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Transportation United States

US Eliminates Human Controls Requirement For Fully Automated Vehicles (reuters.com) 60

Posted by BeauHD from the it's-about-time dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: U.S. regulators on Thursday issued final rules eliminating the need for automated vehicle manufacturers to equip fully autonomous vehicles with manual driving controls to meet crash standards. Automakers and tech companies have faced significant hurdles to deploying automated driving system (ADS) vehicles without human controls because of safety standards written decades ago that assume people are in control. The rules revise (PDF) regulations that assume vehicles "will always have a driver's seat, a steering wheel and accompanying steering column, or just one front outboard passenger seating position."

"For vehicles designed to be solely operated by an ADS, manually operated driving controls are logically unnecessary," the agency said. The new rules, which were first proposed in March 2020, emphasize automated vehicles must provide the same levels of occupant protection as human-driven vehicles. NHTSA's rule says children should not occupy what is traditionally known as the "driver's" position, given that the driver's seating position has not been designed to protect children in a crash, but if a child is in that seat, the car will not immediately be required to cease motion. NHTSA said existing regulations do not currently bar deploying automated vehicles as long as they have manual driving controls, and as it continues to consider changing other safety standards, manufacturers may still need to petition NHTSA for an exemption to sell their ADS-equipped vehicles.
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US Eliminates Human Controls Requirement For Fully Automated Vehicles More

US Eliminates Human Controls Requirement For Fully Automated Vehicles

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  • ...welcome our ADS overlords
  • ... "US Eliminates Humans by Fully Automated Vehicles"

  • Providing the user-adjustable setting: “prioritize occupant" vs. “prioritize pedestrian" -- like in the Amazon show Upload [wikipedia.org] (can't wait to see what people choose). :-)

  • If one of these things has an emotional meltdown (or system failure), and drops into a "safe" mode, there is no way an operator can take over and move it to a safe parking place off the roadway? If a bunch of sensors are damaged in a fender bender, will the thing be able to clear the traveled portion of the roadway by itself or will it just sit there blocking traffic? If the vehicle is caked with snow or freezing rain, or even just mud, on the sensors, will the driver just be stranded until they get out and

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by zshXx ( 7123425 )
      There can be an app to move stuff around manually (if still working). Eg: Tesla's super lame summon mode which needs to be much better to handle things like these.
      • Wouldn’t that depend on the non-functional sensors? The lag and awkwardness of manually controlling a two ton machine in a dangerous setting from a smart phone screen is exactly why companies like waymo do not do this.
    • And thus the reason there won’t be any actual adoption even if bureaucrats rule it legal. There is a reason testing has been done where there is no rain no snow and few clouds and where every inch of all roads traveled have been extensively pre-mapped and meticulously hand tuned into a model it depends on for navigation. We are at least 20 years away, just like 20 years ago. On the plus side, we should get decent ones about the same time we have functional and profitable fusion power.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kmoser ( 1469707 )
        Autonomous driving works 100% perfectly today, if you assume spherical cars in a vacuum.

      • Stop telling lies. Autonomous driving is way more advanced than 20 years ago. 17 years ago autonomous cars couldnâ(TM)t navigate 8 miles of a controlled track. Yet you can find plenty of videos on YouTube showing a Tesla successfully navigating door to door from LA to San Francisco without any human intervention. Autonomous cars are way safer today than airplanes were 20 years after they were invented. You have not been following the field and the advanced, yet you have an opinion.

        • First off I have worked in a related field so I am aware of the technical aspects and limitations. Never said we didn’t make progress, you seem butthurt over facts. We also made quite a few improvements in fusion as well as we still don’t have a functional (Sustained over unity reaction) much less profitable plant either.

          Autonomous vehicles are NOT safer than human driven at this point, the fact you think they are by comparing sunny day straight line freeway miles to iced over roads is proof

    • I would guess we're a long ways off from where control-less vehicles would be sold to the general public. They'll likely be used as fleet vehicles for Uber (sorry, gig workers) or in similar taxi/shuttle replacement scenarios. Think "cars as a service". In the event of a malfunction, another car would show up, you'd transfer to it, and the failed vehicle would be towed away for repair.

    • You must have not read TFA

      "For vehicles designed to be solely operated by an ADS, manually operated driving controls are logically unnecessary,"

      What part of this do you not understand? /s

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jbengt ( 874751 )

        What part of this do you not understand?

        The part where you might need manual controls when the automatic ones fail.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbengt ( 874751 )
      Exactly what I came here to say. There always needs to be a manual override capability.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The Waymo ones can be remotely instructed via a cellular connection if they get into difficulty. There is also an emergency stop button inside the car for passengers.

      The remote control is not direct driving I think, it's just the ability to give the car hints like "ignore this thing that appears to be an obstacle, it's a sensor problem" or "shut down and wait for assistance to arrive".

    • > there is no way an operator can take over and move it to a safe parking place off the roadway?

      I see no reason to assume that. I believe existing prototypes usually have the option to plug in controls when needed (e.g.,via USB). And several are experimenting with remote drivers. Meanwhile all but the most extreme problems (EMP attack? Hacking?) should leave the vehicle capable of pulling off the road and calling for help.

      If the entire suite of sensors is down rendering remote driving impossible, then

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hawk ( 1151 )

      in fairness, there are modes of failure today that leave a vehicle unable to be moved manually, such as those that leave an automatic transmission jammed and unable to be disengaged.

      it's really a question of *frequency* of failure modes, not whether they exist.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Cryptocurrency has been running amuck since 2009, and they're only just now realizing it needs to be regulated. Meanwhile, we still seem to be quite far off from a true fully self-driving vehicle, and yet here is Uncle Sam jumping before the gunshot has gone off. I guess it really is true what they say about a broken clock.

    • The difference is that prior to digital currencies, there were no digital currencies, so obviously there were no regulations to regulate something that didn't exist.

      Prior to fully self-driving vehicles, there were plenty of human-driven vehicles and plenty of regulations to go along with them. So when a new kind of vehicle came on the scene, all of the regulatory machinery was already there, e.g, you need to get specific permission.

      However, if you go far enough back [wikipedia.org], there were no regulations for drivin

  • There will probably be no way for an occupant of said fully-automated vehicle to be held liable in an accident w/o any user controls inside the vehicle. Probably not the owner either, unless it can be shown he/she didn't maintain the vehicle properly. So all potential accident liability will fall on the manufacturer. Can't wait to see how they try to weasel out of this.

    • Never underestimate insurance companies' ability to smell profit. You'll be required to add autonomous car malfunction coverage, and it will (obviously) cost extra.

    • The vehicle makers will do their level best to insulate themselves from liability. The most likely way is to steal a page from the software industry, and make a dense "terms and conditions" document that you have to agree to before using the car. In that they will find many ways to shift the blame to you. I can see them having a "you agree to maintain the vehicle according to our schedule", and putting in ridiculous things (they do that now on new cars to try to get out of warrantee service). Some of th

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by waspleg ( 316038 )

      It'll be buried deep in .003 font in your sales contract, obviously, saying they're not responsible for anything and you're 100% on your own.

    • Occupants of a vehicle of this type will be unlikely to SURVIVE an accident, and if they do they'll be emotionally scarred for life by the utter horror of being trapped inside a machine they had zero control over.

      • Occupants of a vehicle of this type will be unlikely to SURVIVE an accident

        Occupants of vehicles without controls will be more likely to survive the accident, because none of them will have to worry about impacting a steering wheel (which still happens even with airbags) or having their neck broken by an airbag steering wheel (which happens because people are so close to it.)

        and if they do they'll be emotionally scarred for life by the utter horror of being trapped inside a machine they had zero control over.

        A lot of people have no control over their vehicle right before an accident, that's why they get into an accident.

        If you're done shaking your fist at clouds, you can go back inside now and take your Geritol.

        • You haven't got a single fucking clue what you're talking about, just like most of the 90 IQ morons on the planet that believe the media hype about so-called 'self driving cars', media that is also 90 IQ and believes the marketing hype from companies like Alphabet who know damned well that the half-assed AI they 'developed' has precisely ZERO cognitive ability and WILL fuck up, DOES fuck up regularly, and is in no way shape or form ready to be driving cars on public roads by itself, people WILL be hurt and

          • You now what else fucks up regularly? Human drivers.

            Autonomous driving systems seem to be approaching the point where the casualties per passenger mile are comparable to human drivers (they're already far better according to e.g. Tesla, but it's probably safe to assume their numbers are biased)

            They may fail in different ways than human drivers, but if I'm a passenger in a bus I only care about the probability that I'll be injured or killed in an accident, I don't really care whether the particular accident

          • Human drivers fuck up regularly. All I care about is whether the AI is better than most of them. I'd like it to be significantly better, let's say ten times better, before it's widely deployed. Frankly, that doesn't seem like a high bar.

            • It's not and won't be anytime in the forseeable future, and you can't refute that. Give up, you have no argument that SDCs are actually viable.

  • I wonder how much this cost in brib^H^H^H^Hcampaign contributions to get passed.
    Great return on investment, I'm sure. /s

  • If you're following the self driving space closely, you'll know that people in the industry generally think that level 3 self-driving vehicles are at least 5 years away, with most thinking over 10 years. Going up to level 4 or 5 is MUCH MUCH further away.

    The thing is... the problem gets exponentially harder. The self driving stuff you see the Tesla closed betas do are no where NEAR good enough to be relied on, nor deployed to the general public for occasional use. People don't realize that Humans have fatal

  • but can you still get an DUI in one?

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

      but can you still get an DUI in one?

      It depends. It's not illegal to be drunk in a car today. That's how a cab or ride sharing can move a drunk. As long as the drunk person isn't in control of the vehicle there should be no DUI. They were not driving.

      Today you can be convicted if you're simply in the driver's seat drunk. Even if the car is off.

      I've heard proposals that they want to make a requirement that all cars have a breatholizer to be able to start a car. Yet more useless equipment we'll have to pay for and maintain because other people c

  • Tesla, quite possibly the current leader in the consumer market, can't even estimate a battery charge, but are no longer required to include manual controls. Meanwhile PG&E who cant manage a power grid without destroying an entire county every 6 months wants to monkey fuck with their infrastructure to suck the power out of your EV.

    Must be bribe season

  • There's absolutely no way any so-called 'self driving car' is anywhere near ready to be 100% in control and have no way for human occupants to control it if necessary. They are opening the door to horrific deaths. You're completely insane if you use a vehicle of this nature.
  • Sounds like the driver won't be liable.

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