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A U.S. House panel on Wednesday approved a sweeping proposal by voice vote to allow automakers to deploy up to 100,000 self-driving vehicles without meeting existing auto safety standards and bar states from imposing driverless car rules.
Representative Robert Latta, a Republican who heads the Energy and Commerce Committee subcommittee overseeing consumer protection, said he would continue to consider changes before the full committee votes on the measure, expected next week. The full U.S. House of Representatives will not take up the bill until it reconvenes in September after the summer recess.
The measure, which would be the first significant federal legislation aimed at speeding self-driving cars to market, would require automakers to submit safety assessment reports to U.S. regulators, but would not require pre-market approval of advanced vehicle technologies.
Automakers would have to show self-driving cars "function as intended and contain fail safe features" to get exemptions from safety standards but the Transportation Department could not "condition deployment or testing of highly automated vehicles on review of safety assessment certifications," the draft measure unveiled late Monday said.
[...] States could still set rules on registration, licensing, liability, insurance and safety inspections, but could not set self-driving car performance standards, under the proposal.
[...] Auto dealers want the final bill to clarify that the measure would not preempt state dealer franchise laws that generally bar automakers from selling vehicles directly to consumers.
I can understand why an autonomous test vehicle doesn't need seat belts but is taking away the ability of a state to regulate this new technology a good idea? What do you think?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday July 21 2017, @01:16AM (1 child)
We still have liability, handled by the courts. It's not desirable to eliminate every possible safety issue via regulation.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 21 2017, @01:39AM
> It's not desirable to eliminate every possible safety issue via regulation.
Of course not. But something heavy/dense that is part of the self-driving system, but not well attached, is a pretty obvious safety issue. What do the current generation of LIDAR sensors (with motorized mirror) weigh? I think that most car companies have internal standards for things like this (because killing customers is bad business), thus the waiver is reasonable, even though the car is not the same as the production car that was crash tested.
I happen to be sensitive to this problem due to an experience in testing c.1980 -- a large 8-channel Brush (chart) recorder was attached inside the truck to record speed, steering, etc (long before modern data acq systems). The truck was tripped and rolled over. The test driver was nearly beheaded when the heavy recorder got loose, it missed him by an inch or so. I had been driving the same truck, in the same maneuver, a few minutes before--it could have been me.
when I add test equipment to cars now, I really bolt it down.