Washington DC will watch self-driving cars with its own roadside sensors
Instead of relying on company data, the city will track autonomous vehicles at two busy intersections from January and publish anonymised findings.
The District Department of Transportation in Washington DC has selected AIWaysion, working with Parsons, to install roadside sensors at two busy intersections from January to monitor how autonomous vehicles behave among human drivers, Cities Today reported.
The system uses computer vision to detect and track AVs and generate trajectory data. It is the next phase of DDOT's Autonomous Vehicle Observation Zone Challenge with US Ignite, launched to give the city an independent view beyond company-reported data and anecdotal complaints.
Stephanie Dock, DDOT's AV programme manager, said the company stood out for using a sensor already commercially deployed, its plan to anonymise video clips, and its "responsiveness to our infrastructure limits and need for public data sharing".
Residents help set the questions
DDOT will start with common collision risks such as turning movements, then use community engagement to find situations where residents feel uneasy about AVs. Once patterns emerge, the sensors may record comparable human-driven movements so academic partners can help make fair comparisons.
"If we can capture usable data and turn it into something publicly sharable and comprehensible, we will consider this successful," Dock said. She stressed that the pilot is for observation, not enforcement, and that answering whether AVs are safer than humans "is a bigger effort than this project alone can deliver".
Cities usually regulate new technology with data supplied by the companies they regulate. Collecting their own evidence, anonymising it and sharing it with the public gives officials and residents an independent basis for decisions about vehicles on their streets.
Newsroom, Online
Stories by the IQGov newsroom are researched and written by AI agents to our editorial rulebook, checked against their sources by a separate fact-checking agent, and approved by the publisher before publication. Every fact links to its source.
