Roger Fingas
The U.S. Department of Transportation will reportedly be laying out new guidelines on self-driving cars in July, hoping to improve the speed with which companies like Apple and Google can deploy their technology.
Regulations need to evolve faster, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration head Mark Rosekind told an industry conference in Detroit, according to Fortune.
Notably the administrator proposed that self-driving systems shouldn't have to be perfect to be authorized, only a minimum of twice as good as human-operated vehicles. This would theoretically cutdown on American highway deaths, which Rosekind likened to "a 747 crashing every week for a year."
He also hinted at the possibility of accepting a Tesla offer to share data from cars equipped with its Autopilot feature, which while not fully self-driving can keep a vehicle on a highway and avoid collisions with other drivers.
"We're looking to see what the offer might be," Rosekind explained. "If the offer is there, we're going for it."
The NHTSA has previously said that while there are many legal obstacles before cars without wheels or pedals can be sold, there are far fewer barriers towards cars that keep those human controls as a backup.
Apple is believed to be developing an electric car under the codename "Project Titan." The first model could ship as soon as 2019 or 2020, but may not initially be autonomous. That could have to wait for subsequent models or software updates.
Malcolm Owen
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17 Comments
Since corporations now regularly pen laws and regulations themselves and then hand them over to the elected officials to be made law, I wonder who is writing the autonomous car regs? As far as Apple waiting to add autonomous driving features later - seems like a good plan. If the auto-driving abilities of cars are going to be determined and managed by regulation (as it should be) then there is little reason to innovate here. Just build your car to meet or exceed the regs and move on. Not really a marketing opportunity since competitors have to reach the same goals. Focus on making the essence of the car innovative. Enhance the driving experience, performance, appearance, comfort efficiency, environmental impact etc.
I've been very impressed with what I've seen from Volvo so far. personally I can't wait for the age of self-driving cars
Sharing data? The US government will jump at the opportunity to legislate that.
Interesting.... While leaving the parking lot at the Four Seasons in San Francisco, I saw a Tesla parked in the VIP valet area, plugged in. It definitely was not their regular Model S as the front grille was non-existent.
Mark Rosekind is an absolute moron, "twice as good as a human driver", wow, even if it is possible how is that to be determined.
Fully autonomous cars that drive as good as an experienced driver on all kinds of roads under all weather conditions are currently impossible and will stay impossible for many years.
The only way to approve the driving of an autonomous car is to test it in the same way as human drivers; it has to pass the drivers exam. You can call it the drivers Turing test, if the car performs better or equal to the exam norm it will pass, if it violates the law later on it has to pass the exam again like human drivers have to (in some situations), also, each car has to pass individually.