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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: 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.