The Obama administration said companies developing driverless cars should adopt a series of government recommendations to certify their vehicles are ready for USA roads, a policy aimed at front-running possible conflicting local rules and potentially reducing traffic fatalities.
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The wide-ranging proposal unveiled on Tuesday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) called on automakers to voluntarily submit details of self-driving vehicle systems to regulators in a 15 point “safety assessment”. The Department of Transportation’s policy package has four elements. The full policy on self-driving vehicles, released Tuesday, presents guidelines for manufacturers including data recording, crashworthiness and cybersecurity.
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 last level, Level 5, describes a auto that requires no human assistance at all. But advancements in technology means that won’t always be the case. But the guidelines have remained more open and broad than the typical safety standards applied to traditional, human-driven vehicles. It also requires that drivers be intimately familiar with the vehicle being tested and, in order not to distract other drivers, they must look like they are in control at all times.
New US regulations announced for self-driving carsRegulators and the industry see self-driving cars as potentially much more safe than conventional vehicles. If approved, it will be updated annually.
Giving regulators authority to approve technology before it goes on sale “might have potential for expediting the safe introduction and public acceptance of” highly automated vehicles, the NHTSA proposal said.
President Barack Obama himself penned an editorial about self-driving cars, published September 19 in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
In 2015 more than 35,000 Americans died in vehicle crashes, the president noted, citing a figure that’s been widely quoted in recent months – 94 percent of fatal crashes are caused by driver error, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Last year, Google had criticized proposed draft rules in California that would have required a licensed driver in an automated vehicle.
President Barack Obama gave an enthusiastic endorsement to self-driving vehicles that, when safe, could prove “transformative”, in an opinion piece published Sept 19.
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In this July 15, 2016, photo, a double decker tour bus drives by an Audi self driving vehicle parked on Pennsylvania Avenue, near the Capitol in Washington. “The quickest way to slam the breaks on innovation is for the public to lose confidence in the safety of new technologies”, Obama wrote Monday.
