The U.S. announces safety standards for autonomous cars
With autonomous driving poised to make some huge changes in the automotive safety and insurance industry it only makes sense for the government to come up with some rules as to how safe these cars are on the road.
While Canada hasn’t made any strides in the testing and development of the tech, various states have allowed autonomous vehicle testing already. While the number of these vehicles on the road is fairly small it makes perfect sense for the country to create a set of guidelines for automakers to follow similar to the minimum safety standards cars must already satisfy before being released to the public.
As we’ve seen even semi-autonomous driving can be dangerous, so these guidelines, which go beyond the minimum standards, should help keep drivers and pedestrians safe. According to Engadget the guidelines are based around a 15-point system that includes guidelines for how autonomous vehicles will record and communicate data, how they will behave in the event of a crash, how well they handle driving, and even how the user interfaces with the car. The full description of the policy is available for download, but the main gist of it is that the feds will approve of any autonomous vehicle made available to consumers.
It isn’t clear if the guidelines will also be used to approve semi-autonomous systems such as Tesla Autopilot, but it’s a big step forward for the inevitable day when someone wants to make a fully autonomous car available. Considering that Canada is often lumped in with the U.S. market for vehicles it stands to reason any autonomous vehicles being built for use down there will follow the same or similar standards in Canada, so it’s kind of big news for us as well!