Making a Safety Case for Driverless Cars

About the talk

Making a Safety Case for Driverless Cars. From Jeff's abstract: “After offering a few insights about the engineering of passenger vehicles that offer some form of autonomous driving capability, I would like to discuss several questions that venture beyond the usual boundaries of engineering. For example, should an autonomous vehicle be designed to drive exactly in compliance with traffic laws — or should it be designed to mimic an expert human driver (e.g., exceeding the speed limit to keep up with the traffic)? I would also like to discuss questions about what kind of ‘safety argument’ society should expect from automakers that an autonomous vehicle is safe. For example, is it acceptable to argue that the widespread introduction of autonomous vehicles will eventually reduce the number of serious accidents, even if this means that some of these accidents could occur in situations that are very unlikely to result in an accident for a conventional vehicle without an autonomous driving capability?”

About the speaker

Dr. Jeff Joyce is the co-founder and managing director of a Vancouver-based engineering consultancy, Critical Systems Labs Inc., which provides clients with expertise in the specification and analysis of safety-critical systems across aerospace, automotive, defence, rail, medical devices, high energy physics and hydro-electricity generation. He has contributed to certification standards including RTCA DO-178C, recognized by Transport Canada and the US FAA as a basis for certifying software in commercial aircraft, and is a co-inventor on several patents assigned to GM, including a method for ensuring operation of limited-ability autonomous driving vehicles. He earned his doctorate in Computer Science from Cambridge University in 1990, with earlier degrees from the University of Calgary and the University of Waterloo.