Carmakers give cautious welcome to self-driving guidelines: VIDEO
Carmakers give cautious welcome to self-driving guidelines
US government move is a big step for technology hampered by patchwork regulation
The guidelines include requirements that driverless cars transmit and receive basic safety messages © EPA
YESTERDAY by: Leslie Hook in San Francisco and Richard Milne in Oslo
The US published details of its first national guidelines for self-driving cars on Tuesday, with its attempt to tackle the existing patchwork regulation receiving a cautious welcome from carmakers.
The new outlines indicate for the first time how carmakers can get approval for self-driving cars and how the safety of these vehicles will be measured.
The policy clears the way for national-level regulation of autonomous vehicles, an area that had previously been unregulated except for occasional state and city-level rules.
“Self-driving cars have become the archetype of our future transportation,” wrote Anthony Foxx, US transport secretary, in the new rule book. He likened the advent of self-driving vehicles to earlier transportation revolutions brought about by trains, cars or planes.
Companies that are developing driverless cars, such as Google, have long called for national-level rules to help provide a clear regulatory framework for the nascent industry.
However, several prominent carmakers stopped short of fully endorsing the new guidelines on Tuesday.
“While we are still examining the details, it seems that the scene has now been set for a speedier introduction of autonomous driving cars in the US,” Hakan Samuelsson, chief executive of Volvo Cars, told the Financial Times: “Let’s be clear what this means. It means saved lives.”
A spokesman for German automaker Daimler, which owns Mercedes-Benz, said it was “heartened by the collaborative approach” of the US as federal, state, and municipal authorities worked together.
At GM, the US automaker based in Detroit, a spokeswoman said the company welcomed the effort and was still reviewing the guidance.
It includes several elements that could rankle the tech companies that have been at the forefront of autonomous vehicle technology, including a requirement that every new software update for a driverless car must go through the same safety approval process as a new vehicle.
The policy also requests that car companies share extensive amounts of data with regulators. This includes not only standard quarterly crash reports, but also intimate details of their cyber security defences and data on every security breach of a car.
Sharing such technical details has previously been a point of contention between regulators and companies, which argue that they can be responsible for their own cyber security measures.
Google and Uber, which have been competing to develop driverless taxi fleets, did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr Foxx, speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, said that driverless technology will “improve the quality of life for so many Americans”. He called the new guidelines the “most comprehensive automated vehicle policy the world has ever seen, the first of its kind”.
While countries such as Singapore have stolen a march on the US by outlining driverless policies sooner, the US, as the world’s second-largest auto market, is in a position to help steer the course of driverless standards worldwide.
“In the 50 years of the US Department of Transportation, there has never been a moment like this, a moment where we can build a culture of safety as a new transportation technology emerges,” Mr Foxx said.
President Barack Obama has made support for driverless vehicles a key part of his tech agenda, promising this year to set aside $4bn from the 2017 budget for the development of autonomous driving and vehicle safety technology over 10 years.
With more than 35,000 road deaths a year, the US has the highest rate of fatal auto accidents per capita of any high-income country, and almost all of these are caused by human error. Once autonomous vehicle technology is fully developed and safe, it could in theory reduce the number of car crashes and bring road deaths down.
Having the US federal government take the lead in setting guidelines is a positive step for the companies developing driverless cars, such as Google, which has clashed with state regulators.
Several states have restrictive rules for driverless car testing, while others have none. In California a rule proposed last December would have banned cars without a steering wheel — such as the one Google is developing — from public roads for at least three years.
While individual states will still have the final say over their autonomous vehicle rules, the guidelines from the Department of Transportation lay out the first formal federal recommendations for states to consider, with the goal of creating a consistent national regulatory framework.
Mr Obama explained the policy in an op-ed, writing: “We’re also giving guidance to states on how to wisely regulate these new technologies, so that when a self-driving car crosses from Ohio into Pennsylvania, its passengers can be confident that other vehicles will be … just as safe.”
The guidelines from the Department of Transportation do not yet represent formal laws, but will form the basis for rules to be passed in Congress. The department has asked for public comment on the rules over the next 60 days, and pledged to update its guidelines every year as the technology develops.
One key plank of the guidelines is a 15-point safety report that carmakers will be asked to submit before putting driverless cars on the road, addressing issues such as data recording, privacy, consumer education, and post-crash behaviour. The reports will initially be voluntary, but could become mandatory.
The guidelines also include requirements that driverless cars transmit and receive basic safety messages, similar to the way aircraft can automatically communicate with each other. They envision that cars will be able to communicate with infrastructure points in future as well, to assist with steering and safety.
New cyber security rules for all cars, both self-driving and traditional, will be part of the guidelines, at a time when car hacking is an increasing concern.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will gain new authority to regulate self-driving cars, including the ability to issue recalls if it deems cars are unsafe.
Additional reporting by John Murray Brown in London and Patti Waldmeir in Chicago
https://www.ft.com/content/74a1e5dc-7ed4-11e6-8e50-8ec15fb462f4
