After failing to pass legislation in 2018, the U.S. Congress will try its hand once again at a self-driving car bill.
Reuters reported Tuesday that the House Energy and Commerce Committee and Senate Commerce Committee have notified relevant groups that they request input for new legislation. Automakers and safety groups are among the areas each committee requested input from. The hope this time is to create a bi-partisan piece of legislation across both chambers of congress.
Last year, the Republican-controlled House passed a bill, though a similar bill in the Senate failed to pass due to Democrat concerns over self-driving car safety. Although chambers made amendments, last year’s lame-duck Congress punted the topic to 2019 as Democrats took control of the House and Republicans grew their majority in the Senate.
The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers already praised Congress’ announcement. The alliance covers numerous large automakers, including General Motors.
“Right now various countries are exploring regulations that will shape the future of autonomous vehicles, and the U.S. risks losing its leadership in this life-saving, life-changing technology, so we urge Congress to move forward now, this year,” the alliance said in a statement.
The letter sent to various groups asked for input for the new bill by August 23. The hope is to reach a compromise and pass legislation this year.
The previous bills included abilities for automakers to win exemptions for self-driving cars without typical human controls and directed federal regulators to collect crash data from Level 2 autonomous driving systems. Those include Cadillac’s Super Cruise system and Tesla’s Autopilot. On the former topic, GM has petitioned the NHTSA to make an exception to current regulations and allow its Cruise self-driving cars to operate without a steering wheel or pedals. A decision is supposedly coming soon.
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Source: Reuters
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“Right now various countries are exploring regulations that will shape the future of autonomous vehicles, and the U.S. risks losing its leadership in this life-saving, life-changing technology, so we urge Congress to move forward now, this year,” the alliance said in a statement.
This technology few people want per recent studies.
I have a big ear in the automotive realm, and partnered with a friend who co-owns a used dealership. I have yet to meet or hear from a customer that actually wants this crap, none of my many car friends trust or want anything to do with it. It is yet another agenda driven fantasy wet dream that will never work. Much like Socialism!
I hope it gets killed in the Senate
Airliners already have an advanced autopilot system that you can engage or disengage, and it works well, except for the fact that all it has to do is fly the plane straight and level at 35,000 feet. And even still, it has problems, and the technology has been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people in the last year alone.
Making a “self-driving vehicle” is orders of magnitude more complex, and I would bet it never really materializes in the way many imagine.
Cars will always have pedals and a steering wheel, just like planes. To take those away, is just stupid and a fantasy advanced by out-of-touch executives.
I can’t name a single person I know who wants this technology.
So can we please get rid of the self-driving captchas….PLEASE
Get rid of self-driving captchas, and GM should sell Cruise before it turns into a failure and use that money to update their current lineup.
No, he means that for each self-driving captchas you complete on GMA and elsewhere, you’re completing a verification exercise to aid a bot in determine and recognizing objects in a driving environment. This data is used to inform future generations of bots in recognizing objects that you already recognize as you drive.
All of this sourced from 12 years of Street view data from all over the world, and all you have to do is verify what the bots sees.
Is it a fire hydrant? Is it a hill? Is it a bus? Is it a crosswalk? The bot may not know 100%, but you can tell the bot what a taxi looks like by ticking the correct boxes, thereby giving the bot that much more information of what a taxi looks like.
This is Google’s doing, not GM, and if you think that GM should just roll over and stick to updating their current lineup to keep the UAW workers busy, you’re missing the bigger picture. Autonomous cars ARE the update for their current lineup.
If you don’t like it, aim MUCH higher, not lower.