National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) awards grant to UCLA's Garrick Institute and Mobility Lab, together with TRC Inc. and Toxcel

The NHTSA awarded the team composed of the Transportation Research Center Inc. (TRC), ToXcel, and UCLA Garrick Institute for the Risk Sciences and UCLA Mobility Lab with the project “Overview of Operational Safety Concepts of Level 4 ADS Fleets.” The project has a period of performance of 2 years. It aims to identify safety risks associated with Level 4 ADS Mobility as a Service (MaaS) operations and the fleet operator's responsibilities and activities to mitigate such risks. Professors Ali Mosleh and Jiaqi Ma will serve as the PIs and Co-PIs of the project, and Dr. Marilia Ramos will serve as the Principal Researcher. 

Automated Driving Systems (ADS) offer the potential to reduce crash-related deaths and injuries, improve access to transportation, and reduce traffic congestion and emissions. For ADS vehicles operated in a “mobility as a service” model, operational safety oversight becomes the responsibility of the fleet operator. Operational safety responsibilities of the fleet operator may include roles, functions, and aspects related to: inspections, dispatching, maintenance and repair, ODD-related vehicle usage, in-service health and status monitoring, incident response, crash investigation and reporting, teleoperations, staffing, training, recordkeeping, and other related functions. Correct and consistent adherence to policies, procedures, and strategies to achieve the ADS relevant operational safety responsibilities will be essential to facilitate safe and ongoing operations of ADS-equipped vehicles within the fleet.

To identify the operators’ operational safety responsibilities and propose risk mitigation actions, the team will perform a risk assessment of ADS MaaS operations. The project tasks include:  i) conducting hazard identification of Level 4 ADS MaaS operations, ii) performing risk assessment, iii) identifying fleet operators’ operational safety responsibilities, iv) proposing activities that could help fleets mitigate risks and achieve operational safety responsibilities, v) evaluating the mitigation activities.