Driverless Car Rules: Google ‘Gravely Disappointed’ Over California’s Proposed

For now, they specifically exclude fully autonomous driverless cars that wouldn’t even have a steering wheel.

One of Google’s main goals with autonomous vehicles is to reduce traffic accidents, which claim around 33,000 lives every year in the United States alone.

“Safety is our highest priority and primary motivator”, Google’s statement said. The concept vehicles have already logged over 1.6 million kms on public roads surrounding San Francisco and Austin, Texas during their initial testing phase. Initially, manufacturers would receive a permit for three years, during which time consumers could lease the cars but manufacturers would be required to keep tabs on how safely they are driving and report that performance to the state.

But Google, who is just one of the companies working on driverless cars in California, argues that safety is the number one reason the public needs driverless cars.

The DMV took a cautious approach in its precedent-setting draft regulations that could govern the release of self-driving cars to the public. The DMV’s proposed rules would limited how much of Google’s vision could be accomplished. Sometime down the road, the DMV says it will think about the “unique safety, performance, and equipment requirements associated with fully autonomous vehicles without the presence of a driver.”.

Google was the first to react to this proposal by saying this would hold back the technology that could prevent vehicle crashes and would border the mobility of people who cannot drive.

Whoa, Nelly, the California Department of Motor Vehicles told self-driving auto developers Wednesday.

Google is turning its selfdriving cars unit into a standalone business under Alphabet next year, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.

Shahan also said other issues need to be addressed, including driver training in the event of an autonomous vehicle failure and what to do if the electricity grid goes down. This includes Apple, which is rumoured to be developing driving technology for a reveal next year, and Tesla, whose chief executive Elon Musk recently revealed that his company wants to seek out “hardcore engineers” in an effort to develop self-driving cars.

Company spokesman Johnny Luu says Google, which has led development of the technology, is “gravely disappointed” by the rules, which will limit Google’s ability to deploy the cars as quickly as it would like.

Two public workshops addressing the draft regulations will take place at California State University in Sacramento on January 28 and at the Junipero Serra Building in LA on February 2.

Steven Shladover, a research engineer with a UC Berkeley advanced transportation program, said the DMV faces a hard challenge in establishing the nation’s first real regulations for self-driving cars – something it was required to do by legislation in 2012.