October 2021

AASHTO Connected and Automated Vehicle

Policy Principles

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BackgroundDeployment of connected and automated vehicles (CAV) will greatly improve the safety and mobility of the na-tion’s transportation system. These and other transportation technologies have the potential to improve safety, equity, and sustainability. CAVs are an important part of multi-modal transportation system that support Coop-erative Automated Transportation (CAT) policies with a focus on integrating connected and automated vehicle technologies.

Infrastructure Owners and Operators (IOOs)—including state departments of transportation—play a fundamen-tal role in advancing, operating, and maintaining the physical and digital infrastructure necessary to support transportation technologies. Advancing CAV requires interoperable, reliable, and consistent infrastructure, a cohesive national vision, collaborative partnerships, funding, and clear policy.

Many unknowns remain for CAV. The path and timeline to deployment is unclear. Level 5 automation technology is costly to develop. It is unclear whether CAVs will be individually owned or shared. The public remains unfa-miliar and skeptical of the technology. The CAV industry continues to evolve, consolidate, and change.

Purpose The purpose of these policy principles is to articulate AASHTO’s position on CAV policy. While other sectors are defining their CAV policy principles, this document reflects AASHTO’s priorities for the new administration. This document reflects the current climate and policy needs for where we are in 2021 and is intended to be a living document, reviewed each year to reflect changes in technology and policy.

AASHTO CAV Policy PurposeTo safely advance and deploy connected, automated and cooperative vehicle technologies, AASHTO will promote a national vision and strategy that advances our goals to promote equity, accessibility, sustainability, and quality of life. A national strategy must include innovative and flexible Federal infrastructure investment, funding for CAV pilots and deployments that leverage public–private partnerships for digital and physical infra-structure, uniform Federal policy that maintains traditional Federal and state roles, and continued stakeholder convening to build trust and awareness of these technologies to meet community-identified needs.

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AASHTO CAV Policy Principles

1. A National strategy and vision are needed. Policy statement: AASHTO supports the need for a coordinated National Strategy which includes a vision and CAV deployment readiness strategy.

Recommendations

H The vision and related readiness strategy must be collaborative, with active input from IOOs, in-dustry, communities, local governments, and other transportation stakeholders, representing the populations their respective transportation systems serve.

H Model the National Strategy after existing successful approaches, including international models that show how independent, collaborative non-governmental organizations can lead these efforts.

H Federal research is critical to advance CAV technology including multi-modal applications for pub-lic transit and shared mobility.

2. Safety is paramount.Policy statement: CAV technology has the potential to significantly improve the safety of transportation systems, infrastructure, and users. IOOs should actively advance CAV technology and test and deploy these technologies to advance safety for all users.

Recommendations

H Transparency is important to inform communities and policy makers during research, testing, pi-lots, and deployments.

H Develop performance measures and reporting metrics to monitor system performance.

H Safety verification of automated driving systems is critical to ensure the safe operations of AVs.

H Promote the open exchange of lessons learned (building on NHTSA’s AV TEST Initiative).

H Share our knowledge of the effectiveness of these technologies and share lessons learned, so oth-er states can learn from others and enhance their programs.

H Identify consumer education needs for higher levels of vehicle automation and the appropriate local, state, and Federal role and action in identifying educational needs.

3. Support sustainability. Policy statement: A majority of new vehicles are developed with electric vehicle technol-ogies. We support technology investments that advance resiliency goals, sustainability and mitigate climate change. We support policy that integrates electric vehicles technol-ogies and other sustainable technologies with CAV technologies.

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4. The future is connected and automated.Policy statement: Connected vehicle technology is key to ensuring automated vehi-cles have the redundant safety measures in place to advance AASHTO’s goals of a safe, mobile, equitable and efficient transportation system.

Recommendations

H IOOs should focus on performance-based outcomes of the technology and avoid prescribing tech-nology that inhibits innovation to support futureproofing.

H AASHTO continues to strongly support the preservation of the 5.9 Gigahertz (GHz) spectrum to advance safety and realize the benefits of connected vehicle technologies.

H Underlying CAV infrastructure investments should remain technology neutral while also planning for flexible future investment.

H Promote consistent use of CAV technology to increase efficiency and address the limited funds IOOs have to adapt to new technology as it evolves.

H While connectivity is ideal, vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) tech-nology poses challenges. States are moving forward in IOO operations not assuming vehicles will be connected.

5. Promote innovative Federal infrastructure investment.Policy statement: More flexible and dedicated funding is needed to advance CAV technologies. Fund digital and physical infrastructure that enhances safety while also supporting technologies that advance CAVs.

Recommendations

H Support telecommunication investments that build the underlying infrastructure backbone for future investment.

H Support comprehensive investment strategies that support safety, environmental, CAV, smart mo-bility, and other transportation goals.

H Support public-private investment by updating Federal policy authorizing states to develop collab-orative investment strategies for the future.

H Ensure investment policy supports ongoing operations and maintenance and addresses asset man-agement and lifecycle strategies.

H Support more flexible spending using existing federal programs and direct appropriations to states.

H Promote research and investments that take a human-centered design approach to understand human factors, social acceptance and what users need in the future.

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6. Advance equity, access, and quality of life.Policy statement: CAV technologies have the ability to improve mobility, access and equity but could also further disadvantage marginalized communities. IOOs and partners recognize the role transportation plays in society, its ability to connect com-munities, and the historic inequities the 20th century created when building out the nation’s transportation system.

Recommendations

H Support equitable investment, policy, and engagement strategies.

H Require meaningful community-based engagement with an emphasis on marginalized and under-served communities.

H Support CAV technology investment that advances community-driven needs and increase access to desirable mobility options.

H Promote best practice approaches for public-private data sharing, analysis and use to ensure equi-table deployments of CAVs and shared mobility within communities.

H Support CAV technology investments that augment existing public transportation service and ac-cess, including first mile last mile connections.

H Leverage these technologies to foster future talent while developing the current workforce.

H Understand how CAV will impact a mixed-fleet environment.

H Address how CAV technologies may not be affordable for all users.

7. Preserve traditional state and Federal roles.Policy statement: National policy should preserve: (1) traditional federal roles in ve-hicle safety and consumer protection; and (2) state policy in regulating driver licens-ing, vehicle registration, insurance, and training. This distinction will become less clear as the operator role and vehicle technology evolves so Congressional efforts must include IOO voices when developing federal policy.

8. Uniform national policy is essential to avoid a patchwork approach.

Policy statement: Uniform national policy to authorize the safe testing and deploy-ment of CAVs is essential. This policy is needed to avoid the current inconsistencies and patchwork approach of state laws which leads to uncertainty and reluctancy to deploy technologies.

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Recommendations

H The Federal government must take a proactive role in advancing interoperable national CAV poli-cy, including Federal concepts of operations for AV. Outdated state policies must be addressed to accommodate changing trends and technologies.

H Coordinate through existing bodies including the Governor’s associations, motor vehicle adminis-trators, state legislatures, insurance, and law commissions.

H Support a unified body to convene stakeholders, monitor state policy, and update databases to help inform communities and lawmakers about state policy.

9. Strong Federal leadership is crucial to foster industry collaboration and community engagement.

Policy statement: Building off previous national dialogues, continue to collaborate, convene, and share information among IOOs, local governments, industry, research-ers, communities, planning organizations and other stakeholders. Inform and engage communities to build trust and awareness of CAV.

Recommendations

H Collaborate internationally.

H Engage across government, industry, academia, regions, and communities to ensure interoperabil-ity and partnerships to plan, test, demonstrate and deploy CAVs to advance safety, mobility, equity, and efficiency.

H Strong Federal leadership is critical to convening industry, the publics sector (including IOOs, local governments, and planning organizations), and other stakeholders to ensure strong coordination and collaboration and ensure the public and private sectors work together to safely deploy technol-ogies to meet community needs.

H It is critical to leverage technology to advance transportation solutions that directly meet commu-nity-identified needs.

H Federal support is necessary to support research and deployments beyond single occupancy vehi-cles to promote technology use for transit and other modes.

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10. Promote data sharing that preserves data privacy and security.

Policy statement: Advance a connected vehicle ecosystem that enables reliable, consistent, and secure V2I data exchanges to support cooperative automated trans-portation and CAV. Protect personal information and proprietary data and promote secure, vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) enabling information sharing.

Recommendations

H Preserve data privacy and data security

H Promote sharing of data from CAV and shared mobility platforms between public and private sec-tors

H Enable IOOs to leverage innovative ways to store, analyze, manage, secure, retain and discard CAV data.

H Develop national frameworks and best practice approaches to manage government and industry data and enact general data protection regulations; privacy-by-design, data reporting, data shar-ing, open source and other, related data standard needs.

H Promote Security-by-Design—Need to protect the security of the transportation system and the physical and digital infrastructure, to prevent cyber attacks.

H Support technology interoperability across vendors, industry, jurisdictions, and regions.

H Address data governance roles and definitions for local governments, states, and the Federal government, including federal guidance for state or privately-owned datasets, and defined data stewards for CAV data.

H Identify data stewards for CAV data and gain a clearer understanding of data ownership.

American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials555 12th Street, NW, Suite 1000Washington, DC 20004 | transportation.org

More information can be found at AASHTO’s CAV Information Portal at:

http://cav.transportation.org

You can also contact:

Matthew Hardy, Ph.D.Senior Program Director for Planning and Performance Management

202-624-3625 | mhardy@aashto.org