Elon Musk Expresses Concern Regarding New NHTSA Advisor Missy Cummings
Friday, October 22, 2021 | Chimniii Desk
Key Points
Missy Cummings is a former Navy fighter pilot, Duke University professor, and vociferous critic of Tesla's Autopilot software. Musk was suspicious of Cummings prior to her appointment to the NHTSA. Tesla's lawyers did not want Cummings to see company records pertaining to Autopilot, claiming concerns about her association with a competitor. Aurora's VP of Safety, Nat Beuse, is a former NHTSA employee. By bringing technical experience to the table, Cummings may be able to expedite NHTSA's work on developing a regulatory framework for AV development, which the industry has been pleading for. Klauser will then take the wheel in the famed 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2023, following Cadillac's plan to enter the event with a hybrid prototype for the first time in 20 years. "
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Creating a Level Playing Field in the Field of Regulation
Elon Musk was not present on Tesla's quarterly earnings call this week, but he managed to stir some controversy nonetheless.
On Tuesday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced the appointment of Missy Cummings as a senior safety advisor. Missy Cummings is a former Navy fighter pilot, Duke University professor, and vociferous critic of Tesla's Autopilot software. This is a temporary position designed to assist the agency in "transfer and application of new technology."
Elon Musk was quick to respond. "Her track record is objectively incredibly prejudiced against Tesla," he tweeted Tuesday morning. Musk's supporters quickly responded with a torrent of filthy personal assaults and online harassment, prompting Cummings to remove her account. Additionally, they established an online petition, sponsored by "Autopilot Users for Progress," requesting President Biden to reconsider Cummings' hiring. As of this writing, the petition has garnered about 20,000 signatures.
Cummings is the director of Duke University's Humans and Autonomy Laboratory, and she has spoken openly about how fatal incidents she witnessed as a Navy pilot influenced her study. In a podcast interview last month, she discussed witnessing a fellow pilot crash and die due to what she refers to as "mode confusion" — a state of confusion between the computer and the human regarding what is happening.
"We've known about this for a long time in aviation, but this is brand new knowledge for the car industry," she explained on the McKinsey Global Institute podcast. "We see this when people believe Autopilot and Full Self-Driving are synonymous, and they climb into the backseat or take their hands off the steering wheel, unaware of the danger they are in, and the car crashes."
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Pic: Mary Louise "Missy" Cummings
Cummings stated that her late colleague was eventually blamed for his own death, while she contends that it was also caused by hardware and software design failures. The NHTSA addressed a similar human-interface danger in 2018 when it recommended automakers, including Tesla, to improve their surveillance of drivers' attention while driving.
Although we do not yet know what Cummings will be doing at the NHTSA, industry observers have made some reasonable predictions. One is a position in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's collision investigations of Tesla's Autopilot software, including an August flaw probe into Autopilot crashes with fire trucks, police cars, and first responder situations.
"It's tough to imagine it's a coincidence that the NHTSA requested specific information on vehicle automation adoption and crashes from Tesla and other firms and then hired Missy," said Phil Koopman, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who researches AV safety. "I'd anticipate her playing a part in analysing that data to determine which safety risks, if any, exist in vehicles equipped with Level 2 or higher automated technologies."
Why does Musk appear so agitated? Perhaps because Autopilot and the FSD beta system that Tesla began rolling out to customers earlier this month are critical to Tesla's image as a technology pioneer, particularly when the rest of the auto industry catches up. Not only does the feature help sell cars, but at $10,000 a unit, FSD might generate additional revenue that could help Tesla's margins expand beyond those of a traditional automaker to the tech margins implied by its valuation. Musk confirmed this on Twitter earlier this week.
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Musk was suspicious of Cummings prior to her appointment to the NHTSA. My colleague Dana Hull discovered an email exchanged in 2020 between lawyers representing the family of Jeremy Banner, who was murdered in March 2019 when his Tesla collided with a semi-trailer in Florida. Tesla's lawyers did not want Cummings to see company records pertaining to Autopilot, claiming concerns about her association with a competitor. Cummings serves on the board of directors of Veoneer, a company that develops lidar sensors. (Musk has stated that lidar is not required for complete autonomy.)
Both Waymo and Aurora declined to comment on Cummings. Aurora's VP of Safety, Nat Beuse, is a former NHTSA employee. However, based on my conversations with other current and former workers of AV businesses, it appears that Cummings is well-liked.
Additionally, AV businesses such as Waymo have moved to separate themselves from Tesla and its camera-only approach to autonomy, which they believe would taint public perception of the technology and result in unduly tight regulatory constraints.
By bringing technical experience to the table, Cummings may be able to expedite NHTSA's work on developing a regulatory framework for AV development, which the industry has been pleading for. However, she levels the playing field, which may make the rest in the industry worried as well, even if they aren't Elon Musk.
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