
U.S. House approves proposal to speed the deployment of self-driving cars - sethbannon
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-selfdriving/u-s-house-unanimously-approves-sweeping-self-driving-car-measure-idUSKCN1BH2B2
======
0xcde4c3db
> Advocates hope self-driving cars can help reduce U.S. road deaths, which
> rose 7.7 percent in 2015, the highest annual jump since 1966.

This was a news story in itself [1]. It was attributed to increased driving,
encouraged by economic factors such as higher employment and lower gas prices.

[1] [http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2016/02/18/467230965/...](http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2016/02/18/467230965/2015-traffic-fatalities-rose-by-largest-percent-
in-50-years-safety-group-says)

~~~
fuhrysteve
> attributed to increased driving, encouraged by economic factors such as
> higher employment and lower gas prices

Interesting - I always assumed that the increase in road deaths was at least
largely due to increased cellphone usage, resulting in distracted drivers.

~~~
ehnto
It's not to say that's not still the cause of many of them, just that with
more people on the road more accidents can occur.

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FidelCashflow
I make the argument that the majority of our interactions with law enforcement
(for those of us who are otherwise generally well mannered) stem from some
driving related instance. This is the true pathway for most of us to get
tangled up in the [broken[ revolving door of the legal system. I am 100% all
for self driving cars and look forward to owning one as soon as there are no
controls for me to interact with at any time during travel. i.e. no steering
wheel, no gas or brake pedals, nothing and therefore no reason to be pulled
over. I want the car to be treated legally as an extension to my home;
anything that I do / can do at home can also be done in the car. I want a
cocktail? take it from the house into the car while it takes me to my
destination.

~~~
evanlivingston
That is to say, you want to limit your mobility to that which is directly and
entirely under the control of legislated authority with no possibility of
circumventing laws for one reason or another.

~~~
rubicon33
I have long been arguing among friends and family that in the future it should
be ILLEGAL to manually operate your vehicle without a special license. That
license, would require to obtain it, a much more vigorous examination and
approval than we currently have at the DMV. So, for those determined to
manually operate their vehicle, there would always be the means for them to do
so. But it should be sufficiently difficult that the average joe doesn't
pursue it, given the utility of the self driving car.

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cjensen
Question: Does this undermine California's safety standards for self-driving
cars? I was very pleased with how quickly California slapped down Uber. Will
California still be able to do that?

For those who don't remember: Uber was clearly experimenting with unready
software on the roads with insufficient safety processes in place. When caught
on camera running a red light, Uber blamed the human operator and weasel-
worded their pr statement to imply that the car was not in autonomous mode. It
in fact was in autonomous mode, and the driver was in observation mode. It's
unclear if the failure was due to observer attention failure or lack of
training.

~~~
danblick
Yes, it seems to prevent states from having their own safety policies. It
makes an exemption for "performance standards" which I guess is omissions.

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phkahler
Federal overreach. I find it incredible that they want fully autonomous cars,
but we do not yet have fully autonomous aircraft. This stuff isn't safe yet,
and may not be for some time. If a state doesn't want to allow it on their
roads, DC should not get to overrule them.

~~~
dmix
This entire thing sounds like they are trying to solve a problem that doesn't
yet exist.

As you said, how can they effectively legislate something that is not even
fully fleshed out yet? Is this really the time to centralize legislation at
the federal level and block states?

The primary benefit of allowing states to do it instead is that you can have
more liberal experimentation in places where it makes more sense, like less
dense, deserty Nevada, with lots of freeways. While more densely populated
highly urbanized parts of the country can be avoided until it's ready.

I can't believe they are selling this as 'speeding the deployment' because it
would be 10x easier for tech companies to convince a state/local government
than the federal one. And it seems they already convinced a few states
already...

The only thing I can imagine this is "speeding up" is helping the major auto
companies minimize their legal costs and allow them to focus on lobbying one
level of government. As well as making it easier for these companies to guide
the legislation towards their favour. This is how corporatism works in the US.
The legislation is designed with big-co's in mind who have teams of lawyers
and lobbyists.

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SapphireSun
"Automakers would have to submit safety assessment reports to regulators, but
the bill would not require pre-market approval of advanced vehicle
technologies. The measure now goes to the Senate, where a bipartisan group of
lawmakers has been working on similar legislation."

You and I both know that without premarket approval, one or more companies are
going to get careless and are going to kill people before the technology is
ready. It's going to stain public acceptance for a quite necessary technology.

Here's a new medicine we're developing! It's gonna totally work great. The
science says it's possible, we just need to work out the kinks while treating
hundreds of thousands of people....

~~~
mobilefriendly
Even with government approval, there will be fatal accidents. This approach is
better because it DIRECTLY holds automakers liable-- they can't claim immunity
because some bureaucrat approved the vehicle. And it keeps politics and
technical ignorance out of the development cycle.

Also, 3,000 people die every month on U.S. roads, your medicine analogy is
wrong because there is much harm from the current system.

~~~
ghaff
One issue is this.

Assume self-driving cars exist at some point. Assume they reduce fatalities by
90 percent. Ignore injuries. Now "only" 3,000 people are being killed by
autonomous vehicles because "Hey, software isn't perfect and stuff happens."
How many consumer products today kill that many people a year and the public
is basically OK with it?

I'm not saying that the companies shouldn't make reasonable payments as a cost
of doing business but if Ford manufacturing defects today were to kill 1,000
people a year they'd be sued out of existence.

~~~
pg314
There are plenty of medical procedures that save lots of lives but
occasionally kill people. The public is ok with that because it is way better
than the alternative.

~~~
ghaff
Medicine generally is the closest analog. On the other hand when someone dies
because of a rare drug side effect, lawsuits are common. There's a reason why
the drug companies are protected from liability in the case of common vaccines
[and that medical malpractice insurance is so expensive].

~~~
damnfine
Except in this case, someone else's bad medicine can kill you.

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TuringNYC
Would be great to see a similar national viewpoint on liability issues with
SDCs. For example, who is liable (the car owner? manufacturer? algo writer?)

~~~
stale2002
The people who pay for self driving car accidents will be the same people as
those that pay for them today.

The insurance companies.

Only now, these insurance companies will be paying 1/4th the amount of money
they were before, because of the reduced number of accidents.

~~~
BurningFrog
I doubt it.

If my self driving Subaru causes an accident, I think Subaru will pay for the
damages. And Subaru doesn't need to involve an insurance company in that
transaction.

~~~
kwhitefoot
Volvo have already made it clear that they will take responsibility for
incidents caused by autonomous Volvos. I presume that this is at least partly
a marketing tool because I would certainly prefer a clear commitment on the
part of the manufacturer of any autonomous car that I might buy.

~~~
Angostura
Interesting. If that is a formal commitment, I imagine insuring a Volvo could
be rather cheaper than some other cars.

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Tangurena2
Hmm. The section on exemptions to safety standards was pretty interesting. I
wonder what brought that on.

The federal pre-emptions to state regulations was expected. States cannot have
any higher standards than the federal ones, except for the vehicles that the
states purchase for their own needs.

~~~
wbc
how come pre-emptions are expected? i would expect states cannot have any
LOWER standards than federal (think min wage, emissions, etc) and can mandate
higher if they choose

~~~
dsfyu404ed
CA emissions have forced the automakers to offer basically two versions of
every vehicle for the past half century or so. Nobody in the industry wants a
repeat of that because it costs money.

~~~
jlev
In both cases the California standard was higher, improving the environment
and saving lives.

What happened to the states being policy laboratories? I thought Republicans
were for local control? Or is that only for school textbooks and baking
wedding cakes.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>In both cases the California standard was higher, improving the environment
and saving lives.

Not the lives of the people who would have been saved by safety features in a
car they weren't driving because they couldn't afford it or because the
implementation of a particular safety feature was a lower priority than the
implementing a second variant of emissions equipment and calibration.

Stuff like this is fairly zero sum.

>What happened to the states being policy laboratories

The federal government could implement this as a FMVSS if they wanted.

Neither party has a monopoly on saying one thing and doing another.

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Splatter
Question: Is it expected that, as a result of this legislation, there will be
rigorous behavioral and performance definitions and standards that self-
driving cars, however that is defined, will have to meet?

IOW, similar to, or in addition to, the FMVSS, will manufacturers have a
series of regulations that define the minimum requirements of objective
performance criteria for cars sold as "self-driving"? If so, what would those
criteria be? Will there be software source code audits to exhibit that the
software wasn't written specifically for the testing (vis-a-vis VW)? Finally,
will superior test results become marketing fodder for manufacturers in the
way acceleration and cornering are now?

~~~
danblick
It seems like the legislation would delegate responsibility for coming up with
such policies to the Secretary of transportation and gives them 24 months to
come up with such rules.

‘‘§ 30129. Updated or new motor vehicle safety stand- 10 ards for highly
automated vehicles 11 ‘‘(a) SAFETY ASSESSMENT CERTIFICATION.— 12 ‘‘(1) FINAL
RULE.—Not later than 24 months 13 after the date of the enactment of this
section, the 14 Secretary of Transportation shall issue a final rule 15
requiring the submission of safety assessment certifi- 16 cations regarding
how safety is being addressed by 17 each entity developing a highly automated
vehicle or 18 an automated driving system. Such rule shall in- 19 clude— 20
‘‘(A) a specification of which entities are 21 required to submit such
certifications; 22 ‘‘(B) a clear description of the relevant test 23 results,
data, and other contents required to be 24 submitted by such entity, in order
to dem- 25 onstrate that such entity’s vehicles are likely to

[http://docs.house.gov/meetings/IF/IF00/20170727/106347/BILLS...](http://docs.house.gov/meetings/IF/IF00/20170727/106347/BILLS-115-HR3388-L000566-Amdt-9.pdf)

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1337biz
One of the very few things that I see as a massive benefit of the current
Trump Whitehouse:

Now would be the time for moonshot projects!

I bet Trump would be willing to free a massive budgets if under his term there
were a realistic chance on something like the moonlanding. Or something that
would ensure him a positive entry in the history books. I truly hople Thiel or
Musk use this rare opportunity.

~~~
Retric
Most presidents would, but they don't create the budget.

~~~
redler
And even if a budget were somehow allocated, much of it would be deferred into
subsequent congressional terms. An 11- or 12-figure project that has to
survive multiple presidential and congressional terms would be no easy feat.

~~~
1337biz
I don't think he is interested much in the presidential terms coming after his
4 or 8 years. The most vivid example for that problem is the Iran hostage
crisis which led arguably to the election loss of Carter (while he put massive
effort into that issue) but only a few days after his loss and into Reagan's
presidency, the hostages were released.

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program_whiz
tl;dr Under pressure from big investors and a public clamoring for road bots,
politicians as usual cater to the whims of the moment.

2 years later: After numerous accidental deaths, the outcry of the public, and
the behest of large tech donors fighting growing competition, politicians
cater to the whims of the moment and heavily increase regulation and scrutiny
of self-driving cars.

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dayaz36
I'm confused...how is capping the number of FSD cars allowed to 25k accelerate
anything? Am I missing something?

~~~
azernik
Yes. You're missing that the current cap is 0.

To elaborate: "Current federal rules bar self-driving cars without human
controls on U.S. roads. States have issued a variety of different rules in the
absence of clear federal guidance, and automakers have complained that
California’s rules are too restrictive."

~~~
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.

~~~
azernik
Given that this is from a base of zero, and the cap is set to rise by 4x to
100k by 2020 (which is when Waymo plans to _start_ introducing driverless
cars), I do not think that this is at all a slow pace.

~~~
dayaz36
GM sells sells 10M cars per year so 100k would be 1% of that. Also who's
Waymo? Tesla is planning to demonstrate a CA to NY trip with zero human
intervention in just a few months and Elon has said they're shooting for 2019
for L5 FSD for their entire fleet made past October 2016 (they've already put
in the hardware necessary for FSD so when the software is ready a simple OTA
software update is all that's necessary for you're car to have full L5
autonomy)

~~~
danblick
> they've already put in the hardware necessary for FSD so when the software
> is ready a simple OTA software update is all that's necessary for you're car
> to have full L5 autonomy

That's bull. Every other company working on fully autonomous driving is using
Lidar for obstacle detection, but Tesla's cars have none (only radar and
cameras). I see no reason to think their software is any better than anyone
else's (in fact I would say Waymo almost certainly ahead of them there).

Why should I have any confidence that they will be able to get better results
than anybody else using cheaper hardware?

~~~
dayaz36
> I see no reason to think their software is any better than anyone else's (in
> fact I would say Waymo almost certainly ahead of them there)

Waymo has 3 million miles of self driving data. Tesla has 3 BILLION. Perhaps
that can be a reason?

~~~
makomk
Waymo can collect full video and sensor data from all the miles its cars
drive. Tesla can collect some high-level logs. It's just not the same thing at
all.

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tryingagainbro
IMO: The need to emphasize that accidents will still happen, just less than
when humans are at the wheel.

------
Animats
Dup of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15185262](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15185262)

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Pica_soO
On the one side - i find this quite extraordinary- a government ready to push
new technologys, instead of inhibiting it- on the other (slightly paranoid)
side- what is in it for the senators?

Huge portions of traffic automated, because they really love new tech? Nah.
They could have forwarded hyperloops and public traffic ages ago.

Do they get a bonus point for the next vote? Certainly not, a large part of
the population earns its "good" livelihood with what this law is about to
destroy.

So one wonders- can you push and incentivize the trading of still green
bananas to the market- and the watch the populous lynch the producers/cripple
with regulation, after the expected large failure happens? You would be seen
as tech loving - and you could prevent social turmoil + reap large lobbyist
gift basket.

Of course that would be very cynical and presume foresight on the part of the
politician. Still.

~~~
jcao219
I'm having trouble comprehending your fourth paragraph.

~~~
Pica_soO
The idea is to take a new technology, that is bound to create horrible
accidents, and push it faster forward then is its own pace - thus creating
indirectly a surge of horrible accidents in the publics eyes, that would make
the public rise against said technology.

A sort of - over-evaluation to kill a company- strategy.

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djschnei
screw the states and their autonomy!

~~~
fhsjei
If driving from one state to another, especially for business purposes,
doesn't count as interstate commerce I don't know what does.

See the United States Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3): The
United States Congress shall have power "to regulate Commerce with foreign
Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."

~~~
sokoloff
Exactly. For airplanes, the FAA is supreme and has consistently smacked down
individual state/city initiatives to regulate air traffic (and rightly so,
even as I'm a small federal government/states' rights advocate in general).

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squidfood
Well that's one way to look at creating jobs, I suppose...

