House Reps grease the wheels for hundreds of thousands of robo-cars on America's streets A draft US law that will let self-driving cars potentially swerve mandatory vehicle safety requirements has raced through the House of Reps. Under the proposed legislation, American automakers will be able to ask the US Department of Transport for exemptions to safety standards, allowing them to get autonomous vehicles onto …
"SELF-DRIVE- Safely Ensuring Lives Future Deployment and Research In Vehicle Evolution Act"
sounds like someone REALLY wanted to be called that name :o)
remembers S.H.I.E.L.D. -
Maria Hill: What does S.H.I.E.L.D. stand for, Agent Ward?
Grant Ward: Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.
Hill: And what does that mean to you?
Ward: It means someone really wanted our initials to spell out "shield." [Hill gives him a look] …It means we're the line between the world and the much weirder world. We protect people from news they aren't ready to hear. And when we can't do that, we keep them safe.
Politics these days - once you have a nice acronym you just vote for it, chances are nobody's read the actual legislation at all. Let's just call it what it is, another subsidy for the auto-industry.
Coming next week - Safely Ensuring Lives Future Deployment and Research for Universal Guns ... work it out yourself, this is America.
Under the proposed legislation, American automakers will be able to ask the US Department of Transport for exemptions to safety standards, allowing them to get autonomous vehicles onto the streets for testing and deployment faster.
Manufacturers able to put mostly untested, several tonne, computer controlled, high speed vehicles on the road without much oversight? Well, that gives another good reason not to travel to the good ol' US of A...
To allow the auto industry to have robo-cars without built-in override controls is plain stupid. The auto industry has come up with brain dead fobs that allow replay attacks to open your car, even potentially start your engine. They allow global lookups of VIN vs fob-code which allows thieves at compromised dealerships to steal cars (See "Mexico Jeep dealership san diego vehicle theft" using Google), you can attack your cars CAN bus through the entertainment system as well as vehicle monitoring ie OnStar.
Fine; if they want to do this, they must abide by FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) guidance and requirements on software for mission critical applications. After all, the software is mission and safety critical and a software bug can result in death. To build software to FAA requirements might make them think twice. The car manufacturers are too worried about 'reducing' their costs.
I think I might need to contact my state senator and house representative about this and make the above suggestion. Someone has to bring some sense into this.
SELF-DRIVE is just such an Act as one might suspect of these, er tools. I suspect that the acronym will probably turn out to be more like Safely Ensuring Lawmakers' Fiscal Delight Raking In Vast Equity.
And the rest of us will just have to duck and cover, or even better - drive old cars on back roads.
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