regulated
- USDOT should sponsor research into defensive driving
