Optimus Ride’s Approach to Safety: Safety Culture
Optimus Ride designs, builds, and operates customized electric and autonomous transportation solutions for low-speed geofenced locations, from residential communities and mixed-use developments to office/industrial parks, ports, airports, academic campuses and city zones. Optimus Ride is committed to upholding a culture of safety throughout the company, as there are many people working on a complicated system in different environments nationwide. We believe that a culture of openness and shared responsibility will best help to reduce and respond to these risks, as well as help to ensure the safety of our team, our users, and those we share the road with.
Optimus Ride’s safety culture builds upon industry standards and best practices for functional and operational safety. These practices include sharing information about safety standards and expectations with all employees, creating avenues for reporting safety concerns and incidents, incorporating lessons learned into our development and service operations, and monitoring leading indicators for safety-critical aspects of our system’s performance. In practice, our safety culture enables us to improve safety by fostering trust and the free flow of information.
Functional Safety at Optimus Ride
Optimus Ride's design, validation, and deployment procedures incorporate system safety processes based on industry best practices which are reinforced through the company’s safety culture. The functional safety of the system is evaluated at each phase of the design and validated through ongoing design reviews and testing. We monitor the system’s safety performance during pilot programs to improve the overall safety of our system.
The functional safety is evaluated in three phases:
- Phase 1 - Requirements, Design, and Analysis
- Phase 2 - Verification and Validation
- Phase 3 - Fielded Systems
In Phase 1, we utilize state-of-the-art, test-driven development practices to integrate the safety analysis of the autonomous driving system (ADS) with its design to allow for continuous iteration and re-evaluation of safety goals as the design is changed. This practice includes following principles of Safety Guided Design, Hazard and Risk Assessments (HARA), and Safety Engineering.
In Phase 2, our team evaluates the system’s performance related to hazards and risk reduction. At this stage, we perform simulations in standard and stressed operating scenarios before we move to private, closed course testing to gain confidence in the system’s performance. Once these are complete, Optimus Ride moves to perform public road testing in a controlled and regulated manner.
Finally, in Phase 3, our system undergoes monitoring and maintenance of safety critical issues for proper response, bug reporting, tracking, and analysis. This includes proper configuration management to verify the correct version of the system is in use.
Operational Safety at Optimus Ride
All employees who will be operating the vehicles are required to participate in Optimus Ride’s intensive training program and maintain good standing as a certified Vehicle Safety Operator (VSO). During the program, employees are introduced to Optimus Ride’s safety culture, protocols for operation, and safety reporting systems. The program takes place in four phases:
- Phase 1: Classroom Training + Engaged Observation with Trainers and Management - During classroom training, VSOs are introduced to safety principles and standard processes for vehicle operation, including analyzing vehicle logs to understand the basics of its behaviors. We then utilize our private test track(s) to familiarize the trainee with operating our vehicles. This is followed by supervised training on public ways once the VSO has demonstrated proficiency operating the vehicles.
- Phase 2: Monitored Practice of Vehicle Operation and Role Responsibilities with Management and Supervisors - To safely manage the vehicle under all circumstances, VSOs are trained on how the vehicle and its underlying systems perform under normal conditions as a baseline and are then introduced to applicable warning systems and safety-critical bugs, including software and hardware malfunctions.
- Phase 3: Monitored Practice of Vehicle Operation and Role Responsibilities with Supervisors and Colleagues - Trainees continue operation on public roads with supervisors and colleagues after receiving the go-ahead from their manager.
- Phase 4: Evaluation of VSO Performance - If completed successfully, trainees become certified Vehicle Safety Operators and enter the continuous learning phase.
- Phase 5: Experienced Classification and Continuous Learning - After certification, employees are partnered with experienced personnel until they have completed sufficient in-vehicle driving hours to gain the ‘experienced’ level classification. Certified VSOs are required to upkeep their status by participating in continuous training based on changing vehicle configurations and internal processes. This process includes assessing the performance of VSOs through scheduled and random auditing. After these reviews, we coach VSOs for ongoing learning and development.
The Role of Optimus Ride’s Safety Culture in VSO Training
The Optimus Ride Vehicle Safety Operator training program prepares employees to participate in our safety culture. As part of this, VSO trainees are familiarized with our reporting systems for safety-related issues, learning how to identify and escalate potential safety issues without fear of retaliation, including the option for employees to make anonymous reports.
Operations and bug reports are shared with the appropriate stakeholders throughout the company, while safety-critical reports are evaluated by our internal Safety Committee which is composed of key members from the engineering and operations divisions of the company. Upon receipt, the Committee investigates the root cause(s) of the issue, devises and implements a comprehensive solution, and notifies employees of the investigation’s outcome. From the outset of their career at Optimus Ride, trainees know that all employees can improve safety by motivating continuous improvement throughout the company.
Optimus Ride’s Commitment to Vision Zero
Optimus Ride is committed to the goals of Vision Zero – to eliminate all traffic accidents in our city streets by setting safe speed regimes. Extensive studies have shown dramatic reductions in fatalities, especially at pedestrian intersections, with speeds below 20 miles per hour. Optimus Ride’s autonomous driving system is designed to meet principles of Vision Zero. Our system can safely integrate into any vehicle platform to adapt to community needs for passenger service and last-mile logistics.
Currently, we support two vehicle platforms, the Polaris GEM e4 and e6 models, which are classified as Low Speed Vehicles (LSVs) according to FMVSS 500 and meet all U.S. federal safety standards. Our vehicles are programmed to adhere strictly to Vision Zero speeds. We believe self-driving vehicles have the power to enable mobility access within our communities while saving lives. We hope to continue engaging with the communities we serve to advocate for Vision Zero and educate the public on how autonomous transportation systems will play a key role in road safety in the years to come.