Cars without steering wheels will be allowed under certain conditions, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said today in an 80-page report.
The report gives guidelines, which are voluntary. Precise rules, which are binding, have yet to be spelled out. But the policy clearly is to cut rules whenever possible while reserving the right to tighten regulation if problems should emerge. “When regulation is needed, USDOT [U.S. Department of Transportation] will seek rules that are as non-prescriptive and performance-based as possible,” the report says.
Two bills in Congress aim to achieve such goals on a national level, in many cases overruling states and localities. The U.S. House of Representatives has passed its bill, but the U.S. Senate version has stalled. Consumer advocates have protested measures in the proposed legislation that they maintain would sacrifice safety.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/chao ... -xmpr5fx23
The introduction of driverless cars to busy city centre streets risks causing traffic chaos and more congestion because law-abiding “robo-vehicles” will refuse to take risks.
A study found that the first phase of self-driving cars — when they are expected to share roads with human drivers — may increase traffic jams by more than 16 per cent.
Researchers said that, unlike human drivers, autonomous vehicles would be too focused on “obeying the law and not taking risks” when moving between lanes, causing more tailbacks
a bleak future awaits
=D>