Proposals floated in Detroit last week by top federal auto safety officials indicating the agency is willing to allow auto manufacturers to detour US motor vehicle laws and regulations, particularly for unproven robot cars would, if true, be a “wrong turn” for the agency, Consumer Watchdog said.
“With multiple instances of deadly defective cars, a historic number of recalls, the Volkswagen scandal and the report Google’s robot cars had hundreds of near misses, now is not the time for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to abdicate its responsibility to enforce auto safety through binding safety rules,” said Harvey Rosenfield, founder of Consumer Watchdog, a non-profit citizen organisation.
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The group said Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, flanked by executives from Google, General Motors and other auto companies, last week promised that the agency would remove “roadblocks” for robot cars by granting manufacturers various exemptions from legal requirements.
The “Proactive Safety Principles” released by NHTSA Administrator Michael Rosekind in Detroit include a “commitment to work collaboratively” between NHTSA and automakers. However, Consumer Watchdog claims, sources say that industry opposition to any standards – whether voluntary or mandatory – forced NHTSA to delay announcement of a pact between the agency and automobile manufacturers.
If implemented, the agency’s plans would set it on a “collision course with consumers,” Consumer Watchdog said. It and other leading consumer safety advocates have formally petitioned NHTSA to issue a safety rule requiring auto companies to install new breaking technologies as standard equipment.
And the consumer advocates caution that so-called “driverless vehicles” – intensely promoted by Google – “pose unprecedented safety, privacy and ethical questions that have yet to be addressed, much less answered.”
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By GlobalDataGoogle admitted last week its much-hyped “driverless vehicles” actually needed humans to take control 341 times during the previous year in order to avoid a crash or because the technology failed.
“If this is the new NHTSA unveiled at the Detroit auto show, Americans aren’t going to buy it,” Rosenfield said. “We urge the agency to stay the course and stick to the job of carefully and thoroughly regulating the industry.”
Petition seeks braking technology requirement
The petition submitted to NHTSA by Consumer Watchdog, the Center for Auto Safety and Joan Claybrook, former NHTSA Administrator and President Emeritus of Public Citizen, asks the agency to require automakers to install as standard equipment Automatic Emergency Breaking, a set of three technologies that use combinations of radar, lidar (reflected laser light) and cameras to prevent collisions.
Noting that auto manufacturers had been lobbying NHTSA for permission to “‘voluntarily’ establish safety standards in place of… mandatory safety regulation,” the petition points out that such self-regulation pacts “are developed behind closed doors, with no public involvement; are not binding on any company or particular vehicle or model at any given time and can be unilaterally (and secretly) abandoned; cannot be enforced by any members of the public, NHTSA or any other government agency; and often do not reflect objective, scientific or empirical research.”
Report to California DMV shows safety issues in robot cars
As part of its public safety first approach to robot cars, the California Department of Motor Vehicles requires companies testing driverless vehicles to submit an annual “disengagement” report to the DMV summarizing instances when human drivers had to take control of a self-driving robot car during testing. Seven companies that were approved for testing self-driving cars in 2014 were required to file disengagement reports with the DMV by 1 January. The seven are Volkswagen Group of America, Mercedes Benz, Google, Delphi, Tesla, Bosch and Nissan. The reports, released last Tuesday, showed that Google led in “disengagements”: over the 15 months ending on 30 November, 2015, its robot technology failed and handed control to the driver 272 times and a test driver felt compelled to intervene 69 times.
Proposed regulations covering self-driving robot cars issued in December by the California DMV require the robot cars to have a steering wheel and pedals and be occupied by a licensed driver capable of taking control of the vehicle.
“The spectacle of top federal auto safety officials getting together with executives from the industry they are supposed to be regulating at an industry trade show and bubbling on about robot cars is troubling,” Consumer Watchdog said. “Auto safety policy should be developed in Washington, DC, not made in Detroit.”
