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As regular Critical Link blog readers know, I’m both a car guy and a technology guy. So I am naturally drawn to articles at the intersection or car and tech. Thus, my interest in autonomous vehicles (AVs). EE Times recently had a provocative article by Carnegie Mellon associate professor Philip Koopman, whose specialty is AV safety. While Koopman definitely sees the potential benefits of AVs, he argues that AV technology is still “immature”, and that AV industry campaigning to keep regulatory oversight at a minimum is wrong-headed. This campaign, Koopman says, is based on what he calls “The Dirty Dozen” myths about AVs – a list of myths he lays out and debunks.

Using Koopman’s myth statements in full, I’ll briefly summarize his points, but urge you to read the full piece. Even if you don’t agree entirely with his premise that we need more AV regulation, not less, overall his points hold a great deal of validity.

Myth #1: 94 percent of crashes are due to human driver error, so AVs will be safer. The gist Koopman’s argument is that this misrepresents the original findings of a study that “94 percent of the time a human driver might have helped avoid a bad outcome.” Which is not exactly the same as accidents caused by the driver. Drivers do make mistakes; so will AV. It’s just that their mistakes will be different. AVs won’t be texting while driving, but there’s plenty that can go wrong.

Myth #2: You can have either innovation or regulation – not both. In fact, Koopman argues, you can have both. And that regulations can be written that explicitly allow for innovation. Even if the industry just sticks to its own generally agreed upon standards for safety, training, and testing, there’ll be plenty of room to innovate.

Myth #3: There are already sufficient regulations in place. Other than in NYC – where there are an awful lot of cars on the streets and pedestrians in the crosswalks – Koopman says there are precious few regulations. When it comes to safety, regulation equates to “little more than taking the manufacturer’s word for it.” Gulp!

Myth #4: We don’t need proactive AV regulation because of existing regulations and pressure from liability exposure. Not true, Koopman says. The regulations covered under today’s Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards are principally focused on basic safety functions – think headlights and seat belts – and do not address computer-based system safety. Which is pretty much what AVs are about. With respect to liability exposure, Koopman’s wary that companies with deep pockets for development may not mind making a few payouts (however large) to the families of those killed by an AV.

Myth #5: Existing safety standards aren’t appropriate because (pick one or more):

• • They are not a perfectfit;
  • No single standard applies to the whole vehicle;
  • They would reduce safety because they prevent the developer from doing more;
  • They would force the AV to be less safe;
  • They were not written specificallyfor AVs.

Hogwash, according to Koopman. There are existing safety standards that are flexible, and which cover AVs. Nothing in these standards would keep a developer from doing more than required and none of them would render AVs less safe (an argument Koopman finds “laughable”).

Myth #6: Local and state regulations need to be stopped to avoid a “patchwork” of regulations that inhibits innovation. These “patchwork” regulations exist in large part because AV companies pressure the state’s they’re working in to go easy on regulations, threatening to pack up and take their jobs to a more accommodating state. “Moving to regulation based on industry standards would help the situation. A federal regulation that prevents states from acting but does not itself ensure safety would make things worse.”

Myth #7: We conform to the “spirit” of some standard. Spirit of the law vs. letter of the law arguments may seem like hairsplitting, but this makes Koopman’s point pretty clearly:

Consider whether you would ride in an autonomous airplane in which the manufacturer said: “We conform to the spirit of the aviation safety standards, but we’re very smart and our airplane is very special, so we took liberties. Trust us – everything will be fine.”

Myth #8: Government regulators aren’t smart enough about the technology to regulate it. There is no denying that the technology underpinning AVs is complex. It’s not really a matter of smart vs. not so smart. It comes down to technology that is rapidly changing and requires tremendous expertise to truly understand. But Koopman points out the plan being proposed by the U.S. Department of Transportation invokes the standards that the AV industry has already agreed to. Which sounds smart enough to me.

Myth #9: Disclosing testing data gives away the secret sauce for autonomy. Nope, Koopman says. Reporting testing data won’t disclose a company’s intellectual property.

Myth #10: Delaying deployment of AVs is tantamount to killing people. So far, the safety benefits of AVs are all in the long-promised future. And so far, there’s nothing to prove that AVs will be safer than cars driven by humans, especially given that those human-driven vehicles are getting safer thanks to the growing use of active safety features (e.g., automated emergency braking).

Myth #11: We haven’t killed anyone, so that must mean we are safe. Hmmmmm. I just googled and it seems that there have been at least a handful of deaths associated with AVs. Not to mention that ‘so far, so good’ doesn’t equate to perfect safety.

Myth #12: Other states/cities let us test without any restrictions, so you should too. Road testing is important, and no one’s going to trust AVs until and unless they’re fully road-tested. But just because one jurisdiction allows for it, that doesn’t make it safe to do so. Here, Koopman gets back to his central theme that the AV industry really just has to adhere to its own agreed to safety standards and not put innocent drivers and pedestrians, caught up unwittingly in someone else’s experiment, at risk.

As disappointing as it’s been that AVs aren’t further along by this point, I’d hate to see things rushed to the point that there are enough public failures that the risk seems to start outweighing the rewards of autonomous vehicles. This could result in a backlash – and some over-reacting, over-regulation – that could stymie advances for years to come. I’d hate to see that happen. Sounds like some regulation is in order.

The past year has been a tough one. Most of us very likely know people who’ve had covid; many have lost family members, friends, colleagues. Most of us have very likely seen small businesses – shops and restaurants – close permanently. Many know folks who lost their jobs.

We’ve all been missing out a lot of things: getting together with family and friends; celebrations great and small; going to church. And we’ve all been missing out on the community gatherings that we may not even be aware of how much we enjoyed them – until they’re gone. One of which is Fourth of July fireworks, which many cities and towns had to cancel last year.

Fortunately, in many places, fireworks are back.

And engineer that I am, this makes me think of the technology that goes into those fireworks displays that light up the July sky. I posted about celebrating the Fourth a few years back, but I thought it was a topic that’s worth revisiting. So – thanks to an article by Kevin Clemens I found on DesignNews –   here goes with Kevin’s list of “interesting fireworks facts to help you understand the science behind the boom.”

In the beginning, there and here

The Chinese get credit for inventing fireworks, sometime around the second century B.C. Those first firecrackers were bamboo stalks. To get a bang out of them, you tossed them in a fire. Once the hollow air pockets heated up: BANG!

But it took another 1,000 years or so before “modern” fireworks came about. That’s when the Chinese concocted gunpowder by combining potassium nitrate, sulfur, and charcoal. And by stuffing the gunpowder into the bamboo stalks, we had fireworks.

By the Middle Ages, fireworks had made their way to Europe, and the Italians – I am proud to say – who were the first Europeans to produce fireworks.

Although July 4^th wasn’t made a federal holiday until 1941 – something I did not know – we’ve been celebrating it since 1776, when our Continental Congress decided to declare our independence.

Now, on to the science and technology

Launch: There’s nothing new about some of the science and technology. The firework shell is set off from a mortar, which is nothing more than a short steel pipe. A black powder charge, the lifting charge, in the pipe is set off and thrusts the shell up and out. The lifting charge also lights the shell fuse. When the shell gets to its launch altitude, there’s a bursting charge that blows the shell up. (This is how it’s generally done. In some cases, although it’s more expensive, a rocket is used to launch the shell.)

Colors: The colors are produced by combustible metal salts: the most commonly used are “strontium carbonate (red), calcium chloride (orange), sodium nitrate (yellow), barium chloride (green) and copper chloride (blue).” The most common metal salt – sodium chloride, i.e., table salt – won’t work because it “absorbs water and would produce a fizzle rather than a sizzle.” And while red is a very popular color for fireworks, reds – when color is combined with pyrotechnic compounds – produce carcinogenic “junk” that drifts back down to earth. (Researchers have found a non-carcinogenic, “environmentally-friendly” approach. Just to be on the safe side, you might want to make sure your blanket and lawn chairs are upwind from the junk!)

Patterns: Remember running around the backyard in your pj’s writing your name with a sparkler? Those stars you see when a shell bursts may well be pieces of sparkler compound. Those starry night fireworks are the most common ones. More sophisticated designs are created by having different colored sections that ignite at different times, using separate fuses. Patterns are also created using star pellets. Explosive charges are deployed to make the outlines grow larger so you can see what they’re supposed to be.

The physics behind it:

Calculating the trajectory for a fireworks projectile, launched from a mortar tube is a straightforward two-dimension kinematics problem. In this case the initial launch velocity is positive, the acceleration due to gravity is negative, and the maximum altitude depend only upon the vertical component of the initial velocity (neglecting air resistance on the shell). The horizontal velocity (moving downrange) is a constant (neglecting air resistance), and the position depends upon the time of flight.

Show choreography: Back in the day, fireworks shows were choreographed by hand. These days, there are design programs and simulation software that let designers see what their displays will look like. And when the show goes on:

Prior to the invention of “e-match” the pyrotechnics were fired by hand using manual switch panels. But now, once the show has been fully programmed, script files can be exported to the firing system to make sure that each launch and explosion is timed to perfection. Better and safer shows are the result.

Environmental and safety concerns:  Red fireworks aren’t the only environmental (and health hazard) problem. To avoid fires being set when residual matter drifts to the ground, many fireworks displays occur near water. That means that perchlorates produced will drift into water, “contaminating rivers, lakes and drinking water.” Air quality can also be temporarily impacted by fireworks displays. Cleaner fireworks are being introduced.

In terms of your safety as you sit there watching the fireworks, thanks to the professionals running the fireworks show, audience injuries are rare-to-nonexistent. The fireworks people buy (legally or illegally) and set off in their backyards are a different story. Thousands of consumer injuries are recorded each year. So be careful out there.

If you’re a fireworks fan, here’s hoping that things are back to normal where you live.

Whether you’ll be celebrating the Fourth of July with the local fireworks display, and/or firing up the grill in the backyard, and/or just breathing a sigh of relief that the worst of the pandemic seems to be behind us, I hope that you all enjoy a Glorious Fourth.