CADA - Civil Autonomous Driving Authority

With the imminent introduction of autonomous driving vehicles to our roads, accidents are bound to happen, some due to AI error, some caused by human error and some unavoidable due to other environmental events like deer or children running into the road etc.

It cannot be left to manufacturers of the vehicles, the judiciary or individual governments to manage the investigations into such events.

When aircraft crash the CAA investigates. We should have a Civil Autonomous Driving Authority CADA.

AV = Autonomous Vehicle
Green Box = A recording of the environment in which the vehicle driving. This would include visual recordings of the surroundings, car data such as speed and position and any further environment data available such as time, temperature etc.
White Box = AV system enclosed to protect proprietary code but with common input and output so that it can be plugged into a vehicle simulator.

CADA would make available a set of test scenarios that AVs must pass to be licensed.
All AVs to have black boxes to record the last journey made.

When an accident occurs, a set of steps would have to be followed:

• A black box is supplied to CADA
• A simulation of the accident is created using black box data
• A white box is used to drive a vehicle in the simulator
• Simulations are used to update scenarios for future AVs and current AV updates
• Scenarios are made open source for use by AV developers
• AV licensing fees used to pay for CADA

Problems
Who pays - The vehicle manufacturers would have to pay to licence a new EV
How to handle new sensor technology - The green box would have to be able to take
How to enable competition by giving low market entry cost - Access to all scenarios, the simulator, white box and green box specifications and data would be made available for free.