Driverless Cars Start Today; Rand Says Unready Cars, Injuries & Fatalities Justified
Of the 50 companies testing driverless car technology right now, the subset that applied -- and it's unclear from news reports how many did apply -- for a California permit may be able to legally "test" cars with no backup driver in the car on all California roads beginning today April 2.
These companies have been testing driverless cars by allowing them on roads with backup drivers. Starting today, they could "test" the cars without the backup driver in the car.
The process of getting a permit includes few requirements, but two are agreeing to notify "cities" before driving the cars within their bounds, and "providing a plan to interact with law enforcement" in case of an accident? It's not clear from news reports what the plan to interact with law enforcement must specify.
Not required to get a permit to release a car with no driver onto public roads, is a plan to exchange phone numbers with another car's driver in the case of an accident.
Consumer and safety advocates are escalating warnings and are publishing more specific proposed tests they'd like state Department of Motor Vehicles authorities to demand manufacturers meet such as an autonomous vehicle driving test to prove one can obey and navigate complex intersections.
The San Francisco Chronicle yesterday, far below the lede, summarized a Rand Corp. study that said a few injuries or fatalities now are a tradeoff that will refine the technology and save lives later on:
-------
Update:
7:00 AM PST: KQED this morning reported one company so far has applied for a "permit" to "test" a vehicle with no driver in the car. It's assumed the permit was granted.
KQED interviewed an information scientist from Rand Corporation that repeated the driverless cars were not yet ready but we need to get them out on the road with pedestrians and cyclists to refine and tune the cars' artificial intelligence (A.I.) "It's not clear that they're ready yet, but there's no way to get them ready without getting them on the street."
This work by AJ Fish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
These companies have been testing driverless cars by allowing them on roads with backup drivers. Starting today, they could "test" the cars without the backup driver in the car.
The process of getting a permit includes few requirements, but two are agreeing to notify "cities" before driving the cars within their bounds, and "providing a plan to interact with law enforcement" in case of an accident? It's not clear from news reports what the plan to interact with law enforcement must specify.
Not required to get a permit to release a car with no driver onto public roads, is a plan to exchange phone numbers with another car's driver in the case of an accident.
Consumer and safety advocates are escalating warnings and are publishing more specific proposed tests they'd like state Department of Motor Vehicles authorities to demand manufacturers meet such as an autonomous vehicle driving test to prove one can obey and navigate complex intersections.
The San Francisco Chronicle yesterday, far below the lede, summarized a Rand Corp. study that said a few injuries or fatalities now are a tradeoff that will refine the technology and save lives later on:
"A study from the Rand Corp. says widespread use of autonomous cars before they're perfected would save lives, even if they'd still cause crashes, injuries and fatalities."I believe that's the same logic authorities used to conduct medical experiments at Tuskegee. I'll check in the morning.
-------
Update:
7:00 AM PST: KQED this morning reported one company so far has applied for a "permit" to "test" a vehicle with no driver in the car. It's assumed the permit was granted.
KQED interviewed an information scientist from Rand Corporation that repeated the driverless cars were not yet ready but we need to get them out on the road with pedestrians and cyclists to refine and tune the cars' artificial intelligence (A.I.) "It's not clear that they're ready yet, but there's no way to get them ready without getting them on the street."
This work by AJ Fish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
