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U.S. prepares for autonomous vehicles with new policy

The coalition said in a press release that it welcomed the new policy because it made the rules standard across the country and also “supports rapid testing and deployment in the real world”.

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“Autonomous vehicle technologies do hold the promise of improving safety”. Regulators must continue to exert strong oversight, with minimum performance requirements, rigorous testing and verified data, she said.

While AAA Arizona is optimistic about the potential that self-driving cars present, motorists and regulators both have to be careful on the road to that day. Will they fully replace the human driver?

Self-driving Uber vehicles are already roaming through the streets of Pittsburgh.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has been investigating Tesla’s autopilot system since June following a fatal crash in Florida when the system was in use.

The report stops short of suggesting any impropriety in the relationship but makes clear that Google used its relationships with key officials to make a case for its vision for autonomous vehicles at the highest levels of government.

Foxx was joined by Mothers Against Drunk Drivers at the Tuesday news conference.

“From MADD’s perspective, we really do share the same goal”, Sheehey-Church said. And states would still enact and enforce traffic laws.

Other safety advocates responded cautiously.

It also describes a model state policy for regulation of driverless vehicles.

The government, she said in a statement, “should not rely instead on mere guidance” instead of “assuring public safety with minimum federal safety standards”. The guidelines also introduced accelerated timelines for regulatory matters regarding the autonomous vehicles, in order to better match the speed at which these technologies are being developed. But it also includes areas specific to each vehicle’s automation functions, such as operation design domain-when and where a vehicle will be fully in control-object and event detection, and response and fall back minimum risk condition-when the vehicle realizes it can no longer drive itself.

The issue is self-driving cars, also known as autonomous vehicles, the rapidly evolving technology that promises to improve Americans’ safety and mobility dramatically by removing the key cause of auto accidents – driver error. These levels, established by the NHTSA and SAE, range from braking and acceleration to auto sensing cars and changing lanes to complete autonomy with the vehicle controlling all safety-critical functions through the entire trip. As President Obama wrote in a op-ed in the Pittsburg Post-Gazette, the federal government is asking manufacturers to sign a 15-point safety checklist before offering their cars to the public. The administration’s guidance will promote safety, he wrote. If implemented, such bans would effectively curtail one of the largest near-term benefits that self-driving vehicles can bring us: more safe and efficient road-going freight transportation. Only a formal rulemaking will adequately protect public safety, the group said.

Portions of the proposed guidelines will be effective immediately. Henry Claypool, policy director of the Community Living Policy Center, said driverless cars could be hugely beneficial for disabled and/or old people, who are not able to operate vehicles themselves and don’t have access to taxis or public transportation.

In March, Cummings testified at a congressional hearing about the future of self-driving cars.

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This revolution stems from the fact that 35,092 people died on US roadways in 2015 alone and that 94% of these crashes were tied to human error. It contains a voluntary 15 point “Safety Assessment” (see attachment) to be utilized when designing, manufacturing and deploying HAVs. They’ll then document their evidence for NHTSA. For instance, companies testing self-driving cars in California must file reports of any crashes and an annual “disengagement report” detailing all the times that the self-driving technology failed. States, he said, should stick to registering the cars and dealing with questions of liability when they crash.

A group of self-driving Uber vehicles are lined up to take journalists on rides during a media preview at the company's Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh earlier this month