Important is in terms of how do you support really standg up or evaluating real life use cases or proof of concepts or pilots if you will and thats what we see other countries doing is getting these systems up and running to learn from them as quickly as possible. That takes infrastructure support. That takes things the government is best equipped to help execute and manage. I think thats another big area where we would really welcome the support of these agencies. So when youre talking about infrastructure, were planning smart cities. We need to be thinking five years ahead, ten years ahead in terms of the ability for us to have Smart Devices and the like. Exactly. The Vehicle Infrastructure piece of it the markings on the roadways, basically equipping the infrastructure to be ready. If were talking about large investments we should be looking into that. Federal and state. I think ann harbor is a good example. They have come together to create a test bed on the campus grounds. You were about to chime in. I was going to say weve been very encouraged by the way that secretary fox has approached this and recognizing its important to allow us to Work Together to develop the technology safely and find ways to deploy it. So we certainly dont know at this stage all the answers and i think weve seen flexibility to learn as we go and respond to those respond to what we learn. So its a problem of getting rules trying to imagine what the future is going to look like, shouldnt we be focussed on testing right now and citing a Good Environment for testing. We so far have found out that we dont have particular challenges with testing and the technologys advancing rapidly. Where were most concerned is about bringing this to market and regulations that would limit the operation of the technology and thats where we think the congress and federal government can help pave the way. Thank you. I wanted to give a public thank you to gm for being such a good partner on the spectrum issues you all leaned in and worked with us in a cooperative manner. That meant a lot to me. We appreciate you as well. Thank you. Senator peters is up next. Thank you. I have to say as a senator from michigan and representing the motor city that im very excited about these incredible develops in our Auto Industry and to see auto manufacturers coming together with suppliers, with Technology Companies all cooperating together to create some partnerships that will ultimately create an awful lot of new jobs and are going to lead to some extraordinary break throughs in terms of Vehicle Safety as well performance and as weve heard from your testimony and others deal with some of our mobility challenges general for various individuals. So i want to thank the witnesses for being here today to discuss this frontier, particularly connected in Automated Technologies and their life saving benefits. We know there are still some significant challenges that were going to be facing in order to actually see this realized. I think its clear that what we are on the cusp is Disruptive Technology in the auto sector probably unlike anything weve seen for i cant imagine how many decades, but its many decades since weve seen this sort of Disruptive Technology. As weve heard today is we know that over 38,000 people died on our highways last year and your companies are developing technologies that could very well dramatically reduce that number saving tens of thousands of lives and thats why i believe as members of congress and my colleagues here we have do everything we can to make sure that your efforts are not delayed or unnecessarily detestified. That means that congress has to ensure that the fcc, the dot and ntia are thoroughly testing any proposal for testing sharing between the dsr safety critical signals and unlicensed wifi devices. Technology should not be compromised by someone connected to a toaster or lieght switch. The technologies must be safe and protect privacy. We must avoid a patchwork of regulation that will stunt the deployment of these technology and implement a consistent National Policy and we must think carefully about the insurance implications of connected and automated cars and the possibility of liability shifting to the manufacturers as human control dissipates. We must increase our investment in connected and Automated Vehicle research and development. I support the administrations ten year 3. 9 billion proposal for this purpose and the 200 million in the dot fy17 budget request for funding a Pilot Program that will accelerate these technologies and i think its particularly essential that a portion of this money go towards funding a designated National Facility where industry and government can come together to conduct connected and Automated Research development and testing. As weve heard countries like sweden and china and japan have established these test sites. We need to do it as well. I appreciate the comment about the city associated with the university of michigan which is involved in some detailed testing on a tract which brings all the manufacturers together and perhaps get some comment from some of you as to how important it is to have a National Testing facility that can bring all the manufacturers together, suppliers together to make sure all these technologies actually Work Together. It doesnt do any any good to have a great product if it doesnt work out on the road and in all weather conditions as well. Snow and ice is important to test. Perhaps some of your comments as to how important it is for us as government officials to be focusing on creating a National Center where we can do this sort of testing . Can i address that senator . I think that would be great. My one concern would be that the test data was made available to a more academic expert based community for that validation that these tests are meeting the standards that we think they should. So that should be led by academics. An independent group, not necessarily academics but sure id be happy to. I take that youre volunteering. Thank you. I think to your point senator its very important that we do request find a way to thoroughly test these technologies as you indicate. It will take a lot of work amongst various companies and suppliers and regulators so i do think that having a way that we can approach this in a coordinated fashion would be very important to us going forward. Anyone else . We very much value the important to test in all kinds of weather conditions. Thats part of the reason why weve done as much testing as we have in different locations and wed love to learn more. I always wanted to pick up from a report that the department of transportation just released last week that posed to Automated Vehicles under the current motor Vehicle Safety standards. The reported concluded many standards included the presence of a human drivers and many cars that deviate from this conventional design vehicle certification becomes more difficult and dependent on new standards and how we interpret those standards. I would encourage your companies to submit questions so working together the Automotive Industry and government can determine how to address potential regulatory advances which you have expressed we need to have to move this technology forward. I encourage you to share testing data with nhtsa to help them developing these new standards. Perhaps some comments from you as to how youre working now with nhtsa sharing information and there was discussion about a new targeted authority as well if you could elaborate on some of those ideas i would appreciate it. We continue to work very closely with nhtsa. We have a long relationship with nhtsa. We have worked with them around this topic of Autonomous Vehicles. We look forward to learning more on both sides and continue to Work Together on appropriate Regulatory Authority because as i think weve emphasized many times we want to develop and deploy this technology safely and safety is our primary concern and making sure we can do it safely is very important as a company before we actually introduce this to the public. I couldnt agree more. Safety has to be front and foremost in this and for the last six years weve been engaged with nhtsa sharing our lessons from the road and taking their feedback and incorporating that into our program. Were very excited about secretary foxs initiative in building guidelines over the next six months and look forward to taking part in the public work shops that well be having that will bring a degree of transparency to the process that is important to build confidence. Thank you. Thank you senator peters. Yes, thank you very much mr. Chairman. In 2014, 3,179 people were killed in distracted driving crashes and another 441,000 were injured but right now too few states are receiving federal funding. We worked on this and it got included in the fast act to make sure states besides connecticut were able to receive some of the funding for educational efforts on distracted driving and with he know these incentive grants are helpful. Could you talk about what advances in Automated Vehicles would mean for reducing the incidents of distracted driving. We know its a major issue. Its expanding. Its not just kids. Its adults too. We had today in our newspaper front page two people hurt, one man killed getting he was a school bus driver, 79 years old and he went out and lived in a rural area. He was just going out like he did every day to get his newspaper at the mailbox and it turned out the woman who hit him was doing a text and shes been charged with a crime. That was today. Every single day theres Something Like that. Could you talk about how the Automated Vehicles whoever can take it would be helpful . I think with that unfortunate and tragic example highlights is the role that the systems can play immediately with systems like lane Departure Warning and other driver alerts and then ultimately the car taking evasive action as it gets more and more automated. Those are direct Counter Measures to the effect where the driver is not paying attention to what the car is doing and thats that immediate safety benefit that the systems that are commercially available now can bring which is why were so excited about the implementation of the stickers act and getting it out there into the consumer base. But as you continue down that path automated driving in the censors that go with it are what enable the car to avoid those situations regardless of what the driver is doing. Thats the ultimate safety benefit, not just for distracted driving but all forms of driver related accidents. I think the distracted driving incidents are tragedy but to the point Autonomous Vehicles can address the large percentage of accidents due to drunken driving or speed related accidents. Theres a very large percentage, over 90 of accidents are attributable to some sort of driver error and Autonomous Systems should be able to address that. Senator, this is at the heart of why were engaged in this work. When we look at the 38,000 people that were estimated to be killed last year on americas roads its an unacceptable number and theres so much opportunity to do good here. The technology will never be perfect but the opportunity to reduce those accidents and those tragedies is incredible. Go ahead. Sorry. This is one of the key things we bring to the equation. Looking at the issue of drunk driving specifically it has been determined by more than one Research Project that the advent of ride sharing has significantly reduced the incidents of drunk driving across the countriey. The ability to deploy this technology on a mass level is where we can tribute to this discussion. So by enabling a ride sharing platform like lift we can bring these safer option to the public and get it ready much quicker than other models could. If i can weigh in here. All of these things are absolutely true. My special is human error so this is definitely something that is going to help address these problems. I think the real trouble that were up against is the hybrid time. Were in a strange time where youre going to see more and mora tonmy being introduced into cars and thats going to increase distraction. Recently tesla suffered from the car getting in the backseat of the car. This is the funny thing about Human Behavior if humans think the cars pretty good then theyre behavior is going to be worse. The best thing to do is for everyone get out of their cars today and have them be driverless tomorrow. That would be the safest thing we can do but until then when we have gremlines on the same road with the teslas were going to have to be careful about how we set up that interaction. Weve seen this completely agree with the research. A few years ago we were at the point where we had technology that could drive well on the freeway. Imagine a product where you get in the car, drive it, put it on the freeway, press a button and then it drives for you. And we had 140 employees test that capability. And they loved the product. They thought it was fantastic. I think maybe the former Vice President for General Motors said that driving is the distraction and we saw that live. And it really comes down to the fact that at some point the Automation Technologies are just so good that they people overtrust it even when theyre told they shouldnt. This is again why were taking that leap toward fully selfdriven vehicles. The technologies exist to make sure if people are going to climb in the backseat or arent paying attention to the road that the system can warn them and get their attention back on the road. Okay. Ill put on the record another question because im out of time here about Autonomous Vehicles and increased mobility for Senior Citizens because were seeing what i call a silver tsunami. Ive been told to call it a silver surge of more seniors and so to be curious ill ask questions on the record later about how there can be help for seniors as well. Thank you very much. Those are good questions and were going to be there soon. Actually this is a my neighborhood from minnesota thank you senator for those questions. This will have great application for people who need an Autonomous Car to keep them awake until they get to south dako dakota. You mean when theyre driving through south dakota. Senator. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Its the perfect segue talking about big wide open country we have out west and thank you for testifying today. I can tell you its refreshing to hear about the innovation and job creation thats occurring outside washington, d. C. My home montana is the fourth largest state, we have 75,000 miles of public roads, 95 of those are rural. Our interstate highways you can go 80 miles an hour. That is the speed limit. So i see those Autonomous Vehicles as having the potential for significant safety improvement. I want to talk through some safety issues and get your comments. Theyve been addressed a little bit here already. Driver fatigue, my wife and i were heading out for diner this weekend and there had been a roll over most likely driver fatigue, claimed the life of a man from my hometown. Billions of losses every year, thousands of lives lost because of driver fatigue. How will Autonomous Vehicles help reduce driver fatigue injuries and fatalities. If i may, i think in our model theyre not driving anymore and so the issue is mediated. Even in the case of the study that i talked about earlier we had 140 people use the vehicles. One of the most touching stories was a woman who lives about 1 1 2 hours from work and kmuts every day and she told us that coming in that she wanted to cook for her family and exercise and that she didnt have the time anymore. She used our car for a week and she said every day that week she got home and she was able to go for a run and cook for her family because she was not exhausted from fighting traffic. So i think these what i call the softer elements of social benefits of this technology are going to be enumable and hard to cant quantify up front. Were developing systems for some of these semi Autonomous Vehicles where we have cameras that look at the driver to sense where is the driver looking, are their eyes on the road, are they blinking, so we can now determine the state of the driver and take the appropriate Counter Measures to either stimulator reengage the driver. Those technologies will roll out here toward the end of this year along with that autonomous driving capability. Its probably more the semi autonomous where were at here. I want to talk about drunk driving. How will this reduce drunk driving. How do we reduce drunk driving injuries, fatalities . As you indicated in the fully autonomous mode its obvious. How about semi autonomous. There are technologies under development to try to determine if a driver is capable of responsibly driving. To be honest i think at the pace that autonomous technologies are moving i would hope we could get to these vehicles relatively quickly and they will be a solution for several of these issues around driving. This is related to drunk driving too. We had a horrible wrong way crash on interstate highway 94 that killed three people two weeks ago. Thinking about the way that google is working and maybe this is for your doctor, is ther