Re:The 'Self Drive' Act puts America on the road to reducing...
by socalthrowaway on Wednesday September 06, 2017 @05:20PM
(#15187226)
It's illegal to enter an intersection if unsafe to do so.
The biggest concern having driven around self driving cars in California is that they absolutely cannot handle mixing with traffic in situations like merging onto rush hour freeway traffic. Try watching one get off and watching the gap increase as more and more cars do the same while you are stuck behind the car trying to enter the freeway. It's the eternal good Samaritan problem. Same in normal traffic as it tries to drive 'safely' and maintain a following distance which leads to the same issue of stopping a whole lane.
Re:The 'Self Drive' Act puts America on the road to reducing...
by drivingmenuts on Wednesday September 06, 2017 @10:23PM
(#15188709)
> Google/Waymo cars keep getting rear-ended when they detect they're entering an intersection with blocked lines of sight. They'll advance a bit into the intersection, detect cross traffic, and stop.
If a human driver did the exact same thing, wouldn't that incite a case of road rage? This seems like a problem that Google/Waymo must solve, rather than forcing the majority of driven cars to solve.
The preemption part will allow companies to test self-driving heavy trucks in California, something California DMV does not currently allow. Also, currently the California DMV can revoke the vehicle licenses of a self-driving car manufacturer if they do bad stuff, which DMV did to Uber. DMV can probably still do that.
Some of the safety standards are explicitly weak. "The Secretary may not condition deployment or testing of highly automated vehicles on review of safety assessment certifications." But NHTSA still gets to set standards, and they can order recalls.
There's not much about liability; this doesn't change who's responsible for accidents or for vehicle defects. The requirements on manufacturers are mostly toothless - "submit a plan" comes up regularly. There are no privacy standards, so Tesla can watch you in your car as long as they admit somewhere that they do that.
Can DMV still make manufacturers submit crash reports and disconnect reports? Not clear. The bill text is IN GENERAL.—Nothing in this subsection may be construed to prohibit a State or a political subdivision of a State from maintaining, enforcing, prescribing, or continuing in effect any law or regulation regarding registration, licensing, driving education and training, insurance, law enforcement, crash investigations, safety and emissions inspections, congestion management of vehicles on the street within a State or political subdivision of a State, or traffic unless the law or regulation is an unreasonable restriction on the design, construction, or performance of highly automated vehicles, automated driving systems, or components of automated driving systems. Now manufacturers get to litigate "unreasonable restriction". (Some self-driving car companies hate those reports, because they show their technology sucks. Google/Waymo is fine with it. Latest accident report: Uber vehicle just taken out of auto mode was rear-ended while stopped.)
(The biggest lesson we have so far from self-driving car accidents is that the non-self-driving cars need basic automatic braking to prevent low-speed rear-ending the self-driving cars. Google/Waymo cars keep getting rear-ended when they detect they're entering an intersection with blocked lines of sight. They'll advance a bit into the intersection, detect cross traffic, and stop. The human-driven car behind them then sometimes hits them, at very slow speed.)
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/3388...