Posted on 01/15/2018 12:04:54 PM PST by Enlightened1
Detroit (AFP) - Regulators will "carefully and responsibly" review General Motors' request to test an autonomous car without a steering wheel, US Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said Sunday.
"It is now coming to the stage with the rapid advancement of self-driving technology that this request is now a reality," Chao said on the sidelines of the Detroit Auto Show.
"So we will view the petition carefully and responsibly."
GM on Friday unveiled the Cruise AV, an autonomous vehicle with no steering wheel or pedals, announcing it had asked the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to exempt it from a number of federal standards that cannot be met with a driverless car.
GM executives have said they planned to introduce a large-scale fleet of self-driving taxis by 2019, a timeframe some analysts consider ambitious.
GM released images of the Cruise AV and video of the interior with a strikingly spacious windshield devoid of a steering wheel.
"It's quite a striking image when people see it for the first time," GM president Dan Ammann told AFP on the sidelines of a GM event Saturday.
"I think people will want to engage with the technology and understand it and experience it," Ammann said.
"But I think what's really most powerful about what the technology can offer is an increase in safety on the road. And once people understand that and see and experience it, we think the adoption will be there."
"Its hard to generalize" about whether the public is ready for autonomous cars, Ammann said. "Some people are more than ready. And other people will be watching and seeing how it evolves."
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
I was thinking about that in the 1980’s. With all the talk of Category III (don’t know what it is these days) very few seemed to actually trust it to land the plane. Of course I’m sure being a commercial airline pilot, most the joy is actually flying.
Pukin’ Dog used to say that just monitoring the FMS on the 777 (going over the Atlantic IIRC) was extremely boring. I can believe it. One particular gig I had was a 12-hour shift of monitoring servers on 3 screens - BION, the days when nothing went wrong were the worst, because you had nothing to do. You’d get through 8 hours of boredom and you still had basically 1/2 day of work to go. The days you were busy solving problems, the 12 hours went pretty fast.
Any commercial pilots out there?
What an idiot.
Anybody with half a brain is going to run as far away from one of these things, as fast as they can, lest they get run over.
Good point. Next up: GM requires all buyers must have Google StreetView map their driveway and garage.
What I’d like to know is who does GM think it’s sucking up to?
Open the car door, Hal.......................
The good news is both can ride shotgun. The bad news is, it will probably have a shotgun detector. And forced PBS for liberal brainwashing.
Nice! Can the robot built into the dash hand you and your friend a glass of bubbly, too?
Seems like the old transmission tunnel “hump” is going to be replaced with a different hump.
I’m afraid I can’t do that Dave.
Fortunately nothing went wrong there.....
And every time I see a driverless car, I immediately wonder when will be the first time someone loads one up with explosives and drives it to the local church, courthouse, or school.
So who gets sued when an crash occurs. The car company responsible for steering the car?
But does it know when you gotta stop and pee?
The CIA is just taking all the mystery about using vehicles to assassinate political enemies...
I don’t want to be on the road with a car with no steering wheel. Driving around with a bunch of potheads is challenging enough.
You don’t want to drive? Take a bus.
Well, fine.
Evidently all those films of me in Drivers Ed werent destroyed after all.
So ...
will I need auto insurance?
... or will General Motors need to provide insurance for everyone who lets them control the car?
...
They’ll have liability like they do now. Most of the liability will go to the owner. These are intended to be fleet cars, at least initially.
Hehe. Its true though all joking aside.. there will be no purpose for the seats “as-is”. Wouldn’t more comfy seating make more sense.
Even the BEST bucket seats suck after a few hundred miles.
Oh wait.. Prolly electric and doesn’t have that range Hahaha!
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We need immediate action from congress to ban these insane Road Boulders!
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