Feds want to regulate drivers when the driver is the car

The DOT’s comprehensive policy overview on self-driving cars, released Tuesday, presents safety guidelines for self-driving auto manufacturers – from data recording to crashworthiness and cybersecurity – in addition to distinguishing what federal and state government responsibilities are and outlining the existing and possibly new regulatory tools necessary to monitor self-driving cars.

The U.S. Transportation Department, in its most comprehensive statement yet on autonomous vehicles, also issued voluntary guidelines and urged automakers to certify that their highly automated vehicles were ready for public roads.

There’s now no news for when Uber’s self-driving cars might be rolling out to Asia, but we’ve reached out to the company for comment so stay tuned for updates.

“Right now, too many people die on our roads – 35,200 previous year alone – with 94 percent of those the result of human error or choice”, Obama wrote in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “We have to get it right”.

At the time, ex-Chancellor George Osborne backed the new legislation, saying: “At a time of great uncertainty in the global economy, Britain must take bold decisions now to ensure it leads the world when it comes to new technologies and infrastructure”.

Obama wrote the administration is asking automakers “to sign a 15-point safety checklist showing not just the government, but every interested American, how they’re doing it”. Companies would also have to demonstrate how vehicles would comply with all traffic laws and fare in traffic crashes and how they would perform after a crash.

In drawing up 112 pages of guidelines, the government tried to be vague enough to allow innovation while at the same time making sure that vehicle makers, tech companies and ride-hailing firms put safety first as the cars are developed.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has been investigating Tesla Motors Inc’s Autopilot system since June because of a May 7 fatal crash in Florida in which the system was in use. That would be a departure from the agency’s historic self-certification system and might require action from Congress.

The president also wrote that government rules are necessary, and that if self-driving vehicles are not safe, the federal government will remove them from the roads.

Google criticized California previous year when the state proposed draft rules requiring steering wheels and a licensed driver in all self-driving cars. States, he said, should stick to registering cars and dealing with questions of liability when they crash. The person requested anonymity because the guidelines had not yet been made public. “And. when the software is operating the vehicle, that is an area that we intend to regulate”. The goal is to “avoid a patchwork of state laws”, he added. Yet if a manufacturer doesn’t follow the guidelines “it will be open and apparent”, he said.

Traditional automakers and tech companies have been testing self-driving prototypes on public roads for several years, with a human in the driver’s seat just in case.

“We want to be as nimble and flexible as we can be, recognizing that we will never, ever compromise on what we think is safe”, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said at a Washington news conference.