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US Consumer Groups Warn 'Robot Car Bill' Threatens Safety (consumerreports.org)
"If you don't place a Capable Engineering crew to oversee a project that involves lives, you're asking for trouble," writes Slashdot reader Neuronwelder. Consumer Reports writes:
Congress is moving ahead with plans to let self-driving cars be tested on U.S. roads without having to comply with the same safety rules as regular vehicles... The House passed its version of the legislation earlier this month with little opposition. The Senate is expected to vote on its bill in the coming weeks... "Federal law shouldn't leave consumers as guinea pigs," said William Wallace, policy analyst for Consumers Union. "We were hopeful that this bill would include much stronger measures to protect consumers against known emerging safety risks. Unfortunately, in the bill's current form, it doesn't."
The legislation, which would take effect in 18 months, would allow the deployment of up to 50,000 self-driving vehicles per company in the first year of its application, rising to 100,000 vehicles annually by the third year, exempt from essential federal safety standards... Automakers might be able to go beyond the limits by getting exemptions for more than one model. The bill also creates a means to go beyond 100,000 cars for each company, by allowing automakers to petition the NHTSA after five years for more vehicles.
"The bill pre-empts any state safety standards," argues the group Consumer Watchdog, "but there are none yet in place at the national level."
The legislation, which would take effect in 18 months, would allow the deployment of up to 50,000 self-driving vehicles per company in the first year of its application, rising to 100,000 vehicles annually by the third year, exempt from essential federal safety standards... Automakers might be able to go beyond the limits by getting exemptions for more than one model. The bill also creates a means to go beyond 100,000 cars for each company, by allowing automakers to petition the NHTSA after five years for more vehicles.
"The bill pre-empts any state safety standards," argues the group Consumer Watchdog, "but there are none yet in place at the national level."
Not only does it leave consumers as guinea pigs, it makes every non-participating driver, cyclist, and pedestrian a guinea pig. When someone dies from a flaw in self driving, will they consider it a good trade off if maybe fifty years down the road we start to see a decrease in road deaths from the technology? Will they understand why their family paid the price? Full liability on the part of the vendor introducing a self driving technology should be a minimum requirement.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
So long that the companies of the self driving cars are wholly liable for any and all injuries, deaths, and emotional distress to the tune of $10 million plus.
Doubt the law actually places liability on the companies testing these and we're just expected to take the deaths as the inevitable cost of progress!
Proof positive - as if further proof were needed - that the Republican party have their collective tongue so far up the backside of big business that they now don't care who knows. A 1+ ton of metal - carrying fuel to intensify any resulting explosion, lest we forget - allowed to use the same roads as J Random Driver without even a basic roadworthiness test? The only other logical explanation is that they're all high.
What safety standards?
Why do they think those standards shouldn't apply?
They call this reporting?
Make clear that federal requirements necessary for human operation, like steering wheels, won’t be required for self-driving cars
That seems normal. Where's the beef?
ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
We do what we must because we can. For the good of all of us... except the ones who are dead. For there's no use crying over every mistake.
The world has always been just one big Aperture Science.
Of course there are none yet. Congress is kicking the can to the administrative agencies to figure out how to review submissions to determine if the vehicles are at least as safe as cars are now. Whether the federal agency will succeed in carrying out its mission, it will be in a better position to figure that out than congressmen are. It sounds like the "watchdogs" are asking for the self-driving vehicle equivalent of the Clipper chip: something that will be an antique before it is even passed, and then will be almost impossible to update because laws are not easily changed.
It is fine as long as it puts safety standards in place itself and sets up a regulatory body to monitor compliance.
Does whatever their corporate masters decide.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
>> 'Robot Car Bill' Threatens Safety
Is this Bill Gates? Who is this Bill person and why hasn't he already been arrested?
We can't expect technology to be fully viable and 100% safe from the start. By imposing such expectations we are making a lot of things commercially not viable. This is why we don't have flying cars, not because we can't build them, but because we can't make them perfectly safe.
You're going to need laws like this. Because it's just not going to be possible to make self-driving cars under a regulatory system designed for human-driven cars. Or indeed under any "mature" regulatory system (that is, one that has managed to fix the industry in question in place). It would be like taking today's regulatory system and insisting Ford follow it for his first Model A.
Personally, I'm not a fan of self-driving cars, so by all means oppose this law.
TENS OF THOUSANDS of people die in car accidents every year in the United States.
Look, like the rest of you, I'm arrogant enough to think myself a great driver. But the numbers are irrefutable, we fucking suck as a species, at driving. Humans have FAILED.
Given the length of development thus far, if every car was immediately switched out for a self driving car, there is no way they'd match even a substantive fraction of the number of deaths.
ANY delay will cost MORE lives than those being saved. It's absolutely asinine to take policy in that direction. It's born from a luddite mentality, and not any desire for safety. It should be shunned!
This is a poorly written article. There is no mention, except for lack of steering wheel, of the rules self driving cars don't have to follow. If you are getting up in arms over this, at least point out the problem.
Does anyone have a good car analogy?
This William Wallace guy. I knew he was just a stickler for the man. Freedom my ass. Boo, I say. Boo!
Until then, regs for human directed cars are more likely to get in the way of development than they are to do any good.
'U.S. Consumer Groups' apparently have some intelligent people in them that see, as do I and many others, that so-called 'self driving car' technology is not even close to ready-for-prime-time, and that legislators, who notably are technologically ignorant and incompetent, have been taken in by all the hype and actually believe that they're going to have K.I.T.T. to have a delightful conversation, in an English accent, on the way to their destinations. So-called 'self driving cars' are not going to do much of anything to prevent collisions and deaths, they'll probably add to them. Keep them off my roads, don't want them around me.
Given the amount of money these companies are [probably] throwing at federal, state, and local government in order to make this happen. Safety be dammed, as long as the money is rolling in.
The cited article didn't differentiate between self driving vehicles designed for human beings and self driving vehicles designed for freight only. I think it makes a difference. Who needs air bags and passenger roll bars if there are no living passengers?
Self driving cars lacking the safety requirements of a steering wheel, brake pedal, emergency brake, etc. might be acceptable for a car that can't be moved under manual control. But, it will be a while before I would trust a vehicle with no way to take manual control and get it out of a dangerous locale.
What safety requirements would be waived for self driving cars? The cited article seemed to be FUD mongering on the issue with no specifics on what is on the supposed waivers of safety features.
NRRPT/RCT