Tesla says that next year its cars will not only steer themselves within a lane, they will change lanes to pass slower vehicles when it is safe to do so. While other high-end cars, such as the Mercedes S-class, can steer themselves (“lane centering”), Tesla is the first to promise automatic lane changing.
San Ramon, California may see the nation’s first self-driving buses next year. The buses will operate in an office park called Bishop’s Ranch. While their range will initially be limited, they will use existing infrastructure, which means all of the people who have been dreaming of pod cars should pack up their bags and go home. Pod cars and similar personal-rapid transit devices would, like Contra Cost County’s self-driving buses, have a limited range, but would require expensive new infrastructure to work at all.
Volvo’s CEO, Håkan Samuelsson, has so much confidence in his company’s progress towards completely automated vehicles that he says the company would accept full liability for any accidents that were the fault of its cars. (Google and Mercedes have made similar promises.) At the same time, Sanuelsson has urged the United States government to impose national guidelines on the states for self-driving cars. The Antiplanner isn’t so sure; I’d rather have 50 different state laws, some good and some bad with the bad ones learning from the good, than one national rule that is almost certain to be bad with little opportunity to learn because there are no other sets of rules in other states.
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Meanwhile, the gulf is growing between “intelligent transportation systems” (ITS) and self-driving cars. The former is a buzz-phrase for government-funded (and, in some people’s visions, government-mandated) infrastructure, yet none of the companies designing self-driving cars are assuming that such infrastructure will be available. A recent conference on ITS did not include anyone from Google or other self-driving car companies and in fact barely if ever mentioned those companies. Instead, they talked about such concepts as “interoperability.” But, as one participant noted, “interoperability does not mean forcing market driven solutions to come to terms with flawed or ill-conceived and outdated solutions conceived by standards-setting bodies.”
Is it the self-driving car’s fault if somebody jumps in front of it too quickly for the car to stop?? Is it the self-driving car’s fault if someone rear-ends it and in the process pushes it into the car in front of it ?? (Yes it is)
If the manufacturer’s are serious about taking on the liability and they will use existing infrastructure, then we’ve arrived. The self-driving cars will appear on the streets as soon as they are on the market.
Yeah, Volvo is looking to consolidate its regulatory vendors into a smaller, more easily managed group. Why pay politicians in 50 states to bend AV rules your way when you could instead pay key members of the House Transportation Committee and Senate Commerce Committee, throwing bones to other individual congress people whenever Volvo wants to swing a big bill their way? Volvo is advocating early adoption of crony capitalism in the federal market for autonomous vehicle regulation. The states should strenuously resist. Laboratories of democracy and all that.
@OFP2003: Common carriers aren’t held strictly liable if a pedestrian steps out in front of a bus in the middle of the street…why should AV manufacturers?
Did you see the reports of the guys who drove cross country in record time? The only problem they had was going 90 MPH – far above any speed limits and the system didn’t react fact enough.