Philip Koopman

Where they publish

• Blog Safe Autonomy His blog on autonomous-vehicle safety. Has a feed.

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  Recent

  • Safety Architecture & Redundancy Patterns 30 Mar 2025  This is a lecture from my CMU graduate course on safety architecture and redundancy patterns. It describes numerous patterns that involve redundancy used for fault detection (fail silent), redundancy used for avai…
  • Cyber-Hurricanes and Automotive Software: Common cause failures and the risk of widespread automotive losses 20 Jul 2024 The recent CrowdStrike IT outage has focused attention on a topic rarely discussed, but fundamental to mission-critical systems: common cause failures. While this particular outage affected business and airlines more th…
  • Architectural Coupling Killed The Software Defined Vehicle 14 Jul 2024 SDV failures might have poor architectural cohesion and coupling as a critical factor. We’re reading about high profile software fiascos in car companies, and how they might be handling them, for example: The $5B VW bet…

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  • Mercedes Benz DRIVE PILOT and driver blame 7 Jul 2024 MB has softened their stance on Level 3 liability, but they still don't really have your back when it matters. Good news: Mercedes Benz has improved their position on driver liability. Bad news: But they’re not there ye…
  • Time to Formally Define Level 2+ Vehicle Automation 21 Jun 2024 We should formally define SAE Level 2+ to be a feature that includes not only Level 2 abilities but also the ability to change its travel path via intersections and/or interchanges. Level 2+ should be regulated in the s…
  • Perspective on Waymo's Safety Progress 17 Jun 2024 I am frequently asked what I think of Waymo's progress on safety.  Here are some thoughts on progress, mishaps, and whether we know they are acceptably safe. At current deployment rates it will take Waymo about 20…
  • Truths & Myths About Automated Vehicle Safety -- Video Series 16 Jun 2024 The past year has seen both peak hype and significant issues for the automated vehicle industry. In this talk we recap general trends and summarize the current situation for autonomous vehicles such as robotaxis, as wel…
  • The Waymo Utility Pole Crash 15 Jun 2024 Waymo vs. utility pole smackdown: the utility pole won. No apparent extenuating circumstances. Nobody was injured; the vehicle was empty. The pole suffered a minor dent but is still in service. This video has an intervi…
  • Academic Publishing, AI, and Broken Incentives 15 Jun 2024 Since I've been a part of the academic publication ecosystem for decades (as have some of my readers), I'll share some thoughts on the latest publication quality scandals: Junior faculty are suffering from an ever-incre…
  • SAE J3018 for operational safety 8 Jun 2024  Any company testing on public roads should conform to the industry standard for road testing safety: SAE J3018.  When AV road testing first started, it was common for testers to claim that they were safe…
  • Live Talk: Challenges in Autonomous Vehicle Safety Assessment 5 Jun 2024 Challenges in Autonomous Vehicle Safety Assessment Recorded live at a US DOT workshop on May 29, 2024. Knowing whether an autonomous vehicle is safe enough to operate on public roads is an extremely difficult challenge.…
  • Waymo's Misleading Claim of Saving Lives 4 Jun 2024 Waymo claims they are "already saving lives" so often, and people are so taken in by that misleading claim, that I'm going to take a moment to explain why it is misleading. And especially harmful when used as justificat…
  • Five views into the Cruise Robotaxi Pedestrian Dragging Mishap 3 Jun 2024  On October 2, 2023, a Cruise robotaxi dragged a woman 20 feet underneath the vehicle in San Francisco. The circumstances of the mishap and everything else are complex. But the robotaxi industry was profoundly shak…
  • Video: Autonomous Vehicle Safety: More Than Net Risk (Live) 11 May 2024  Talk for EV Society of Canada, May 7, 2024 -- recorded as a live webinar Safety will ultimately be the deciding factor for the viability of autonomous vehicle technology. Despite various pronouncements and hype ov…
  • New NHTSA high-speed/pedesterian AEB Rule 30 Apr 2024 NHTSA has a new rule out requiring high-capability Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) in new vehicles from 2029. Some key points from an initial read-through of the new NHTSA AEB Rule document are below. NHTSA points out…
  • Proposed new definitions for safety (Draft) 25 Apr 2024  The following definitions were proposed at the recent Dagstuhl workshop and will be incorporated in an upcoming Safecomp paper. These below text is hereby placed in the public domain, with a specific objective of…
  • When Is a Recall Not a Recall? 11 Mar 2024  This opinion piece claims that a Tesla software update should not be a recall. I'm calling bullsh*t. Article Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-believe-the-tesla-headlines-safety-recall-software-update-c2e95f…
  • The Exponent Report on the Cruise Pedestrian Dragging Mishap 29 Jan 2024 On October 2, 2023, a Cruise robotaxi Autonomous Vehicle (AV) in San Francis-co struck and then later – as part of different maneuver – dragged a pedestrian under the vehicle as part of a more complex road mishap. …
  • Cruise Pedestrian Dragging Incident Report 26 Jan 2024 Cruise has released materials from an investigation into the pedestrian dragging incident and related external communication transparency failures of last October. There is a lot to unpack, but remarkably little of it t…
  • Vay deployment of tele-driven cars 20 Jan 2024 Vay is deploying tele-driven cars in Las Vegas. At a first pass they have done some safety homework, but open questions remain that they should address to instill public confidence. I spent some time doing background re…

  Link verified 20 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.