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The Car Connection reports that back in May Google unveiled the prototype of its first autonomous car built in-house but there were a few features that the new model lacked — for example, a steering wheel and brake pedal. Now, California's DMV has told Google to return those accouterments to their traditional locations so that riders can take "immediate physical control" of the car, if necessary. That and other autonomous vehicle regulations kick in on September 15.
"This isn't a huge setback for Google," writes Richard Reed. "After all, the prototypes aren't nearly ready for primetime, they're just being used for tests. Though the control-less models have worked fine on closed tracks, with no accidents to date, they'll eventually be navigating real streets in real traffic, so they'll need to be up to code. In fact, the DMV may tighten up things a bit further next month, when it issues regulations concerning test vehicles on public roads." In the long run, though, we'd expect the DMV to loosen some of these restrictions. It will undoubtedly take years for regulators and the public to begin trusting autonomous cars — and even then, it's likely that automakers will keep some kind of manual override system in place. After all, given the safety records of autonomous cars — records that will certainly improve with the rollout of vehicle-to-vehicle technology — we're hopeful that motorists will (almost) never need to use them.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Friday August 29 2014, @11:06AM
The state finds that there is a problem with your horseless carriage sir. It seems you have not included neither a harness, hitch nor a horse. Please add these to your design so we can approve your horseless carriage for use on the road.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 29 2014, @02:47PM
This is a reasonable addition. At first.
The first versions of driverless cars will have issues. They will then 'fail safe'. How do you move them back to somewhere the computer knows what to do? What if you drive your car into another state that has said 'you may not do that'? What if your battery died and it can not get to the network to find more information on road conditions? I can think of a hundred reasons to have one. Once they work the kinks out it will not be as reasonable to have and be extra cost.
For now having a steering wheel is reasonable.
Lets crawl before we are flying down the highway at 80.