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Automotive News Mobility Report U.S. House unanimously approves sweeping self-driving car measure


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U.S. House unanimously approves sweeping self-driving car measure

September 6, 2017 @ 1:37 pm

David Shepardson

Reuters

UPDATED: 9/6/17 3:08 pm ET - adds details

 

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. House on Wednesday unanimously approved a sweeping proposal to

speed the deployment of self-driving cars without human controls and bar states from blocking

autonomous vehicles.

 

"With this legislation, innovation can flourish without the heavy hand of government," U.S Rep. Bob Latta,

R-Ohio, said on the House floor ahead of the voice vote in the chamber Wednesday. Latta is chairman of

the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee that developed the legislation.

 

The bill now goes to the Senate and would allow automakers to obtain exemptions to deploy up to

25,000 vehicles without meeting existing auto safety standards in the first year, a cap that would

rise to 100,000 vehicles annually over three years.

 

Automakers and technology companies, including General Motors and Google's self-driving car

affiliate Waymo, have been pushing for new federal rules making it easier to deploy self-driving

technology

 

 

It looks like new technology has some strong friends in government, people who don't fully

understand the limitations of autonomous technology and how dangerous this could be.


 

 

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The bill now goes to the Senate and would allow automakers to obtain exemptions to deploy up to

25,000 vehicles without meeting existing auto safety standards in the first year, a cap that would

rise to 100,000 vehicles annually over three years.

 

Yeah, let's undermine all the regulations we've spent years getting in place.

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The scary thing about this is the fallout with car insurance...if you don't have a self driving car....are your rates going to go up so high that you can't afford them? Your more or less taking people's freedom away from them by forcing them to use something that is controlled by someone else.

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What standards need to be exempted? If it's just things like extended crash testing or electronic safety items due to the expense then I don't think it's a huge deal. If they're leaving out airbags that's entirely different.

 

I wouldn't think it would be electronic safety items because that should be part of the autonomous system anyway.

 

I'm presuming the thinking is that these autonomous cars will be so much safer, you won't need the safety items because it's not gonna crash as often (not my thinking, mind you, but the thinking of those passing the laws).

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The scary thing about this is the fallout with car insurance...if you don't have a self driving car....are your rates going to go up so high that you can't afford them? Your more or less taking people's freedom away from them by forcing them to use something that is controlled by someone else.

 

KPMG's report on autonomous vehicles and insurance predicts the total loss from automobile accidents will drop 63% between now and 2050. That will reshape the insurance industry. https://assets.kpmg.com/content/dam/kpmg/us/pdf/2017/06/chaotic-middle-autonomous-vehicle-paper.pdf

 

People's freedom won't be taken away by autonomous vehicles. On the contrary, they will increase freedom by giving millions of people who can't or don't want to drive more options for getting where they need to go. Besides, driving a regular car or truck is something that's already controlled by someone else - state and territorial governments. Drivers have to be licensed by those governments for the privilege of operating motor vehicles on public roads.

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I wouldn't think it would be electronic safety items because that should be part of the autonomous system anyway.

 

I'm presuming the thinking is that these autonomous cars will be so much safer, you won't need the safety items because it's not gonna crash as often (not my thinking, mind you, but the thinking of those passing the laws).

 

I interpreted it as reducing development costs and time to get prototypes on the road.

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If it is for manufacturer-owned vehicles, then I could see that, but not for vehicles made available to the public. You're interpretation is likely correct.

 

I think the feeling is that the risk is low given the relatively small number of initial vehicles and the added safety features. And by reducing those requirements you can speed development and testing.

 

It also doesn't mean that they won't include most of the current safety features. E.g. maybe they don't do all of the NHTSA crash tests, just some.

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People's freedom won't be taken away by autonomous vehicles. On the contrary, they will increase freedom by giving millions of people who can't or don't want to drive more options for getting where they need to go. Besides, driving a regular car or truck is something that's already controlled by someone else - state and territorial governments. Drivers have to be licensed by those governments for the privilege of operating motor vehicles on public roads.

 

So your telling me if I don't own car, I can leave whenever I want, with in 5-10 minutes when I summons an autonomous vehicle? I don't think that is going to happen, thus why people aren't going to give up their normal car. Those same people can use a taxi, bus, uber or whatever.

 

I laugh at people "sharing" cars too...who's gonna want to get into a car that has been vomited or whatever fun bodily function you want to use instead, when they get a car? It's not like they are going to be able to bring them back to get cleaned/inspected all the time.

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I laugh at people "sharing" cars too...who's gonna want to get into a car that has been vomited or whatever fun bodily function you want to use instead, when they get a car? It's not like they are going to be able to bring them back to get cleaned/inspected all the time.

 

So much for that "new car" smell!

 

I think the car companies are setting themselves up for failure with autonomous vehicles and especially with ride sharing.

 

This will eliminate performance, specialty and off-road vehicles. Yeah, the wealthy will still be able to afford to own and drive their own cars, but production will be low. Think Ford GT.

 

Vehicles like Mustang, Raptor, ST Focus and Wrangler will be gone. The only profit oriented trim left to produce will be luxury.

 

There will be a need for small pod, medium pod and large pod vehicles. Might as well be generic and make them all in one color like the Model T.

 

I predict there will be just 3 global car producers left in 30 years, producing generic pods designed around government specifications, with only a smattering of niche builders catering to the wealthy.

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I laugh at people "sharing" cars too...who's gonna want to get into a car that has been vomited or whatever fun bodily function you want to use instead, when they get a car? It's not like they are going to be able to bring them back to get cleaned/inspected all the time.

 

There's a distinction between "sharing" and "access". When a company like Ford or Hertz or Uber acts as a mediator between a customer and a product or service provider, it's not sharing. The customer is paying the mediator company for access to a product or service. If those products or services are inferior, the mediator company will lose business.

 

Ford Credit experimented with a program for shared car leases last year in Austin, Texas. It was up to the customers to figure out how to share the lease payments, how much each participant would use the car, etc. Ford Credit did not really act as a mediator. Nobody signed up for this program, and Ford Credit scrapped it after a few months. http://www.autonews.com/article/20161207/FINANCE_AND_INSURANCE/312079998/ford-credit-learns-from-closed-shared-lease-pilot

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They still haven't licked the propeller of autonomous cars effectively communicating to human drivers and vise versa.

Think of all the non verbal communication gestures you see between human driversnd a dumb robot that doesn't know

or recognize what they mean....are autonomous cars going tp get some kind of right of way priority over human drivers?

Edited by jpd80
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