The Detroit Free Press reports, “The U.S. Transportation Department’s updated self-driving vehicle development guidelines” have the agency continuing “to rely on industry to police itself,” an approach that some safety advocates consider “borderline negligent.” Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao to Ann Arbor “said that voluntary compliance and self-reporting are what boost safety, not fear of punishment, and she said the government should not be a hindrance to developing technology.” However, “John Simpson, director of Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project, said that companies developing self-driving technology had been lax in self-reporting to date, reinforcing the idea that voluntary guidelines, rather than requirements, do not work.”
NHTSA moving to revise self-driving car safety rules. Reuters reports the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration “is moving ahead with plans to revise safety rules that bar fully self-driving cars from the roads without equipment like steering wheels.” The NHTSA’s stepped up regulatory focus “comes as legislation in Congress to speed self-driving cars, which passed the U.S. House in 2017, has stalled and has only an outside chance of getting approved this year, congressional aides say.”
From the news release of the American Association for Justice.
