US Senate Panel Approves Self-Driving Car Legislation (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday unanimously approved a bill to speed self-driving cars to market without human controls and bar states from imposing regulatory road blocks. The bill still must be approved by the full Senate. The U.S. House passed a similar version last month unanimously. General Motors Co, Alphabet Inc, Ford Motor Co and others have lobbied for the landmark legislation. Despite some complaints from Republicans, the Senate bill does not speed approval of self-driving technology for large commercial trucks after labor unions raised safety and employment concerns. The measure, the first significant federal legislation aimed at speeding self-driving cars to market, would allow automakers to win exemptions from current safety rules that prohibit vehicles without human controls. States could still set rules on registration, licensing, liability, insurance and safety inspections, but not performance standards.

Comments

All I need to Know...

[clonehappy]

General Motors Co, Alphabet Inc, Ford Motor Co and others have lobbied for the landmark legislation.

Enough said to know where I should stand on this.

Re:All I need to Know...

[gweihir]

Accidents happen all the time. The only thing needed for this to be a good idea is less average damage to people in accidents with self-driving cars than in human-controlled ones. That should not be hard to achieve...

Re:All I need to Know...

[rmdingler]

People like you who don't have the education or direct experience working with the specific technology in this case are not in any way shape or form qualified to be commenting on how safe or beneficial it'll be. You're just one more bobble-head believing and agreeing with the nonsensical hype you're being spoon-fed about this. The FACT of the matter is this isn't even real "AI" to start with, it's shitty half-assed "machine learning" crap, and at current it has to 'phone home' to have a remote HUMAN operator take over from it when it runs into something it can't handle. This reveals it to be a PIECE OF SHIT that should not be allowed on public roads. There will be traffic problems because of this garbage, there will be DEATHS that need not have occurred and that nobody will be held responsible for. DO NOT WANT!

Similar logical fallacy, circa 1900, used by folks wanting to demonize the horseless carriage.

Unions

[JBMcB]

Because of unions. Next question?

Re:Unions

[tomhath]

Click on the reuters.com link next to the headline. K, thx.

Neither the House nor the Senate bill would speed approval of self-driving technology for vehicles over 10,000 pounds, a step pushed by trucking organizations. Labor unions raised safety and employment concerns, and Democrats resisted that part of the proposal.

Re:Nope.

[Xenx]

Interstate trucking would be the least dangerous type of self-driving vehicle usage.

No commercial truck provisions?

[Dorianny]

This is stupid, long-haul trucking is the industry that would benefit most from self-driving vehicles and it is also one of the easier challenges for the auto-industry. You can expect many states to start throwing roadblocks disguised as safety concerns that are meant to delay roll-out for the purpose of "saving jobs"

Re:No commercial truck provisions?

[drinkypoo]

This is stupid, long-haul trucking is the industry that would benefit most from self-driving vehicles and it is also one of the easier challenges for the auto-industry.

It is not time to have fully automated class 8 trucks driving around. They are just too big and thus too dangerous. Normally sized vehicles are dangerous enough. Give it a few more years, and you'll see similar legislation for heavy trucks.

It is also not easier to do self-driving trucks, because they have to be able to handle all the same situations that self-driving cars have to be able to handle. Or have you never seen a person or a deer running across a freeway? How about stuff sitting in the road, like a cardboard box, chunk of a tire, mattress, stack of lumber, scissor jack, bag of trash, burning vehicle, half a deer, jumper cables, a rock the size of my head, a wheel with a tire, or a wheel without a tire? How's about stuff flying above the road, like a plastic bag floating every which way, a goose taking off, or a vulture taking off trailing a disintegrating "mass" (I use the term loosely) of roadkill? These are all things I've seen on the freeway, except the goose. The moment you take the human out of the truck, or even take the human's eyes off of the road, the truck has to be able to deal with all of that stuff, and more.

Terribly Wrong Link

[aneroid]

Did they even check? Obviously not.

Here's the actual article: http://www.reuters.com/article...

Great article there, but what about cars?

[eepok]

Here's the linked article: http://www.reuters.com/article...

I'm guessing that was a copy/paste error.

The speed limit had very low compliance,

[Joe_Dragon]

The speed limit had very low compliance and some states replaced traditional speeding fines with $5–$15 energy wasting fines

the first child that dies by self-driving truck

[WillAffleckUW]

This will all fall apart the first time a wealthy white family loses a child to a legal self-driving truck.

Mark my words.

Insurance?

[thedarb]

If I'm not driving it, it should only need to be insured against damage caused by others. If it causes an accident, that's the manufacturers liability, not mine, as I wasn't driving it. If it's any way made to be my liability, I'm not going to buy it. I'd rather hire a self driving taxi than own the liability of my own self driving car.