Washington, D.C., January 28, 2022 – The Lidar Coalition applauds the Department of Transportation’s release of the National Roadway Safety Strategy, and the goal of eliminating roadway fatalities. The Coalition is a group of seven of the leading lidar manufacturers, which have come together to promote safety, equity, and sustainability through the deployment of lidar-based technologies. The Coalition looks forward to collaborating with the Department to achieve this goal through the deployment of critical automotive safety technologies and intelligent infrastructure.
The Coalition is particularly supportive of the regulatory actions outlined in the “Safer Roads” and “Safer Vehicles” sections of the Strategy, including:
- Updating the New Car Assessment Program
- Updating the Monroney Label
- Establishing Performance Standards for Automatic Emergency Braking
These regulatory actions will significantly improve safety on our roadways, and help to educate consumers on the capabilities and limitations of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). In all of these regulatory actions, the Department should ensure that all ADAS technologies are enabled with sensors that can detect all road users in low-light conditions, when the vast majority of vulnerable road user fatalities occur. The Department should also use regulatory actions to enable: (1) the safe deployment of autonomous vehicles; and (2) the deployment of intelligent sensor-based infrastructure, both of which have the potential to vastly improve safety on our roadways.
We look forward to the Department advancing these actions as soon as possible.