back to article The KITT hits the Man: US Congress urged to OK robo-car trials

More than one hundred organizations called on US congress to fast-lane legislation on self-driving cars. In an open letter, dated Monday, to party-leading Senators Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) the 108 companies and advocacy groups ask that congress speed up its consideration and passage of parallel self- …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Can't Wait!

    Vested interests are pushing this hard, meanwhile Gartner still predicts robocars are over a decade away. Meantime I'm wondering about Safety and Security. Will Unsafe or 'less safe' or riskier updates get pushed to cheaper budget cars first, before executive models??? After all, that's what Win-10 home users are right now, guinea-pigs for corporate customers etc!

    1. Christian Berger

      That worries me...

      Given their track-record, if Gartner claims that AV are still more than a decade it means that we probably already have widespread adoption of AV already. It seems unlikely they are right in that regard.

  2. TRT Silver badge

    Congressional lobbying...

    from the Amalgamated Union of Vehicle and Highway Barrier repairers, Road Debris Sweepers and Vehicular Crash Investigators?

  3. a_yank_lurker

    The New Fusion?

    Are AVs the new fusion, always 10 or 20 years away from being commercially available?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A self-fufilling prophecy

    I have no idea if the same situation exists in the UK, but here in the increasingly unregulated States, Millennials text-while-driving with wild abandon. I see rear-end collisions and just-averted ones on a weekly basis. Auto insurance prices have gone up by double digits due to distracted driving, a code-phrase for TWD. I have no interest in a self-driver, but I desperately want Millennials to buy them.

    1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Re: A self-fufilling prophecy

      There are plenty of distractions besides testing, and plenty of non-Millennials texting while driving. Spend too much time grinding that one axe and you'll find you get nothing cut.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Meh

    This is already sounding like a stampede to the trough...

    If its not a stampede for federal contracts, its a stampede by pols looking for political donors.

    The only one of those backers that I am happy to hear about are advocacy groups for disabled people in need of driving services. Even Mothers Against Drunk Driving is a bit problematic, as I have not seen any current evidence that autonomous vehicles would A) be used by someone whose judgment is impaired and B) that autonomous vehicles are systemically safe.

    I still think the big issues around surveillance/control of who is on the road and the IT security of having a large percentage of cars on the road being autonomous has been properly thought out.

  6. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

    Stifled or not?

    I must admit this bring back memories of comedy sketches about cars and aeroplanes and if they had been invented during a period of legislation and safety concerns that we have now. Odds are, both the car as we know and the plane as we know would probably not exist. Something along the lines of the Bob Newhart sketch "Marketing the Wright brothers".

    On the other hand, I really don't want to be out on the road when some AV car that's not fully tested and has all the fun regulated out of it goes "rogue".

    1. codejunky Silver badge

      Re: Stifled or not?

      @ John Brown (no body)

      In a similar vein this article about the development of aircraft and the freedom allowing what we have today vs starting the venture without such freedom-

      http://www.continentaltelegraph.com/2018/03/04/the-wrong-brothers/

      The freedom to experiment brings advancements.

  7. kirk_augustin@yahoo.com

    Autonomous vehicles have got to be the dumbest idea ever. Computers are way to slow at vision recognition. Humans are over 100 million times faster at it. They currently are trying to use GPS mapping, and everyone with a NAV system knows how obsolete that data is.

    1. Francis Boyle Silver badge

      The old "my satnav is crap therefore autonomous cares will be unsafe" argument

      You get what you pay for and your satnav is a consumer grade product supported by the manufacturer which as with phones more often than not means not really supported. Once you have autonomous vehicles the road database they use becomes part of the road infrastructure and gets update by the appropriate authority in real time. So for example, in the event of a crash and a lane being closed off, the cones go out and the database is updated at the same time. And yes, this requires competent, properly funded government agencies, so maybe not so good for third world countries like the US, but for the rest of us, fine.

      1. Kinetic

        Re: The old "my satnav is crap therefore autonomous cares will be unsafe" argument

        There's no way in hell you'd rely on a central data feed to notify you of things like lane closures. You have to do that in real time based on environmental feedback. Yes if a road is closed, a data update to reroute all the traffic to another route is a good idea. If you rely on central updates, what happens when someone breaks down on a road and blocks a lane - you just going to run into the back of him / wait behind him because you think it's a traffic jam?

        The more genuinely autonomous we can make these vehicles, the better. Ideally they'd be completely disconnected from any central update / control system, so no coordinated hack can hold everyone to ransom.

        Personally I don't see the attraction of them, but if we are going down this path they have to be able to handle everything the world throws at them. After all, before long no-one will be able to drive, so who's going to get the car out of trouble ?

        1. Francis Boyle Silver badge

          Re: The old "my satnav is crap therefore autonomous cares will be unsafe" argument

          Of course you don't rely on a updates from a database to avoid collision. An autonomous vehicle is by definition autonomous. But you do need it for navigation. What I'm criticising is the idea that with AI vehicles you'll get people going to the shop for a loaf of bread and ending up in a farmer's field somewhere in the back of beyond (to exaggerate just a little).

          Making safety critical systems network dependent is, of course, insane. (Not that I am aware of anyone advocating it, vendors of network equipment aside). But if you have a problem with routing information coming from a network you probably should advocate banning radio traffic reports.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What insanity

    There is a big push to legalize on-roadway testing but not a single safety, security, design or maintenance requirement for autonomous vehicles. Properly functioning AVs could prove useful to the elderly, handicapped, etc., reduce the number of DUIs and remove some of the terrible drivers from the roadways. Until the tech is bullet-proof reliable with redundant systems, hardened communications, extensive independent certification, etc.no vehicles should be allowed on the roadways.

    Federal AV standards are mandatory and should not be a knee-jerk after thought once people start dying. Legislation must be created to decide who will die in an unavoidable collision and who's going to pay for all of the carnage. The insurance industry want's no part of the rushed-to-market, not ready for prime time vehicles. It's all a big money grab for the first suppliers to get approval to sell half-baked products to naïve consumers for big bucks.

    1. FrozenShamrock

      Re: What insanity

      Exactly. Who is going to be responsible in the event of the inevitable crash? The car manufacturer, the software provider, the owner of the car, or the person in the car at the time? And, don't tell me there won't be any crashes caused by AVs. Weather conditions, typically crap software, hardware failure, poor maintenance of either the hardware or software of the vehicle, etc. What about software security standards for AV? The Reg has published stories about car hacks. There are a lot of questions that need to be answered. Like other readers, I want no part of an AV now. However, I can see it for disabled or older drivers, and, of course, Millennials with the attention span of a brain damaged goose.

      1. Citizens untied

        Re: What insanity

        For those who think in the simplest terms of capitalism, this is the last leg of automation needed to fully eliminate human quirks from the risk profile. Automated consumption.

        Has anyone ever written a sci fi story about the rise of the machines where the machines destroyed their creators simply by consuming all available resources.

        I see herds of solar powered AVs disrupting the natural world, being churned out of fully automated factories while the humans are increasingly agoraphobic and incapable of even basic manual tasks.

        Its gonna be great.

  9. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

    parallel what now?

    ask that congress speed up its consideration and passage of parallel self-driving car laws in both the House and the Senate

    I first read that as "parallel self-driving car lanes in both the House and the Senate". Which, frankly, sounds awesome and I for one fully support it.

  10. Daz555

    @Citizens united

    "Has anyone ever written a sci fi story about the rise of the machines where the machines destroyed their creators simply by consuming all available resources."

    Horizon Zero Dawn on PS4.

  11. IGnatius T Foobar ✅

    Self-driving cars are autonomous death machines

    How many more people have to die before we can get some common sense legislation banning these autonomous death machines?

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like