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| komando.com |
Article thanks to Rolf Lockwood and truckinginfo.com. Links provided:
I take it back. Way back. In my May column I wrote about the Arizona fatality in March involving an Uber vehicle in autonomous mode. The facts were “a bit sketchy,” I admitted, but suggested that “in a sense they don’t matter. It’s about the optics.”
Well, it certainly was about the optics in the larger context of social acceptance in the autonomous world. And they were undeniably bad, even though it was the first fatal accident involving what people call a ‘robot’ vehicle.
“I’d venture a guess that autonomy actually has little to do with this accident, that nothing could have prevented the woman’s death,” I wrote back in May. “There simply wasn’t time for any reaction, human or otherwise.”
But there actually was time, apparently, according to a 300-page report released by the Tempe Police Department in late June. And in fact the report blames the crash on distracted driving. Sound familiar?
To remind you of the circumstances, the Uber vehicle — a Volvo XC90 SUV — was doing 44 mph on a multi-lane roadway at night, apparently in Level Four autonomous mode, and simply failed to “see” Elaine Herzberg crossing the road while walking her bicycle. She was not at a crosswalk, jaywalking in other words. A so-called “backup” human driver — Rafaela Vasquez — was present, though not actively driving. Worse than that, the police report says the driver was watching ‘The Voice’ on a cell phone, and in the 20 minutes or so before the crash, her eyes were off the road some 32% of the time.
The driver in this case, and it’s clear in a video the police released on Twitter, saw the woman crossing the road only half a second before impact. The car did not brake at all.
FreightWaves, in an interview with Brad Moore, Director of Communications and Media Relations for Central New Mexico Community College noted that CNM is at “the intersection of I-25 and I-40 in the heart of Albuquerque, two highly traveled trucking routes,” making it an ideal spot for training the next generation of drivers. According to Moore, CNM has long offered a “college-credit truck driving certificate program that takes 12 to 15 weeks to complete, as well as contract training for local trucking companies that wanted one-on-one, accelerated training opportunities for their prospective drivers.”
By 2015, CNM was receiving more demand for “accelerated training that wouldn’t require a trucking company or individual to provide the vehicle,” and by fall 2016, “CNM Ingenuity, an arm of CNM that offers accelerated training programs in high-demand fields, received approval to use one of the Class A vehicles from the college’s traditional semester-long program for one-on-one trainings. The response to this type of training was very positive and led to significantly higher demand for accelerated training opportunities, with little to no marketing. That led to the planning of the new accelerated program,” Moore explained.
As for appealing to younger drivers, Moore estimates that 80% of inquiries about the new program have been from millennials, and that their first group of students has already started hitting the books. “The first cohort of the accelerated program started on July 9 with five participants. A new cohort of six to nine students will now start every four weeks. The August cohort is nearly full. In the fall, we plan to begin running two cohorts a day to meet demand,” Moore stated.
“Since announcing the launch of this program, we have received a tremendous response from trucking companies and people in our community who want to become truck drivers and earn a good living,” said Kyle Lee, chief executive officer of CNM Ingenuity. “As a community college, this is exactly what we strive to do – educate and train community members for quality jobs that serve the needs of our regional economy.”
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