Aurora’s “Unshakable Safety Culture” relies on Aerospace Safety Experts it Forbid to Talk to Me. Then Heidi King Makes It Worse
Aurora’s announcement — https://aurora.tech/blog/aurora-shares-safety-report
Article — Aurora forms expert advisory board focused on driverless safety — https://www.autonews.com/mobility-report/aurora-forms-expert-advisory-board-focused-driverless-safety
Aurora recently announced it created a Safety Advisory Board. On it are two folks from aerospace.
“Building a team with depth and breadth of safety expertise is a key part of our safety approach. Inside Aurora, we have multi-disciplinary experts with decades of experience in self-driving and automotive safety. And to ensure we’re always testing our assumptions and raising our safety standards, we also want to leverage the expertise of safety leaders outside of Aurora. The Safety Advisory Board will offer an external perspective on Aurora’s overall approach to safety, as well as other broader industry topics, like how we engage with regulators and the public. They’ll also offer feedback on systematically managing, controlling, and mitigating safety risks.”
One of these folks is David Carbaugh — Former Chief Pilot Flight Operations, Boeing. I will come back to him in a moment.
Today, Nat Beuse, VP of Safety for Aurora, who was former safety lead for Uber, posted about this on LinkedIn
In that post Nat says — “For my entire career, from my time at NHTSA to my current role as Aurora’s VP of Safety, I’ve been motivated by saving lives and making our roads safer. Before Aurora, I joined Uber ATG to not only build an unshakable safety culture at ATG, but to set the groundwork for how the self-driving industry could and should approach safety.”
An “unshakable safety culture” at ATG and Aurora is not relying on human test subjects needlessly. Many of which the process requires be harmed or fatally injured. It is also not forbidding your independent aerospace safety consultant, David Carbaugh, from talking to me. I assume you told George Snyder the same thing? If I have no idea what I am talking about what is the harm in talking to me? I assume Aurora pays these folks? Seems like quite the conflict of interest. The “safety culture” doesn’t seem very “unshakable” does it?
Now with respect to David Carbaugh. I contacted him to make him aware of safety issues I believe he was not aware of and to warn him he was probably being manipulated and used. Basically, Aurora was misleading him so they could buy aerospace credibility. The first thing he told me was he needed to check with Aurora to see if he could communicate with me. This was a huge red flag. I told him that odds were they would no approve. Well, I was right. He said they told him not to communicate with me. Now, someone please help me understand why an “independent” safety expert (his definition of his role) would ask for permission in the first place, then allow anyone to tell him he cannot communicate on safety matters with me AND to then actually stop communicating. This is exactly what he is NOT SUPPOSED TO DO. The lack of courage and ethical fortitude is off the charts.
To make matters worse Heidi King chimed in congratulating Nat Beuse. Heidi is the former Deputy and Acting Administrator for NHTSA. She says “Congratulations, Nat. Those of us who’ve had the honor of working with you are pleased to learn of this accomplishment, and glad to see NTSB and ATG raising the bar together.”
This is what I posted in response
Raising the bar? If you are going to state something like that, given your former position, where people have been harmed needlessly and many more will be if the status quo you are enabling continue, you can withstand a little scrutiny.
The NTSB, nor NHTSA nor Aurora are remotely close to doing the right thing from literally ANY POV, other than personal selfishness. Not from a time, money or safety POV. The ONLY group who gets this is USDOT VOICES. Now tell me, do they have it wrong? Just like Nat Beuse and David Carbaugh, this is the exact opposite of how you are supposed to approach this.
The NTSB frets over human Guinea pigs then chastises and punts to the even more reckless NHTSA
USDOT introduces VOICES Proof of Concept for Autonomous Vehicle Industry-A Paradigm Shift?
Aurora is trying to buy credibility and trust vs earn it. And it is doing so by misleading and manipulating the public. The way to do this right is to do exactly the opposite. Use the right development approach and show the public scenarios learned and disengagements. Data vs hype.
This industry is a professional, ethical and moral debacle. Yes, Tesla and Elon Musk are the most egregious offenders. But don’t think for a second the majority are on much higher ground. Which AV maker or OEM is going to rise above it first?
Update 6–10–2021
Someone reported one of my posts on this subject, on the Nat Beuse thread, to LinkedIn for violating rules. Included below. So not only did Aurora forbid a safety consultant from talking to me they told LinkedIn my pointing this out and objecting to it on professional, ethical and moral grounds is against policy. Seems odd that is I were wrong these folks would state that and why vs cancelling the messenger.
Aurora is trying to buy credibility and trust vs earn it. And it is doing so by misleading and manipulating the public. The way to do this right is to do exactly the opposite. Use the right development approach and show the public scenarios learned and disengagements. Data vs hype.
Aurora’s “Unshakable Safety Culture” relies on Aerospace Safety Experts it Forbid to Talk to Me. Then Heidi King Makes It Worse
https://imispgh.medium.com/auroras-unshakable-safety-culture-relies-on-aerospace-safety-experts-it-forbid-to-talk-to-me-7d7f2d479dc1
Only you can see this comment. It’s been removed because it goes against our Professional Community Policies.
More on my POV including how to resolve this
The Autonomous Vehicle Industry can be Saved by doing the Opposite of what is being done now
SAE Autonomous Vehicle Engineering Magazine — Simulation’s Next Generation
· https://www.sae.org/news/2020/08/new-gen-av-simulation
Tesla “autopilot” development effort needs to be stopped and people held accountable
My name is Michael DeKort — I am a former system engineer, engineering and program manager for Lockheed Martin. I worked in aircraft simulation, the software engineering manager for all of NORAD, the Aegis Weapon System, and on C4ISR for DHS.
Industry Participation — Air and Ground
- Founder SAE On-Road Autonomous Driving Simulation Task Force
- Member SAE ORAD Verification and Validation Task Force
- Member UNECE WP.29 SG2 Virtual Testing
- Stakeholder USDOT VOICES (Virtual Open Innovation Collaborative Environment for Safety)
- Member SAE G-34 / EUROCAE WG-114 Artificial Intelligence in Aviation
- Member CIVATAglobal — Civic Air Transport Association
- Stakeholder for UL4600 — Creating AV Safety Guidelines
- Member of the IEEE Artificial Intelligence & Autonomous Systems Policy Committee
- Presented the IEEE Barus Ethics Award for Post 9/11 DoD/DHS Whistleblowing Efforts
