If self-driving vehicles are going to play a role in the future of transportation, the public must trust that they’re safe.
Gatik, an autonomous middle-mile logistics startup, is taking another step toward making its case on this, announcing what it described as an industry first: a third-party audit of its safety case for ditching human drivers. The findings will be made public.
This move comes as Gatik attempts to build a business around driverless freight deliveries along routes in North America. It also comes amid heightened scrutiny on the AV industry, which has faced setbacks after some high-profile safety incidents in the robotaxi sector.
“The assessment of our safety case goes beyond a basic review of safety practices and mission statements,” Gatik CEO Gautam Narang said in a statement. “We are assessing our complete autonomous ecosystem to ensure safety in the real world, not just on paper.”
Gatik’s leaders hope to see industry peers follow suit, he added.
Audit me: Gatik enlisted the help of TÜV SÜD, an independent testing and certification organization, and Edge Case Research, an autonomy risk management provider.
In a news release, Gatik said the audit reflects that it’s “committed to launching freight-only operations at scale once it satisfies the thorough evaluations performed on its autonomous driving system by independent third parties.”
“Freight-only” is what the AV sector calls drives that are conducted without a human safety operator in the vehicle. The assessment is aimed at certifying that Gatik has met all the requirements of its safety case, which is the threshold a company has to meet to deem its tech safe enough to drive on public roads without a driver.
Ditching the driver: Founded in 2017, Gatik is focused on the “middle mile” of logistics routes—those that connect distribution warehouses, fulfillment centers, and retail stores. Its customers include Kroger, Walmart, and Tyson Foods.
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The startup aims to expand the number of trucks it has on the road from about 65 today to roughly 300 by the end of 2025, Richard Steiner, Gatik’s VP of government relations and public affairs, recently told Tech Brew.
One of the next big milestones Gatik is aiming for is to scale freight-only operations in Texas, where numerous other AV trucking companies also are trying to go driverless in the near future.
Transparency through data: Gatik isn’t alone in touting transparency about its safety record. Autonomous ride-hailing company Waymo, for example, recently launched a data hub where it provides safety performance data.
The hub shows how Waymo’s driving record stacks up against human drivers in the cities where it operates, making the case that Waymo’s vehicles perform better. The company’s data, which reflects 22 million miles of driving, shows that Waymo’s system has had 84% fewer crashes in which airbags were deployed and 73% fewer injury-causing crashes “compared to a human driving the same distance in the cities” where Waymo operates.
Waymo says it has made its data available in such a way that researchers can replicate its results.
“Safety transparency, like what we are providing in this industry-leading data tool, is key to building public trust as we bring autonomous driving technology to more riders,” the company said in a blog post.
Gatik, meanwhile, promised to provide updates on its progress on completing the safety case program.
“Arriving at this moment in our safety journey has taken eight years,” Adam Campbell, Gatik’s head of safety, said in a statement, “because we move at the speed of safety and learn from our extensive experience in real-world deployments.”