Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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

Posted by msmash on from the autonomous-future dept.

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."

9 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. This is a first by goose-incarnated · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The laws governing something are completed before we've even managed to invent it.

    --
    I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
    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:This is a first by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      The laws governing something are completed before we've even managed to invent it.

      Except that self-driving cars have been around for several years. They certainly aren't perfect, but they already have a track record better than human drivers (which is not a difficult criteria). They are ready to replace human drivers on public roads for many tasks, including routine driving on known routes.

      Will SDCs be in accidents and even kill some people? Very likely. Would even more people die if the same cars had human drivers? Even more likely.

  2. Re:They will be great on icy roads by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Thermal sensors will know the temperature of all sections road within stopping distance. Cameras that can see stuff outside of the visible band of radiation will see the difference in reflection between ice and normal road. A 360 deg continuously LIDAR/RADAR will know the position and velocity of everything within stopping distance.

    It won't be checking its texts, facebook, looking in the rearview mirror for 1/2 a second. "Black Ice" won't confuse it because it happens to be the same color as the road surface.

    Yeah, I can't wait to see how they'll do. I really can't wait for the autonomous vehicle rally races.

  3. No Fault by JBMcB · · Score: 3, Funny

    Michigan is No Fault, so it's nobody's fault.

    --
    My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
  4. Re:They will be great on icy roads by ShooterNeo · · Score: 2

    There probably is a way to determine the difference in road surface. Even if it's not by seeing it ahead of time but just correctly responding when the vehicle hits the black ice patch. Good modeling of the vehicle and modeling of different alternative actions could easily result in better control on such surfaces than human drivers can achieve.

  5. Wow really? by coolmoe2 · · Score: 2
    "We've aired out just about everything over the sun."

    Leave it to a republican to even fuck up such an old ass saying.
    Perhaps the sun is underground where he is.

  6. Still have to use a dealer by sjbe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Great. But we still can't buy a car without involving a greedy pointless middleman.

  7. 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.