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A driverless car startup based out of Silicon Valley and Guangzhou, China has had its driverless testing permit suspended after one of its vehicles crashed in Fremont. According to a DMV report, the Pony.ai vehicle was in autonomous mode when it turned right onto Fremont Boulevard from Cushing Parkway and hit a center divider and traffic sign. The vehicle suffered "moderate damage" to the front of the vehicle, but there were no injuries and no other vehicles involved, the report says. Fremont police arrived at the scene of the crash, and the startup reportedly reached out to authorities to resolve...

Bad weather can render the cameras and lidar on self-driving cars useless. Researchers at MIT suggest ground-penetrating radar as the fix.

John covered this story last night, but the death of a pedestrian struck by a self-driving Uber vehicle in Arizona should have ramifications for the entire idea of autonomous vehicles. (Something I’ve been concerned about for a couple of years now.) After covering the initial reports from the accident, John concluded with the following observations and questions. There will be an investigation of this accident as well, but my first thought is to wonder why the human ‘backup driver’ didn’t stop the car and prevent this. Reliable self-driving cars and trucks may still be a couple years away but it’s...

On my fourth day in a semi-driverless car, I finally felt comfortable enough to let it stop itself. Before then, I’d allowed the car — a Volvo S90 sedan — to steer around gentle turns, with my hands still on the wheel, and to adjust speed in traffic. By Day 4, I was ready to make a leap into the future. With the car traveling 40 miles an hour on a busy road in the Washington suburbs, I pushed a button to activate the driverless mode and moved my foot away from the brake and accelerator. The car kept its...

The U.S. House of Representatives will vote Wednesday on a sweeping proposal to speed the deployment of self-driving cars without human controls and bar states from blocking autonomous vehicles, congressional aides said. The bill, which was passed unanimously by a House panel in July, would allow automakers to obtain exemptions to deploy up to 25,000 vehicles without meeting existing auto safety standards in the first year, a cap that would rise to 100,000 vehicles annually over three years. Automakers and technology companies including General Motors Co and Alphabet Inc’s’ self-driving unit Waymo have been pushing for new federal rules making...

It was an unusual sight: Democrats and Republicans gently ribbing each other, giggling, and vowing to work closely together on legislation that is said to be vital to the health and safety of Americans. Of all the things that could bring both parties together in this era of rank partisanship, who would have thought it would be self-driving cars? The convivial atmosphere in today’s hearing by the House Subcommittee on Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection, which was to mark-up a package of bills related to autonomous vehicles, was by design. After all, it was carefully cultivated by the big automakers...

Eliminating the Problem How difficult is it to test autonomous vehicles (AVs) on public roads? Uber can probably tell you all about it. Much of the difficulty in obtaining the permits necessary for such tests comes from fear. Because self-driving technology is new, because the systems have been involved in incidents in the past, and so on, people aren’t quite ready to trust the tech. The governor of Washington state, however, has a different perspective. Governor Jay Inslee signed an order on Wednesday that would allow for autonomous vehicle tests without a human driver behind the wheel. According to the...

The Michigan Department of Transportation has begun work on a vehicle-to-infrastructure communications project, in which 3M will provide lane markings, smart sign technology and dedicated short-range communication devices for a three-mile stretch of I-75, according to a report from ITS International. Once these items are installed, the Oakland County stretch of highway will allow the testing of advanced vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications. The construction project is expected to take about four months to finish.Michigan is emerging as one of the leaders in V2I and vehicle-to-vehicle communications research and adoption. V2I communications involve the wireless exchange of critical safety and operational data between vehicles...

New research suggests that children born today will never drive a car. The auto industry's embrace of self-driving technology has been accelerating fast and those technological advances mean that by the time today's toddlers come of age, they'll likely never even have to get behind the wheel of a car, according to Henrik Christensen, the director of the University of San Diego’s Contextual Robotics Institute. “My own prediction is that kids born today will never get to drive a car,” Christensen told the San Diego Union-Tribune in mid-December. “Autonomous, driverless cars are not 10, 15 years out. All the automotive...

A new collection of transportation agencies and universities is taking one small step toward transforming the Rust Belt into a place associated with the future instead of the past. Eleven agencies and institutions located in Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania have formed the Smart Belt Coalition, which will spur joint efforts on the testing and deployment of autonomous and connected cars. The collaboration comes on the heels of a legislative overhaul of Michigan regulations last month, which have been relaxed to spur the testing of self-driving technology on the state’s public roads. Ohio and Pennsylvania do not have laws on the...

I now Understand... What’s so enticing about the (just-around-the corner) self-driving cars? In view of my slightly advanced age, I may be forgiven to be a bit slow in learning—but now I understand: It’s all about what happens in the back seat! Special: Do You Like Entering Contests & Big Prize Sweepstakes? As the Globe and Mail reports, Kirk, of the Canadian Automated Vehicles Centre of Excellence, told the Canadian Press on Monday that “… once computers are doing the driving, there will be a lot more sex in cars.” Another (biased ?) pundit, Sergio Marchionne, is claimed to have...

In the Obama Administration’s latest welfare for Silicon Valley billionaires, the President intends to ask Congress for $4 billion in federal subsidies and nationalization of transportation safety regulations in an effort to speed the deployment of driverless cars. US Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, surrounded by about a dozen auto and Silicon Valley tech leaders, announced at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit that the U.S. Department of Transportation Agency intends to remove “potential roadblocks to the integration of innovative, transformational automotive technology that can significantly improve safety, mobility, and sustainability.” These code words mean driverless regulatory design is...

As interest in self-driving cars accelerates, so have questions about their safety and reliability. The idea is that self-driving cars will be safer because they will make far fewer mistakes. But can people trust computer algorithms to guide them safely through incredibly complex and ever-changing road conditions?

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Google, a leader in efforts to create driverless cars, has run into an odd safety conundrum: humans. Last month, as one of Google’s self-driving cars approached a crosswalk, it did what it was supposed to do when it slowed to allow a pedestrian to cross, prompting its “safety driver” to apply the brakes. The pedestrian was fine, but not so much Google’s car, which was hit from behind by a human-driven sedan. Google’s fleet of autonomous test cars is programmed to follow the letter of the law. But it can be tough to get around if...

Self-driving cars are taking to the streets in California this summer, but the Golden State isn't the only one opening its roads to autonomous cars.Virginia just announced that 70 miles of highway in the Commonwealth would be open to self-driving cars, like the cars in Google's fleet. Any autonomous vehicle wanting to travel those routes, called the Virginia Automated Corridors, will be overseen by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, which helped the state government plan the project.As the Richmond Times-Dispatchreports the plan is for companies to test how their cars react in real-world situations on highways packed with human drivers....

In just a few years, communities that depend on the trucking industry for their vitality will be facing major economic disruption.Roscoe, Nebraska, is a good place to contemplate how the evolution of long-haul travel can change a community. This unincorporated settlement—some classify Roscoe as a “semi-ghost town”—sits about seven miles east of the city of Ogallala along U.S. 30, which follows the old Lincoln Highway route and before that, various overland migration trails to California, Oregon and Utah. Just off U.S. 30, opposite the Union Pacific freight-rail tracks, there’s an abandoned gas station with its former pump, pictured above, standing...

Earlier today we heard that the new Lutz Pathfinder driverless car would be launching in the UK later in the year, trials will begin on footpath routes in the UK at first and are then expected to be rolled out to roads. Now the UK government has approved the use of driverless cars in the UK, and legislation to allow the technology to we widely used in the UK will be brought in some time in 2017. UK Transport minister Claire Perry said the following about driverless cars in the UK:- "Driverless cars are the future. I want Britain to...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — California's Department of Motor Vehicles will miss a year-end deadline to adopt new rules for cars of the future because regulators first have to figure out how they'll know whether "driverless" vehicles are safe. It's a rare case of the law getting ahead of an emerging technology and reflects regulators' struggle to balance consumer protection with innovation. Safety is a chief selling point, since self-driving cars — thanks to an array of sensors — promise to have much greater road awareness and quicker reaction time than people. Plus, they won't text, drink or doze off.

Milton Keynes is set to begin tests of the Lutz self-driving pods next year.The four English locations picked to test driverless cars have been named.Greenwich, in south-east London, and Bristol will each host a project of their own, while Coventry and Milton Keynes will share a third. The decision was announced by the quango Innovate UK, after George Osborne's Autumn Statement. The chancellor also announced an additional £9m in funding for the work, adding to the £10m that had been announced in July. The businesses involved will add further funds. Bristol will host the Venturer consortium, which aims to investigate...

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) -- About four years ago, the Google team trying to develop cars driven by computers - not people - concluded that sooner than later, the technology would be ready for the masses. There was one big problem: No state had even considered whether driverless cars should be legal. And yet this week, Google said it wants to give Californians access to a small fleet of prototypes it will make without a steering wheel or pedals. The plan is possible because, by this time next year, driverless cars will be legal in the tech giant's home state.