Argo AI, a Pittsburgh-based autonomous vehicle company, received praise from international certification group TÜV SÜD following an audit of Argo's safety practices, which TÜV SÜD found conform to the Autonomous Vehicle Safety Consortium's (AVSC) best practices and SAE International's J3018 standard for safe on-road testing.
Per TÜV SÜD's audit, the testing found that Argo meets, and in some instances exceeds, industry best practices and standards as outlined by AVSC and SAE International. The group specifically brought attention to Argo's four-week certified training course it puts all AV testing specialists — the humans who sit in the driver's seat to monitor the self-driving vehicle in the event that human-based action or override needs to occur — through as part of their onboarding at the company.
To be a testing specialist, Argo requires that employees have a valid driver's license and pass criminal, education and employment verification background checks, including screenings of Department of Motor Vehicles records. These employees must also pass a 10-panel drug screen and alcohol test before they can get into a vehicle equipped with Argo's self-driving technology.
Once that initial screening is complete, testing specialists are then subjected to four weeks of training, which includes classroom instruction, test track training and on-road evaluations. During this time, testing specialists will also be challenged by fault injection training, which is where Argo will intentionally create unexpected scenarios on a test track to prepare a testing specialist to react appropriately to the kinds of unusual encounters that occur in real-world driving environments.
The training for its testing specialists is one snapshot into a culmination of efforts that Argo said speak to the overall importance the company views on topics relating to safety, and having those efforts confirmed by an external source only further fuels that narrative, the company's Senior Communications Manager Catherine Johnsmeyer said.
"Public road testing is a privilege that we take incredibly seriously. Safety is really at the core of everything we do as a company, it's our foundational value," Johnsmeyer said. "Because our public road testing is visible to the public, we take the safety of our employees and the communities in which we operate very seriously. The importance of also having that third-party validation, that's not really something that we've seen any other company do before so that helps us as we continue to look to build trust with these communities."
Even the decision to have a third party evaluate Argo's safety practices received praise from TÜV SÜD.
"In the United States there currently are no statutory requirements for third-party assessment prior to permission being issued to test automated vehicles on public roads. The fact that Argo still approached TÜV SÜD for assessment is a clear demonstration of its commitment to autonomous vehicle safety, and its trust in our expertise in the autonomous vehicle field," Christian Gnandt, vice president of automated driving at Munich, Germany-based TÜV SÜD, said in a release. "We were very happy to work with Argo and to have the opportunity to draw on our extensive knowledge in this field and also expand our experience at the same time."
Argo's Co-founder and CEO, Bryan Salesky, used TÜV SÜD's findings as a reason to reiterate the importance of safety when it comes to self-driving vehicles.
“Public trust is just as important as actually delivering the technology,” Salesky said in a release. “We can develop the technology, but if consumers and communities don’t trust it, then we’ve not done our job. We hope this extra step helps ensure that Argo is earning the trust needed to have self-driving cars welcomed to the market.”
