Safety

Aurora Informational Report: Preparing for Driverless Operations

Nat Beuse — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 18:03:45 GMT

As our team advances toward driverless trucking operations, we continue to make strong progress in closing the few remaining claims in our safety case and we're excited that we will soon be able to deliver our world-changing product.

Standing Up for Safety: Bringing Roadside Warning Devices into the 21st Century

Ossa Fisher — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 19:24:00 GMT

On December 26, 2024, after two years of silent review, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) denied Aurora’s application to pilot modernized roadside warning systems in autonomous trucking. While this does not prevent us from complying with existing regulations when we launch our driverless trucks in April, this decision raises a more important question: as Americans, how do we think about safety and innovation on our roads?

Preventing Fatal Collisions: How Autonomous Trucks Could Save Lives in the Golden State

the Aurora Team — Tue, 27 Aug 2024 17:26:21 GMT

We’ve deployed our safety-focused self-driving technology in Texas, where it’s currently delivering loads in autonomy for customers on a daily basis. And soon, we’ll look westward to routes that connect our highways to major freight corridors in California.

At Aurora, Safety Is More Than a Mission. It’s Personal.

the Aurora Team — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 20:14:56 GMT

Prioritizing Safety: A Spotlight on Driverless Trucking Capabilities

Nat Beuse — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 16:00:00 GMT

With driverless commercial launch on the horizon, it’s been an exciting year at Aurora as we’ve continued to validate the performance of our autonomous trucks. As we’ve shared before, safety is at the core of this process, especially as we mature advanced capabilities necessary to help prevent collisions and efficiently haul freight for our customers.

We believe that openly communicating about the progress of our autonomous trucking technology is essential to building trust with the general public, regulators, safety leaders, and the communities in which we operate.

When we launch our product on public roads, we don’t want it to be a surprise – our goal is to make the path to driverless operations clear and easy to understand.

Our team recently highlighted a subset of our validated driverless capabilities at our test track in Pittsburgh, where we hosted analysts, investors, and the media for a transparent look at how Aurora is preparing to launch our product. Guests saw a driverless Aurora Driver-powered truck safely interact with a law enforcement vehicle, respond to pedestrians who unexpectedly entered the path of the vehicle, react to a tire blowout, and more. The keynote from the event can be viewed online here, and we’re sharing videos from this driverless testing below.

Preventing fatal collisions: How the Aurora Driver expects the unexpected

Nat Beuse — Mon, 18 Dec 2023 18:13:28 GMT

At Aurora, our mission and value proposition have been driven by safety since day one. Not only has this meant making safe autonomous vehicle operations the core of our business model, we’ve made safety the metric by which we measure the progress of our technology. As part of this commitment, we have pledged to only launch our driverless product when we can show its safety through the completion of our Safety Case.

A core part of this approach is rapidly advancing and validating the Aurora Driver’s capabilities in our industry-leading Virtual Testing Suite. Through simulation, we can both improve performance in the complex scenarios we have already seen on public roads and test capabilities against rare situations we haven’t yet encountered (or may never encounter!) in the real world. But where do these scenarios come from? And how do we know they’ll be relevant to our operations when we launch our product?

We’ve taken a multi-pronged approach to answering these questions, leveraging the expertise of safety experts at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) as well as real examples of fatal collisions between human drivers on our Dallas-Houston launch route.

Stories from the road: Safety readiness case studies

the Aurora Team — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 16:00:00 GMT

As Aurora continues to hit milestones and prepare for the commercial launch of our Aurora Horizon autonomous trucking service, we’re keeping our industry-leading safety approach at the forefront of development and deployment.

Safe by design: The Safety Checklist process

the Aurora Team — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 16:30:00 GMT

We use two types of processes to manage the safety risks of vehicle operations at Aurora. One is the Safety Case, which covers autonomous operations on public roads with (and eventually without) an operator behind the wheel. The other is the Safety Checklist, which covers non-autonomous, manual operations on public roads and autonomous operations on closed tracks with an operator behind the wheel.

Aurora’s 2022 Safety Report

the Aurora Team — Thu, 15 Dec 2022 05:00:00 GMT

At Aurora, we’re committed to prioritizing safety and transparency in how we develop and deploy our self-driving products. As part of our commitment to sharing our work with regulators, shareholders, and the general public, we’re releasing an updated Safety Report, our 2022 Voluntary Safety Self-Assessment (VSSA).

The U.S. Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) encourage autonomous vehicle developers to share their safety approaches in these VSSA reports, and this release marks our third edition VSSA for our self-driving technology.

Our Safety Report opens with a letter from our CEO and co-founder Chris Urmson, highlighting Aurora’s recent safety progress and our commitment to the safe deployment of autonomous vehicles. Read his letter below, and check out the full report for more details.

A Letter from Aurora CEO and Co-Founder Chris Urmson

The lifecycle of a Safety Case at Aurora

the Aurora Team — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 05:00:00 GMT

Defining safety in the self-driving space and communicating that definition in a way that is transparent and thoughtful is an ongoing effort in the industry. Anyone who doesn’t live and breathe autonomous technology like we do might understandably be skeptical of this new and evolving space. Though many experts agree that autonomous vehicles will make our roads safer, to some, the idea of a self-driving vehicle may be incomprehensible or disconcerting. We believe that in order to quickly and broadly see the safety benefits of deploying self-driving vehicles on the road, autonomous vehicle companies like Aurora have a responsibility to be exceptionally transparent. That is why we are so vocal about our commitment to not deploying an autonomous product until we have a strong, evidence-based argument for the safety of our technology.

So, in the interest of transparency and accountability, today we are sharing a closer look at the work that underpins our development of safe self-driving technology.

A quick recap

Our Safety Case Framework, as we’ve outlined before, provides a comprehensive safety argument that addresses developmental and commercial products we create and operate on public roads. It consists of hundreds of safety claims and thousands of pieces of evidence that support the safety argument we make to satisfy the top-level claim that our self-driving vehicles are acceptably safe for operation on public roads.

Why Every Month Should be National Safety Month | Aurora

the Aurora Team — Mon, 18 Jul 2022 04:00:00 GMT

Leading with Safety: The Core Principles of Self-Driving Safety | Aurora

the Aurora Team — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 04:00:00 GMT

Welcome to Safety Case 101 | Aurora

the Aurora Team — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 05:00:00 GMT

Safety at Scale: The Importance of a Strong Safety Culture | Aurora

the Aurora Team — Wed, 26 Jan 2022 05:00:00 GMT

When speaking with partners, policymakers, and consumers about self-driving safety, we hear a lot of questions about how our vehicles operate on the road—how do they deal with aggressive drivers? What do they do when they encounter pedestrians and bicyclists? Can they navigate complex construction zones?

Building for Scale: When it comes to safety, it’s important to plan for expansion | Aurora

the Aurora Team — Thu, 02 Dec 2021 05:00:00 GMT

Building a company and technology to transform an industry like transportation means planning for the long term. One of the most critical first steps for developing a generational product is to invest in the foundational elements that enable scalability. The expansive experience of our team has given us key insights that have driven an approach to development we’ve seen other industry players only recently begin to talk about—heavy investment in virtual development over massive on-road testing, long-range and multi-modal sensing, locally-optimal and rapidly-updatable maps, and deep partner integrations with leading auto manufacturers.

Safety Case Framework Development and Tailoring | Aurora

the Aurora Team — Wed, 18 Aug 2021 04:00:00 GMT

Development of the framework

Aurora has adopted a safety case-based approach because we believe that it is the most logical and efficient manner to show and explain how Aurora determines that our self-driving vehicles are acceptably safe to operate on public roads. The heart of this framework is a structured argument, supported by evidence to demonstrate a claim for why our vehicles are acceptably safe. No single piece of evidence captures the totality of safety. There are complex interactions and relationships between the many elements that go into a self-driving vehicle. Ultimately, evidence without a claim is simply trivia and, conversely, a claim without evidence is baseless. A safety case-based approach brings these two essential concepts together in a logical manner to effectively show the work that we are doing to determine our vehicles are safe to operate on public roads. Along with delivering a safe product, being transparent with our approach is an important part of developing self-driving technology.

Aurora unveils first-ever Safety Case Framework that addresses the safety of both autonomous trucks and passenger vehicles | Aurora

the Aurora Team — Tue, 17 Aug 2021 04:00:00 GMT

Out on the Road: The importance of applying industry safety standards to AV development | Aurora

the Aurora Team — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 04:00:00 GMT

Self Driving and SMS: How We Are Implementing our Safety Management System | Aurora

the Aurora Team — Fri, 16 Jul 2021 04:00:00 GMT

Aurora's updated safety report and first-ever Safety Advisory Board | Aurora

Nat Beuse — Wed, 02 Jun 2021 04:00:00 GMT

A letter to regulators: Prioritizing safety and a technology-neutral approach | Aurora

Nat Beuse — Tue, 06 Apr 2021 04:00:00 GMT

At Aurora, we’re committed to working with our partners in the industry and the government to make sure self-driving vehicle guidelines and regulations prioritize safety, are technology-neutral, and ensure a level playing field for all self-driving developers. It’s unacceptable that tens of thousands of people die annually on our roadways and self-driving technology can usher in a new era of safety.

Aurora’s Safety Playbook: the foundation for bringing the Aurora Driver to market safely | Aurora

the Aurora Team — Thu, 11 Mar 2021 05:00:00 GMT

At Aurora, we move fast. We launched our next-generation trucks in 12 weeks. Five months after opening our office in Dallas, we were pulling customer loads autonomously with those trucks. However, we can only move as fast as we are safe. After all, we’re in this specifically to improve the safety of our roads. New data from the National Safety Council estimates that as many as 42,060 people died in motor vehicle crashes in 2020—that status quo is not acceptable. When self-driving technology is deployed broadly, it will save lives and make our roads safer. But that only becomes possible when we all put safety first.

Putting Safety into Practice: Aurora’s Safety Approach | Aurora

Chris Urmson — Wed, 02 Oct 2019 04:00:00 GMT

A letter to Congress: Rules to keep citizens safe and encourage rapid innovation | Aurora

the Aurora Team — Mon, 09 Sep 2019 04:00:00 GMT

State Road Rules: A Troubling Patchwork of Regulations | Aurora

Charity Allen — Wed, 28 Aug 2019 04:00:00 GMT

Within the self-driving industry, we talk a lot about working together to enact clear and consistent rules for regulating autonomous vehicles. Without these rules, we’ll likely see a proliferation of individual state regulations—in fact, we already see that happening.

Aurora Safety Report: The New Era of Mobility | Aurora

the Aurora Team — Mon, 29 Apr 2019 04:00:00 GMT

Self-driving technology offers an incredible opportunity to save lives, increase safety and efficiency on our roads, and make it less expensive, more accessible, and generally easier to get around. Someday soon you and your goods will be transported by the Aurora Driver.