Ford, General Motors and Toyota have teamed up with engineering standards organisation SAE International to develop a new consortium to address the safety of automated vehicles.

The consortium will help draw up safety standards for autonomous cars 

Launching as governments around the world face the issue of how to regulate autonomous vehicles, Automated Vehicle Safety Consortium (AVSC) will work to develop a set of safety guiding principles to help inform standards development on testing, development and deployment of SAE Level 4 and 5 automated vehicles.

“We understand that autonomous vehicles need to operate safely and reliably in concert with infrastructure and other road users to earn the trust of the communities in which they are deployed,” said Ford Autonomous Vehicles LLC chief technology officer Randy Visintainer. “Our goal with the consortium is to work with industry and government partners to expedite development of standards that can lead to rulemaking.”

The consortium will initially develop a roadmap of priorities, applicable to developers, manufacturers, and integrators of automated vehicle technology and focusing on data sharing, vehicle interaction with other road users, and safe testing guidelines.

The work will also harmonise with efforts of other consortia and standards bodies throughout the world.