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Senate Committee Expected To OK Autonomous Car Bills in Michigan (detroitnews.com)

Michael Wayland, and Melissa Burden, reporting for The Detroit News: Michigan legislators could vote as early as next week on sweeping autonomous vehicle bills that would allow self-driving cars on any Michigan road without a human driver behind the wheel. The Senate's Economic Development and International Investment Committee is holding a public hearing on the bills at 10 a.m. Wednesday at Nexteer Automotive, 3900 E. Holland, in Buena Vista Township in Saginaw County. The seven-member committee is expected to send the bills to the Senate floor for a vote as early as Tuesday. If approved, the bills would need approval of the House before heading to Gov. Rick Snyder's desk. "We're very, very sure that this is going to move out of committee tomorrow," Sen. Mike Kowall, R-White Lake Township, who introduced the legislation, told The Detroit News on Tuesday. "We've aired out just about everything over the sun."

2 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. Re:This is a first by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Michigan hosts the automotive testing grounds of several companies. In southeast Michigan seeing experimental, preproduction vehicles on public roads is common.

    This legislation isn't about change or something new. This legislation is required to maintain the status quo.

  2. Re:They will be great on icy roads by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Because it's invisible to the human eye? A poorly designed sensor that only detect stuff on the EM spectrum between 400-700 nm wavelength? (And in some people it can't even differentiate between red and green).

    What does black ice look like on the IR spectrum? UV?

    The more I read slashdotters comment on modern technology that some of us have experience with the less and less confidence that I have any of them know anything.

    throw on to issue of when roads are COVERED in snow so you can't see lines to know where the road is, and no GPS isn't gonna help.

    So how does a human stay on the road? We somehow manage with two (or one) optical sensor with limited range of view driven through a neural net that has limited bandwidth and slow propagation delay between nodes. In older cars without ABS or power steering you could sometimes add a 'touch' sensor to that because you could get feedback as to what was going on through the brakes or steering wheel.