Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Apple, Tesla Ask California To Change Its Proposed Policies On Self-Driving Car Testing (reuters.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the rules-of-the-road dept.

Tesla and Apple have asked the state of California to change its proposed policies on self-driving cars to allow companies to test vehicles without traditional steering wheels and controls or human back-up drivers, among other things. Reuters reports: In a letter made public Friday, Apple made a series of suggested changes to the policy that is under development and said it looks forward to working with California and others "so that rapid technology development may be realized while ensuring the safety of the traveling public." Waymo, the self-driving car unit of Google parent company Alphabet Inc, Ford Motor Co, Uber Technologies Inc, Toyota Motor Corp, Tesla Motors Inc and others also filed comments suggesting changes. Apple said California should revise how companies report self-driving system "disengagements." California currently requires companies to report how many times the self-driving system was deactivated and control handed back to humans because of a system failure or a traffic, weather or road situation that required human intervention. Apple said California's rules for development vehicles used only in testing could "restrict both the design and equipment that can be used in test vehicles." Tesla said California should not bar testing of autonomous vehicles that are 10,000 pounds (4,535 kg) or more. Tesla also said California should not prohibit the sale of non-self-driving vehicles previously used for autonomous vehicle testing.

30 comments

  1. Appls asks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    To fuck you in the butt

    1. Re: Appls asks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No problem!

      (bends over, spreads cheeks)

      Do your worst!

  2. Ban 'em from public roads by DatbeDank · · Score: 0

    Unless it is possible for a self driving car to be driven with a blind folded "driver" they shouldn't be on the road at all. You know what real automakers do when they want to test concepts and innovative cars? They put them onto test tracks and proving grounds so they don't risk the lives of regular people going about their lives.

    1. Re:Ban 'em from public roads by grif_91 · · Score: 1

      Disclaimer: This is just my common sense talking; I feel like there has probably already been extensive testing done in closed-course situations and computer simulations. The problem with an emerging technology of this type is that you cannot account for the human element without a great deal of exposure to it. That's for both the programmers of the car's software, and the other drivers on the road. What your stating sounds to me like wanting a toddler to run before it can walk when it just learned to crawl a few months ago. Apple/Tesla/Alphabet et. al. are not asking for the go ahead to sell self-driving cars, they just want the regulations to be more friendly for their side. That being said, I feel you are right that there should still be extensive testing (though I think it probably qualifies for on-road at this point), and just as important; I feel as though it should be as transparent as possible without the divulgement of trade-secrets. I'm a realist, I understand that everyone's in it for a buck. Side note: Reading your comment took me a few tries when I stumbled over the "blind folded" part. I kept thinking you meant actual blind drivers folded in half.

    2. Re:Ban 'em from public roads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Exactly. But consider that almost all software/hardware companies these days design first and let the users (or suckers depending on your point of view) beta test their products. So I'm amazed how much long it took for Apple. Tesla and others to ask for the same kind of "test" for driverless cars. Who cares about peones getting hit, we're just beta testing your your convinience baby.
      I hope California tells these fuckers to do it the safe way : tracks. They have a cash load of money, use some of that to build state of the art tracks for experimenting with driverless cars/trucks etc...

    3. Re:Ban 'em from public roads by DatbeDank · · Score: 1

      There are ways to safely test complicated scenarios with multiple cars. Look at how the highway safety institute handles crash tests. They make a car and essentially destroy it. That is how you safely test cars by having several drivers on a closed course simulate heavy traffic changing lanes and even tapping the vehicle to simulate a collision.

    4. Re:Ban 'em from public roads by rkordmaa · · Score: 1

      It very much is possible to make them go totally without a driver. Not from a legal standpoint, but from technical standpoint no problemo, the car will drive on its own if told to do so. Safety of such a thing is questionable obviously, but how are we ever going to answer that question without experimentation? Is "it worked fine on test track" good enough answer to you? Its not sufficient imho, only real life statistics can give a satisfactory answer. Traffic accidents are sort of an acceptable loss in today's society already, they are a fact of life we must accept anyway, so i think its not that big of a leap to accept a risk of testing driverless cars in the name of lowering traffic causalities in the future. Mind you the driverless cars being tested are probably already safer than human drivers or so the developers claim at least.

    5. Re:Ban 'em from public roads by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 1

      There are ways to safely test complicated scenarios with multiple cars. Look at how the highway safety institute handles crash tests. They make a car and essentially destroy it. That is how you safely test cars by having several drivers on a closed course simulate heavy traffic changing lanes and even tapping the vehicle to simulate a collision.

      Yes, you can create complicated scenarios and test them, but you can't create nearly enough to cover the range of what will actually occur in actual driving conditions and interactions with human drivers.

    6. Re:Ban 'em from public roads by ColdSam · · Score: 1

      How many years did you spend on a test track before they let you on our public roads?

    7. Re:Ban 'em from public roads by HiThere · · Score: 2

      E.g., the Google car has already encountered a jay-walking wheelchair user chasing a ... was it a duck?

      When would you even THINK to simulate that?

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    8. Re:Ban 'em from public roads by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      Except the test tracks are designed to test the mechanal features. For automated cars there is a degree of this on test tracks. But there comes a point where it needs real world testing. If you write software at nearly every level of complexity once you hand it to the real world they find new problems that needs to be fixed.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  3. Quelle surprise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Please don't make us all report how much our driving software sucks, people might take that the wrong way."

  4. The Not-Yet-Ready For Prime Time Drivers by cmholm · · Score: 1

    Breaker, breaker, that'd be a big no on ditching the steering wheels, back up drivers, and reporting fack-ups, good buddy, over.

    Fact is, autonomous driving systems aren't yet up to snuff to go the full monty. Until they prove out, they need a human with some skin in the game, and who's aware s/he's playing. And the state can't be sure how close to the tipping point we are without reporting.

    On the flip side, I agree that allowing higher gross vehicle weights should be allowed, the better to test freight hauling.

    --
    Luke, help me take this mask off ... Just for once, let me butterfly kiss you with my own eyes.
    1. Re:The Not-Yet-Ready For Prime Time Drivers by mrclevesque · · Score: 1

      "On the flip side, I agree that allowing higher gross vehicle weights should be allowed, the better to test freight hauling."

      If they still can't do it while testing below 10,000 pound vehicles why allow then to test it with more than 10,000 pounds?

    2. Re:The Not-Yet-Ready For Prime Time Drivers by Namarrgon · · Score: 1

      Self-driving cars have been driving themselves for millions of miles so far. They're certainly not perfect, but clearly they can do it. Are you suggesting we wait until small vehicles are perfect before we even start testing with large vehicles?

      --
      Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
    3. Re:The Not-Yet-Ready For Prime Time Drivers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you demonstrate that your car produces 1 accident every 100 million miles, then you continuously have 10 accidents at any given moment in time. While it seems to be superior to human drivers, it doesn't help the 10+ people that die at the hands of some company's technology any given moment. They would immediately sue the company (like drivers sue after an accident).

      This means every moment in time you have to hand out X million Dollar to relatives of 10+ people for dying. So you can either try to make more money than that or lower the quantitative value of human life in Dollars.

    4. Re:The Not-Yet-Ready For Prime Time Drivers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is why we have car insurance. It is unlikely that you would be able to recover more money than from a typical *at fault* driver. A self driving car company could profitably charge 1/2 the going rate of care insurance and just pay out when accidents happen.

    5. Re:The Not-Yet-Ready For Prime Time Drivers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Are you suggesting we wait until small vehicles are perfect before we even start testing with large vehicles?"

      ABSOLUTELY! Anything less than perfection is just too nuts to be allowed!!

      No changes or exceptions should be made at all!! There should always be a human with standard controls at hand to take over in case of failures, and all failures of even the smallest degree need to be reported.

    6. Re:The Not-Yet-Ready For Prime Time Drivers by rkordmaa · · Score: 1

      There are already court precedents for it, Tesla was pardoned on the count of their Autopilot already having caused demonstrable reduction of accidents.

    7. Re:The Not-Yet-Ready For Prime Time Drivers by rkordmaa · · Score: 1

      Where does the assumption come that driverless cars are not up to snuff, that they are incapable of going without a backup driver? They are not going without a driver because of legal reasons, not technical ones.

    8. Re:The Not-Yet-Ready For Prime Time Drivers by mrclevesque · · Score: 1

      "Self-driving cars have been driving themselves for millions of miles so far. They're certainly not perfect, but clearly they can do it."

      Sure, if you mean temporary use of adaptive cruise control and lane changing automation works pretty good on some stretches of some types of roads.

      "Are you suggesting we wait until small vehicles are perfect before we even start testing with large vehicles?"

      I'm suggesting the need to test on vehicles that weight 10,000 pounds or more is mainly a marketing stunt to attract investors at this point.

    9. Re:The Not-Yet-Ready For Prime Time Drivers by Namarrgon · · Score: 1

      Adaptive cruise control & lane changing on highways might be the level Tesla is at, but even those driver assists can be a huge help for tired or inattentive drivers - so why not for truck drivers too? They spend a great deal of time driving on highways. If there's potential benefit, why not test and develop that?

      And companies like Waymo have clearly progressed beyond that, with fully-autonomous driving and navigation of smaller cars over a wider range of suburban and highway roads. Nobody's claiming it's yet ready for commercial unmanned vehicles or anything, and large & heavy vehicles clearly have their own challenges on top of that, but it will never improve if it doesn't get tested. Marketing stunt or not, the need for testing must be obvious if we want autonomous trucks any time soon.

      --
      Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
    10. Re:The Not-Yet-Ready For Prime Time Drivers by mrclevesque · · Score: 1

      "those driver assists can be a huge help for tired or inattentive drivers - so why not for truck drivers too?"

      They can already test those. No need for a new law.

  5. OMG Fuck apple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    what a shit show of an embarrassment to the entire tech industry

    1. Re:OMG Fuck apple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Send an army of self driving cars into their headquarters and vanquish the foe!

    2. Re:OMG Fuck apple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Off with their heads!!

    3. Re:OMG Fuck apple by HiThere · · Score: 1

      Sorry, but it's a reasonable request. It may also be reasonable to deny it, but it's a reasonable request. There's no way that a "driver" who's just been sitting there playing a game on his phone will be able to take over the driving in 10 seconds, so the steering wheel is useless in emergencies.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  6. Much better than your average driver by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    As someone that has actually provided a learning experience to a self-driving car (I spend far too much time walking downtown Mountain View streets), I can say with some confidence that self-driving cars are far more careful to avoid incidents than a human driver would be under the same circumstances. I trust them far more than most of the drivers on the same streets (and, again, I see plenty of them, and have observed them in real time). And at least they are not looking down at their phone driving through the stop sign as I am crossing the street. I will never assert they are perfect, but perfect is the enemy of the good enough, and they are far better than good enough (and certainly than the average SV driver) today.

    1. Re:Much better than your average driver by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As someone that has actually provided a learning experience to a self-driving car (I spend far too much time walking downtown Mountain View streets), I can say with some confidence that self-driving cars are far more careful to avoid incidents than a human driver would be under the same circumstances. I trust them far more than most of the drivers on the same streets (and, again, I see plenty of them, and have observed them in real time). And at least they are not looking down at their phone driving through the stop sign as I am crossing the street. I will never assert they are perfect, but perfect is the enemy of the good enough, and they are far better than good enough (and certainly than the average SV driver) today.

      Your anecdotal experience is meaningless. Tell us how the car did on the snowy mountain road when the truck going the opposite direction came across the road and was heading straight for you. Did it do better than a human driver? How about in the driving rainstorms.....oh wait, we just tested in safe conditions.

      http://www.carscoops.com/2017/03/tesla-model-s-hits-barrier-with.html

  7. 1-800-hows-my-driving by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So we all know those bumper stickers to call in the delivery driver who's driving like an asshole. How do we do the same? 'submit your bug here, and the community manager will review?'

    Really, really, really needs to be thought through. And it's really not.