Can regulators keep up with the pace of self-driving tech?

The advent of autonomous driving is pushing the auto industry to rethink how standards and procedures to vet and deploy new safety technologies are set and adopted by regulators.

Recent crashes, such as the fatal Uber accident in Arizona and several involving semi-autonomous systems in Tesla vehicles, have put a spotlight on how the industry is regulated. Just last week, NHTSA ordered a cease and desist on an aftermarket device that effectively disables the safety controls on Tesla's Autopilot system, raising concerns that regulators cannot keep up with new technology.

Companies working at the forefront of self-driving car technologies such as mapping, sensors and pedestrian detection have to meet a high bar set by organizations such as SAE International and the International Organization for Standardization to achieve automotive-grade safety standards. But in a constantly evolving landscape, critics fear government authorities are falling behind in evaluating and approving these guidelines for road readiness, and, in some cases, are too inexperienced with new technologies to incorporate them into cars.

"This goes well beyond the types of technology NHTSA has dealt with in the past," said Marc Scribner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. "This is a big learning experience for regulators."

Motor vehicle safety technology is governed by rules set by NHTSA in 73 mandatory requirements in the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards.

NHTSA can adopt or update rules based on a process outlined in the 1996 National Technology Transfer and Advancement Act, which allows for companies and standards bodies to introduce technologies and petition for updating or being excluded from certain regulations. Last year, for example, Volkswagen Group of America petitioned to be exempt from headlight requirements that blocked the company from introducing adaptive driving beams, following a similar petition from Toyota a year prior and updated guidelines from SAE in 2015.

Critics say the speed of technological development is outpacing how fast regulators can consider new or updated standards. A 2016 report commissioned by NHTSA found that 33 of the 73 vehicle safety standards requirements would create issues for autonomous car companies to test and certify new technologies.

"This is a problem that has been ongoing for decades," Scribner said. "It's only going to get worse as these developers are coming up with these really transformative technologies."

Standards bodies are issuing and updating autonomous-related rules more frequently, a function of how quickly tech is moving from research labs to public testing and exacerbated by the speed of software updates.

"As this technology rapidly evolves over the coming years as we reach a deployment stage, we have to expect SAE and similar groups will be revising standards much more quickly than every five years," Scribner said.

In recent years SAE has introduced and updated its five levels of autonomy, often cited as a yardstick for self-driving car programs. Last year, ISO introduced a software-focused pedestrian detection standard likely to evolve as programming improves.

Without clear approvals for integrating technology into production vehicles, some fear innovation could be stifled.

In some cases, developers have protocols to follow. But for relatively new tech, there is little guidance.

For example, in high-definition mapping, "there truly are no standards," said Ro Gupta, CEO of Carmera, a startup that focuses on street-level data acquisition and software guidance technologies. "There's no single customer using the same HD format for their maps."

Gupta said creating business strategies for autonomous mapping can be a "moving target."

"Eventually, one government and, ultimately, all governments and bodies will coalesce around something, but that could take decades," Gupta said. "In the meantime, you have this patchwork of self-standardizing and coalition-forming."

Until standards become common across the industry globally, companies will increasingly face questions on how to certify technology for the road.

Said Kobe Muranko, CEO of Arbe Robotics, a radar startup: "If there was no mandatory regulation, companies would demand that."