Autonomous vehicles on state's roads still likely years away

SEATTLE — Washington state is laying out its plans to regulate driverless cars tonight. We started digging into this after an Uber self-driving car hit and killed a pedestrian in Arizona early this morning.

Fifty companies already have permits to test on public roads and highways in California.

So how close is Washington to following suit?

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​The state is taking steps toward putting autonomous vehicles on our roads. But they are baby steps.

The governor signed an executive order last June setting out guidelines for pilot programs for autonomous vehicles. But the best estimate is that we are about five years away from a lot of those vehicles being on our roads.

There are videos aplenty touting the magic of a vehicle driving itself. And the experts have said autonomous vehicles could save us from ourselves since most accidents are caused by human error.

Then came the accident early Monday morning. For the first time ever, a self-driving vehicle, in this case an Uber, struck and killed a pedestrian even with a human driver in the car.

"How acceptable is a death caused by a robot or an artificial-intelligence-driven vehicle versus a human?" asked Reema Griffith.

Griffith runs the state Transportation Commission. She is already thinking about how autonomous vehicles will be integrated onto our roadways. She says the fatality in Tempe, Arizona, brings into sharp relief the tradeoffs we might have to accept.

"No one likes the fact that we have over 37,000 people dying (in vehicle crashes) every year in this country; over a thousand in Washington state are killed every year," she said. "And if we can go to a system that maybe drops that by 80, that's great. But is it still OK? And is it realistic to think a computer or a robot can be 100% perfect all the time?"

As it is, the state Department of Licensing says there are already semi-autonomous vehicles on our roads. Those that, say, stop on their own to avoid a collision. So far, just five companies have registered with the state to run their own fully autonomous vehicles, including Google.

But what is happening in California, putting these self-driving shuttles KIRO 7 highlighted last November on the roads, is not yet happening here.

"We're not ready for that," Griffith says.

And she predicts the state won't be ready until at least 2023.

The state Legislature just passed a bill to form a work group to study how best to enter this brave new world of vehicles driving themselves.

"To kind of get everybody in the room around the table to start talking about the implications of this technology in terms of public safety," she said, "but what else do we need to do to invest to make sure our infrastructure is ready to accommodate these cars safely?"

The bill is awaiting the governor's signature. The governor has given every indication he intends to sign it.

Cox Media Group