A New Road Safety Group Targets Self-Driving Cars
A new plea The group is pushing state lawmakers to pass stricter regulations on autonomous vehicles. The group Safe Autonomous Vehicles Everywhere in the United States (SAVE-US) says its goal is to ensure that new autonomous driving technologies will save lives instead of harm. His work has a clear target: Tesla.
The campaign, announced Wednesday, counts among its goals passing legislation that would force tech developers to be clearer about the limitations of their driving technology; communicate more specific and public information on accidents to States; and use multiple sensors on their vehicles. In the United States, regulation governing autonomous vehicles is generally managed by states, whose laws range from strict (California) to relatively permissive (Arizona, Texas). Fourteen US states have no laws relating to autonomous vehicles. The group will initially target lawmakers in larger states, including Illinois, New York and New Jersey, said Shua Sanchez, the group’s national campaign director.
Sanchez and Bob Somers, technical advisor to SAVE-US, met this summer outside an administrative hearing in Oakland, California. Inside, lawyers for the California Department of Motor Vehicles argued that Tesla should temporarily lose its license to manufacture and sell vehicles in the state because, they say, the electric automaker falsely advertised its fully autonomous driving assistance and Autopilot features.
Sanchez, a physicist, had been following Tesla closely since he became involved in the Tesla Takedown movement earlier this year, leading protests outside a showroom in Boston to protest CEO Elon Musk’s involvement in the so-called Department of Government Effectiveness. Somers had worked as an engineer at Zoox, a developer of autonomous vehicles, for half a decade. (He has since left the autonomous vehicle industry.)
In Oakland, they agreed: autonomous vehicle technology has the potential to save lives. But rushing the technology, or confusing customers about its limitations, is unsafe and could doom the entire project. (An administrative judge is expected to rule on the Tesla case later this year.)
“It’s fair to say that Tesla is the worst actor in this space, but that certainly doesn’t mean that every other company is a perfect actor either,” Sanchez says. “If we don’t have good regulations in place, we’re leaving the door open for any company that might go down a dangerous path. »
