As self-driving cars are becoming more common on Pittsburgh streets, people are starting to ask new questions.
How will autonomous vehicles affect parking? What does this mean for people living in low-income communities? And, for government officials, how will this technology impact my constituents?
Gerardo Interiano’s job is to answer those questions — or at least start the conversations that could lead to an answer.
As head of government relations at Aurora Innovation, a technology company with offices in Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Palo Alto, Calif., developing self-driving cars, Mr. Interiano works with government officials on all levels to “lift the veil” about how this type of technology works and how it can benefit communities.
Mr. Interiano, who moved to Pittsburgh from Austin, Texas, to join the Aurora team in April, has worked in government roles at the state and federal level, as well as spent time working as a government affairs executive in other industries.
Working with an autonomous vehicle company is especially exciting because there is a clear, beneficial mission that he says is hard to dispute.
“Everybody understands the difference that it can make if you can cut your commute in half and spend more time with your family,” he said. “Everybody who’s lost someone in a car accident or that has been in a car accident themselves [understands] if we can make a difference in reducing the number of car accidents, it’s a really positive change.
“Our responsibility is to work with each level of government and understand what are their goals. How can we help them accomplish those initiatives while at the same time making sure that the regulations and the laws that are being passed are going to be able to allow for this tech to be deployed?”
For Mr. Interiano, who is one of about 100 Aurora employees in Pittsburgh, each work day is different as he moves back and forth between the federal, state and local levels, and even connecting with community groups to answer their questions and address their concerns head-on.
At each level the goal is the same from his perspective as a representative for Aurora: “Deliver the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly and broadly.”
“It’s a great opportunity and a huge responsibility for us to be able to write the rules of the road with all of these officials,” he said.
The autonomous vehicles industry continues to face scrutiny over safety concerns, which were heightened in March 2018 after a woman was killed in an accident with one of Uber’s self-driving cars in Arizona.
Mayor Bill Peduto told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in March that his administration has been working with Uber to address the concerns raised by the fatal accident. Uber removed its cars from Pittsburgh roads for nine months before returning them in December. Mr. Peduto also signed an executive order in March to create more policies for self-driving cars in the city involving safety, transparency and data sharing.
At Aurora, the company says safety is a central pillar as they develop their technology, the Aurora Driver. They have implemented virtual testing before putting their cars on the road and are developing a set of criteria to more quantitatively assess their success.
The self-driving cars Aurora puts on the road in Pittsburgh, and their other cities with headquarters, are still staffed by two vehicle operators who act as an additional safety measure. The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation requires a licensed driver to be in the driver’s seat while a self-driving car is on the road.
Part of Mr. Interiano’s job is to develop a relationship with local leaders, like Mr. Peduto, city council members and community groups. On the local level, Aurora has worked to forge a partnership with the nonprofit Girls of Steel, which Mr. Interiano says is training the youth who will one day become the engineers Aurora will hire.
On the state level, his role means working with PennDOT to get the company’s cars on the road. Aurora was the first self-driving car company to receive authorization from PennDOT in October 2018, following new state requirements earlier that year.
Four other companies received PennDOT authorization later that year: Qualcomm Technologies Inc., Carnegie Mellon University, Argo AI and UATC, which is part of Uber Advanced Technologies Group. PennDOT also authorized Aptiv Services US, in February.
“Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh are really leading in this space,” Mr. Interiano said. “They are seen as leaders across the country when it comes to self-driving technology, and they’re working with us and constantly reaching out and having those conversations so we can make sure we can get these technologies on the road.”
On the federal level, committees in both the Senate and the House of Representatives are collecting feedback from people in the autonomous vehicle industry about what type of legislation needs to be passed.
In 2017, the House passed an autonomous vehicles bill, but the bill did not pass in the Senate. For this new round of legislation, Mr. Interiano said Aurora is focused on creating “rules that are going to keep citizens safe and allow for rapid innovation to be able to continue.”
For example, Aurora wrote in a letter submitted to Congress, the federal government should maintain regulation over autonomous vehicles rather than broadening state control in order keep regulations consistent across the country.
Along the same lines, Mr. Interiano said Aurora would like to see the federal government step in to standardize some rules of the road that differ across state lines: Who has the right of way when making a right turn on a road with a bike lane — the driver or the cyclist? Is a vehicle required to stop for a school bus on the opposite side of a multilane road?
Just as a driver would have to remember each set of rules, so will the technology controlling the self-driving car, he said.
“Right now, there’s a patchwork of rules all across these different communities that don’t necessarily tell us what it is that’s safer for drivers,” he said.
Although there are several self-driving car companies in Pittsburgh, when it comes to public policy, Mr. Interiano said the sense of competition doesn't apply.
“We’re so much stronger when we go in together,” he said. “In the end, we want to make sure as an industry that this is something that the public trusts and the public has confidence in.”
Lauren Rosenblatt: lrosenblatt@post-gazette.com
First Published: October 7, 2019, 10:00 a.m.