The President and CEO of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America President, Shailen Bhatt, has been appointed to the advisory board of the driverless car company Aurora.
Tech Crunch reports that the company, which bought Uber ATG last year, has “tapped experts in aviation safety, insurance, medicine and automotive safety — all people from outside of the niche AV industry — to provide an outside perspective on the company’s overall approach to safety.”
The new advisers will look for gaps in its system and advise on the best ways to share its progress and record with regulators and the public. Along with Bhatt, members are:
- Dave Carbaugh, Former Chief Pilot Flight Operations, Boeing
- Adrian Lund, Managing Member of HITCH42, LLC and former President of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
- Dr. Victoria Chibuogu Nneji, Lead Engineer & Innovation Strategist at Edge Case Research
- Dr. Jeff Runge, President of Biologue, Inc. and former Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
- George Snyder, President and CEO of GHS Aviation Group
Nat Beuse, Aurora’s VP of Safety blogged, “When thinking about safety, especially in a developing industry like self-driving, we’re constantly forging new ground and asking complicated questions: What does it mean to be safe enough to drive on public roads? How do we measure safety? What are the standards that we and the industry need to set? Even after spending decades in safety, as an official at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and then in the self-driving industry, these questions are challenging. Sharing our work publicly and opening ourselves up to questions and critiques can be challenging too. But if we want to achieve our mission of making our roads safer, we need to be open and transparent and bring others – from regulators and competitors to safety experts and the public – into the fold.”
(Picture – ITS America)
