International Trade Commission Investigation of Certain Vehicle Parts and Components
The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released a report on the applicability for vehicles equipped with automated driving systems (ADS) -- also known as autonomous vehicles (AVs) -- of vehicle safety tests typically performed on more traditional vehicles. Federal law requires that vehicle models met certain Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) before they can be sold and driven on roads in the U.S.
The report concluded that "the test methods developed were able to perform a representative sample from the [Office of Vehicle Safety Compliance] test procedures used for compliance verification. However, due to the nature of the braking and stability control testing, the ADS may prevent the vehicle from executing the defined test procedures without modification to the ADS and/or test procedures."
As an example of the limitations, a human tester usually drives a vehicle through an obstacle course, but the obstacle course is meant to test how a vehicle handles extreme circumstances and does not reflect normal road conditions. AVs don’t know how to handle obstacle courses like these because they don’t reflect normal road conditions. One could collaborate with an OEM and ask them to make adjustments to the AV’s code so it knows how to navigate the obstacle course, but then issues arise around whether the altered code diminishes the value of the results of the AV’s obstacle course performance since the AV wouldn’t be operating on roadways with the same coding.