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Apple, Tesla Ask California To Change Its Proposed Policies On Self-Driving Car Testing (reuters.com) 30

Posted by BeauHD from the rules-of-the-road dept.
Tesla and Apple have asked the state of California to change its proposed policies on self-driving cars to allow companies to test vehicles without traditional steering wheels and controls or human back-up drivers, among other things. Reuters reports: In a letter made public Friday, Apple made a series of suggested changes to the policy that is under development and said it looks forward to working with California and others "so that rapid technology development may be realized while ensuring the safety of the traveling public." Waymo, the self-driving car unit of Google parent company Alphabet Inc, Ford Motor Co, Uber Technologies Inc, Toyota Motor Corp, Tesla Motors Inc and others also filed comments suggesting changes. Apple said California should revise how companies report self-driving system "disengagements." California currently requires companies to report how many times the self-driving system was deactivated and control handed back to humans because of a system failure or a traffic, weather or road situation that required human intervention. Apple said California's rules for development vehicles used only in testing could "restrict both the design and equipment that can be used in test vehicles." Tesla said California should not bar testing of autonomous vehicles that are 10,000 pounds (4,535 kg) or more. Tesla also said California should not prohibit the sale of non-self-driving vehicles previously used for autonomous vehicle testing.
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Apple, Tesla Ask California To Change Its Proposed Policies On Self-Driving Car Testing More

Apple, Tesla Ask California To Change Its Proposed Policies On Self-Driving Car Testing

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  • Appls asks (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    To fuck you in the butt

  • Unless it is possible for a self driving car to be driven with a blind folded "driver" they shouldn't be on the road at all. You know what real automakers do when they want to test concepts and innovative cars? They put them onto test tracks and proving grounds so they don't risk the lives of regular people going about their lives.
    • Disclaimer: This is just my common sense talking; I feel like there has probably already been extensive testing done in closed-course situations and computer simulations. The problem with an emerging technology of this type is that you cannot account for the human element without a great deal of exposure to it. That's for both the programmers of the car's software, and the other drivers on the road. What your stating sounds to me like wanting a toddler to run before it can walk when it just learned to crawl
      • There are ways to safely test complicated scenarios with multiple cars. Look at how the highway safety institute handles crash tests. They make a car and essentially destroy it. That is how you safely test cars by having several drivers on a closed course simulate heavy traffic changing lanes and even tapping the vehicle to simulate a collision.

        • There are ways to safely test complicated scenarios with multiple cars. Look at how the highway safety institute handles crash tests. They make a car and essentially destroy it. That is how you safely test cars by having several drivers on a closed course simulate heavy traffic changing lanes and even tapping the vehicle to simulate a collision.

          Yes, you can create complicated scenarios and test them, but you can't create nearly enough to cover the range of what will actually occur in actual driving conditions and interactions with human drivers.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by HiThere ( 15173 )

            E.g., the Google car has already encountered a jay-walking wheelchair user chasing a ... was it a duck?

            When would you even THINK to simulate that?

    • It very much is possible to make them go totally without a driver. Not from a legal standpoint, but from technical standpoint no problemo, the car will drive on its own if told to do so. Safety of such a thing is questionable obviously, but how are we ever going to answer that question without experimentation? Is "it worked fine on test track" good enough answer to you? Its not sufficient imho, only real life statistics can give a satisfactory answer. Traffic accidents are sort of an acceptable loss in toda

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ColdSam ( 884768 )
      How many years did you spend on a test track before they let you on our public roads?

    • Except the test tracks are designed to test the mechanal features. For automated cars there is a degree of this on test tracks. But there comes a point where it needs real world testing. If you write software at nearly every level of complexity once you hand it to the real world they find new problems that needs to be fixed.

  • Breaker, breaker, that'd be a big no on ditching the steering wheels, back up drivers, and reporting fack-ups, good buddy, over.

    Fact is, autonomous driving systems aren't yet up to snuff to go the full monty. Until they prove out, they need a human with some skin in the game, and who's aware s/he's playing. And the state can't be sure how close to the tipping point we are without reporting.

    On the flip side, I agree that allowing higher gross vehicle weights should be allowed, the better to test freight haul

    • "On the flip side, I agree that allowing higher gross vehicle weights should be allowed, the better to test freight hauling."

      If they still can't do it while testing below 10,000 pound vehicles why allow then to test it with more than 10,000 pounds?

      • Self-driving cars have been driving themselves for millions of miles so far. They're certainly not perfect, but clearly they can do it. Are you suggesting we wait until small vehicles are perfect before we even start testing with large vehicles?

        • "Self-driving cars have been driving themselves for millions of miles so far. They're certainly not perfect, but clearly they can do it."

          Sure, if you mean temporary use of adaptive cruise control and lane changing automation works pretty good on some stretches of some types of roads.

          "Are you suggesting we wait until small vehicles are perfect before we even start testing with large vehicles?"

          I'm suggesting the need to test on vehicles that weight 10,000 pounds or more is mainly a marketing stunt to attract

          • Adaptive cruise control & lane changing on highways might be the level Tesla is at, but even those driver assists can be a huge help for tired or inattentive drivers - so why not for truck drivers too? They spend a great deal of time driving on highways. If there's potential benefit, why not test and develop that?

            And companies like Waymo have clearly progressed beyond that, with fully-autonomous driving and navigation of smaller cars over a wider range of suburban and highway roads. Nobody's claiming it

            • "those driver assists can be a huge help for tired or inattentive drivers - so why not for truck drivers too?"

              They can already test those. No need for a new law.

    • Where does the assumption come that driverless cars are not up to snuff, that they are incapable of going without a backup driver? They are not going without a driver because of legal reasons, not technical ones.

  • Much better than your average driver (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    As someone that has actually provided a learning experience to a self-driving car (I spend far too much time walking downtown Mountain View streets), I can say with some confidence that self-driving cars are far more careful to avoid incidents than a human driver would be under the same circumstances. I trust them far more than most of the drivers on the same streets (and, again, I see plenty of them, and have observed them in real time). And at least they are not looking down at their phone driving throu

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