
The 'Self Drive' Act puts America on the road to reducing congestion - abhi3
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/technology/349375-the-self-drive-act-puts-america-on-the-road-to-reducing
======
Animats
The link is to a PR piece from a right-wing lobbyist. The actual bill is
here.[1] It's mostly about federal preemption. NHTSA can set standards, and
states can't. There are also some irrelevant giveaways regarding exemption
from bumper and crashworthyness standards for low-volume vehicles.

The preemption part will allow companies to test self-driving heavy trucks in
California, something California DMV does not currently allow. Also, currently
the California DMV can revoke the vehicle licenses of a self-driving car
manufacturer if they do bad stuff, which DMV did to Uber. DMV can probably
still do that.

Some of the safety standards are explicitly weak. "The Secretary may not
condition deployment or testing of highly automated vehicles on review of
safety assessment certifications." But NHTSA still gets to set standards, and
they can order recalls.

There's not much about liability; this doesn't change who's responsible for
accidents or for vehicle defects. The requirements on manufacturers are mostly
toothless - "submit a plan" comes up regularly. There are no privacy
standards, so Tesla can watch you in your car as long as they admit somewhere
that they do that.

Can DMV still make manufacturers submit crash reports and disconnect reports?
Not clear. The bill text is _IN GENERAL.—Nothing in this subsection may be
construed to prohibit a State or a political subdivision of a State from
maintaining, enforcing, prescribing, or continuing in effect any law or
regulation regarding registration, licensing, driving education and training,
insurance, law enforcement, crash investigations, safety and emissions
inspections, congestion management of vehicles on the street within a State or
political subdivision of a State, or traffic unless the law or regulation is
an unreasonable restriction on the design, construction, or performance of
highly automated vehicles, automated driving systems, or components of
automated driving systems._ Now manufacturers get to litigate "unreasonable
restriction". (Some self-driving car companies hate those reports, because
they show their technology sucks. Google/Waymo is fine with it. Latest
accident report: Uber vehicle just taken out of auto mode was rear-ended while
stopped.)

(The biggest lesson we have so far from self-driving car accidents is that the
non-self-driving cars need basic automatic braking to prevent low-speed rear-
ending the self-driving cars. Google/Waymo cars keep getting rear-ended when
they detect they're entering an intersection with blocked lines of sight.
They'll advance a bit into the intersection, detect cross traffic, and stop.
The human-driven car behind them then sometimes hits them, at very slow
speed.)

[1] [https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-
bill/3388...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-
bill/3388/text)

~~~
socalthrowaway
It's illegal to enter an intersection if unsafe to do so.

The biggest concern having driven around self driving cars in California is
that they absolutely cannot handle mixing with traffic in situations like
merging onto rush hour freeway traffic. Try watching one get off and watching
the gap increase as more and more cars do the same while you are stuck behind
the car trying to enter the freeway. It's the eternal good Samaritan problem.
Same in normal traffic as it tries to drive 'safely' and maintain a following
distance which leads to the same issue of stopping a whole lane.

------
bryanlarsen
Reducing congestion? Self-driving is going to make congestion much, much
worse. Self-driving makes driving cheaper, safer, easier & more accessible.
Anytime you do that for anything, usage increases dramatically, often in ways
that are difficult to fore see. But it's not hard to predict a few:

\- cheap delivery will be used for everything \- people will send and summon
vehicles from everywhere. I might drive to work, send my vehicle home so
somebody else can use it, summon it at the end of day, and drive home. \- et
cetera

~~~
kcorbitt
Agree with everything you say. Personally, I hope that self-driving cars are
introduced alongside a road-use tax that moves the true cost of road
construction and maintenance (and the opportunity cost of all the last
currently dedicated to roads) to users, rather than the general public.

~~~
shuntress
>moves the true cost of road construction and maintenance ... to users, rather
than the general public.

Public infrastructure should not be a la carte.

~~~
ecshafer
Buses and trains are. why should roads be purely subsidized? Why should free
parking be subsidized. Car driving is massively subsidized and it has a hugely
negative impact on the environment, it's expensive, does not scale, and
difficult to maintain. Reducing car use, and shifting to a transit and walking
focused style of living is better on every front.

~~~
jessriedel
Whether or not car driving is subsidized, it's incorrect to suggest that it's
levied uniformly across the population. Gas tax makes up a very large fraction
of public spending on roads.

Also, although buses and trains charge per user, they are also heavily
subsidized.

~~~
Fricken
Busses are part of the public transportation infrastructure, just like roads,
sidewalks, bridges and everything else. It's weird that they aren't fully
subsidized.

~~~
hueving
But roads aren't fully subsidized. That's what the gas tax is for. Drivers of
electric cars are currently free-riders, which is something that will have to
be addressed if they become a significant fraction of drivers.

~~~
thatcat
Electric cars are technically still taxed on electricity, registration, and
purchase. They shouldn't be taxed further until other cars are forced to pay
the full cost of their effects including NOx and CO2.

~~~
hueving
Those taxes are not specifically for roads like the gas tax is.

------
brndnmtthws
Want to reduce congestion? Invest in public transit infrastructure.

~~~
chc
In most of America, this idea seems to be even less practical than self-
driving cars. America is pretty much designed to be a pessimal case for public
transit. San Diego, where I live, does invest in public transit infrastructure
and has relatively extensive mass transit options (buses, trains and
trolleys), and yet public transit is still largely unusable outside of fairly
small, specific areas. In order to use public transit, I'd have to walk half a
mile to a station and then my commute to work would be four times as long as
it is by car.

So when I hear "invest in public transit infrastructure," I feel like it isn't
a concrete enough suggestion. Does it actually mean tear down most of America
and replace it with a country where mass transit is practical, or what? I'd
love never to have to drive again, but merely investing in public transit
demonstrably isn't enough.

~~~
akgerber
The issue with San Diego is not the lack of infrastructure, but the land use—
many businesses and offices are in unwalkable office park hellscapes that are
designed to make driving easy to the exclusion of any other mode of transit.

Since public transit requires a walking trip at both ends, it will never be
very popular in areas where one needs to take a dangerous mile-long walk
across a sea of parking and high-speed arterials, instead of a quick jaunt
through a lively neighborhood.

~~~
chc
That was exactly my point: A lot of the US is laid out in a way that is
pessimal for mass transit — "hellscapes," as you put it — so investing in
public transit infrastructure doesn't seem like enough to make a big
difference. The problem isn't just a lack of investment, but also that mass
transit isn't very well suited to America as it exists today. Any proposal to
make public transit happen in America that doesn't address this seems pretty
unrealistic to me.

------
ouid
The title could do a lot more to indicate what the Self Drive act actually is.

A house committee drafted some legislation that grants the federal government
regulatory power over self-driving cars, or rather strips it from state
governments. At least as far as it is reported in the article.

~~~
Kadin
It'd be interesting to see what the reaction is from people and companies in
the field.

Preemption legislation seems a little premature, to me. Sure, it would stop
states from hindering autonomous-vehicle development, e.g. to protect
entrenched interests or because of irrational fears, but it could also stop
states interested in being on the forefront of research from doing more
interesting things.

It seems like the sort of thing you'd want when products were further along
the development path and having a broad, harmonized-rules marketplace is
necessary to move further, but not when most of the tech is still pretty early
R&D work.

~~~
ballenf
Preemption is needed most for nascent industries where the economics are
uncertain. It gives investors more confidence to invest in an unproven
technology if you can at least predict one aspect of the landscape on a
national level.

Down the road, you can start to relax the preemption (theoretically) and let
the market forces keep unwise state regulation in check.

------
riffic
You want to reduce congestion and make mobility improvements for many? Look to
cities that make cycling a way of life through infrastructure, planning, and
design.

------
mtgx
I've just seen this infographic showing that 5G connectivity is also about
"car to car communication" (among other things):

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJCxYZ1XoAAm_CL.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJCxYZ1XoAAm_CL.jpg:large)

I _really_ hope that's just wishful thinking from companies like Qualcomm and
wireless operators and _not_ something car makers are actually considering.

Making the cars' critical systems (such as the self-driving systems, which
would respond based on other cars' actions in car to car communication) be
accessible from the internet sounds like a terrible idea. This is why I hope
this type of law is _not_ rushed, as car makers and companies like Uber and
Google/Waymo hope it will be.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
There's a lot of potential gain from car-to-car communication, but I also see
a huge risk. I can be reasonably confident in my car's own sensors, but only
God knows what my car is being told by other cars about the world; the
opportunities for malicious activity there are huge.

It's hard to imagine a system that uses V2V that doesn't rely on some manner
of trust, like a closed/encrypted system with car manufacturers having CA-like
signing authority or something. And if I've ever learning anything, it's that
car companies are not great at network security.

~~~
smileysteve
I too saw F8 and The Furious.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Ha, I actually have not. Though I did see the trailer which looked ridiculous.

------
saosebastiao
I'm confident in many benefits of autonomous vehicles, but reducing congestion
is not one of them. Quite the opposite, actually.

Wanna know what happens when you no longer have people looking for parking but
rather have them picking up and dropping off at the curb? Visit a busy airport
or pickup/dropoff curbs at a large suburban elementary school.

Now throw in the fact that in order to get to _your_ destination, you'll have
to drive _through_ those clusterfucks that are caused by _other people 's
destinations_. Oh, and all the cars that might not be circling looking for
parking, but are now circling looking for new passengers. Oh, and all the new
cars on the road when lower costs move people from transit into SOVs. That's
the future, embrace it.

~~~
mchahn
When there are a lot fewer cars, congestion will go down. Cars will be shared.
Sort of a Uber without drivers. Why own your own car?

~~~
chc
Will there be a lot fewer cars, though? Assuming you want to achieve the same
throughput, you'd still need about as many cars as there are at rush hour
today.

------
dayaz36
25k is less than 1% of most major auto manufacturers yearly production
numbers. No article I've read on this news has put that into context and
instead praises the legislation as liberating car manufacturers to bring FSD
cars to the masses. Most people don't read past the headline let alone look
into the facts of the article. Also nothing good EVER gets passed legislation
unanimously. Last time the House passed legislation this quickly and
unanimously was when they passed SOAPA. Something feels fishy about this. I
haven't read the legislation directly but I bet if a journalist went through
it fully, somethings would surface that people wouldn't like.

------
ynniv
_The House Energy and Commerce Committee passed the SELF DRIVE Act with a vote
of 54-0._

 _The act correctly delineates the purview of federal versus state regulation
for autonomous vehicles. In short, federal regulatory bodies have authority
when it comes to the car, while states have authority when it comes to the
driver._

A bipartisan, unanimous vote to secure future regulator power, story at 11!
_eyeroll_ The Federal government gets to regulate the car that drives itself,
and the State gets to regulate the driver that's actually just a passenger.

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dexterdog
I don't get this assumption that SDCs are going to reduce energy usage. Sure,
it will be better on a per-mile basis, but people are going to be traveling a
lot more than they are now.

~~~
WillPostForFood
It may not, but hopefully it is an opportunity to push the transition to
electric cars. If we are going to effectively replace all cars, let's make
some smart choices on the replacements.

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letlambda
A new designated felon would be required to sell highly automated vehicles,
the Cyber Security Officer.

You'll sign some documents certifying everything is fine, but of course,
everything won't be fine. When your cars get hacked you'll go to jail for
defrauding the government and/or manslaughter. I bet it pays real good though.

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ilaksh
Does it give them permission to remove the backup driver? In Waymo's case it
seems like they are mainly waiting for a law that says that and then they can
deploy for certain routes and conditions.

------
revelation
The idea that a bill "sponsored" by corporations whose sole purpose is selling
as many cars as possible will "reduce congestion" is probably the most
ridiculous idea this turn of the century.

What's next? McDonalds innovation on nutrition facts labels to reduce junk fat
consumption and improve health outcomes?

~~~
WillPostForFood
If corporations selling cars were "sponsoring" a bill, they should be
sponsoring a bill banning self driving cars, because they are an existential
threat to the business of selling cars.

