Connected Vehicles

Looking for interesting and helpful resources on autonomous vehicles? Here are some starting points below.

Ontario Automated Vehicles Pilot Project Regulations, O Reg 306/15. Provides for a regulatory scheme for testing automated vehicles on roads in Ontario. Among other things, a driver must be present in the vehicle and the vehicle must be equipped with technology allowing the driver to turn the automation on and off.

The Ontario Connected Vehicle/Automated Vehicle (CVAV) Program is a public-private partnership among the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development, Employment and Infrastructure and Ontario Centres of Excellence. Website.
The Ontario Government’s InvestinOntario website pushes hard on Ontario as the place to be for connected car and autonomous vehicle research.

Canada’s Senate released a report on connected and automated vehicles in January 2018. The report was authored by the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications and is titled “Driving Change: Technology and the future of the automated vehicle“.

Daniel Therrien, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, emphasized the need for notice and informed consent when delivering written submissions to the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications on November 22, 2017. See the Commissioner’s written submission here.

An article on Ars Technica asked whether Google’s Waymo was at risk of failing commercialization, in part, because it is trying for a moonshot of a vehicle capable of travelling in many different environments – from side roads to highways. By contrast, examples abound of companies with smaller ambitions that seem to be getting close to market with useful autonomous vehicles. For example, Coast Autonomous is focusing on autonomous vehicles in low-speed environments – think campuses, downtown transit routes, and airports. Read Google’s Waymo risks repeating Silicon Valley’s most famous blunder. For an interesting article on a Coast Autonomous trial – read University trials driverless shuttle on the Smart Cities World website.
Avis Budget Group and Dentons US have written an interesting article for the ACC Docket titled “The Regulatory Future: Compliance in the Age of Self-driving Cars“. Find it in the February 2018 edition of the ACC Docket.
Aarian Marshall has written an interesting article for wired.com encouraging us all to be more realistic about the timeline for “self-driving” cars. Read “After Peak hype, Self-Driving Cars Enter the Trough of Disillusionment” on wired.com.

Timothy M Banks