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Comma.ai Shelves Self-Driving Device After Regulatory Warning (reuters.com)
Comma.ai founder George Hotz, who has spent the good part of his past year criticizing competitors and their technologies, sent out a series of tweets Friday, saying that Comma.ai, a startup that aimed at offering semi-autonomous driving system, will be pulling out of the U.S. market in response to requests from federal regulators. From a Reuters report: The intervention, by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, came before Comma.ai began marketing its device. It is the latest signal that regulators want more control over the development and deployment of self-driving vehicle systems by vehicle manufacturers and suppliers, after a period in which they took a largely hands-off approach. The NHTSA on Friday disclosed an Oct. 27 letter to Comma.ai stating that the agency is investigating whether the company's device, called Comma One, complies with federal regulations. The letter and an accompanying special order demanded that Comma.ai provide the agency with information about the device and warned that the agency could prohibit the sale of the system if it were found to be defective.
The wording of the letter implies that a driver assistance device may be deemed "defective" even if "drivers will use your product in a manner that exceeds its intended purpose". The list of requested information includes basic specifications of the device, such as what it does, which vehicles it is for, how it is installed, how it is used, under what conditions it can be used, detailed results of testing in all such conditions, what it ends up doing when it shuts off, what it ends up doing if installed in an unsupported vehicle, detailed results of testing for compliance with each element of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard, how it interacts with rearview mirrors, when it goes on sale, and the name of every entity that will sell the device.
My understanding of Comma leaving the U.S. market is that it lacks the money to perform exhaustive tests, especially on all unsupported vehicles, and to hire legal counsel to interpret the FMVSS (49 CFR 571) and other pertinent regulations.