Saying they were doing something no other government has done, Obama administration officials rolled out a plan Tuesday they say will enable automakers to get self-driving cars onto the road without compromising safety. In drawing up 112 pages of guidelines, the government tried to be vague enough to allow innovation while at the same time making sure that vehicle makers, tech companies, and ride-hailing firms put safety first as the cars are developed, the AP reports. The president and Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said that autonomous vehicles are too valuable for public safely and technological innovation to slow down with state-by-state regulations, or lengthy rule-making processes. Will states and cities be willing to loosen their regulatory grip over self-driving cars?
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“Fully automated vehicles are driven entirely by the vehicle itself and require no licensed human driver”, the policy says.
But technology companies will probably bristle at having to share data after an accident involving a self-driving auto, said Katie Thomson, former senior counsel at the DOT and FAA and now a partner at the law firm Morrison & Foerster. “NHTSA has the authority to identify safety defects, allowing the Agency to recall vehicles or equipment that pose an unreasonable risk to safety even when there is no applicable Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard”. Self-driving vehicles are no longer science fiction, as many companies either have autonomous cars under development or ready for use.
“We left some areas intentionally vague because we wanted to outline the areas that need to be addressed and leave the rest to innovators”, said Bryan Thomas, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration spokesperson. If deployed properly, driverless cars will significantly increase quality of life for all Americans through improved safety and accessibility of transportation-and will also reduce our over-dependence on petroleum.
While it is unclear when exactly fully autonomous vehicles will be on the road, most carmakers and analysts expect cars to come to market with increasingly sophisticated driver-assistance systems in coming years.
The DOT hopes its current approach-encouraging both autonomous vehicle development and safety-will bring those numbers down significantly.
Any doubt about the reality or imminence of driverless cars has all but vanished with the issuance of US government guidelines signaling Washington’s intent to regulate the transformative technology’s rollout during the next several years.
Google is now testing these vehicles in the Phoenix area, so chances are we’ll see them around here sometime in the near future.
If you were from another planet and just watched our TV vehicle commercials, you’d think we were a bunch of incapable twits.
Current federal regulations require cars to have steering wheels, but that could change. His family believe the vehicle was in autopilot mode at the time and is suing Tesla. At the time, the company said “neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied”.
“Problems with drivers not paying attention or getting sleepy or getting drunk are really ripe for autonomous to do a better job than humans”, said Ron Medford, director of safety at Google’s self-driving auto program and former deputy administrator of the NHTSA. The new system will primarily rely on radar sensors instead of cameras and deliver warnings to drivers who don’t keep their hands on the steering wheel.
Consumer advocates worry that the DOT’s voluntary approach will allow unsafe products on the road.
These guidelines will apply to the testing of automated vehicles as well as production cars.
State Police Trooper Robert Lima told the News Service there is not yet any State Police policy on how to handle automated cars.
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Industry reaction, however, was largely favorable. During the week of September 12, Uber rolled out its first fleet of self-driving cars in Pittsburgh. “This field is extremely competitive, and data has huge, huge value”, said Jonathan Handel, an attorney with TroyGould who has written about self-driving cars.
