10 ms·

The 'Self Drive' Act puts America on the road to reducing congestion

64 points by abhi3 9y ago

letlambda 9y ago
A new designated felon would be required to sell highly automated vehicles, the Cyber Security Officer. You'll sign some documents certifying everything is fine, but of course, everything won't be fine. When your cars get hacked you'll go to jail for defrauding the government and/or manslaughter. I bet it pays real good though.
dayaz36 9y ago
25k is less than 1% of most major auto manufacturers yearly production numbers. No article I've read on this news has put that into context and instead praises the legislation as liberating car manufacturers to bring FSD cars to the masses. Most people don't read past the headline let alone look into the facts of the article. Also nothing good EVER gets passed legislation unanimously. Last time the House passed legislation this quickly and unanimously was when they passed SOAPA. Something feels fishy about this. I haven't read the legislation directly but I bet if a journalist went through it fully, somethings would surface that people wouldn't like.
ouid 9y ago
The title could do a lot more to indicate what the Self Drive act actually is. A house committee drafted some legislation that grants the federal government regulatory power over self-driving cars, or rather strips it from state governments. At least as far as it is reported in the article.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  I skimmed the text, it does specify requirements of it's own on self-driving cars (both for safety and privacy), establishes a council of industry experts on it, etc. as well. But barring states from regulating this in their own borders is about as much of a sweetheart bill for business as you can get, it ensures they only have to spend their lobbying money on one legislative body.
  - Johnny555 9y ago
    But barring states from regulating this in their own borders is about as much of a sweetheart bill for business as you can get, it ensures they only have to spend their lobbying money on one legislative body. But it also means that they only need to meet one standard, not 50. Which sounds like the right thing to do when it comes to regulating something mobile that will operate in all 50 states.
    - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
      The differences from state to state are typically minor and not incompatible. Most states derive their requirements from federal standards/recommendations anyway. Current manufactures only offer two versions of cars. One is for most states. The other is for a particular state and all the other states on the "I'm with him" bandwagon. If a certain state would adopt federal recommendations for certain vehicle requirements then things would be greatly simplified.
      - Johnny555 9y ago
        The differences from state to state are typically minor and not incompatible How can you say that when not all states have even enacted legislation to regulate self-driving cars? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Self_Driving_Cars_Legalized_States_in_USA.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Self_Driving_Cars_Legaliz... Even minor changes between states are expensive for automakers to manage, and it's bad for consumers if some manufacturers choose to certify their cars for certain states -- you could end up buying a car that you not only can't legally take to another state, but the car will refuse to go there at all to avoid manufacturer liability.
        ocdtrekkie 9y ago
        There's very few situations where a car wouldn't be legal to drive in another state. For one, states are generally expected to respect other state's certification and licensing. Additionally, short of the hallmark "cars which have no steering wheels", which likely just won't work outside their programmed area anyways, you could just drive the car normally when in a state which doesn't support it.
- Kadin 9y ago
  It'd be interesting to see what the reaction is from people and companies in the field. Preemption legislation seems a little premature, to me. Sure, it would stop states from hindering autonomous-vehicle development, e.g. to protect entrenched interests or because of irrational fears, but it could also stop states interested in being on the forefront of research from doing more interesting things. It seems like the sort of thing you'd want when products were further along the development path and having a broad, harmonized-rules marketplace is necessary to move further, but not when most of the tech is still pretty early R&D work.
  - ballenf 9y ago
    Preemption is needed most for nascent industries where the economics are uncertain. It gives investors more confidence to invest in an unproven technology if you can at least predict one aspect of the landscape on a national level. Down the road, you can start to relax the preemption (theoretically) and let the market forces keep unwise state regulation in check.
brndnmtthws 9y ago
Want to reduce congestion? Invest in public transit infrastructure.
- chc 9y ago
  In most of America, this idea seems to be even less practical than self-driving cars. America is pretty much designed to be a pessimal case for public transit. San Diego, where I live, does invest in public transit infrastructure and has relatively extensive mass transit options (buses, trains and trolleys), and yet public transit is still largely unusable outside of fairly small, specific areas. In order to use public transit, I'd have to walk half a mile to a station and then my commute to work would be four times as long as it is by car. So when I hear "invest in public transit infrastructure," I feel like it isn't a concrete enough suggestion. Does it actually mean tear down most of America and replace it with a country where mass transit is practical, or what? I'd love never to have to drive again, but merely investing in public transit demonstrably isn't enough.
  - adrianN 9y ago
    I guess investment in public transit has to go hand in hand with saner zoning laws and measures to reduce sprawl. It's certainly not an over-night solution, but few things in city planning are.
  - oftenwrong 9y ago
    America is low density because it provides incentives for low density living. The solution, in short, is to remove those incentives. Once the costs of current land use patterns are undistorted, society will adjust, and land use will intensify. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/8/15/financing-suburbia-how-government-mortgage-policy-determined-where-youlive https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/8/15/financing-subu... https://granolashotgun.com/2016/08/31/a-thousand-hidden-subsidies/ https://granolashotgun.com/2016/08/31/a-thousand-hidden-subs... https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/8/a-utah-republican-might-have-the-best-urban-transportation-plan https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/8/a-utah-republic... https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/18/highway-spending-is-eating-the-budget https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/18/highway-spendi...
saosebastiao 9y ago
I'm confident in many benefits of autonomous vehicles, but reducing congestion is not one of them. Quite the opposite, actually. Wanna know what happens when you no longer have people looking for parking but rather have them picking up and dropping off at the curb? Visit a busy airport or pickup/dropoff curbs at a large suburban elementary school. Now throw in the fact that in order to get to your destination, you'll have to drive through those clusterfucks that are caused by other people's destinations. Oh, and all the cars that might not be circling looking for parking, but are now circling looking for new passengers. Oh, and all the new cars on the road when lower costs move people from transit into SOVs. That's the future, embrace it.
- tommoor 9y ago
  Replace parking with more loading zones - of course that requires city governments to understand and embrace the shift.
- devy 9y ago
  > but reducing congestion is not one of them. Quite the opposite, actually. The premise of that is to increase vehicle usage efficiency, hence reduce the total amount of vehicles on road and reduce congestion. Additional autonomous vehicles applied in public transits will further improve traffic flow (on demand vs. fixed scheduled services, reducing empty runs etc.)
  - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
    Yet every time we increase efficiency by building roads we end up with more congestion. Can we outrun this problem?
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  Some drivers need a space fit for a semi truck in order to pull out into traffic. Some drivers don't go at green lights because they're distracted. Some drivers camp in the left lane. It's highly possible that the cumulative benefit of widespread adoption of self driving cars could offset the negative aspects of people who suck at some subset of driving.
dexterdog 9y ago
I don't get this assumption that SDCs are going to reduce energy usage. Sure, it will be better on a per-mile basis, but people are going to be traveling a lot more than they are now.
- WillPostForFood 9y ago
  It may not, but hopefully it is an opportunity to push the transition to electric cars. If we are going to effectively replace all cars, let's make some smart choices on the replacements.
revelation 9y ago
The idea that a bill "sponsored" by corporations whose sole purpose is selling as many cars as possible will "reduce congestion" is probably the most ridiculous idea this turn of the century. What's next? McDonalds innovation on nutrition facts labels to reduce junk fat consumption and improve health outcomes?
- WillPostForFood 9y ago
  If corporations selling cars were "sponsoring" a bill, they should be sponsoring a bill banning self driving cars, because they are an existential threat to the business of selling cars.
mtgx 9y ago
I've just seen this infographic showing that 5G connectivity is also about "car to car communication" (among other things): https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJCxYZ1XoAAm_CL.jpg:large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJCxYZ1XoAAm_CL.jpg:large I really hope that's just wishful thinking from companies like Qualcomm and wireless operators and not something car makers are actually considering. Making the cars' critical systems (such as the self-driving systems, which would respond based on other cars' actions in car to car communication) be accessible from the internet sounds like a terrible idea. This is why I hope this type of law is not rushed, as car makers and companies like Uber and Google/Waymo hope it will be.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  There's a lot of potential gain from car-to-car communication, but I also see a huge risk. I can be reasonably confident in my car's own sensors, but only God knows what my car is being told by other cars about the world; the opportunities for malicious activity there are huge. It's hard to imagine a system that uses V2V that doesn't rely on some manner of trust, like a closed/encrypted system with car manufacturers having CA-like signing authority or something. And if I've ever learning anything, it's that car companies are not great at network security.
  - smileysteve 9y ago
    I too saw F8 and The Furious.
    - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
      Ha, I actually have not. Though I did see the trailer which looked ridiculous.
- csours 9y ago
  I don't think you can call V2X rushed, as it the first version of the standard was published in 2002. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-everything https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-everything
bryanlarsen 9y ago
Reducing congestion? Self-driving is going to make congestion much, much worse. Self-driving makes driving cheaper, safer, easier & more accessible. Anytime you do that for anything, usage increases dramatically, often in ways that are difficult to fore see. But it's not hard to predict a few: - cheap delivery will be used for everything - people will send and summon vehicles from everywhere. I might drive to work, send my vehicle home so somebody else can use it, summon it at the end of day, and drive home. - et cetera
- jon_richards 9y ago
  I think the main hope is improving the parking situation. I wonder how much congestion is caused by people driving around slowly looking for parking.
  - shuntress 9y ago
    Just because there is no person in the car, that won't stop it from driving around looking for parking. After my car drives me 45 minutes to work it still needs to park nearby to pick me up after work.
    - ensignavenger 9y ago
      It can park much further away, and it could even wirelessy locate and reserve a parking spot.
      - Jtsummers 9y ago
        And park closer together. I imagine my office parking lot's physical capacity would increase by at least 60% if we didn't have to get in and out of the vehicles. It already has capacity for around 1000 workers (maybe more). Even if they didn't move the lot, my car could drop me off at the entrance and then go find an available spot. The lot is huge, close to a 1/4 mile walk from the furthest available space to my entrance. I wouldn't mind not having to worry about that on those days I'm running late.
riffic 9y ago
You want to reduce congestion and make mobility improvements for many? Look to cities that make cycling a way of life through infrastructure, planning, and design.
ynniv 9y ago
The House Energy and Commerce Committee passed the SELF DRIVE Act with a vote of 54-0. The act correctly delineates the purview of federal versus state regulation for autonomous vehicles. In short, federal regulatory bodies have authority when it comes to the car, while states have authority when it comes to the driver. A bipartisan, unanimous vote to secure future regulator power, story at 11! eyeroll The Federal government gets to regulate the car that drives itself, and the State gets to regulate the driver that's actually just a passenger.
Animats 9y ago
The link is to a PR piece from a right-wing lobbyist. The actual bill is here.[1] It's mostly about federal preemption. NHTSA can set standards, and states can't. There are also some irrelevant giveaways regarding exemption from bumper and crashworthyness standards for low-volume vehicles. The preemption part will allow companies to test self-driving heavy trucks in California, something California DMV does not currently allow. Also, currently the California DMV can revoke the vehicle licenses of a self-driving car manufacturer if they do bad stuff, which DMV did to Uber. DMV can probably still do that. Some of the safety standards are explicitly weak. "The Secretary may not condition deployment or testing of highly automated vehicles on review of safety assessment certifications." But NHTSA still gets to set standards, and they can order recalls. There's not much about liability; this doesn't change who's responsible for accidents or for vehicle defects. The requirements on manufacturers are mostly toothless - "submit a plan" comes up regularly. There are no privacy standards, so Tesla can watch you in your car as long as they admit somewhere that they do that. Can DMV still make manufacturers submit crash reports and disconnect reports? Not clear. The bill text is IN GENERAL.—Nothing in this subsection may be construed to prohibit a State or a political subdivision of a State from maintaining, enforcing, prescribing, or continuing in effect any law or regulation regarding registration, licensing, driving education and training, insurance, law enforcement, crash investigations, safety and emissions inspections, congestion management of vehicles on the street within a State or political subdivision of a State, or traffic unless the law or regulation is an unreasonable restriction on the design, construction, or performance of highly automated vehicles, automated driving systems, or components of automated driving systems. Now manufacturers get to litigate "unreasonable restriction". (Some self-driving car companies hate those reports, because they show their technology sucks. Google/Waymo is fine with it. Latest accident report: Uber vehicle just taken out of auto mode was rear-ended while stopped.) (The biggest lesson we have so far from self-driving car accidents is that the non-self-driving cars need basic automatic braking to prevent low-speed rear-ending the self-driving cars. Google/Waymo cars keep getting rear-ended when they detect they're entering an intersection with blocked lines of sight. They'll advance a bit into the intersection, detect cross traffic, and stop. The human-driven car behind them then sometimes hits them, at very slow speed.) [1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/3388/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/3388...
ilaksh 9y ago
Does it give them permission to remove the backup driver? In Waymo's case it seems like they are mainly waiting for a law that says that and then they can deploy for certain routes and conditions.

64 points by abhi3 9y ago

A new designated felon would be required to sell highly automated vehicles, the Cyber Security Officer. You'll sign some documents certifying everything is fine, but of course, everything won't be fine. When your cars get hacked you'll go to jail for defrauding the government and/or manslaughter. I bet it pays real good though.

dayaz36 9y ago

25k is less than 1% of most major auto manufacturers yearly production numbers. No article I've read on this news has put that into context and instead praises the legislation as liberating car manufacturers to bring FSD cars to the masses. Most people don't read past the headline let alone look into the facts of the article. Also nothing good EVER gets passed legislation unanimously. Last time the House passed legislation this quickly and unanimously was when they passed SOAPA. Something feels fishy about this. I haven't read the legislation directly but I bet if a journalist went through it fully, somethings would surface that people wouldn't like.

ouid 9y ago

The title could do a lot more to indicate what the Self Drive act actually is. A house committee drafted some legislation that grants the federal government regulatory power over self-driving cars, or rather strips it from state governments. At least as far as it is reported in the article.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
I skimmed the text, it does specify requirements of it's own on self-driving cars (both for safety and privacy), establishes a council of industry experts on it, etc. as well. But barring states from regulating this in their own borders is about as much of a sweetheart bill for business as you can get, it ensures they only have to spend their lobbying money on one legislative body.
- Johnny555 9y ago
  But barring states from regulating this in their own borders is about as much of a sweetheart bill for business as you can get, it ensures they only have to spend their lobbying money on one legislative body. But it also means that they only need to meet one standard, not 50. Which sounds like the right thing to do when it comes to regulating something mobile that will operate in all 50 states.
  - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
    The differences from state to state are typically minor and not incompatible. Most states derive their requirements from federal standards/recommendations anyway. Current manufactures only offer two versions of cars. One is for most states. The other is for a particular state and all the other states on the "I'm with him" bandwagon. If a certain state would adopt federal recommendations for certain vehicle requirements then things would be greatly simplified.
    - Johnny555 9y ago
      The differences from state to state are typically minor and not incompatible How can you say that when not all states have even enacted legislation to regulate self-driving cars? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Self_Driving_Cars_Legalized_States_in_USA.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Self_Driving_Cars_Legaliz... Even minor changes between states are expensive for automakers to manage, and it's bad for consumers if some manufacturers choose to certify their cars for certain states -- you could end up buying a car that you not only can't legally take to another state, but the car will refuse to go there at all to avoid manufacturer liability.
      - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
        There's very few situations where a car wouldn't be legal to drive in another state. For one, states are generally expected to respect other state's certification and licensing. Additionally, short of the hallmark "cars which have no steering wheels", which likely just won't work outside their programmed area anyways, you could just drive the car normally when in a state which doesn't support it.
Kadin 9y ago
It'd be interesting to see what the reaction is from people and companies in the field. Preemption legislation seems a little premature, to me. Sure, it would stop states from hindering autonomous-vehicle development, e.g. to protect entrenched interests or because of irrational fears, but it could also stop states interested in being on the forefront of research from doing more interesting things. It seems like the sort of thing you'd want when products were further along the development path and having a broad, harmonized-rules marketplace is necessary to move further, but not when most of the tech is still pretty early R&D work.
- ballenf 9y ago
  Preemption is needed most for nascent industries where the economics are uncertain. It gives investors more confidence to invest in an unproven technology if you can at least predict one aspect of the landscape on a national level. Down the road, you can start to relax the preemption (theoretically) and let the market forces keep unwise state regulation in check.

brndnmtthws 9y ago

Want to reduce congestion? Invest in public transit infrastructure.

chc 9y ago
In most of America, this idea seems to be even less practical than self-driving cars. America is pretty much designed to be a pessimal case for public transit. San Diego, where I live, does invest in public transit infrastructure and has relatively extensive mass transit options (buses, trains and trolleys), and yet public transit is still largely unusable outside of fairly small, specific areas. In order to use public transit, I'd have to walk half a mile to a station and then my commute to work would be four times as long as it is by car. So when I hear "invest in public transit infrastructure," I feel like it isn't a concrete enough suggestion. Does it actually mean tear down most of America and replace it with a country where mass transit is practical, or what? I'd love never to have to drive again, but merely investing in public transit demonstrably isn't enough.
- adrianN 9y ago
  I guess investment in public transit has to go hand in hand with saner zoning laws and measures to reduce sprawl. It's certainly not an over-night solution, but few things in city planning are.
- oftenwrong 9y ago
  America is low density because it provides incentives for low density living. The solution, in short, is to remove those incentives. Once the costs of current land use patterns are undistorted, society will adjust, and land use will intensify. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/8/15/financing-suburbia-how-government-mortgage-policy-determined-where-youlive https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/8/15/financing-subu... https://granolashotgun.com/2016/08/31/a-thousand-hidden-subsidies/ https://granolashotgun.com/2016/08/31/a-thousand-hidden-subs... https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/8/a-utah-republican-might-have-the-best-urban-transportation-plan https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/8/a-utah-republic... https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/18/highway-spending-is-eating-the-budget https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/18/highway-spendi...

saosebastiao 9y ago

I'm confident in many benefits of autonomous vehicles, but reducing congestion is not one of them. Quite the opposite, actually. Wanna know what happens when you no longer have people looking for parking but rather have them picking up and dropping off at the curb? Visit a busy airport or pickup/dropoff curbs at a large suburban elementary school. Now throw in the fact that in order to get to your destination, you'll have to drive through those clusterfucks that are caused by other people's destinations. Oh, and all the cars that might not be circling looking for parking, but are now circling looking for new passengers. Oh, and all the new cars on the road when lower costs move people from transit into SOVs. That's the future, embrace it.

tommoor 9y ago
Replace parking with more loading zones - of course that requires city governments to understand and embrace the shift.
devy 9y ago
> but reducing congestion is not one of them. Quite the opposite, actually. The premise of that is to increase vehicle usage efficiency, hence reduce the total amount of vehicles on road and reduce congestion. Additional autonomous vehicles applied in public transits will further improve traffic flow (on demand vs. fixed scheduled services, reducing empty runs etc.)
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  Yet every time we increase efficiency by building roads we end up with more congestion. Can we outrun this problem?
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
Some drivers need a space fit for a semi truck in order to pull out into traffic. Some drivers don't go at green lights because they're distracted. Some drivers camp in the left lane. It's highly possible that the cumulative benefit of widespread adoption of self driving cars could offset the negative aspects of people who suck at some subset of driving.

dexterdog 9y ago

I don't get this assumption that SDCs are going to reduce energy usage. Sure, it will be better on a per-mile basis, but people are going to be traveling a lot more than they are now.

WillPostForFood 9y ago
It may not, but hopefully it is an opportunity to push the transition to electric cars. If we are going to effectively replace all cars, let's make some smart choices on the replacements.

revelation 9y ago

The idea that a bill "sponsored" by corporations whose sole purpose is selling as many cars as possible will "reduce congestion" is probably the most ridiculous idea this turn of the century. What's next? McDonalds innovation on nutrition facts labels to reduce junk fat consumption and improve health outcomes?

WillPostForFood 9y ago
If corporations selling cars were "sponsoring" a bill, they should be sponsoring a bill banning self driving cars, because they are an existential threat to the business of selling cars.

mtgx 9y ago

I've just seen this infographic showing that 5G connectivity is also about "car to car communication" (among other things): https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJCxYZ1XoAAm_CL.jpg:large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJCxYZ1XoAAm_CL.jpg:large I really hope that's just wishful thinking from companies like Qualcomm and wireless operators and not something car makers are actually considering. Making the cars' critical systems (such as the self-driving systems, which would respond based on other cars' actions in car to car communication) be accessible from the internet sounds like a terrible idea. This is why I hope this type of law is not rushed, as car makers and companies like Uber and Google/Waymo hope it will be.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
There's a lot of potential gain from car-to-car communication, but I also see a huge risk. I can be reasonably confident in my car's own sensors, but only God knows what my car is being told by other cars about the world; the opportunities for malicious activity there are huge. It's hard to imagine a system that uses V2V that doesn't rely on some manner of trust, like a closed/encrypted system with car manufacturers having CA-like signing authority or something. And if I've ever learning anything, it's that car companies are not great at network security.
- smileysteve 9y ago
  I too saw F8 and The Furious.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    Ha, I actually have not. Though I did see the trailer which looked ridiculous.
csours 9y ago
I don't think you can call V2X rushed, as it the first version of the standard was published in 2002. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-everything https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-everything

bryanlarsen 9y ago

Reducing congestion? Self-driving is going to make congestion much, much worse. Self-driving makes driving cheaper, safer, easier & more accessible. Anytime you do that for anything, usage increases dramatically, often in ways that are difficult to fore see. But it's not hard to predict a few: - cheap delivery will be used for everything - people will send and summon vehicles from everywhere. I might drive to work, send my vehicle home so somebody else can use it, summon it at the end of day, and drive home. - et cetera

jon_richards 9y ago
I think the main hope is improving the parking situation. I wonder how much congestion is caused by people driving around slowly looking for parking.
- shuntress 9y ago
  Just because there is no person in the car, that won't stop it from driving around looking for parking. After my car drives me 45 minutes to work it still needs to park nearby to pick me up after work.
  - ensignavenger 9y ago
    It can park much further away, and it could even wirelessy locate and reserve a parking spot.
    - Jtsummers 9y ago
      And park closer together. I imagine my office parking lot's physical capacity would increase by at least 60% if we didn't have to get in and out of the vehicles. It already has capacity for around 1000 workers (maybe more). Even if they didn't move the lot, my car could drop me off at the entrance and then go find an available spot. The lot is huge, close to a 1/4 mile walk from the furthest available space to my entrance. I wouldn't mind not having to worry about that on those days I'm running late.

riffic 9y ago

You want to reduce congestion and make mobility improvements for many? Look to cities that make cycling a way of life through infrastructure, planning, and design.

ynniv 9y ago

The House Energy and Commerce Committee passed the SELF DRIVE Act with a vote of 54-0. The act correctly delineates the purview of federal versus state regulation for autonomous vehicles. In short, federal regulatory bodies have authority when it comes to the car, while states have authority when it comes to the driver. A bipartisan, unanimous vote to secure future regulator power, story at 11! eyeroll The Federal government gets to regulate the car that drives itself, and the State gets to regulate the driver that's actually just a passenger.

Animats 9y ago

The link is to a PR piece from a right-wing lobbyist. The actual bill is here.[1] It's mostly about federal preemption. NHTSA can set standards, and states can't. There are also some irrelevant giveaways regarding exemption from bumper and crashworthyness standards for low-volume vehicles. The preemption part will allow companies to test self-driving heavy trucks in California, something California DMV does not currently allow. Also, currently the California DMV can revoke the vehicle licenses of a self-driving car manufacturer if they do bad stuff, which DMV did to Uber. DMV can probably still do that. Some of the safety standards are explicitly weak. "The Secretary may not condition deployment or testing of highly automated vehicles on review of safety assessment certifications." But NHTSA still gets to set standards, and they can order recalls. There's not much about liability; this doesn't change who's responsible for accidents or for vehicle defects. The requirements on manufacturers are mostly toothless - "submit a plan" comes up regularly. There are no privacy standards, so Tesla can watch you in your car as long as they admit somewhere that they do that. Can DMV still make manufacturers submit crash reports and disconnect reports? Not clear. The bill text is IN GENERAL.—Nothing in this subsection may be construed to prohibit a State or a political subdivision of a State from maintaining, enforcing, prescribing, or continuing in effect any law or regulation regarding registration, licensing, driving education and training, insurance, law enforcement, crash investigations, safety and emissions inspections, congestion management of vehicles on the street within a State or political subdivision of a State, or traffic unless the law or regulation is an unreasonable restriction on the design, construction, or performance of highly automated vehicles, automated driving systems, or components of automated driving systems. Now manufacturers get to litigate "unreasonable restriction". (Some self-driving car companies hate those reports, because they show their technology sucks. Google/Waymo is fine with it. Latest accident report: Uber vehicle just taken out of auto mode was rear-ended while stopped.) (The biggest lesson we have so far from self-driving car accidents is that the non-self-driving cars need basic automatic braking to prevent low-speed rear-ending the self-driving cars. Google/Waymo cars keep getting rear-ended when they detect they're entering an intersection with blocked lines of sight. They'll advance a bit into the intersection, detect cross traffic, and stop. The human-driven car behind them then sometimes hits them, at very slow speed.) [1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/3388/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/3388...

ilaksh 9y ago

Does it give them permission to remove the backup driver? In Waymo's case it seems like they are mainly waiting for a law that says that and then they can deploy for certain routes and conditions.