Self-driving car capital? One senator thinks it can be Florida

It started with a TED talk.

Sen. Jeff Brandes (R-St. Petersburg) had just finished serving in the Army, and was looking to make a name for himself in Tallahassee as a junior representative. He came across a talk given by the founder of Google’s driverless car project.

He quickly realized the potential of self-driving cars to transform many aspects of daily life. Ever since, he has made it his mission to turn Florida into what he calls “an angel investor” in automation policy.

“We want to have policies in place for this technology to flourish,” Brandes said in an interview at the 7th Annual Florida Automated Vehicles conference in Miami, which concluded Friday.

Brandes has drawn headlines in the tech community for filing legislation allowing virtually any automated vehicle on Florida’s roads; this summer, he helped make Florida one of the first states to make AVs without a human back-up safety driver street legal.

Among the state’s advantages Brandes points to that he believes makes it ideal for AV companies: no snow, which makes lane markings more visible. That also means less road construction in general.

The state’s size also provides a huge testing ground, Brandes said.

“You can drive your automated truck 8 hours,” he said.

Each year seems to bring Brandes’ vision of Florida as America’s self-driving car capital closer to reality. Among the newest developments touted at this year’s conference:

▪ In June, a self-driving truck by California-based Starsky Robotics made a 9.4 mile demonstration run on the Florida Turnpike.

▪ Beep, a Lake-Nona based firm, is now shuttling passengers through that Central Florida planned community.

▪ Voyage, a Silicon Valley-based firm, is ferrying passengers in automated vehicles in The Villages.

And in Miami-Dade, Ford and its tech partner, Argo AI, continues to test out its AV technology after launching a pilot program in 2018.

“Among lots of rich insights, Miamians want self-driving services to integrate seamlessly into their lives so as to maximize their time and reduce their anxiety,” the company said in a statement.

Among those who share Brandes’ vision is Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez. In an interview, he said he believes the technology is “very close” to being widely available.

“We want to be a test-bed for this technology,” he said. Gimenez also touted the region’s no-snow advantage.

Florida has also drawn headlines as the site of at least two accidents involving Tesla’s “autopilot” feature; in 2016 Joshua Brown was killed in an accident near Williston; in March, Jeremy Beren was killed near Delray Beach.

In fact, according to Sam Abuelsamid, an AV analyst with research group Navigant, Tesla’s technology is not a true “self-driving” feature; rather, the technology falls into a “driver assist” category—one where human attention is still necessary. Tesla is misrepresenting its own features, he said in an email.

“The fact that the FTC and NHTSA also allow Tesla to continue sell a “Full Self-Driving” option that does not exist and may never actually be capable of what Musk promises only exacerbates this and contributes to the mistaken belief that Tesla’s can in fact drive themselves,” he said.

Tesla was not present at the Miami conference. It did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Whatever the case may be with Tesla, oversight of actual AV technology at both the state and federal level remains too lax, Abuelsamid said.

“They should be requiring much more data sharing and documentation of the efficacy of these systems before they allowed onto the streets,” Abuelsamid said in an email. “Unfortunately, no one has yet developed any measurement standards and regulators don’t have the expertise to do this so companies are left to self-regulate.”

For Brandes, safety is paramount; yet he believes a balance can be struck.

“We’re Switzerland,” he said. “We don’t want to be rushing this—but we want to be a leader.”