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Countries agree regulations for automated driving
More than 50 countries, including Japan, South Korea and the EU member states, have agreed common regulations for vehicles that can take over some driving functions, including having a mandatory black box, the UN announced Thursday.
The binding rules on Automated Lane Keeping Systems (ALKS) will come into force in January 2021.
The measures were adopted by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations, which brings together 53 countries, not just in Europe but also in Africa and Asia.
"This is the first binding international regulation on so-called 'Level 3' vehicle automation," UNECE said in a statement.
"The new regulation therefore marks an important step towards the wider deployment of automated vehicles to help realise a vision of safer, more sustainable mobility for all."
[...] The United States is not part of the forum but its car manufacturers would have to follow the new regulations in order to sell Level 3 vehicles in Japan, for example.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday June 26 2020, @01:19PM (6 children)
Low maximum speeds aren't necessarily bad if you can do something else with your time. But Level 3 ain't it. No sleeping, no open containers of booze. Maybe the benefit is that people will (ideally) check their phones only during those short "driverless" periods, cutting down on accidents and deaths.
Took 2 hours to post this comment, damn.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2020, @02:22AM (1 child)
I think the low speed limits on California freeways are due to the fact that states like to find any excuse to give tickets and collect fees, send people to drivers school and through the court system, etc... which all just funds the whole system.
When automated vehicles advance to the point where they don't need driver attention and they are obviously and unequivocally much much safer than human drivers there is no point in having ridiculously low speed limits because no matter what the state chooses the speed limit to be the car will simply be programmed to automatically follow said limit and there would be no revenue generated from cars running red lights (due to lower yellow light times) and speeding. So the state would have no reason to make the speed limits ridiculously slow since it doesn't bring in any revenue and they will eventually raise them to reasonable levels.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2020, @12:45PM
Don't know how old you are, but your fantasy of 100% automated driving isn't happening in my lifetime (because I intend to keep on driving), and probably not in yours. The initial surge of hype & venture capital for this technology has dropped off significantly, now that the extent of the problem has become more clear.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2020, @02:28AM (3 children)
"Low maximum speeds aren't necessarily bad if you can do something else with your time."
About the only other thing I can do with my time in a car, if I'm a passenger, is talk on the phone or keep my eyes closed. Otherwise I have to look outside the car. If I try texting for too long or reading I get car sick because apparently the bumpy road combined with my eyes looking at a relatively still object in the car causes my brain to think there is something wrong which makes me sick.
Yeah yeah, there is probably medicine you can take for that but not worth it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2020, @12:49PM (2 children)
Fixing motion sickness is one of the major problems in autonomous driving. A number of expensive active suspensions are being developed to really smooth out the ride--but these are most likely to appear on high end / luxury cars aimed at 1%'ers. Everyone else gets to barf, I guess?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2020, @03:14PM
About a third of people are "highly susceptible" to motion sickness according to wiki. If suspension tech reached the point where motion could no longer be felt, would the problem be solved, or would the windows have to be blacked out (or use VR headsets) to remove signs of motion from the periphery? Can the issue be solved by encouraging people to just look out the windows rather than get sick trying to check their phone?
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Sunday June 28 2020, @10:51AM
I have a version of the GP's problem. I can't read in a vehicle for more than a minute or so without feeling a nauseous headache. If I persist, it will get worse until I throw up. In my experience, smoothing out the ride does not help, if anything it makes it worse. (It might be because smoother rides tend to have more enclosed environments. Fresh air helps.)
In autonomous vehicles I would be pretty much limited to conversation, music, or sleep.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.