Would you dare to sit in a car without a steering wheel? The United States allows self-driving cars without steering wheels

eric_wang

Would you dare to sit in a car without a steering wheel? The United States allows self-driving cars without steering wheels [Copy link]

Recently, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) of the U.S. Department of Transportation issued the first "Occupant Protection Safety Standards for Vehicles Without Driving Controls", and the specific effective date has not yet been disclosed. The rule states that the effective date will be inserted 180 days after the final rule is published in the Federal Register.

　　

If it goes into effect, it means that fully autonomous vehicles will no longer need to be equipped with traditional manual controls such as steering wheels, brakes or accelerator pedals to meet occupant safety protection standards in a collision. NHTSA described the new rule as a "historic step."

　　

“An important part of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s safety mission will be to ensure safety standards keep pace with advances in automated and driver-assist systems by 2030,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “This new rule is an important step forward, establishing strong safety standards for vehicles equipped with ADS.”

　　

The new rule was first proposed in March 2020 and passed two years later. This is an important node for the development of the autonomous driving industry. The safety standard that autonomous vehicles must have human drivers has changed. That is, autonomous vehicles no longer need to comply with the regulations that "there must always be a human driver seat, a car steering wheel and steering column, or only one front outer passenger seat."

“As the driver changes from human to machine in an ADS-equipped vehicle, the need to ensure human safety remains the same and must be integrated from the beginning,” said Steven Cliff, deputy administrator of NHTSA.

　　

Source: Cruise

In February, General Motors Co and its self-driving technology unit Cruise applied to NHTSA for permission to produce self-driving cars without human controls such as steering wheels or brake pedals, Reuters reported.

　　

NHTSA also stated that manual driving control is logistically unnecessary for vehicles designed to be operated solely by ADS.

　　

At the same time, NHTSA also emphasized in the new regulations that self-driving cars must provide the same level of occupant protection as human-driven vehicles.

　　

Specifically, the new rules state that children should not occupy the traditional driver's seat because it is not designed to protect children in a collision, but the car will not be required to stop immediately if a child occupies the driver's seat.

　　

NHTSA said existing regulations do not currently prohibit automakers from deploying automated vehicles as long as they have manual driving control systems, and as NHTSA continues to consider changes to other safety standards, manufacturers will still need to apply to NHTSA for exemptions to sell their vehicles equipped with ADS.

wangerxian

Autonomous driving is very practical, but safety is difficult to guarantee, and this technology still requires a long period of testing.

Verifone

The idea is good, but it is difficult to implement. This is not only a problem for a single car, but also requires consideration of the entire autonomous driving system.

se7ens

Let robots do such boring work as driving.

We look forward to the early arrival of such advanced technology and cars to benefit thousands of drivers

Gen_X

With the popularization of 5G and other networks, it should not be far from our lives.

There is a bus line in Shenzhen that has been running for a year, and there are also many commuter buses within campuses and delivery trucks within residential areas.

I have been driving ES8 for three years. I use "driving assistance" on highways (automatically set the upper limit to 120) and closed roads in the city. It is said that the software cannot catch up with TS.

But driving no longer makes me tired as before, because there is always time when I don’t need to “concentrate fully” and part of the time can be left to the car computer.

There are five levels of autonomous driving, and now it has reached level 2.5 (TS and others are said to have reached level 3.1). Above level 3, the steering wheel is useless. That is to say, there is a hidden steering wheel at level 3.5, and the gradual transition to complete elimination still requires people's cognitive acceptance process, just like when people did not accept this pure electric car with "four wheels and a bomb".

Currently, this is achieved based on accurate maps (there are many places that are not reached) + multiple videos + multiple radars.

In the future, by combining 5G maps and more refined real-time information, it will be possible to achieve "autonomous driving" above Level 3.

Autonomous driving is not a technical issue, but mainly an issue at the legal and regulatory levels.

hellomankind

It is better to keep the steering wheel and accelerator. After all, if you don't drive it all the time, many people still want to drive it occasionally, and in the end, when they encounter danger, they still have to leave it to people to deal with. If it is controlled by a machine, people will have no right to choose.

Gen_X

The main obstacles to autonomous driving are:

1. Some markings on closed roads and urban roads are discontinuous;

2. Turning, overtaking, and changing lanes at the exit of the highway can be achieved in places guided by precise maps, but some sections of the road are not covered by precise maps;

3. The vehicle computer is currently unable to accurately process the signs of construction sections and emergency roads;

4. When encountering overtaking problems, the car computer cannot make reasonable handling: For example, there is a pedestrian and a tricycle blocking the road on both sides, and they will definitely collide. Which one should you choose to avoid? If two people are on the left side of the road and one person is on the right side of the road, how to choose? This is a very complicated legal and social issue. Sometimes people cannot handle it correctly.

nalanxiaorang

True intelligent driving seems to be still a long way off. There are still many factors required, including technical issues, matching of the entire social ecology, and matching of regulations and ethics.