The United States National Highway Traffic Safety Administration believes now is not the time to begin regulating self-driving cars. The reason? Onboard technology and the entire industry is still premature.
NHTSA deputy administrator Heidi King told Bloomberg in a report published last Thursday “the technology is so nascent,” and added, “I don’t think it is appropriate today to regulate this technology.”
However, as the technology and industry advances, the NHTSA will be ready to step in and lay out guidelines. King said the agency will always keep self-driving cars on the radar and identify the right time for regulation.
Instead, the agency is committed to identifying problems that hinder the deployment of self-driving cars. Earlier this year, the agency opened a comment period for automakers to identify areas that restrict self-driving cars.
Two companies have emerged as frontrunners in the autonomous vehicle race: General Motors and Waymo. The former plans to commercialize self-driving cars sometime in 2019. But, Waymo, plans to roll out its first robo-taxi service in Arizona later this year. GM has also submitted a request to U.S. Department of Transportation to deploy its Cruise AV without a steering wheel or pedals.
Comments
Wouldn’t it make more sense to take proactive steps at working with automakers to lay the foundation for autonomous vehicle legislature? Now the automakers will continue on with their work, announce plans bring to bring it to market, and the government will step in and say, “Wait, no, we need time to review and regulate this new technology.” Work with the automakers now on what you want, research the technology, and plan accordingly so that automakers don’t waste their time.
The US legislature in general is behind on vehicle regulations. Vehicle lighting, camera mirrors, etc. The whole systems needs a review.
There are several operational pilot tests of fully autonomous fleet owned shuttles in the united states and none of them use GM/Cruise or Waymo…Right now in Vegas and Lincoln NE there are operational self driving shuttles, they both use the French company Navya…
Seems to me that unless there is some objective validation criteria for autonomous vehicle certification, lawyers will have a heyday suing manufacturers anytime anything goes wrong. Seems a shame if autonomous vehicle technology could provide a substantial improvement over current driver error (impaired, distracted, sleepy) accidents and is not implemented because of liability risk.